Today I continue with Part II of my series, Who Should I Vote For?, in which I provide an analysis of the field of presidential hopefuls from a progressive, constitutionalist, Independent standpoint.

Thursday’s news of Governor Mitt Romney’s departure from the race throws a bit of a monkey wrench into my planned breakdown of the following candidates:

*Romney
*McCain
*Clinton
*Obama
*Paul
*Bloomberg (I know, I know, he’s not really a candidate [yet], but I have him here to talk about third parties and their viability).

…but considering my Monkey likes wrenches named after him, I will still talk about Mr. Romney a bit because he’s likely not to ride into the sunset of American Presidential politics just yet (although he’s the anti-Washington, self-avowed political outsider. If he has so much disdain for Washington, why’s he trying to run the joint?).

Before I get to Mitt, I thought I’d begin with the candidate who’s position is most clear right now, and that is Senator John McCain, who for all intents and purposes has wrapped up the Republican nomination, despite the derision the “wingnut” faction of the GOP holds for him.

When I was making my film about Ohio I was amazed at the power the Evangelicals held in the GOP and had the sense that a schism was imminent among Republicans, and would play itself out in the event that a “moderate” Republican emerge as a front-runner in the 2008 election. Back in 2004 and 2005 the only name that came to my mind as a successor to George Bush was Rudy Giuliani, a guy that had boatloads of streetcred among registered-Republicans for his anti-terror rhetoric and his 9-11 “heroics.” However, I sensed that the “powers that be” within the party would find his views on abortion, gay-rights, gun control, and illegal immigration untenable, making him an nonviable candidate when push came to shove. This I thought, would set off a third party movement among the right wing of the GOP, forcing them to create a “Social Conservative” party or “Family Values” party that would only put up candidates who could check the right wing block on all of those hot topics mentioned above and many more, like school vouchers, privatizing Social Security, maintaining a “first-strike” policy towards the infidels in the Middle East, and so on. The Republicans would be in a quandary, I thought, with Giuliani as the best candidate, but also incapable of receiving his party’s nomination.

Little did I know that Rudy would fall off the face of the map and John McCain would step into that role of virtually un-nominate-able frontrunner. The way I see it, rank and file right-wing Party Members hate him for the following reasons:

1) His immigration policy. McCain has a realist’s view on the situation, and unlike Mitt “Round ‘em Up and Ship ‘em Off” Romney,” realizes that it’s impossible to deport an estimated 12 million people. Think of the legal and law-enforcement costs of such a policy!
2) They hate him for his support of restrictions on Gun Shows, which they believe infringes upon the Second Amendment.
3) They hate him for his opposition to some of the recent tax cuts proposed by the Bush Administration.
4) They hate him for his sponsorship of McCain-Feingold, which proposed new restrictions on campaign finance reform. Interestingly, both the conservative NRA and the left-wing ACLU both oppose McCain-Feingold for different reasons. But did you know that this year industry experts project that a combined $3 billion will spent on this years Presidential campaign? $3 billion for what essentailly amounts to a Super-sized job interview? Imagine if that $3 billion instead was a charitable donation that went to fixing New Orleans or making college affordable for all?
5) They hate him for his acceptance of Global Warming and his support for regulations that try alter or reverse its course. I heard former Congressman Tom Delay on Hardball the other night asserts that the notion that man is causing the atmospheric pollution that threatens the delicate balance of Earth’s ecosystem is arrogant and not backed up by science. Then who’s causing it, if not man, the Whooping Crane?

But their hatred for him runs deeper than his vote either way on legislation over the last 20+ years. I believe the undercurrent for their hatred for him comes from the Party itself, not from everyday registered Republican voters. Many Americans, even Republicans, like to think of themselves as Independent, and many of us admire that quality in politicians, a trait that is hard to come by in that profession. This explains his string of victories despite the disdain the rank and file of the Party hold for him. Americans think of McCain as a maverick. We hear maverick and we think John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. What is more American than being a maverick?

But the hardliners in the party hear maverick and think, “uncontrollable.” Maybe this guy might serve his convictions and judgement before the interests of a political party, and we can’t have that, can we? So they will stop at nothing to tear him apart during this nominating process until he acquiesces to their demands and pledges loyalty to the right-wing establishment within the Party. They are basically threatening to sit this one out and allow a Democrat to take the office rather than support the will of the Republican voters. In my opinion, this strategy is self-destructive and futile. A possible option might be to throw their support towards a more right-wing candidate like Mike Huckabee, or possibly to a third party candidate. I don’t think there’s time to at this point to schism and go third party, and if John McCain might lose a close one to Hillary or Obama, Mike Huckabee would get steamrolled.

As an Independent Progressive, the biggest problem I see for a McCain candidacy is not the squabbling over whether or not he’s Conservative enough for the wackjobs in the GOP, but instead his delusial Iraq policy. By now we’ve all heard him say that he foresees our job in Iraq lasting another 100 years, which is completely unacceptable to at least two-thirds of the American electorate. He says that his support of The Surge in Iraq indicates he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to managing the war. Proponents of the Surge argue that the situation in Iraq is getting better and we should stick it out to see it through.

My view, as a West Point-trained former infantry officer, is if we send more troops over there of course the situation will appear to be more stable! If we had sent the right amount of troops from the very beginning, we wouldn’t have quite the disaster that we currently face. Bottom line, if we increased the troop numbers in Iraq from 130,000 to half a million, I think there would undoubtedly be more “peace” in the country. The problem for me (and it should be a problem for any right-winger who considers themself to be a fiscal conservative) is: at what cost? How much is stability in Iraq actually worth to us in terms of dollars and common sense?

Right now we’re running an Iraq military budget of an estimated $8 billion per month. If we believe John McCain, then our foray into Iraq might cost as much as 9.6 QUADRILLION DOLLARS!!!! (That’s $9,600,000,000,000,000! Or, a pile of $100 bills stacked 6,515 miles high). And if it seems unrealistic to just keep business as usual for the next 100 years, but we still want to “win” the war, then we should increase the funding of our operations over the short term. Right now we’re at about half a TRILLION DOLLARS in total spending on Iraq. If we double our efforts over the next five years to really stick it the evil-doers, then that strategy might cost us another TRILLION DOLLARS. So any realistic dollar value of “victory” might fall somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $9.6 quadrillion.

But wait, have we even talked about American lives lost? Add another 2000-4000 soldiers killed to the 4000 that have already died and another 30,000-60,000 to the 60,000 who are already wounded, if we stay another five years at current mortality rates. I don’t even have an estimate on hand for what it would cost the VA to administer health care to all of those wounded and suffering from PTSD but my guess is that dollar figure would also be astronomical.

The point I’m trying to make here with all of this mind-numbing math is that a TRUE CONSERVATIVE should hate John McCain for his Iraq war policy alone. We’re just not getting a good return on our investment in Iraq, and the question every American should ask themselves is how much are we willing to spend to keep that country “stable” and our country safe? For $1.5 trillion, we could probably build a retractable roof over the entire country! And what about the economic and social cost of all of these children who no longer have fathers or mothers?

Besides his views on Iraq, John McCain is reasonably palatable for any moderate, Independent, and even some liberals or progressives. He has demonstrated an ability to reach across the aisle in order to get things done. He has demonstrated his love for country by enduring over five years of captivity and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese. He is not a “Bushie,” so it’s reasonable to expect that he won’t populate his staff and cabinet with a slew of Neo-Cons.

But I still think he’s unelectable, even with the reluctant support of the GOP hardliners. And here’s where I’ll introduce my Immutable Axiom of Presidential Voting Patterns: at the end of the day, people vote for candidates they know and like. Jimmy Carter was likeable. Reagan more so. Mondale was not. Dukakis was not. Bush Sr., not likeable, but we knew from Reagan. Clinton was likeable. Plus, he put money into the pockets of the middle class, and they won’t ever forget that. Bush, people knew from his daddy. Plus he had that regular-guy charm. Gore was unlikeable. Kerry was unlikeable. McCain is not…

He’s winning primaries right now because people know him and trust his experience over the other guys. As for the General, I think if it’s McCain-Obama, Obama wins hands down due to the likeability factor, which I think trumps familiarity. If that is the matchup, it will be very familiar in tone to the Clinton-Bush or Clinton-Dole matchups, in which Bill’s charisma won over voters feeling uninspired by Bush Sr or bored to tears by Beltway-insider Dole’s dry rhetoric. If it’s McCain-Clinton, it will be closer, due to the hatred people have for Hillary, but ultimately McCain’s unlikeability will outweigh his familiarity factor. And in the privacy of the voting booth, moderates and Independents will wistfully remember the fiscal abundance and worldwide respect that America enjoyed during the Clinton years and throw the election her way, despite the much balley-hooed “unification” of the Republican party that will occur if her name is on the ballot.

…They might even remember her hubby’s election theme song, perhaps retitled to fit the retrospective they hope will occur when voters consider her candidacy: “Don’t Stop Thinking About Yesterday.”