Oh, and, by the way, I am kind of cynical, now that you come to mention it

A compelling and probably accurate article at Lew Rockell. Why a Primary Vote for John McCain is a General Election Vote for Hillary by John Keller.

After four terms as Senator from Arizona, John McCain has written or co-sponsored enough legislation to give us a good idea of what he believes the proper role of government to be without explicitly asking. Even if we did ask, actions are what matters. Below is an analysis of McCain’s electability based on bills he’s sponsored, most of it in the last 8 years, and various speeches and op-ed pieces. I’ll spare you the suspense, and give you the summary up front; read the rest for supporting details. McCain sees the federal government as the solution to nearly every problem, and advocates creating new bureaucracies and federal databases to track and monitor the "solutions." His bills are laden with the veneer of free market controls, tracking databases, and public-private information exchange and R&D so popular when alleged Republicans expand government; at the end of the day, he is expanding government in nearly every conceivable way. He is a committed Clintonian interventionist, often the lone Republican supporting Bill Clinton’s interventions of choice in Sudan, Somalia, Kosovo, and Bosnia.

McCain considers himself capable of getting things done in Washington because many of his bills are bipartisan efforts. The results however, leave conservatives shaking their heads: Free Speech Control, Gun Control, Unlimited Immigration, Support for a Greenhouse Gas Tax, and Woodrow Wilson–Style International Gun-Barrel Democracy. McCain was the Democrats’ useful conservative idiot in each of these cases. He was the lead sponsor of multiple bills no Democrat could have pushed through Congress, but given that almost all the co-sponsors of these bills are hard-core leftists we can see by his actions this Senator is a big government Republican on matters domestic, fiscal, and foreign.

As usual, read the whole thing. I've only quoted the introduction. The details go far beyond that.

---

I had drafted this post earlier for posting tomorrow, but I'll go ahead and post it now along with some additional comments. Most other bloggers who I read made it clear who they would be voting for. I didn't, because I knew it would be pointless.

The herds who graze the vast American plains will only vote for who they are told to vote for. Thompson never had a chance. He ran for prez not because he had a great ambition, but because a lot of people wanted him to--a lot, but not nearly enough. The media never recognized him as a legitimate candidate and did their best to portray him negatively to make sure the livestock didn't consider him legitimate, either. Thompson was closest to a real conservative of the currently surviving candidates. Paul was closest to a real libertarian (and look how the media treated him). They were the only two I ever considered voting for, and neither of them ever had the slightest chance of getting the media's permission to run.

No, as of this post they have not dropped out of the race, but I still refer to their candidacies in past tense because they are already history.

I knew from the beginning that I would never get a chance to vote for either of them in the general election. If you think that there's any real difference in any of the other Redemopublicrats, you are still fooling yourself. The only difference we should worry about now is which one will be the most competent at screwing us, and prepare for things to get a lot worse.

One last update: my prediction. It's going to be McCain and Clinton. Beyond that, the chicken entrails are murky and I can't say what will happen, except that it's going to be so nasty that it will make 2000 look like an April picnic in the park.