WEBCommentary Contributor

Author: Michael J. Gaynor
Date:  February 7, 2008

Topic category:  Other/General

Presidential Race: Winning Ugly


Unfortunately, Huck and Fred Thompson siphoned off from Romney too much of the conservative vote and the Kings (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Michael Reagan, Mike Gallagher) and Queen (Laura Ingraham) of Talk Radio waited too long to declare their support for Romney and did not go far enough, by exploding the myth that McCain is still a man of great character.

The frontrunners in the races for the Democrat and Republican presidential nominations--Hillary Clinton and John McCain--claim that they will have a very civilized contest after they are nominated, but each of them is winning nomination ugly.

Yes, Hillary is winning ugly.

Michael Barone: "The Clinton campaign, defeated in Iowa and nearly in New Hampshire, scraping by in Nevada and expecting a clobbering in South Carolina, faced a choice between losing clean and winning ugly. What is amusing is that so many liberal commentators were surprised when the Clinton apparat, with the unhesitation of a shark, chose the latter option."

Anyone surprised did not pay attention during or study the Clinton years and should contact Ann Coulter (who will be supporting Hillary as the lesser evil if McCain is the Republican nominee).

The media has made it a race between Hillary and Barack Hussein Obama, but Team Clinton won't lose it and a black winning about four-fifths of the black vote (as Barack did on Super Tuesday and in South Carolina) involves a political burden as well as a political benefit.

Barack won Delaware, because one-third of the vote in the Delaware Democrat primary is black and Barack won 90% of it. (Team Clinton, used to winning 90% of the black vote in presidential races, must be shocked as Bill, once lovingly called America's first black president, watches his wife receive about the same percentage of the Democrat black vote that his Republican opponents in the 1992 and 1996 presidential races did against him.

Barack easily won his home state, Illinois, but, despite the media hype and Oprah, Hillary convincingly took hers, New York, plus other big states contested on Super Tuesday, California and New Jersey, and Hillary has the most delegates (even though Barack won more Super Tuesday states.

Note: Despite the efforts of its two United States Senators, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, and its Governor, Deval Patrick (its first black governor), Hillary won Massachusetts by a substantial margin.

The truth is that John McCain has been winning ugly too, thanks to (1) the media, (2) the Huck and (3) devilishly good luck.

Winning by lying is winning ugly.

McCain has been lying shamelessly, but successfully, figuring that his military service and imprisonment during the Vietnam war immunize him on the character issue.

Before the Florida Republican primary (and having lost to Romney by 9% in Michigan and edged the Huck by 3% in South Carolina), McCain essentially charged that Romney had sided the cut-and-run Democrats on Iraq. Anyone who watched the whole ABC interview to which McCain referred should have know that McCain had lied outrageously about Romney's position. Romney actually had said he would veto a fixed withdrawal date, but the once-divorced McCain now lusts for the presidency and was desperate, so he lied.

Likewise, McCain lied about what he had said about Justice Samuel Alito during a private meeting last April when it was publicly reported in, of all places, the pro-McCain Wall Street Journal. Asked if he looked forward to appointing justices like Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Alito, McCain responded, candidly, that he wouldn't have nominated Justice Alito because Justice Alito "wears his conservatism on his sleeve." Instead of owning up to his private "straight talk," McCain said he didn't remember and proclaimed great admiration for Justice Alito. (No wonder former Senator Rick Santorum said that McCain's "Straight Talk Express" had become the "Twisted Talk Express"!)

With Super Tuesday imminent, McCain even ridiculously claimed that Romney had disparaged the World War II service of Bob Dole, the Republicans' 1996 presidential candidate. Romney did no such thing.

Mr. Barone: "McCain — whose candidacy seemed terminal last July 1 — was able to duplicate, with lesser percentages, his 2000 victory in New Hampshire, then survive a defeat in his best 2000 state, Michigan, then squeeze out a 33 percent to 30 percent victory over Mike Huckabee in South Carolina and a 36 percent to 31 percent victory over Mitt Romney in Florida."

If the Huck was not around, McCain would have had to create him in order to win the Republican presidential nomination.

One on one, Mitt Romney would beat him, even though he's a Mormon and there is an anti-Mormon bias, exacerbated by the Huck, a Baptist preacher, billing himself as a Christian leader, campaigning in churches and making a comment that even the Huck decided called for him to apologize.

Fact: Huck split the conservative vote with Romney and that allowed McCain to eke out a plurality and, in Missouri, for example, win all the Republican delegates.

The media made the news from Iowa's Republican caucuses that Romney was beaten by the evangelical Huck running as a Christian leader during the Christmas season in a state where evangelicals constituted 60$ of republican caucusers, NOT that McCain came in fourth. (Huck was not nearly as successful in Iowa as Romney was in Utah on Super Tuesday, but the media spins, exaggerates or ignores as it chooses.)

The media generally ignored Wyoming"s Republican caucus because Romney was favored and McCain was staying away.

The media made the news from New Hampshire's Republican primary that McCain beat Romney, not that Romney won a plurality of Republicans and "the President of New Hampshire" did not do nearly as well there in 2008 as he had in 2000.

The media deftly underplayed Mitt's nine point win over McCain in Michigan and ignored the fact mentioned by Mr. Barone: Michigan was McCain's best state during the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.

The media slighted the Nevada caucuses, won big by Romney, while sensationalizing McCain edging Huck with a third of the vote.

And then the media trumpeted McCain's five point win in Florida, due to the collapse of the Giuliani campaign, the Florida governor's endorsement of McCain and a huge vote for McCain from Hispanics sympathetic to illegal aliens.

The truth is that the media made McCain competitive.

The truth is that without the Huck in the race, Romney would have handily defeated McCain.

The truth is that Team Clinton is looking forward to a McCain nomination, because he's become a brazen liar, like Bill; he's too old for the job, obviously; and they know they can beat him, with or without Barack on the ticket.

Unfortunately, Huck and Fred Thompson siphoned off from Romney too much of the conservative vote and the Kings (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Michael Reagan, Mike Gallagher) and Queen (Laura Ingraham) of Talk Radio waited too long to declare their support for Romney and did not go far enough, by exploding the myth that McCain is still a man of great character.

Will the septuagenarian McCain (whose dad died before he was 71) still be alive to be nominated?

Is the plan for Huck to be McCain's running mate? (Senator Lindsay Graham, are you very worried?)

Time will tell.

Michael J. Gaynor


Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.


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