- Rudy Giuliani may well be electable, but his repeated claims that gun control is at least partially responsible for reducing crime in New York scare me silly. His later comments have not convinced me he's a friend of the Second Amendment. We'll have at least one major anti-gun candidate in November. We don't need two.
- John McCain's support of amnesty for illegal aliens flies in the face of basic common sense. Like Giuliani, his later statements backing away from it are unconvincing.
- Mitt Romney seems reasonable enough as a conservative - this week. I do doubt the sincerity of his embrace of conservative positions, given how recent a lot of it is.
- Mike Huckabee's recent meteoric rise has come despite his taking considerably less than conservative positions on any of a number of things, from spending to immigration. He's also shown to have foot-in-mouth disease when it comes to foreign policy. I'm also a little uncomfortable with his waving his Southern Baptist religion in everyone's face; he's no Nehemiah Scudder, to be sure, but it's still too much for me.
- Fred Thompson says all the right things. Why can't he get more support? If he can't draw support now, why should we think he will in November?
- I agree with much of what Ron Paul says, but he's got too much of a stigma of kookhood about him to win the nomination, much less the election.
- Nobody else has a significant following.
I don't have to decide yet - and may not get to have a voice anyway, if I'm not home for Minnesota's caucuses on February 5. Still, it bothers me that nobody really stands out yet. It's not like there's anyone on the Democrat side I'd prefer to any of these folks, so my vote in November is assured, but I wish I had more of an opinion...