LIGHTWEIGHT JACKASSES, HEAVYWEIGHT ELEPHANTS

All the CW (conventional wisdom) talk in DC here is about how the Republicans are deep in doom over their prospects for the presidency in 2008 while the Dems are high in the sky.  Don't buy it.  It's the Defeatocrats who are in deep kim-chee.

There are now 9 – nine – of them running for their party's presidential nomination:  Joe Biden, Wesley Clark, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack, Barack Hussein Obama Jr, and Hillary Clinton.  Lightweight City.

Only one of them can be taken seriously, possibly two.

Kucinich is a pint-sized left-wing moonbat.  Dodd is a tall left-wing moonbat who loves Fidel Castro.  Clark is a flake on a ego-trip.  Richardson has a room-temperature IQ.  The Breck Boy (Edwards) is a Jay Leno joke (re: his rich/poor "Two Americas" campaign theme, Leno shows a picture of his $12 million mansion and quips, "We know which America he lives in").

None of them have an ounce of gravitas, political weight, heft, seriousness.

Lighter than any of them, however, is The Obamarama.  Telegenic smile in public, scowling swearing gutter-mouth in private, oozing glib moderation in order to disguise a hard-left Marxism, nothing but a professional politician with no record of legislative distinction and no experience whatever in the real world (his only job:  one year as an entry-level editor), he is stunningly, astoundingly lightweight.

He is nothing but a media creation of hype and frenzy, stories about whom are more appropriate in the supermarket tabloids among the latest breathless revelations regarding Brad and Jen and Jolie. 

So we come to Hillary.  As a serious political force, she blows the other also-rans out of the water.  In terms of sheer political experience and weight, organizational and fund-raising ability, she is no lightweight. 

If you've been counting, though, you noticed two folks missing so far:  Biden and Vilsack.  Senators just about never get to be President, and Biden's no Kennedy.  Vilsack's a two-term governor of Iowa – actual executive experience unlike Senators. 

Both are waiting in the bushes for the coming Obamarama Flame-Out and to then proclaim themselves the Dems' only alternative to the most hated woman in America.

I predicted she would achieve this status someday one week after her husband's first inauguration.  (That same infamous column in the January 1993 Strategic Investment also disclosed she is bisexual – even naming some of her girlfriends like actresses Markie Post and Mary Steenburgen.)

Not an honest, sincere bone in her body.  Fascist.  Marxist. Utterly ruthless and power-obsessed.  Bisexual.  Atheist.  Charmless, phony, coyote-ugly voice (meaning you'd cut your ears off if you had to listen to her for long).  The list of her negatives is lengthy.  It's for good reason she's called The PIAPS.

And she's the best the Dems have got.

Now let's look at the other party's roster.

Yes, there's some quixotic guys there, in for the ride to spotlight their issues like Tom Tancredo (border security, illegal immigration) and Ron Paul (extreme libertarianism).  As always, there are Senators-Who-Think-They-Should-Be-President, like Chuck Hagel and Sam Brownback.

There's one I wish could make a real go for it but for whom there's no chance – my friend Duncan Hunter.  You couldn't find a more stand-up guy than Duncan, more pro-American and pro-defense, more honest and decent. 

But only one Congressman has ever been elected President in  America's history, James Garfield in 1880.  Unfortunately, Duncan won't be the second.

So let's look at the GOP's top tier:  McCain, Giuliani, and Romney.  For the moment, let's put aside other considerations and look at them just in terms of their gravitas – and compare theirs to their Dem opponents'.

Comparing Breck Boys, flaky egotists, and media celebrities to them is pathetic, a cheese quiche compared to a porterhouse steak.  And not just in seriousness or "presidentialness" but in experience and accomplishment.

The weakest of the three in this regard is McCain.  He's just a Senator.  The Presidency is a CEO position, managerial, administrative, executive.  Senators don't have a clue of this, which is why they are so rarely elected and rarely make good presidents when they are (only two presidents in the 20^th century came from the Senate:  Harding and Kennedy).

Add in McCain's unbearable temper and mercurial personality, together with his advocacy of amnesty for aliens and a host of anti-conservative positions, and it's hard to see how he'll make to the White House.

If your rooting for Rudy – well, at least this is easier to do than for McCain.  Being a very successful mayor of New York City for eight years means he has administrative-executive experience and competence in spades, big time. 

Yet being a federal prosecutor before his mayorality in 1993 and running an investment banking firm based on his political contacts after 2001 doesn't give him any extensive entrepreneurial or CEO experience in the business world.  Of the top three, only Mitt Romney has that experience, and in spades, big time.

As the guy who created fantastic business successes like Staples, Dominos, Brookstone, the Sports Authority and others, and who rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from a bribery scandal and $379 million in debt to a squeaky corruption-clean profit of $100 million, Romney is world-class competent.

And of course, he has governmental executive experience as well, albeit via just one four- year term (2003-2006) as governor of Massachusetts.  It also doesn't hurt that he's six-one, movie-star handsome, and personifies family values.  And no, it really doesn't matter that he thinks Joe Smith could read some golden tablets with magic spectacles in 1829.

Then there was January 8^th, when Romney got everybody's attention in Washington by kicking off his campaign not with some $1,000 a plate dinner but with a high-tech telethon that raised $6.5 million in a single day.

It's not that it dwarfed McCain's initial $2m and Giuliani's $1m.  It was the sheer cutting edge hi-tech competency leaving every presidential candidate of either party in the fund-raising dust. 

This is not to make a pitch for Romney.  I have yet to meet the man.  But I do think it is weird for conservatives to complain that he has changed his mind about some of their core issues such as abortion. 

Somehow for never-satisfied conservatives, saying you changed your mind from being pro-abortion to anti-abortion (Romney) is worse than never changing your mind and being consistently pro-abortion (Giuliani).

As a friend of mine, John O'Sullivan (former advisor to Margaret Thatcher and Editor of the London Times, currently at the Hudson Institute in Washington), observes, conservative political parties most anywhere in the Western world win when all three main types of conservatives are unified behind a candidate with gravitas:

Free market, pro-free trade, fiscal conservatives;  "moral traditionalists" or social conservatives; and "patriots" or national security conservatives.

John argues that the Republicans lost in 2006 due to a lack of unity between these three.  The fiscal guys typified by the Wall St. Journal editorial page drive the other two crazy with their advocacy of open borders and letting the illegals in.

Many (not all) of the social folks drive the other two crazy by being anti-free trade (such as ranting against NAFTA), and wimping out on Iraq (not demanding victory).

If the GOP could nominate someone who unifies all three – who is pro-life, pro-normal marriage and family, pro-border security, pro-capitalist, pro-smaller government, pro-military, pro-victory over Islamofascism – it keeps the White House in 2008.  If not, it doesn't.

In other words, although the 21 months between now and election day is a century in political time during which a lot of unpredictable stuff will happen, right now it looks like Romney is the best shot to keep Hillary away from her former home.

What's that?  What about Condi, you ask?  Haven't I been predicting for two years now that she's the one? 

True enough.  Recall that this prediction is based on Bush pulling the trigger on his deal with Cheney to step down so Condi can be VP.  Her candidacy and nomination only works if she is the sitting Vice-President.

Two interesting developments in this regard took place this week.  First, the Senate confirmed John Negroponte as Deputy Secretary of State.  Moving from the Director of National Intelligence to Number Two at State is a definite step down the Washington ladder.  The only way Negroponte would do this is because he was promised he won't be #2 for long.

Yep, with Condi as VP, he'll be what he's always wanted, Secretary of Foggy Bottom.

Second, Karl Rove commented in an interview that all these presidential announcements and campaigning is way too much way too soon.  He expects a lot of flame-outs (such as Barack Hussein), a lot of pan-flashes and peakings-too-soon in both parties.  He and Bush and Cheney are keeping their powder dry for Condi – who Bush still calls "44."

Maybe their Condi-VP plan will never be put into action.  Maybe they'll make a deal with a front-runner whose lead has become insurmountable for her to be his running-mate.  A Romney-Rice ticket would be formidable. 

At any rate, this is a summary of the current thinking in the White House war room right now.  What they are focusing on is the overall strength of the GOP field compared to the overall lightness of the Dems'.  Bush is optimistic his successor will be a Republican.  So should we.