Unlike some other people, I was not much impressed with the first round.

Hogan Gidley, executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, says that he is not sure which Republican presidential candidates will be at the May 15 debate co-hosted by Fox News Channel. He says every candidate has received a letter outlining the criteria which must be met but he will not release a copy of that letter to Accuracy in Media. He says Fox News will decide the candidates based on whether they get one percent in various state or national opinion polls but he is not sure what polls the channel will be using to make that determination.

The Republicans have spent a lot of time sifting through the cold ashes of their perceived golden days of late. Hence their current swoon over actor Fred Thompson.

I watched what was advertised as the first Democratic debate of the political season. MSNBC carried a 90-minute question and answer session wherein all eight announced Democratic candidates for President answered questions from NBC anchor Brian Williams.  Williams was fair but he did not lob tough questions at the candidates. For example, Williams might have asked why each of the candidates flew in to Columbia, South Carolina by private jet instead of by commercial airlines - global warming and all that, you know.

The popularity of presidential candidates in opinion polls at this stage of the campaign is almost completely a function of name-recognition or how much media coverage they have already received or purchased from the liberal media. Yet that is one of the unfair criteria that Fox News will use to select the Republican presidential candidates for a May 15 debate in South Carolina. The arrangement could prevent a true conservative from emerging as a “serious candidate” in the GOP. It may also be designed to help frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, labeled a fake conservative by Terence P. Jeffrey of Human Events, get a virtual lock on the Republican presidential nomination.

Barack Obama, is out there (really out there) stumping for his party’s nomination for President in 2008.  And by the sound of his his recent speech in Chicago, what he is proposing is a liberal’s dream come true when it comes to securing influence and new friends around the world.  In short, he plans to buy them off by sending taxpayer dollars over seas and spreading socialism to all.

Harry “The War is Lost” Reid is a perfect example of what Rudy Giuliani was talking about this week:  Democrats don’t understand the enemy.  This “lost” war is still in its early stages and actually needs to be “found” by the Democrats.  Giuliani rightly described Democrats as defensive-minded when it comes to Islamic militants who desire to destroy our way of life, when the correct course of action - the one chosen by President Bush - is to be on the offensive.  Only one Democrat seems to get this.  That is Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman.  (Oh, yeah, he’s not a Democrat anymore).

Ok, maybe ‘kimshe’, but the result is the same.  Most of the mush-minds in D.C. are politically savvy, but have no clue about or interest in reality.

As some of you know, a few months ago I ran for Chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party. It was a crowded field and one of the other candidates was a man by the name of Jeff Beatty. Needless to say, we both lost.

To hear the mainstream news media tell it, the only issue really in play in the 2008 Presidential election is the war in Iraq.

It seems that conservatives are about to make the same mistake that they made in 2000.  Every Cassandra warned the movement conservatives that GW Bush was a liberal, but they were all duped by his “compassionate conservatism,” which we since have learned really means “liberal globalism.”

It seems obvious looking at recent election results. Bush II vs. Kerry - almost a dead heat. Bush II vs. Gore - a dead heat. Clinton vs Dole - no voter majority. Clinton vs. Bush I - no voter majority. It seems the UNITED States is truly two separate voting blocks, and has two separate sets of morals and goals. Fairly soon, one side of voters is not going to like what the other side wants, and will decide that voting is not going to be enough. But what is the next step?

Good For The Country as a syndicated feature isn’t for gun owners; the feature is written for the non-gun owner and heads of household who may be hearing what is at issue for the very first time, looking for just how to protect their kids at home and away from home, such as at school, in church and in shopping malls.

Do you think something is fishy about the Don Imus affair? Why was the boom lowered on him at this time? The answer may have something to do with his main accuser, the Media Matters group, which is emerging as a front organization for Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and has extensive ties to the national Democratic Party. In firing Imus, NBC News and CBS got rid of one of Hillary’s major political enemies in the media.

The questioners are beginning to question the electablity of President-Elect Fred Thompson.  The MSM is asking whether he is up to the job, questioning whether he has the experience, and so on.  Rudy is running again as Mayor of New York instead of as President of the United States.  He is consequently losing his front runner status by default.  It is a commentary on American politics that Senator McCain looks more presidential and better than any of the men or women who actually have a chance to become president with the announced field.  Except, of course, no one looks or acts more presidential than Fred Thompson.