1 Hillary still scares the crap out of me and there's only one person in that group who has what it takes to beat her.

2 I predict you're likely to get your wish. I've been saying for over a year now that the choices will be Hillary and McCain. I will vote for McCain in that instance, but I will hold my nose somewhat while doing it.

3 My pick (Ken Blackwell, Ohio) isn't even on Hawkins radar, which is a shame. Unlike McCain, he's a solid small government social conservative that draws both strongly on both sides of the aisle , and he's currently leading in the polls for the gubernatorial race in Ohio. I'd love to see him run in '08 will Condi as his running mate. I think he's clean house, and I go out on a limb far enough to say that a Blackwell/Rice ticket would destroy any Democratic challenger by margin of 6%-8% or more.

4 I've been linking McCain for a while now but he is schmoozing a bit much with Dems lately. Still I like him but I was a bit dissapointed he did not go after DICK on FNS yesterday. It would have been better if Wallace would have had a head to head format alough DICK was being all nice yesterday. Don't Worry DICK I go by our vote and your push against a qualified judge for political reasons pre empted any progress you hoped to make with me.

5 If Stockholm John gets the GOP nomination, I will officially disavow any connection with the party, because he is just a slimy piece of shit traitor who cannot be trusted.

6 I, too, would vote for McCain for his stance on the war and defense in general. He will definitely need to polish himself up a bit. He comes across as a bit of a hothead, IMO. I also believe he was a bit too chummy with Kerry and may have cost Bush a few votes in states that were close and so he'll have to prove himself worthy of a lot of people's vote. If McCain gets the nomination, he'll have more scrutiny of his war record by the MSM than they bothered to look into of Kerry's. You can bet that they'll dig up somebody with an axe to grind and you can bet they'll make sure he has an old manual typewriter. Of course, he will also have to move more towards the right on issues that have gotten Reagan, Bush, and Bush elected. None of them necessarily agree/agreed with everything in the party platform, but they had to come out in favor of most of those things in order to get the votes of the base. The problem with Hillary or whoever they trot out there is that the most vocal part of their base has moved so far to the left, that they'll have a very hard time winning any state in the south or in the middle part of the country. I think she only has a small handful of definites outside of New York and California. That won't cut it. The same diehard liberals that voted for Kerry, will still go vote for her but you'll see a lot of people getting up out of their death beds to vote against her. That just goes to show you that even though many liberals that don't usually vote went out not to vote for Kerry but to vote against Bush, he still won. Even though he's more to the left of most Republicans, I think if Giuliani were to run against Hillary, he could win it all. He would be strong on defense and go after terrorists maybe even harder than Bush, and he's got a favorable opinion by most of the country because of his actions after 9/11. He might have a harder time with the base but not so much if Hillary is the opponent. I'm putting my money on some combination of McCain/Giuliani/Rice. Would really like to see Rice on the ticket. Because they falsely believe that all the women will vote for Hillary, Rice is only one they're scared of because of her a) cutting into the women vote, b) cutting into the black vote, and c)superior intellect and likeability. Regardless, I think liberals are delusional about a landslide win for Hillary.

7 This is a media game for a slow newsday. At least another year to go for real interest - and 2 years for serious talk. Do note - this media game keeps Hillary's name out there. That is the purpose of stupid polls at this time - to run advance for her.

8 My brother is one of those die-hard libs. For one intance, his idea of being a lib is being FOR higher taxes because he just cheats on them anyway and honest people will pick up the slack. He lived in NYC for 20 years and hates Guiliani with a passion. I asked why because Guiliani really did a lot to clean up crime in NY and his response was, "Well yeah, you're right. I just hate him anyway." Huh? You see, libs don't NEED a valid reason to hate someone. All they have to do is be Republican.

9 Oyster, my mom was the same way. She was born during FDR, first voted for Kennedy, and drank the Kool-Aid with great gusto.

10 McCain also wants to doubel our troop presence in Iraq the idea being that once and area is cleared it needs to be secured and held. Now bush would have Iraq do that. McCain may be even more pro war than Bush as far as the number of boots he is willing to put on the ground.