Ron Paul people are understandably depressed as much as anyone by Super Tuesday Even the sources who confidently expected Paul would run as an independent - from which point of view John McCain is the perfect foil - are reduced to hoping the Texas Congressman will reconsider his Friday night refusal to do so once he nails down his Congressional GOP nomination in the March 4 Texas primary. (He’s reportedly worried, but elected officials always worry).

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee has massacred John McCain in the Kansas caucuses, results just reported. This is continued evidence of the GOP’s profound malaise.

I continue to think, as the late Lynn Nofziger, Ronald Reagan’s long-time aide, wrote shortly before he died in 2006, that all the preconditions are now present for a Third Party. I realize that this marks me out (not for the first time) as a kook. But I’ve seen it before, in Canada. And, hey, it’s more interesting than shilling for President Giuliani.

Continuing unabated with my conviction that John McCain cannot possibly win in November, I offer this example of the kind of thinking that will doom the Republicans

Dr. Richard Land , a highly respected voice in conservative circles and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, recommended yesterday on CNN that McCain should pick as his vice presidential running mate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Land’s thinking is that undecided voters of either party who are fond of the idea of electing either a woman or an African-American into the White House could be convinced that, while not on the top spot, Rice satisfies both requirements: she’s a black woman.

You will have to spend a long time–much longer than you care to–to come up with a dumber idea than Rice as vice president.

Rice, a Bush apologist war fanatic who liberally tossed around the word “vigilantes” with reference to the Minutemen, is less popular than her boss.

As amazing as Land’s preposterous idea was that his fellow conservatives on the panel all nodded in agreement as if his idea were the finest suggestion they had heard all week.

From now until November, McCain is going to get a lot of stupid advice from the conservatives he feels he has to appease.

To stand any kind of a chance, he should ignore it all. And most importantly, McCain should separate himself as far as possible from Bush, Rice and the rest of that neocon crowd that Americans are so tired of.

Here’s updated spreadsheet [Download primaries.xls ] with immigration exit polling data for Huckabee, Romney, and McCain. My thoughts on how immigration worked for Romney versus McCain are posted as What Immigration Did For the Romney Campaign—The Numbers. I don’t see any downside to Romney in the data except for possibly in Florida. More likely he would have been totally crushed in New Hampshire without immigration and died immediately.

The Huckabee data is quite interesting. He gained an average of 2.79% or 3.6% via his stance on immigration compared to McCain. The lower value is compared to how he did with all voters. The higher number is how Huckabee did compared to non-immigration voters. Either way, the gain to Huckabee from immigration is quite similar to his winning margins in AL, GA, and TN. Not bad for a candidate who didn’t really stress immigration.

The “How to Handle Illegal Immigrants” question yields some interesting results. “Deport Them” outpolls “Path to Citizenship” in all cases. In many states (5), “Deport Them” scores above 50%. However, the real question is how to interpret “Temporary Worker”. The folks pushing for TW status usually (but not always) mean “temporary” as in the next 100 years. However, primary voters probably assume that “temporary” means “temporary”. Combining TW and DT shows that over 70% of primary voters oppose Amnesty.

Notably, 21% of primary voters selected illegal immigration as their main issue. Michigan ranks lowest at 13% and Arizona ranks highest at 31%. California is also quite high at 29%.

This is from St. Louis local paper–it does not mention the race of Charles “Cookie” Thornton, who was black, but it calls him ” ardent supporter of the rights of residents in Meacham Park,” which it refers to as “a traditionally African-American neighborhood,” meaning, in this case, what used to be described as a ghetto.

The shooter was shot and killed by Kirkwood police, Panus said. Sources at the scene say the shooter, Charles “Cookie” Thornton, is well-known in the area as an ardent supporter of the rights of residents in Meacham Park, a traditionally African-American neighborhood in Kirkwood. He also was in the midst of an ongoing legal battle with city hall. He had recently lost a case he filed in federal court saying the city infringed on his civil and first amendment rights.[Suburban Journals | News | Gunman at Kirkwood City Hall took weapon from officer he killed, By Erin Taylor , February 8, 2008]

Here’s a photo of the dead and wounded–as expected, they all turn out to be white:

The Los Angeles Times believes that we citizens don’t expect foreigners coming here to live permanently to become real Americans. The Times thinks it’s fine that they just come to make money and live in their separate ethic communities. The foreigners do need to learn English, however, not to become part of the national community but to get better-paying jobs.

In other words, being able to deal with dollars rather than pesos is cool, but any assimilation beyond that is extreme and unnecessary.

In her heart, Sonia Galdamez is Salvadoran. She speaks Spanish at home and cooks Salvadoran food for her family.

But since arriving in Los Angeles nearly two years ago, she has been sworn in as a U.S. citizen and is studying English at L.A. City College.

Galdamez said she doesn’t have to sacrifice her traditions, roots or language to become American.

“But in this country, really, they speak English,” she said. “If I want to find a good job, I have to learn it.”
[Making for easier assimilation Los Angeles Times, Feb 7, 2008]

On the contrary, most Americans still believe in traditional assimilation in which immigrants embrace the culture of this nation.

A 2005 Rasmussen poll supports this view (79%: No English, No Citizenship):

Two-thirds (67%) of Americans say that those who move to the USA should “adopt America’s culture, language, and heritage. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 17% believe immigrants should maintain the culture of their home country.

Seventy-nine percent (79%) say immigrants should be required to learn English before they are allowed to become citizens. Fourteen percent (14%) disagree.

Another indicator is the 2006 Zogby poll that found 67 percent of citizens wanted immigration decreased so we can assimilate those already here.

In addition, the popular Sensenbrenner immigration bill that passed the House a couple years ago with bipartisan support included an Oath of Allegiance provision that demanded new citizens renounce political loyalty to their birth nations.

It’s bad enough we have millions of illegal aliens, but the MSM and ethnic hucksters are misleading even legal immigrants about what is expected of them from the rest of us.

On Slate, Mickey Kaus writes:

“Remind me again, what is the evidence–in terms of policies, not affect or attitude or negotiating strategy–that Obama is not an unreconstructed lefty (on the American spectrum–a paleoliberal or a bit further left)? For example, would he roll back welfare reform if he could?”

Well, his voting record in the Senate is not extremely far left — in 2007 he was the most liberal Senator, but the two previous years he was only a little more liberal than Hillary.

His record in the Illinois legislature was fairly technocratic, with him picking and choosing issues on which he could make a consensus with technocratic Republicans.

But, what do we know about what he’ll do when he finally gets the top job? For example, who will he nominate to the Supreme Court?

As of the writing of his 1995 book, Obama appears to have been further to the left than about 95% of the public. For example, his concerns in the late 1980s (and repeated with a straight face in his autobiography) about the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.’s church was whether it was not radical enough. Similarly, in Obama’s book, there’s virtually no criticism of welfare. Indeed, Obama’s mission in life when he was a racial activist and then when he became a discrimination lawyer was to get more money out of whites for blacks.

Many people assume that because Obama likes to show that he understands their arguments by paraphrasing them back to them, often better than they made them themselves, that he therefore must agree with them. But it’s just conservative egomania to assume that the problem with people who disagree with you is that they don’t understand your arguments, and therefore anybody who is smart enough to understand you, like Obama is, must agree with you and have your best interests at heart.

Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

For example, when Charles De Gaulle visited embattled French Algeria in 1958, the first thing he told a vast crowd of worried pied noirs was, “I have understood you.” The French-speakers cried in relief because, finally, France had a leader who understood their plight. De Gaulle then proceeded to give their country to their mortal enemies. He understood the French Algerians just fine, as well as they understood themselves. He just didn’t care about them as much as they cared about themselves.

Sen. Obama has written a 442 page autobiography in which he took great pains to indicate that A. He cares about his own feelings a vast amount. B. He cares about one segment of the population far more than he cares about the rest.

I could well believe that Obama moderated his feelings at some point since 1995 (perhaps when black voters rejected him for Bobby Rush in 2000). But I would feel a lot more confident about my guess if the media would stop pretending that Dreams from My Father doesn’t exist and somebody would sit down with him on camera and say: “According to your autobiography, you were way, way out in left field as recently as 1995. (And if you try to deny that, I’ll quote your memoirs page by page.) Have you changed since then? How so? When? Why? How can you prove it?”