McCain Wins; Giuliani and Edwards Bow Out
John McCain's surprising winner-take-all victory in Florida suggests that Republican voters are more pragmatic than party leaders, given the fact that only Republicans (no independents) were eligible to vote on Tuesday. Rudy Giuliani's departure wasn't even a swan song, it was an inevitability that everyone except the campaign and much of the mainstream political punditry had seen since late last year.
John Edwards returns to his advocacy role -- health care and poverty -- and leaves the Democratic field a match race. His voice will be missed. I wish he had at least waited until next Wednesday.
His populist rhetoric forced his rivals to compete for union support, and he was the first out of the gate with detailed plans for universal healthcare and education, putting pressure on the field to match him. The former trial lawyer arguably won a majority of the debates, time and again challenging his opponents to refuse money from lobbyists and speed up their plans for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq.
With Edwards out, Ron Paul (R) remains the only non-mainstream candidate in the race. Let's see what Tuesday brings for him. And what Bloomberg makes of the Republican fall-out.
Comments
Sorry to see Edwards go. He was one of the more honest men in the race who was also against the War in Iraq and pre-emptive attacks on other countries like Iran and Pakistan.
I’m an Independent who usually votes Democrat in my local elections and the Presidential elections. We have an open primary, and while I haven’t ever voted in my primary before, I will this time.
I’m going to vote for Ron Paul. I have had it with the elitist, big business names ruining this country for their own financial gain. And I’m a bit embarrassed to say that it wasn’t until a month ago that I went to Ron Paul’s website to look into him. Ironically, a fellow Edwards supporter and volunteer clued me into Paul.
The fact that the big media conglomerates who were pushing for Rudy, Romney & Clinton have totally ignored and/or attempt to smear Ron Paul like they did to Edwards finally got my attention.
Now I know why.
I feel pretty humbled by this congressman’s 31-year political record. If I had actually taken the time until now to read his website and read about all the pieces of legislation he has introduced over the years, I would have been backing Paul from the start.
thanks, jennifer.
Hi Kathy, Jennifer,
It is always sad to see a nice guys leaving the stage. Especially one having some interesting ideas about important topics. But let’s face it, it is also probably because he was a too nice guy. He was looking way too nice to become a serious candidate. His ideas were great, sure, but who cares? If this election had anything to do with real ideas, do you think that the budget of each candidate would be similar to the one of a small country? If candidate spendings were capped (as it is the case in many democratic countries), the debate would go a lot more about ideas and policies and a lot less about who looks nicer, more macho, more sensitive, more compassionate or more heroic. And why not use the rest of the money (if people really want to spend their hard won bucks on something) to build and maintain a couple of schools or universities in countries where education is an issue? Or, if it’s Republican money and they don’t want to look too altruistic, they could spend them in improving the US basic education. It couldn’t hurt that the average American learns a bit more about geography, History and general culture and not only about mathematics, physics and economics. Nothing wrong about these latest three, except that they don’t help to understand the world around us as much…
thanks, alphast … interesting ideas. most other countries have a fixed (shorter) time period for elections, too, don’t they? aren’t most parliamentary systems?
Well, yes and no. It is true that most have relatively shorter time periods for elections. But for most of them, it is not really fixed. As for the fact that they are parliamentary systems, it is not really true. France has an even more presidential system than the USA, for instance, and the elections are a lot shorter and cheaper, even if you take the size of the country into account. I guess part of the issue in the USA comes from the combination of presidentialism, a nearly locked up two party system and the superficiality of citizen’s political education, information and understanding.