1. No more old senators as candidates (see also Dole, Bob).  Old senators have been in the bubble for too long and are out of touch with real people.  Because of the advantages of incumbency, old senators have forgotten how to run a real campaign.
2. Abolish the Republican queue for the presidential nomination. If good old whoever is familiar and has been around for a long time, but never been nominated, it means that he/she is not good enough, not that it’s his/her turn.
3. No more Boomer candidates (sorry Mitt).  The litmus test is whether the candidate becomes emotional over Vietnam.
4. No more inarticulate presidents
5. Every candidate must be post-racial. No more candidates who place an opponent or supporter/associate of an opponent off-limits for criticism because of race, etc.
6. Learn the lessons of Reagan well, but quit talking about him all the time.
7. Start highlighting competent and articulate governors and recruit more candidates of the same type - conservative populists (not a contradiction) who are articulate and can connect with people.  The Republican pipeline looks good in this respect - Sarah Palin (despite the political malpractice inflicted on her by McCain staffers) and Bobby Jindal are at the top of the list.  Congress is currently held in very low repute and that repute will drop even lower with an all-liberal government.  A governor can run against Congress and the Washington establishment much more effectively than someone currently serving in that establishment.

On the night before the election, I’m predicting that McCain will win by 5-10 electoral votes.

How can this be with Obama ahead in all major polls? The answer is the Spiral of Silence.

The Spiral of Silence was first propounded by German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and, in short version, means that “a person is less likely to voice an opinion on a topic if one feels that one is in the minority for fear of reprisal or isolation from the majority.”

In more detail via Wikipedia:

The spiral of silence begins with fear of reprisal or isolation, and escalates from there. Individuals use what is described as “an innate ability” or quasi-statistical sense to gauge public opinion. Mass media plays a large part in determining what the dominant opinion is, since our direct observation is limited to a small percentage of the population. Mass media has such an enormous impact on how public opinion is portrayed, and can dramatically impact an individual’s perception about where public opinion lies, whether or not that portrayal is factual. Noelle-Neumann describes the spiral of silence as dynamic process, in which predictions about public opinion become fact as mass media’s coverage of the majority opinion becomes the status quo, and the minority becomes less likely to speak out. (Citations Omitted)

This is the downside of the MSM’s descent into acting as the propaganda wing of the Obama campaign. Those voters who dislike Obama or prefer McCaiin are either not talking to pollsters (some polls have a refusal rate of 80% or more recently) or they’re saying they support Obama while not doing so.

Obama’s injunction to his followers to “argue with your neighbors” and “get in their face” if they’re not voiting for Obama further accentuates the Spiral of Silence.

In Britain, the 1992 victory of John Major and the Conservative party in the face of unanimous polling that predicted a Labor win commenced a standard practice of UK pollsters to factor in the Spiral of Silence. US pollsters don’t do so. I predict that they will in 2012.

See more here and here.

UPDATE: See the Times of London

The #1 point in my post about what happens if Obama becomes President was that the Republic of Georgia and Ukraine better watch out.

Hold your nose and read this in the New York Times.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France said Tuesday that Moscow had been issuing Russian passports in Crimea, a region in southern Ukraine where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based. “We all know that they are handing out Russian passports over there,” Mr. Kouchner said in an interview with Kommersant, a Russian online newspaper. The government of Ukraine has said it wants the fleet to leave the Crimean base in Sevastopol when its lease runs out in 2017. But the Russian naval authorities have indicated that they want to retain the base. Mr. Kouchner said Russia might try to make advances in Crimea after the success of its military operations in Georgia in August.

You’ll recall that Russia handed out a lot of passports in South Ossetia prior to its invasion of Georgia.

I have extremely mixed feelings about President George W. Bush. I think he did some good things early in his presidency, but also made some terrible decisions.

President Bush can perform one of his most important acts for the welfare of the United States before his term expires: Appoint a Special Counsel to investigate two aspects of this election.

1. Potential violations of the campaign finance laws
2. Potential violations of voter registration and related laws

The Special Counsel should be tasked with investigating both the McCain and Obama campaigns and voter registration activities of individuals and organizations associated with both the Republican and Democrat parties.

My recommendation for this Special Counsel: Patrick Fitzgerald.

I believe that Fitzgerald was overly-aggressive in his prosecution of Scooter Libby, but, unlike Ken Starr, it will be difficult for the liberal press to tar him with pro-Republican biases. While I disagree with some of Fitzgerald’s prior actions, I think he is very resistant to being deterred or intimidated. Fitzgerald has deep experience with corrupt money in politics, a fixture in Chicago where he is the current U.S. Attorney. Fitzgerald has prosecuted both Tony Rezko and Illinois Republican Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Bush should make the appointment immediately following the election regardless of who wins. Bush will take heat for this, regardless of who the successful candidate is, but it will go a long way toward protecting the election process in the United States. If one party or the other believes the election was stolen, the uproar over hanging chads in Florida will look mild by comparison.

The Independent Counsel statute under which Ken Starr was appointed has expired. The Special Counsel is part of the Justice Department and the Special Counsel can be fired by the Attorney General. By appointing a Special Counsel before the next administration takes office, President Bush will cause the next President and his nominee for Attorney General to be asked whether they will allow the Special Counsel to continue with the investigation. I believe that the American people will react negatively if this investigation is prematurely terminated.

1. If you’re living in the Republic of Georgia or Ukraine, you better brush up on your Russian. Within 6 months of Obama taking office, Putin will send troops in to Georgia and Ukraine. He will make certain to grab the Baku-Supsa and the South Caucasus pipelines so he can put Europe into a hammerlock, particularly with natural gas. Obama will protest and so will the EU, but nobody will be ready to push Russian troops out. Estimated probability – 80%. Once he’s in Ukraine, Vladimir will start throwing his weight around with Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Romania, etc. Estimated probability – 70%.
2. Given the timing of the Israeli election, Israel is unlikely to be in a position to take any military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities until after Obama is inaugurated. Obama will absolutely refuse to allow Israel to attack Iran, prohibit overflights of Iraq and threaten to warn Iran if U.S. surveillance facilities observe any Israeli air force planes heading in the direction of Tehran. Estimated probability – 90%. Within the first two years of the Obama administration, Iran will explode a nuclear device and will announce that it has nuclear warheads mounted on missiles capable of hitting Israel and any other country in the Middle East or Central Europe. Estimated probability – 90%. If Israelis don’t start a major program to expedite the emigration of its citizens, Iran will fire one or more nuclear missiles at Tel Aviv. Estimated probability – 60%. If the Israelis strike first, Iran will launch nuclear missiles at Tel Aviv. Estimated probability – 90%
3. Hugo Chavez will decide that he needs some additional land to govern and will start taking it from Colombia. Obama will remember how much Bill Ayers likes Hugo and protest, but do nothing more. A significant border war will break out which will give Chavez a chance to use his new Russian military equipment. Estimated probability – 75%
4. The United States will join with the European Union in a treaty that imposes significant limits on carbon emissions. Most of the countries in the EU will cheat and exceed the limits. The United States will not. This action will reduce US corporate profits by at least 500 billion dollars in the first five years and increase US unemployment to over 10%. Residential electricity and heating bills will triple in that same period and Obama will create major energy subsidies for the middle class. China will not join the treaty and its annual GDP will grow to exceed the GDP of the US during this period.

 
Excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal by Arthur Laffer discusses bail-out politics and economics. A sample quote:

Giving more money to people when they fail and taking more money away from people when they work doesn’t increase work.

The stock market is obviously no fan of second-term George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama or John McCain, and again for good reasons.

These issues aren’t Republican or Democrat, left or right, liberal or conservative. They are simply economics, and wish as you might, bad economics will sink any economy no matter how much they believe this time things are different. They aren’t.

I was on the White House staff as George Shultz’s economist in the Office of Management and Budget when Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls, the dollar was taken off gold, import surcharges were implemented, and other similar measures were enacted from a panicked decision made in August of 1971 at Camp David.

I witnessed, like everyone else, the consequences of another panicked decision to cover up the Watergate break-in. I saw up close and personal Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush succumb to panicked decisions to raise taxes, as well as Jimmy Carter’s emergency energy plan, which included wellhead price controls, excess profits taxes on oil companies, and gasoline price controls at the pump.

The consequences of these actions were disastrous. Just look at the stock market from the post-Kennedy high in early 1966 to the pre-Reagan low in August of 1982. The average annual real return for U.S. assets compounded annually was -6% per year for 16 years. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a bear market. And it is something that you may well experience again. Yikes!

Then we have this administration’s panicked Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, and of course the deer-in-the-headlights Mr. Bernanke in his bungling of monetary policy.

There are many more examples, but none hold a candle to what’s happening right now. Twenty-five years down the line, what this administration and Congress have done will be viewed in much the same light as what Herbert Hoover did in the years 1929 through 1932. Whenever people make decisions when they are panicked, the consequences are rarely pretty. We are now witnessing the end of prosperity.

Read the whole thing here.

Excellent post by Mark Levin at The Corner. I’m including a longer excerpt than normal because I think it’s so excellent.

The Obama Temptation [Mark R. Levin]

I’ve been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we’d see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what’s occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can’t help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can’t explain themselves in an intelligent way.

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama’s name on it, which adorns everything from Obama’s plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama’s name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

. . . .

But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama’s entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The “change” he peddles is not new. We’ve seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama’s appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the “the proletariat,” as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it’s $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he’s now officially “rich.” The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class). And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good. The “hope” Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual.

Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He’s not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks “fundamental change,” i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands.

So, Barack comes up through the Chicago Democratic organization, likely the most corrupt big-city machine still in existence.

Obama’s crookedness continues, via The Corner on National Review:

So I went to the Obama website this afternoon and clicked on the “Donate” button.

I used my real MasterCard number (but was not asked for the 3 digit security code).

Used the following information and it was accepted…

First name: Fake
Last Name: Donor
Address: 1 Dollar To Prove A Point
City: Fraudulent
State: AL
Zip / Post: 33333
Email Address: allmyinfoismadeup@mediabias.com
Phone Number: 2125551212
Employer: Mainstream Media
Occupation: Being in the Tank

And incredibly, my $5 donation was ACCEPTED!!!

I then went to the McCain site and used the exact same information (and WAS asked for the 3 digit security code for my MasterCard).  There, my contribution was rejected with the following message: “Your transaction was not approved for the following reason(s): Invalid data”, and then: “We have found errors in the information that you have submitted.  Please review the information below and try again.”

What’s the political philosophy behind such blatant dishonesty and illegal behavior? Get the money, win the election, then see if you get caught. If Obama wins the election, he controls the Justice Department, so you can forget about any criminal prosecution. If the toothless FEC does anything, it will assess a fine against the Obama campaign - $250,000 is my bet, maybe a million. Chicago pol Obama figures that swapping a $250,000 fine for hundreds of millions in illegal donations and four years in the White House is a great deal.

Pay no attention to the radical behind the curtain.