madanthony on the primaries....

So, today's the Iowa caucuses today, which means I guess I should put forth an opinion on the people running. I'm not as interested in politics as I used to be, because I've realized that, living in a state with an overwhelming democrat majority, I'm not going to influence elections either way.

So Republican-wise, who would I like to see win? Honestly, there's no candidate who really stands out to me. I would probably pick Fred Thompson and Rudy Guliani as the two best of the bunch. Thompson actually seems to have solid policy ideas (including an optional flat tax), is hawkish on defense, and seems likable and moderate enough to have a chance of winning. Plus, he's on Law and Order! Guliani also seems moderate enough to win. I'm not a huge fan of his record on gun rights, but I think he would probably realize he would need to be pro-gun to win and be re-elected. I also think he is great on defense and has great crisis-management skills.

So the rest of the field? I don't like Huckabee - he strikes me as weak on defense, a bit of a nanny-stater populist on social issues and worst of all, awful on fiscal stuff - he wants to replace the income tax with a 23% sales tax, which would screw over seniors (who are living off savings they already paid taxes on) and probably tank the economy. Romney also strikes me as being more socially conservative and more fiscally liberal than I would want a candidate to be. Ron Paul is a raving nutjob, who lives in a fantasy world where the US doesn't need to be involved in the world in terms of defense and wants us to go back to the gold standard.

On the democrat side, I hate to admit it, but Hillary may be the lesser of the evils. She does have more experience than Edwards or Obama, and is probably the most hawkish of the three on defense. Obama has minimal experience, and rocketed to popularity mostly as a matter of being in the right place at the right time, when it came out that Jerri Ryan's ex-husband was kind of a sex-crazed freak. Edwards is annoyingly populist, with his two-Americas claptrap, plus his previous experience as a trial lawyer, suing doctors with junk-science claims, annoys me.

With a field like this, I'm not really looking forward to election '08. Maybe I should move to Canada.