Today is Festivus, the nondenominational holiday made famous on Seinfeld. The Festivus celebration includes The Airing of Grievances in which each participant at the Festivus Dinner tells each other all the instances where they disappointed him or her that year. In past years I have done an blog version in which I aired my grievances about George Bush. As Bush is now a lame duck, it is time to move on to those who are seeking to replace him.
John McCain: My disagreements with you regarding your support for George Bush and the war, as well as your views on social issues, apply to most of the Republican candidates. In your case I will add one other grievance–your claim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.
Mitt Romney: After governing in a blue state you had the opportunity to help bring this country together by stopping the pandering of the Republican Party to the religious right. Instead you flip-flopped on issue after issue, the result being that you are trusted or respected by neither the left or the right. I hope you have learned your lesson as the Republicans are rejecting you for your religious views while liberals couldn’t care less what religion you are as long as you are willing to respect our heritage of separation of church and state.
Rudy Giuliani: You could have also brought liberal social values to the Republican Party, but like Mitt you preferred to pander to the religious right. Your demagoguery on 9/11 and national security can only work for so long, and your lack of respect for civil liberties is even making some conservatives nervous.
Mike Huckabee: You don’t know much about foreign policy, and your tax ideas are somewhat weird also. You share the same problems with all the Republicans on foreign policy and social issues, but the manner in which you bring religion into politics even makes some conservatives like Peggy Noonan feel uncomfortable.
Fred Thompson: I’ll deal with you when you wake up from your nap.
Ron Paul: Unlike the other Republican candidates you are right on Iraq and civil liberties, but anyone who takes opposing the federal government as the default position on all issues is bound to be right quite often. Your defense of the Constitution would make more sense if you were defending the Constitution as the framers actually intended it as opposed to ignoring those aspects which you personally disagree with, such as separation of church and state. Denial of this basic principle, as well as your views on states rights could lead to less as opposed to more freedom in much of the country. Your denial of basic science seen in your uninformed comments on evolution, along with your belief in ridiculous conspiracy theories raises serious concerns about whether you are out of touch with reality. Your ethics are also questioned when you fail to understand why a contribution from a white supremacist should be returned. Your past writings about blacks being prone to violence and lacking sensible opinions only exacerbates these concerns, which are not relieved by your claims that your newsletter was actually authored by others.
Bill Richardson: I had much higher hopes for you earlier in the race but, barring a late miracle, it doesn’t look like your campaign is going anywhere. I had hoped you would bring a real debate to the race over economic policy but we had to settle for a simplistic push for a balanced budget amendment.
Hillary Clinton: During the CNN/You Tube debate you tried to distance yourself from the word “liberal.” Too often you often seem to want to distance yourself from liberal positions as well to make yourself more acceptable to conservative voters. The only form of liberalism you consistently practice is big government liberalism of the worst type as problems are only addressed by increased government management of people’s lives. This was most clearly seen in HillaryCare I, but remnants remain in HillaryCare II making me question if you learned anything from the first fiasco. Your foreign policy views are not reassuring either as what counts was knowing whether it made sense to go to war before it occurred, not to jump on the anti-war bandwagon years later.
John Edwards: I doubt that there has been a candidate in recent history who has shown such a chance of winning a major party nomination who is so poorly qualified. Bob Shrum got it right in calling you a “lightweight,” a “hyper-ambitious phoney” and “a Clinton who hadn’t read the books.” Your only real skill is an amazing ability, seen in your legal, business, and now political careers, to convince some that you have altruistic motives when your real goal is to increase your own wealth and power. There’s little difference between the junk science you used to win legal cases and the junk economics you now are using to try to win the Iowa caucus. Your commitment to liberal principles is even more suspect than Hillary Clinton’s between your relatively weak commitment to reversing the expanded power of the presidency to your health care plan which would make everything, including preventative care, mandatory.
Barack Obama: I am still waiting for more of the promised specifics of your plans. You do show an excellent ability to at least show consideration of all views, but I’m not yet certain if this is a matter of framing or ideology which will impact the final policy. My suspicion is that in a couple of years I will be writing a number of blog posts disagreeing with some of your actions as president, but things will be far better than if any of your major opponents were to win.
Well put. I wouldn’t disagree with one of those statements. Have a fantastic Festivus and a merry Krismas!