I’m going to catch some slack from my conservative brethren for writing this, but I don’t believe that Sarah Palin can win the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. If you’re trying to analyze objectively a candidate’s presidential prospects, you need to think in terms of electoral votes. More specifically, ask yourself, “Which states does the candidate need to win in order to get to the magic number of 270?” But Sarah Palin isn’t the only potential candidate who would have trouble getting to 270. Like Palin, conservative favorites Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul don’t seem to have a viable path to 270, either. To beat Obama we will need to win a number of independent voters and both Palin and Gingrich…
Posts Tagged ‘Mitt Romney’
2012 Republican Primary Poll Analysis: Which Republican are you most likely to support in 2012?
It might be hard to imagine but after Tuesday’s midterm elections, the 2012 presidential election will start to gear up. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if several candidates announce the formation of exploratory committees as early as December of this year, though most will try to wait until at least January. Remember: disgraced Democratic Senator John Edwards announced his plans to seek the nomination in December 2006. Other major candidates from both parties announced plans to run in January 2007.
We had a total of 284 respondents answer the following question–Which Republican are you most likely to support in 2012? There were seventeen potential candidates on the ballot–some obvious Republican choices and some less obvious choices. Sarah Palin won by…
John Kerry’s Misinformed Position on the New START Treaty
Yesterday, Senator John F. Kerry wrote an op-ed in response to Mitt Romney’s piece published earlier this week in which the former governor argued against ratifying the New START Treaty. Kerry’s op-ed was not only hyper-partisan but, as The Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano notes, quite inaccurate as well. Kerry’s op-ed was little more than partisan drivel. It lacked any sort of serious analytical rigor. I would expect a better quality of analysis and thought from the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Steele’s Failed Critique Highlights Division Among Conservatives on War Strategy
In 2006, I was really pulling for Michael Steele in his battle to win a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland. Unfortunately, Ben Cardin won and Steele wound up running the Republican National Committee. Steele’s odd remarks about the war in Afghanistan have led to a growing number of calls for his resignation among prominent conservatives. The war in Afghanistan was definitely not a war of President Barack Obama’s choosing, as Steele suggested in his remarks at a Connecticut fundraiser. This factual inaccuracy made the rest of Steele’s comments seem off-the-wall, but it appears as though he was trying to challenge the president’s strategy for prosecuting the war. He just failed miserably:
Well if he’s such a…
Congress Should Launch All-Star Commission to Examine Cyber Threats
A report issued last month by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission concluded: ”China is likely using its maturing computer network exploitation capability to support intelligence collection against the U.S. Government and industry by conducting a long term, sophisticated, computer network exploitation campaign.” For the last decade, China has been conducting ”hacker attacks” and network intrusions against U.S. Government and private sector computer networks. In June 2008, Congressman Frank Wolf (VA-10th) revealed that computers in his office had been hacked; authorities concluded that the attacks originated in China. Last May, I argued in The Washington Times that our lack of a declaratory cyber deterrence policy makes us weaker as a nation by…
Defense Transformation and the Next Administration
As the general election gears up, questions surrounding defense and national security are likely to dominate the national discussion. While defense transformation remains an important issue for the Defense Department, it will most likely be lost in policy debates about Iraq and Iran. But defense transformation is not an arcane policy issue; rather it is critical to ensuring that the U.S. retains its preeminent position in world affairs. Simply put, transformation refers to the optimal alignment and development of capabilities, organizations and processes in support of the warfighter to reflect the ever-changing nature of warfare. It is an issue that will confront the next president of the United States.
Current U.S. military operations are a case in point. The Defense Department must…