The Best Argument I've Seen for McCain

McCain's voting record in the 110th Senate is the 8th most conservative in the Senate. McCain's voting record in the current Congress is just more conservative than Texas Senator Cornyn and just to the left of retiring Senator Allard of Colorado. From 2003- until now McCain has consistently had one of the 10 most conservative voting records.

Follow this link to the Poole and Rosenthal website:
http://voteview.ucsd.edu/sen110.htm

FYI: BHO, the junior Senator from Illinois is in a tie for the 10th most liberal Senator.
HRC, the junior Senator from New York is in a tie for as the 20th most liberal Senator.

Poole and Rosenthal use an algorithm that they developed to produce a ranking of Senators and Representatives from each Congress. The ranking are based only on contested roll call votes, not the content of speeches or media images.

Romney II

My personal criterion for picking a primary candidate is: among the set of Republicans, who have a chance to win the general election , who would make the best holder of the office in question.

For President, that set to me has only McCain in it. That's why I want him to be the nominee.

I would rather have Romney as President than McCain, but I don't see that as the relevant choice.

So to my fellow bloggers who support Romney, is it that you have a problem with my criterion (and if so why) or is it that you have a problem with my opinion that if
Romney is nominated, we face a terrible, and I mean terrible, thumping?

It Takes a Public Affairs Professor...

This liberal Princeton Public Affairs professor adds another reason to support the junior Senator from Illinois for President:

"For Wilson School professor Stanley Katz, donating $250 to Obama's presidential primary campaign was a matter of 'putting my money where my hopes are. He's the only candidate who makes me feel like I did in the 1960s,' he added."

Apparently the efforts of the junior Senator from New York to get a $1,000,000 earmark of taxpayer funds for a Woodstock concert museum are not enough to merit the support of this Princeton professor. For this Public Affairs professor it is perhaps more important that Obama makes him feel juvenile, spaced out, self-indulgent, and desirous of other peoples' private property.

In contrast, the senior Senator from Arizona has very different memories of the 1960s than the Princeton Public Affairs professor. You can see Senator McCain's comments on the proposal for federal funding of the Woodstock concert museum and the 1960s here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIxLWbHf8NY&feature=user

Source: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2008/01/21/news/19886.shtml

Electability

According to Intrade.com, the price of a contract which pays $100 if Mike Huckabee wins the Republican nomination is $13.20 and the price of a contract which pays $100 if he wins the Presidency is $4.50. That means the market sees Huckabee as having a 13.2%
chance of winning the nomination and a 4.5% chance of winning the Presidency.

The simple probability formula Prob(Event A given Event B) = Prob(Event A and Event B)/Prob(Event B) implies that the market sees the probability of Huckabee winning the election (Event A) given he wins the nomination (Event B) as .045/.132 = .34, or a 34% chance of winning given he's nominated.

For Mitt Romney, Prob of Nomination = .183, Prob of Election = .061, thus Prob of Election given nomination = .33.

Thus both Huckabee and Romney are about the same electability.

For Guiliani, Prob of Nomination = .198, Prob of Election = .081, thus Prob of Election given nomination = .41.

For McCain, Prob of Nomination = .386, Prob of Election = .161, thus Prob of Election given nomination = .42.

That is, the markets, people trading with real money, think that McCain and Guiliani are more electable, and by a half decent amount.

In this election, having a 42% chance of winning is about all we can hope for.