How excited are Republicans about their candidates?

Ed Morrissey has endorsed Mitt Romney:

First, I want to have someone who supports conservative values. In this, we have no perfect candidates. . . . Of the four, I trust Romney and Giuliani most to continue supporting conservative principles in the face of opposition — and in fact I’d probably trust Giuliani a little more.

. . . .

Romney is not a perfect candidate. We don’t have any perfect candidates.

How excited are we? That excited!

So I got an Ipod for Christmas. I got the 160 GB version, which is perfect. I’ve been ripping my favorite albums, and have well over 300 albums on there now (160kbps AAC for rock music, 192kbps AAC for classical) and still have used only about 1/6 of the thing’s capacity. It’s amazing that I’ve avoided this device for so long, but I’m glad I waited until one came out with this capacity.

Fun stuff.

P.S. A post like this inevitably invites a slew of comments about how I did everything wrong — there are better players out there, I’m ripping CDs at the wrong rate, etc. etc. etc. I can’t stop you, so go ahead.

[Guest post by DRJ]

For years, Austin, Texas, was a sanctuary city that did not notify federal immigration authorities when it arrested known or suspected illegal immigrants … but maybe not anymore:

“Immigration agents will set up an office at the Travis County Jail to monitor the status of people booked into the facility.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will likely be stationed in the jail 24 hours a day, seven days a week in coming months, said Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton.

Until recently, federal immigration agents visited the jail occasionally to check the immigration status of inmates. They began increasing their presence in the facility late last year, leading to more immigration holds being placed on Travis County inmates for possible deportation, said Adrian Ramirez, assistant director for ICE’s San Antonio office.

An immigration hold is a legal order that says a jailed person should be released into ICE custody for possible deportation after completing the sentence.”

I suspect cases like Virginia “Jenny” Garcia’s rape and murder by an illegal immigrant (covered by Patterico in this Deport the Criminals First post) had something to do with this decision. The Travis County Sheriff publicly stated that he made this decision to increase public safety:

“Hamilton met with concerned community groups this week and said he decided to allow ICE agents to work out of the jail to improve joint efforts between local and federal law enforcement agencies to increase public safety.

“My contention is that the best way for (undocumented immigrants) to not come under scrutiny is to not commit crimes,” he said.”

Sheriff Hamilton is right and this could be a positive development for one of my favorite cities.

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

It’s hard to evaluate whether Barack Obama has the political skill to take on the Clinton machine but this recent 1-2-3 political punch suggests he might:

* First, he won the South Carolina primary in a decisive manner that pulled in a noticeable amount of non-black votes.

* Second, following immediately after the SC win that was questioned as a racially divided vote, Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama in today’s New York Times in an op-ed entitled “A President Like My Father.”

* Third, this ABC report states Ted Kennedy will also endorse Obama.

Obama’s spin on the campaign tactics used against him by the Clintons is also impressive:

“In response to Bill Clinton’s comments comparing Obama’s South Carolina win to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, Obama suggested Bill Clinton’s “frame of reference” and racial politics may be outdated.

“His frame of reference was the Jesse Jackson races. That’s when, you know, he was active and involved and watching what was going to take place in South Carolina. I think that a lot of South Carolinians looked at it through a different lens. . . As long as we were focused on those issues, we thought those would transcend the sort of racial divisions that we’ve seen in the past,” he said.

The 55 percent won by Obama in South Carolina was more than double the 27 percent of the vote that went to Clinton, with Edwards coming in third at 18 percent.

But Obama did clarify, however, that he did not think Clinton’s comments this week were intended to negatively harm his campaign.

“I don’t think they were trying to demonize me, but I do think that there is a certain brand of politics that we’ve become accustomed to, and that the Republican Party had perfected and was often directed against the Clintons, but that all of us had become complicit in, where we basically think anything is fair game,” he said.

He also reiterated that the “slash-and-burn politics” that exists in Washington today “is not the Clintons’ fault. It is all of our faults, in the sense that we’ve gotten into these bad habits and we can’t seem to have disagreements without being disagreeable. So part of what I think we have to do is to set a new tone in politics. Not a naive one.”

Obama has a lawyer-like ability to take words and ideas and turn them in a different direction. In that sense, he’s like the Clintons but (I think) better at it.

Hmm. Maybe Harvard Law should be #1 instead of YLS.

— DRJ

How excited are Republicans about their candidates?

See Dubya warns about the possible involvement of Lindsey “tell the bigots to shut up” Graham in a McCain administration. As well as a few others. He concludes:

People like McCain because he’s a war hero and he’s served a long time in the Republican Party. Just like Bob Dole. And look how well that worked out.

McCain fever. Catch it!

I have. And I’m feeling a little queasy.

How excited are Republicans about their candidates? Robert C.J. Parry (a friend of this blog) was asked to write an op-ed explaining why he supports Mitt Romney. The result gives whole new meaning to the phrase “damning with faint praise”:

For my money (and, yes, my money is a big part of this), the only hope we have lies in one former Gov. Mitt Romney. Romney is the man with the right answers right now. That’s a bit scary. . . .

. . . . Mitt’s somewhat, um, cyclical … approach to position-taking over the years makes one wonder if his beliefs now will be his beliefs throughout those pre-election cycles.

But, all we can go on is the here and now. And for that, Romney wins hands down.

Translation: if you held a gun to my head and made me vote for one of the Republicans, I guess I’d vote for this guy.

That’s a good example of how excited we are.