Another Nail in the Coffin of Reagan's Legacy

I had the opportunity to commune with a bunch of similar minds in a live blog at Mike's America as the results came in. I have to thank them all for making the Florida primary easier to watch. Now, down to business.

Here's my predictions from Monday. Let's see how I did:

On the Republican front, Rudy Giuliani will be eliminated from the race, but he will do better than Huckabee. And Mitt Romney will narrowly Defeat John McCain. And I mean narrowly. But, since it's a winner-take-all-delegates state, it will be a big win for Romney, and will swing the momentum his way.

Well, with McCain's victory, I was wrong. This in itself is not the end. But I also predicted that the winner of Florida will get the nomination. This means McCain. And as much as I hope that my prediction is wrong, I suspect that the race this fall will be between John McCain and Hillary Clinton. If this is the case, I will spend the week after the Republican Convention searching for a third party candidate to waste my vote on. And I will share that choice with all of you, so that the person in the White House for four years screwing us is a Democrat in name.

With this victory, several reasons come to mind why McCain could win:

First, the GOP has a tendency to inbreed; that is to give the nod to someone who has paid his dues. McCain did so when he went down to defeat in 2000. Thus, it's his 'turn' to carry the ball. That same mentality gave us George HW Bush (for better and for worse) and Bob Dole (who made Fred Thompson look energetic) as candidates. That's one reason my father hopped on the McCain train. It's about as bad as how Democrats pick their candidates.

Second, there's a tendency for people to try to redefine conservatism to fit their ideas. In his victory speech, McCain reference Ronald Reagan over and over. However, McCain has gone far left on so many serous things (McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, Gang of 14, Bush tax cuts) that it is obvious that he has a horrible record on conservatism. If you doubt that, check out the repository for the Reagan legacy, The Heritage Foundation. I did the search for you, and while McCain is not an absolute liberal, there's a lot of stuff about his accomplishments as a destroyer of conservative principle.

Third, it is a possibility that the makeup of the Republican Party has shifted further to the left. This is probably the worst thing our party can do, as, without clear principles, it will become merely the right wing of the Democrat party. If this happens, conservatives will have to look to the Libertarian party for principles. I did find their response to the State of the Union Address, and I mostly agree with it, with a big exception for their suicidal ideas on the War on Terror. At least it makes a lot more sense than the Democrat response, or even the pseudoconservatism that McCain harps on

Also, I forgot about the FloriDUH factor. It appears that there was more crossover votes than I expected. But I won't go on about it, as the votes are in and I have an aversion to hanging chads for some reason.

Anyway, this is another reason I say the Reagan era is dead. If the GOP can't find a better candidate than McCain, then the party as we know it, as well as what was left of the Reagan era, is truly dead.