It's February of 2007, not 2008, but it's a new day and the 2008 presidential campaign already is underway. It's not unthinkable that a state (or even states) will move its primary or caucus to December. (So much for Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!)
The top two questions are (1) who will be the Democrat nominee and(2) who will be the Republican nominee.
The answers (as of now): (1) Hillary and (2) Mitt Romney.
Black men got the right to vote before white (or black) women, but the Democrats will nominate a white woman for president before they nominate a black man and that woman is Hillary Rodham Clinton, the junior Senator from New York (via Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, the District of Columbia and Arkansas).
After the Democrats successfully nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt for president four times, the United States Constitution was amended to impose a two-term limit.
The Clintons figured out the best way around that was to team up and each serve two terms. As they declared in 2000, they are a two-for-one package.
It's the same tactic that the late George Wallace of Alabama successfully used when he was term-limited as governor: run spouse. It worked until Lurleen Wallace died of cancer.
The Clintons are trying to circumvent the Constitution by each running for a couple of terms. and it's Hillary's turn.
The 2008 Democrat presidential nomination is Hillary's to lose and she's not likely to do so.
Barack Hussein Obama is the current media darling, but the rookie Senator from Illinois is no Abraham Lincoln and not presidential timber.
He does make Hillary look moderate in comparison, which would help her to win a presidential election if Republicans are not careful.
Bill Clinton famously admitted using marijuana, while ridiculously insisting that he did not inhale.
Barack acknowledged using marijuana AND cocaine.
A former president of the Harvard Law Review (like Susan Estrich, the manager of the dismal Dukasis 1988 presidential campaign that tanked when Michael Dukasis, then Governor of Massachusetts, was photographed in a tank), Senator Obama's idea of executive experience is running the Harvard Law Review. That simply will not do.
Former Democrat 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry, the junior Senator from Massachusetts, self-destructed as a 2008 presidential candidate during the 2006 election campaign and not even his second wife (Terry Heinz Kerry, the ketchup widow) can buy him the nomination in 2008.
Former Democrat 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore wants the Democrats to draft him in 2008, but, for him, it's too late. Like Senator Obama, he makes Hillary look moderate in comparison. But as a presidential candidate Bill Clinton's former vice president made George W. Bush President. After Adlai Stevenson, Democrats don't want to nominate a presidential candidate to lose twice.
The last of the so-called top-tier Democrat 2008 presidential possibilities--John Edwards, former 2004 vice presidential candidate and former one-term junior Senator from North Carolina--made Senator Kerry look politically adroit by the way he handled his hateful choices for blog mistress and netroots coordinator, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.
It is astonishing that the vehemently anti-Christian attitudes of these women (examples: Marcotte commented that "the Pope’s gotta tell women who give birth to stillborns that their babies are cast into Satan’s maw"; McEwen referred to President Bush supporters as his "wingnut Christofascist base") could have escaped detection if Senator Edwards, a very skilled trial lawyer, had checked. Worse, when the hateful comments of these women were publicly called to his attention, Senator Edwards merely commented that he disapproved of their language, but kept the two on (until they resigned). Go back to trial work, Mr. Edwards.
So Hillary is on course for the 2008 Democrat presidential election while all other aspirants are heading for rejection.
Of the top-tier Republican presidential aspirants--Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney--Mitt Romney is the best viable alternative.
Polls current show that many more people are favorably disposed toward the idea of electing a black or a woman president than not, but the reverse is true with respect to electing a Mormon president.
Will Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, lose the Republican Party nomination (or the general election) on account of religious bigotry?
NO!
If being a Mormon was fatal to election success (outside Utah), Mitt Romney would not have been Governor of Massachusetts.
When Republicans focus on who best can beat Hillary, Mitt will fit.
Newsday columnist James P. Pinkerton, in an article entitled "Romney's campaign of transformation," opined that "any baby boomer who has been happily married to the same woman for 37 years deserves a medal for good conduct during the sexual revolution."
Mitt Romney is the only top-tier Republican presidential aspirant who has not been divorced. Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich have been divorced twice; McCain once. None of them is in a position to dispute Mitt Romney's moral fitness for America's highest office (even if inclined to do so).
Former Speaker Gingrich had many good ideas, but he is the top-tier candidate the Clintons want to make it to the finals. Him, they think they can beat. And trying to prove them wrong would be an irresponsible risk to take, for heaven's sake.
Senator McCain has been pro-life, but he had his chance in 2000 and he has not matched the political skills of Mitt Romney in enacting a viable universal health-care program in Massachusetts.
Ironically, health-care is Hillary's signature issue, and Mitt Romney showed her the way.
Besides, Hillary is a Wellesley valedictorian and a Yale Law School graduate and the Republicans should select a worthy opponent
Who better to oppose Hill: Mitt Romney, 59, a Brigham Young valedictorian who earned his B.A. summa cum laude and then graduated from a joint JD/MBA program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, was named a Baker Scholar and graduated cum laude from the law school and in the top 5 percent of his business school class, or John McCain, 70, who graduated fifth from the bottom of his United States Naval Academy class and isn't getting younger?.
Rudy Giuliani is NARAL's favorite Republican presidential aspirant. That speaks volumes.
In addition, he obtained an annulment of his childless first marriage, AFTER FOURTEEN YEARS, CLAIMING THAT HE HAD DISCOVERED HE AND HIS WIFE WERE SECOND COUSINS (and if believe that one, there's this bridge in Brooklyn you might want to buy!). His second marriage ended in divorce, with his second wife receiving custody of their three children. Not long after the divorce, he married one of the women with whom he had become involved during his second marriage.
I doubt Mr. Giuliani, or Mr. Gingrich, or Mr. McCain will argue that a Mormon like Mitt Romney is not morally fit to be President of the United States of America, or that enough people would believe it by the time the 2008 Republican presidential candidate is selected.
Why Mitt instead of Hill?
Plenty of reasons, from leadership, competence and executive experience to constitutional fidelity.
Remember the two United States Supreme Court Justices appointed by Bill Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer?
They are judicial activists, a former counsel for the ACLU (Ginsberg) and a Kennedyite (Breyer).
Mitt Romney believes that the proper role of a judge or justice is to interpret the law and the Constitution – not make up the law and deprive we the people of the right to govern ourselves.
As Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney demonstrated that after the activist Massachusetts Supreme Court took it upon itself to establish "gay marriage."
Who better to oppose Hill: Mitt Romney, 59, a Brigham Young valedictorian who earned his B.A. summa cum laude and then graduated from a joint JD/MBA program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, was named a Baker Scholar and graduated cum laude from the law school and in the top 5 percent of his business school class, or John McCain, 70, who graduated fifth from the bottom of his United States Naval Academy class and isn't getting younger?
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.