“A political party cannot be all things to all people. It cannot compromise its fundamental beliefs for political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers. It is not a social club or fraternity engaged in intramural contests to accumulate trophies on the mantel over the fireplace…No one can quarrel with the idea that a political party hopes it can attract a wide following, but does it do this by forsaking its basic beliefs? By blurring its own image so as to be indistinguishable from the opposition party?”

– Ronald Reagan, 1976.

There’s been a lot of talk in the wake of the defection of Arlen Specter about how Republicans have lost influence because they have been intolerant of moderate Republicans. What’s generally missing is context: Specter wasn’t a moderate Republican, like a John McCain, but a perpetual thorn in the side of the Republican party, voting against his own party on a myriad of issues from property rights to national security. (For example, in the annual American Conservative Union rating, Specter has a miserable 44% lifetime rating to McCain’s 88% lifetime rating.)

What’s in a name? Specter was already voting with Democrats, and would have given them the 60th vote whether an “R”, “D” or “I” was beside his name. The Democrats had that 60th vote the day Norm Coleman’s campaign self-imploded.

Which brings us to our more important point and Reagan’s quote above: Take a page from the Democrat’s playbook. The Democrats expanded their party membership and seized or solidified power in all three branches of government by not moving to the middle. Barack Obama and Democrats in both House and Senate races ran on platforms championed by the hard Left. So how is it that Republicans — we are misguidedly told — will only regain power by embracing those persons like Arlen Specter who are, at best, moderates that vote against their party literally half the time? They won’t.

I have mixed feelings on the internal strife in the Democratic Party that is supposedly causing a notable percentage of Hillary backers to openly support John McCain for president.

[Wall Street Journal] Clinton supporters, disillusioned by their candidate’s narrow loss, have been showing up in the McCain camp, and Sen. McCain has stepped up his effort to woo more — including strategists who worked for the Democrat. One former Clinton aide is helping the Republicans identify and win over former Clinton voters. The Republican National Committee even held a “Happy Hour for Hillary” in Denver where McCain volunteers mingled with disgruntled Clinton backers.

…There were signs that even some party luminaries loyal to Sen. Clinton were less than passionately committed to the nominee-in-waiting. Several high-level Clinton fund-raisers, including former campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, plan to leave Denver before Sen. Obama delivers his anticipated acceptance speech before 75,000 people in a football stadium. Mr. McAuliffe said he was heading home for his daughter’s birthday.

The August Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll4 found just 52% of Clinton primary voters now say they plan to vote for Sen. Obama. An additional 21% say they will support Republican Sen. McCain, with the rest undecided or not planning to vote.

On the one hand, I’m thinking Republicans and the McCain camp need to not overplay their hand. If they get too brazen in their attempt to keep the Democrats split it could backfire. And, frankly, I don’t yet believe that come election day Obama is going to lose 48% of Clinton backers. Oh sure, they’re complaining now, but I just don’t see them either not showing or pulling the lever for McCain come election day.

Then, on the other hand, I worry that they do, and if they do, what does that say about the conservative character of John McCain, and what does that say of the very nature of the Republican party?

I’m a little uncomfortable that so many Democrats could be so comfortable putting a supposed conservative in office. Yes, there’s their boneheaded strategy that Hillary could run again sooner (2012 as opposed to 2016, if at all), and there’s the fact that Ronald Reagan — a former Democrat turned Republican who famously quipped that his party “left him” and not vice versa — won two landslides in part with votes from lifelong Democrats.

But even so, when I post a lenghty rant (yesterday) ridiculing the lack of science behind global warming, only to read today that my Republican party might do the same as Democrats, during its convention next week, by providing “a first-ever plank on global warming,” stating that, “While the scope and long term consequences of this warming effect are the subject of ongoing research, we believe the United States should take measured and reasonable steps today,” I just want to hurl my breakfast.

A party platform of “Hey there’s some very debatable science here, but let’s go ahead and foul up the economy anyway with a bunch of growth-retarding carbon trading policies” (the precautionary principle) shouldn’t be high on any fiscally conservative’s mind.

Couple that with McCain’s typically populist language of “taking on big oil, and drug companies” — two entities that have done more to empower the wealth and health ability of Americans than any politician has ever done — or shopping Sen. Joseph Lieberman as a potential running mate, and one has to wonder just what kind of Republican brand might take office. (I love Lieberman’s no nonsense moral clarity on foreign policy, but were he ever to become president it would take decades to undo his economic damage to fiscal conservatives, not to mention what the federal judicial appointees or Supreme Court might become).

This election doesn’t seem to be between the Republican versus Democrats, but between the Republicrats or Demoicans versus the Obamanation Socialist party.

Did you know that Barack Obama has a 26-year-old half brother who “lives on less than a dollar a month in the outer slums of Nairobi, Kenya?” Obama has met him only twice, and failed to mention him in his latest autobiography.

Andrew Breitbart calls out Obama on his “glass houses” mentality.

Someone who made $4.2 million last year and lives in a mansion that a mobster helped pay for should not be throwing stones. When Mr. Obama’s flesh-and-blood lives in squalor, raising the standard of living of his opponent’s extended family is probably not a smart idea.

It’s scary to think that this could be a preview of an Obama presidency in which attacking the rich is all the rage, and the rich in the news media pretend it’s OK. Hugo Chavez is having a helluva run bringing down his formerly prosperous nation of Venezuela with that formula.

…Does anyone think if Mr. McCain had a sibling living in a trailer park making minimum wage (892 times more than Mr. Obama’s half brother’s yearly income) that the mainstream media and the Obama campaign wouldn’t notice?

In fact, last week National Public Radio ran a piece titled, “Cindy McCain’s Half Sister ‘Angry’ She’s Hidden,” highlighting that Mr. McCain’s wife’s half sister was left out of her father’s will. The piece was duly filed under the publicly funded network’s “conservative compassion deficit” media template.

Yet Mr. Obama has a half brother who lives in Africa on three cents a day, and the story breaks in an Italian magazine and is picked up by a London newspaper and a few others in Australia.

Amen. Read the rest. They hypocrisy of the wealthy liberal — to whit, now that I’ve made mine I’m going to jack up your taxes — never ceases to amaze me.

By the way, McCain did screw up on the house thing. All he had to say was “I own one house with my wife, and her family owns several investment properties.”

I keep hearing how smart Barack Obama is. The mainstream media loves to point at every opportunity that Obama is an “intellectual.” Well, if Obama is so darn smart then how is it he seemed caught off guard by an abortion question? He’s running for president, for cryin’ out loud.

[Reuters] Asked at what point a baby gets “human rights,” Obama, who strongly supports abortion rights, said: “… whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity … is above my pay grade.”

Above his pay grade? Well, who’s pay grade is it?

This was a dumb answer. Conversely, people aren’t stupid. They recognize a guy who’s just refusing to answer the question when they hear it.

Were Barack Obama as smart as we’re told, he would have taken a play out of the Bill Clinton “how to appear moderate enough to woo some evangelicals” playbook and replied, “Yes,” but abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” as Clinton did. Or, he could have said, “Yes, but my personal beliefs on religion won’t as president infringe anther’s privacy and choice concerns,” something like that.

The point is, a polished, smart and experienced politico would have answered the question, which just underscores Obama’s lack of leadership. If he can’t answer a tough question before evangelicals, how’s he going to do with Vladimir Putin in the room? How’s he going to answer a tough question like, “Mr. President, how do want to respond to Iran’s missile launch on Tel Aviv?”

So frustrated are the Obama campaign and it’s media backers that they’re now, without any evidence, retorting that John McCain must have cheated during the forum, must have overheard the question, and been able to prepare an answer. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was the most brazen about this, implying the charge must be true because, “He [McCain] seemed so well prepared.”

Set aside the fact that McCain has been in the Senate for decades, run for president before, and has lived a life of answering tough questions. Rather, let me point out that surely, when Obama accepted an invite to attend a televised town hall meeting hosted by one of the country’s biggest evangelical groups (the Saddleback Civil Forum on Presidency), he would have had to have known that the controversial “A” topic would come up, right? I mean, the abortion issue is what makes the evangelicals a voting block to begin with!

Indeed, it turns out that pastor Rick Warren called both McCain and Obama prior to the forum and gave them both examples of topics and questions he would ask because he wanted to avoid any deer in the headlights moment. So, the charge is simply without merit.

No, the truth of the matter is that the Obama camp had to have known such predictably religio-philosophical issues would come up during a religio-philosophical event, but by (bad) strategy they decided that Obama would just dodge the question.

Or, maybe it wasn’t that planned. Maybe, it’s just their nature.

Obama, and most of the liberal community, live in this world where everything is explained away with nuance. “These things are complicated,” we’re told. “They’re not black and white” as conservatives see them, we’re told (insulted).

Yes, indeed they are complicated. But “shades of gray” complication becomes the liberal excuse to never make a tough decision. It’s not that conservatives don’t see the gray areas, it’s that they realize that at the end of the day we — the president especially — have to make a decision and stick to it.

Not so with liberals. Thus, we have endless forums (like the United Nations) perpetually talking about what to do about, say, genocide in Darfur. What to do about Russia invasion of Georgia. What to do about Iranian nuclear proliferation. What to do, what to do, what to do? Just talk some more, say the liberals. After all, it’s nuanced! Can’t make a decision yet. Too complicated. Above our pay grade.

Career-wise, that works just fine and dandy for Capital Hill folks and state department diplomats. Not so much for presidents. Being president means making tough decisions that are often unpopular, and likely to tick off at least half the voting population. (Or worse, sometimes, as Bush as learned, you can make a decision that only partially appeases one’s base, meaning that both your opponents and most of your base constituents find your decisions unpopular — what I call the trap of trying to be the “moderate” president.)

This is going to be a close election. Everyone who remotely follows politics, and doesn’t kid themselves, knows that. Every election since 2000 has been tight, and with the exception of ’96 when Clinton defeated Dole handily, it’s been tight since 1992. But, Obama, by all facts, current events, and historical data, should have a clear advantage over McCain.

Why isn’t Obama pulling ahead?

He’s not ready. And people know it — It’s that simple.

It’s not that Barack Obama had a bad answer — although, predictably as any politically correct liberal he felt it necessary to focus equally on the United States — but just contrast his answer (and the crowd reaction) to a more politically savvy, experienced John McCain. Sometimes, less is more. And sometimes, the answers are indeed that simple.

I think it should be noted that nothing McCain has said is as aggressive as the actions of Russia. It strikes me odd right now to complain of aggressive words in the defense of democracy rather than condemning aggressive actions against a democracy.

– Seth Leibsohn

In a post titled “McCain Should Link Tsar Putin with ‘Drill, Drill, Drill’” CNBC’s Larry Kudlow is spot on:

But global strategist Thomas Barnett has the energy angle on Russia’s invasion of Georgia exactly right. He says, “Now we all have clarity about the nasty nature of Putin’s Russia,” and this gives us clarity on the need to dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil. He asks: Why would the U.S. want to expose the American economy to the potential risk of being held hostage by a couple of oil pipelines that run through the old Soviet empire? He goes on to say, “It’s all-of-the-above time, gang–domestic drilling, nukes, concentrated solar, deep geothermal, clean coal, and whatever else Silicon Valley and heroic capitalists everywhere can dream up as we conduct a market-driven transition to a post-hydrocarbon economy.” (Hat tip to Jimmy Pethokoukis.)

He may be a messianic rockstar candidate but to date he’s parroting John McCain’s leadership like a bad mime.

Let us count the ways:

* Obama was against the surge before he was for it. How Kerryesque! Only after taking a beating from the legitimate criticism that Obama had never been to Iraq did Obama go.

* A few painful polls later, and Obama is now following McCain’s lead on offshore drilling too. (Indeed, even obstructionist Nancy Pelosi has quietly conceded to allow a vote in September so the Democrats in Congress don’t get creamed on the issue).

* From the first hours of the Georgian conflict McCain’s message has been clear and blunt. Meanwhile, Obama is perpetually “refining” his position. First Obama released statement worthy of vying for a state department position, that “it is important at this point for all sides to show restraint.” Yes, Georgia, please show more restraint as Russia slaughters you. Then Obama’s campaign, rather than point out the obvious Russian power grab, decided to attack a McCain staffer (Randy Scheunemann) for previously working with the Georgian government (as though that was illicit or something). Finally, Obama is coming close to unequivocally saying that Russia must withdraw from Georgia, moving ever closer to the McCain position.

None of this matters to the Kool-Aide drinking left. Perhaps the Obama followers forgot that last April the senator voted with McCain and the rest of a unanimous Senate to admit Georgia into NATO? Of course, in recognizing this inconvenient truth they declaw their primary attack on Bush — that his Georgian NATO insistence made Russia feel threatened. Why a supposedly reformed Russia would feel threatened by a fellow Western-style government joining NATO undercuts that argument, of course, and exposes both Russia’s intentions and the Left’s intellectual dishonesty on Russia. But while Bush’s reaction to Georgia is as spinelessly diplospeak as Obama (as the Obama supporters point out), the fact remains that George W. Bush isn’t running for president.

John McCain is Obama’s opponent. And fate just handed him a sledgehammer with which to pound Obama’s foreign policy paradigm.

This is what you call a “read the whole thing” editorial. What frustrates me is that any conservative worth their salt could retort Obama’s dufus “windfall profits” platform in about 60 seconds. For all of McCain’s strengths on Iraq, I just don’t know if he’s capable of doing what the WSJ does below.

The “windfall profits” tax is back, with Barack Obama stumping again to apply it to a handful of big oil companies. Which raises a few questions: What is a “windfall” profit anyway? How does it differ from your everyday, run of the mill profit? Is it some absolute number, a matter of return on equity or sales — or does it merely depend on who earns it?

Enquiring entrepreneurs want to know. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama’s “emergency” plan, announced on Friday, doesn’t offer any clarity. To pay for “stimulus” checks of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals, the Senator says government would take “a reasonable share” of oil company profits.

Mr. Obama didn’t bother to define “reasonable,” and neither did Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, when he recently declared that “The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy.” Really? This extraordinary redefinition of free-market success could use some parsing.

Take Exxon Mobil, which on Thursday reported the highest quarterly profit ever and is the main target of any “windfall” tax surcharge. Yet if its profits are at record highs, its tax bills are already at record highs too. Between 2003 and 2007, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes, exceeding its after-tax U.S. earnings by more than $19 billion. That sounds like a government windfall to us, but perhaps we’re missing some Obama-Durbin business subtlety.

Maybe they have in mind profit margins as a percentage of sales. Yet by that standard Exxon’s profits don’t seem so large. Exxon’s profit margin stood at 10% for 2007, which is hardly out of line with the oil and gas industry average of 8.3%, or the 8.9% for U.S. manufacturing (excluding the sputtering auto makers).

If that’s what constitutes windfall profits, most of corporate America would qualify. Take aerospace or machinery — both 8.2% in 2007. Chemicals had an average margin of 12.7%. Computers: 13.7%. Electronics and appliances: 14.5%. Pharmaceuticals (18.4%) and beverages and tobacco (19.1%) round out the Census Bureau’s industry rankings. The latter two double the returns of Big Oil, though of course government has already became a tacit shareholder in Big Tobacco through the various legal settlements that guarantee a revenue stream for years to come.

In a tax bill on oil earlier this summer, no fewer than 51 Senators voted to impose a 25% windfall tax on a U.S.-based oil company whose profits grew by more than 10% in a single year and wasn’t investing enough in “renewable” energy. This suggests that a windfall is defined by profits growing too fast. No one knows where that 10% came from, besides political convenience. But if 10% is the new standard, the tech industry is going to have to rethink its growth arc. So will LG, the electronics company, which saw its profits grow by 505% in 2007. Abbott Laboratories hit 110%.

If Senator Obama is as exercised about “outrageous” profits as he says he is, he might also have to turn on a few liberal darlings. Oh, say, Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett’s outfit pulled in $11 billion last year, up 29% from 2006. Its profit margin — if that’s the relevant figure — was 11.47%, which beats out the American oil majors.

Or consider Google, which earned a mere $4.2 billion but at a whopping 25.3% margin. Google earns far more from each of its sales dollars than does Exxon, but why doesn’t Mr. Obama consider its advertising-search windfall worthy of special taxation?

The fun part about this game is anyone can play. Jim Johnson, formerly of Fannie Mae and formerly a political fixer for Mr. Obama, reaped a windfall before Fannie’s multibillion-dollar accounting scandal. Bill Clinton took down as much as $15 million working as a rainmaker for billionaire financier Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies. This may be the very definition of “windfall.”

General Electric profits by investing in the alternative energy technology that Mr. Obama says Congress should subsidize even more heavily than it already does. GE’s profit margin in 2007 was 10.3%, about the same as profiteering Exxon’s. Private-equity shops like Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, which recently hired Al Gore, also invest in alternative energy start-ups, though they keep their margins to themselves. We can safely assume their profits are lofty, much like those of George Soros’s investment funds.

The point isn’t that these folks (other than Mr. Clinton) have something to apologize for, or that these firms are somehow more “deserving” of windfall tax extortion than Big Oil. The point is that what constitutes an abnormal profit is entirely arbitrary. It is in the eye of the political beholder, who is usually looking to soak some unpopular business. In other words, a windfall is nothing more than a profit earned by a business that some politician dislikes. And a tax on that profit is merely a form of politically motivated expropriation.

I’m going to shamelessly steal an argument made by Fox News’ John Gibson.

If you look at an average of all the major polls out there, which includes, Gallup, Rasmussen, CNN, USA Today/Gallop, Democracy Corps, Fox News and the NBC News/WSJ polls, Barack Obama is only up by 2.6%.

The question is, if Obama is the messiah we’re perpetually told he is, who will, in Obama’s words “become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,” why isn’t he up on McCain by double digits?

Even the Democracy Corps poll, run by former Bill Clinton campaign head James Carville — for crying out loud – has him only at +5. Even if we toss out the one poll that has John McCain ahead by +4, we’re only talking a 3.5 point lead for Obama. Given how polls seem to call those (1) at home, (2) or retired, that’s a virtual draw for McCain-Obama, or in other words, the exact same highly polarized electorate we’ve had since 2000.

Gibson and many others are citing arrogance. Obama’s actions in past few weeks mimic those of a guy who’s celebrating a little too much when there’s plenty of time left on the clock. People don’t like that.

With so much time, anything could happen, especially given how often pollsters get it wrong, and very wrong at that. But given how the McCain campaign has fumbled so many times, let alone all of the economic issues unfairly associated with him, they’ve got to feel good about not being down 10 or more on August 1.

Pollster.com has done some historical research:

With little in the way of new polling data–and the milestone of 100 days until Election Day passing–we decided to take a look at where the race stood at this time over the past five election cycles. While this was an unscientific review, we did try and choose the most representative polls (from reputable pollsters) that we could find. The trend from 1988 – 2004 shows that the GOP candidate tends to under-poll in the summer–with the exception, as you can see below, of the 2000 campaign. In each of the other four years, the Republican candidate had been polling significantly behind the Democrat at this point in the race. Each of those times, however, the Republican improved his position, gaining an average of 15 points relative to the Democrat.

We shall see, eh? I don’t have high hopes, though. Not so much because of McCain’s miscues, but because the Republican party in general hasn’t had it’s act together in a long time. When you’re perpetually battling a media slant that will cite names like “Ted Stephens” or “Jack Abramoff” on page one on a daily basis with only mention of “Tony Rezko,” “William Jefferson,” “Jim Johnson,” or “Chris ‘there went my VP spot’ Dodd” one time, if ever, and buried on page 14 at that, you have to have your act together. The Republicans just don’t yet, and they’ve alienated their base with eight years pork spending and little backbone.