The Wrong Kind of Candidate

Over the last several days, I've read and heard various ideas about what "kind" of candidate the Republicans should select for the next Presidential candidate. As if it's not sufficient to be a proud conservative.

Many, many conservatives tell me they couldn't defend President Bush against charges that he was stupid, because he mangled words occasionally. So, their solution is to elect a more eloquent president.

WRONG.

Ronald Reagan was the most eloquent President this country has had in the last 75 years. Reagan was not only eloquent, he was whip-cracking smart. Smart, as in Thomas Jefferson smart. Alexander Hamilton smart. Yes, that smart. If you don't believe me, go read "Reagan in his Own Hand". The book is a collection of 670 of Reagan's essays over a period of 40 years. Written entirely by hand, by Reagan, without an editorial assistant and one intermittent research assistant. These essays reflect that Reagan was not only supremely intellectually curious, incisive, and thoroughly steeped in the Founding Father's vision for America, he was profoundly skilled at evaluating and formulating ideas. Don't guffaw. Put down your prejudice, go open your mind and read the book. Then come back here.

And yet, the media pronounced him a dangerous dunce, a cowboy. The lesson here is that, sure, conservatives could appoint a vastly qualified and extremely talented, eloquent, educated and qualified black woman Secretary of State. And get ZERO "credit" for it from the media. In fact, I'd dare say the fact that Condoleeza Rice was black made the media attack her more fiercely than they would have if we had selected Joe the Plumber for that job.

Sure, we could select a woman Vice-Presidential candidate who was MORE qualified to be the Vice President than Hillary Clinton was to be a Senator, because Palin got to where she did wholly on her own merits, not by riding her husband's coattails. And watch her get cruelly savaged by the media with such vile sexism that it boggles the mind. And we act surprised, and "offended" by this, which mimics the "victim mentality" that conservatives say they despise so much. If we despise it so much, why do we do it?

No, the answer is NOT to calculate how the Left might like our candidate and act accordingly, somehow hoping that picking someone with the outward physical attributes that may shield us from the lies and the venom the left vomits forth.

The answer is to nominate the strongest lower-case "c" conservative candidate we can find and to loudly and proudly proclaim the virtues of liberty, freedom, duty, and honor: limited government, federalism, constitutional process. And when the Left attacks, we have our honor and our principles to stand on, instead of the quicksand of fashionable left-wing identity politics.