Unfortunately, those of us not in the political class are just to naive to understand the intricate complexities of CBO scoring and what it would take to balance the deficit. With this mindset, politicians were safe gaurded from we the people being able to claim they weren’t making the tough decisions necessary. Unfortunately for them, the nytimes has made this exercise childs play. Go to the link, right now, and balance the deficit. Do what thousands of congress critters and the last 2 presidents have failed to do. Tough choices? yeah. Everything from a variety of tax increases, tax deductions ending, military cuts, social service cuts, and misc. are on the table. None of them are enjoyable. I have my preference. I have ones I think are absolutely terrible. But, I’ll be honest, I’d stomach nearly any combination of those if I were guaranteed a balanced budget, and certainty that I could pursue prosperity in my life.

I say nearly any combination~ realistically, a lot of combinations of tax increases listed would do irreversible damage. But, as a conservative I’ve come to the conclusion, and I hope you can too, that revenue increases and military cuts can be on the table, if we can find a comprehensive path to accomplish this. I hope we can have a discussion here first, of what combination would be best, rather than calling every proposal dead on arrival.

At a question / answer session at the college of the Ozarks, Newt Gingrich showed his die hard support for the Republican party-

He predicted the rise of a third party by 2012 if Republicans don’t get their act together.  And he acknowledged that most of the big financial problems the country currently faces began under the era of former President Bush.

“Remember, everything Obama’s doing, Bush started last year. If you’re going to talk about big spending, the mistakes of the Bush administration last year are fully as bad as the mistakes of Obama’s first two, three months,” he said.

Yeah- that took me a 2nd read to ensure I caught that right. Our former party leader is predicting that the “big business” sect of the party will kill the party. His motivation seems like one of two obvious things. Either he is genuinely worried that the Republican Party will be on the verge of folding by 2012, (I’m leaning towards not likely) or he is clearing the way for himself to be the “change agent” sweeping in to save America  in dramatic fashion in 2012 in which he accepts the presidential nomination of another party.

I suppose the lingering hypothetical question is- would you support him as a 3rd party candidate? If your knee-jerk reaction is no, then consider if you would support him compared to McCain if he had been a choice. Or compared to most of our other potential nominees in 2008 who didn’t accept all 3 legs of conservatism fully?

I’d like to preface this by noting that Conservatives lost in the primaries. America’s left party nominated the farthest left candidate they had available. And we nominated arguably the farthest left candidate we had available. Maybe I just miss comparing different candidates who I at least respected, I’d like to speculate where each candidate would be at this point in the campaign and invite some hypothetical discussion to lighten the mood around here. Here’s how I think each candidate would likely be fairing-

Giuliani: Out of our field, I have no doubts that Rudy would have criticized Obama hardest, the loudest, and most importantly, in a way we can relate. Obama would have been forced to fight back and would have likely ended up in a mudslinging heavy campaign (even by today’s standards). Rudy’s success would depend on

1) How successful his attacks stuck to Obama

2) His trust created on economic issues by comparing his mayorship of NYC to his role in the economy as president. Ultimately, would he get the perceived universal Republican blame for our current economic distress.

3) His ability to earn the trust of social conservatives (a Palin VP pick would have been perfect for him).

4) Creating major campaign themes besides his response to 9/11.

Huckabee: Populism vs Populism. Speaking talent vs Speaking talent. To win moderates Huckabee would essentially need to beat Obama at his strengths and his image would be a major role. I’m not confident he could pull it off. For every inch Huck lost on the image battle, he’d need to regain it in the social issues battle. All the while he’d have to somehow comfort the fiscally conservative and constitutional originalist in our midst. I think his success depends on:

1) Image in comparison to Obama’s Image. (Read, cult of personality)

2) Ability to sell the fair tax (I’d be most interested in how this debate goes). This would be his only chance at surviving the current economic crisis.

3) Getting every social conservative in the nation out to vote, and converting moderates to social conservatives.

4) Getting a VP of the Bobby Jindal level to comfort fiscal conservatives.

Paul: (Just because this is a fun alternate reality) Government spending (and size) would be at the center of the debate and the most extreme contrast. The only foreign policy debate would be who is more naive. Obama and Paul Supporters would be having a scream off to see who could yell louder, and spam more political content in wasted bandwidth. Paul could never, in a million years, connect with a huge chunk of the electorate (including moderates). This economic crisis would probably actually work to Paul’s advantage. To Win… well, his only shot would be a sudden die hard love for the inner workings of the constitution from the majority of our country.

Romney: I think Romney would go the exact same way as our brand. He doesn’t have career accomplishments that really make him excellent. He might be fairing better during this economic crisis than McCain. You can bet the campaign would be incredibly negative because Mitt would have very much he could get people excited about. I do think he’d run the best campaign from an executive level. His path to 270 would be

1) A well calculated plan that would indeed understand the exact message and states that it’d require to become president.

2) A revitalization of the Republican brand recognizing that without that he has no shot.

3) Proving major political accomplishments.

Thompson: Gotta save the best for last. I honestly think we call Fred a lousy candidate because he couldn’t stand out in a field of 6+. When narrowed down to one on one, I think he’d be a much better candidate. He could possibly make Barrack’s Image appeal look silly and childish. He would excite every corner of our base for a well funded campaign. I have no idea what Fred could legitimately be attacked for other than being a Republican. To counter that, I think Fred could renew pride in the GOP. His highly principled approach to government would earn trust. His path to victory likely depends solely on his ability to relate with the moderates.

I do hope these guys continue to help the conservative movement. They all have places where we desperately could use them. I can’t wait to hear more about the accomplishment’s of Fred’s PAC. Well, back to spectating reality.

-Who is more politically experienced?

-Small town Mayorship vs Community Organization

-Who is really creating a Cult of Personality

-Who is playing Identity Politics

-Palin’s speeches causing fundraising for both her Campaign and Obama

-Who grasps the Bush Doctrine better

-Which of them would do what on Foreign Policy

In all of this, I can’t help but see a beautiful sports analogy (other than baseball for once) begin to unfold. With 8 weeks to go in this election, I feel like we are beginning the fourth quarter of a long grueling football game. Both teams are exhausted (read, everyone is burnt out on their petty partisan and personality fighting) and suddenly the GOP team has subbed in the Junior Varsity squad (Sarah Palin. And for the first portion of the fourth quarter (read, until the first debate) the JV will go head to head with the Dems A team- Obama.

But here is the crazy thing- we are pulling ahead with our JV in. And all this time, our A team- John McCain, is able to step away from the petty daily news cycles. He can be seen as above the bickering. And come two weeks from now, we will see the first debate, and the audience is going to want to see McCain succeed because he hasn’t been dragged to the bottom over the last two weeks as both Palin and Obama will have been. We will enter the last few drives of the game, nearly tied, but fully refreshed, and with the home field advantage.

And all of this while Palin is creating enthusiasm with the fans- improving McCain’s down ticket support should he win, raising money for the cause, and doing all the extracurriculars so the Varsity can focus on what’s most important- winning.

State- Former Status- New Status

TN- Likely GOP- Safe GOP

LA- Likely GOP- Safe GOP

SD- Leans GOP- Likely GOP

NC- Leans GOP- Likely GOP

OH- Toss Up- Leans GOP

CO- Leans Dem- Toss Up

OR- Likely Dem- Leans Dem

WI- Likely Dem- Leans Dem

ME- Safe Dem- Likely Dem

CT- Safe Dem- Likely Dem

If you are keeping score at home- then you’ll notice that every state that shifted this month shifted in our favor. That’s 10 for 10. Of course- OH and CO have been getting all the attention lately. But now, two new states have entered the swing state radar- Wisconsin and Oregon. 538‘s model says the projected likelihood of us taking either of those states is a little better than the Dem’s pulling off Missouri and slightly less likely than them stealing Florida.

Also remember that this next month is going to be dominated by bounces that should be disregarded in the long run. False convention jumps and VP enthusiasm will dominate polling. This my be our last clear look at polls for a while.

When one adds up the pledged, and unpledged but unofficially pledged delegates, BHO appears to have 2,307 delegates or 52% of the vote.

The split looks like this-
Pledged votes: Hillary 1720.5 Obama 1842.5 Edwards 3.0
First, that 0.5 comes from some split in the “Democrats Abroad” delegate count.
More importantly, if super delegates didn’t exist, Obama holds the lead with 51.7% of the vote.

So how much of what’s left does Hillary need?
Take away all the sanctions and there are 852 Super Delegates, and 3 unpledged Edwards delegates for 855. To get to 2210.5 Hillary needs 490 of those unpledged delegates, or 57.3% of them.

Now let’s go a step further. Say you call shenanigans on Obama being given any of Michigan’s pledged delegates when his name wasn’t on the ballot. I know I would. This was an early primary in which many votes could have easily gone to other candidates who removed their name from the ballot. Or better yet- many of the uncommitted votes could easily have been a protest vote to the parties sanctions on the state and the candidates themselves removing their names from the ballot. Well, that’s another 59 delegate penalty to BHO leaving him with just 1783.5 to Hillary’s 1720.5 of pledges (and not just promised) delegate votes or 50.9% of the vote and a spread of just 63 votes. OH NOES!

If that’s the case, our unpledged pool would be upped to 914. Meaning Hillary needs just 490/914 or 53.6% of the uncommitted vote.

Now, a good deal of these numbers are only available to those who pay for premium member status to the pollster, but the gist of the polls are released to the public- and display nothing but good news for McCain. The most recent set of data was taken August 2nd and 3rd- which showed McCain more trusted on 9 out of 15 issues. Prior to that, Obama had been more trusted on 7 out of 10 issues polled. The real meat of polls comes when looking at the trends on the issues. Every single issue that was surveyed in both polls shows McCain either gaining ground, improving his lead, or overtaking obama’s lead. Without seeing the crosstabs, here is the best I could organize the data from the article.

A few of the highlights in terms of McCains +/-

Issue – July – August – Net Gain

• National Security +8 +12 +4
• • Economy -1 0 +1
• • Balance Budget 0 +3 +3
• • Immigration +3 +9 +6
• • Environment -14 -8 +6
• • Social Security-? +6 >+7
• • Health Care -12 -5 +7
• • Education -10 -4 +6
• • Iraq NA +12
• • Abortion NA +6
• • Energy NA +4
• • Negotiate Trade NA +9
• • Taxes NA +7

On Social Security, the article just mentions McCain previously being behind on Social Security, so I assume at least a -1.

I do wish I had the full crosstabs from the last few months, but with the numbers I could pick out, the trends have been rather incredible. Beyond just trends, the data shows that McCain is dominate on military, as expected. He has gained an over all edge on fiscal issues. And on the social issues that he hasn’t yet pulled ahead on, he is moving in the right direction.