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Diary Of A Mad Voter: Heath Haussamen

"Do we really have to do this again?" was my thought when I first read about Otero County, New Mexico, Republican Women Chair Marcia Stirman calling Barack Obama a Muslim and asserting that Muslims are America's enemies.

Apparently, we do. So here goes.

Stirman wrote a letter published Tuesday in the Alamogordo Daily News about why she's a Republican. In it she hit on familiar topics: She believes "in a sovereign God who sometimes gives us what we deserve." She opposes abortion and supports the death penalty. She backs fiscal responsibility, small government, personal responsibility, spanking children, women raising "their own children" and men paying "for the children they've produced." She believes marriage is between a man and a woman and that "illegal aliens should go home." She endorses guns, lower taxes and voter ID.

Amidst all of that are these statements: "I believe Muslims are our enemies. ... I believe war is a fact of life and we should always win. ... I believe there is a moderate and a socialist in this election. I agree with a two-party system, but Obama isn't a messiah or a democrat. He's a Muslim socialist."

She's wrong. [more]

Diary Of A Mad Voter: Heath Haussamen

With the final presidential debate of the 2008 election being held tonight, there's only one thing on my mind: As long as John McCain and Barack Obama refuse to treat Americans like adults, nobody has my vote.

I'm referring to their statements about our troubled economy. I was so disappointed that I didn't even finish watching the last debate after both candidates refused to level with the American people about the situation.

Specifically, they were asked by a 78-year-old woman from Chicago -- a child of the depression -- what sacrifices they would ask individuals to make "to help restore the American dream and to get out of the economic morass that we're now in." [more]

Diary Of A Mad Voter: Heath Haussamen

When Sen. Pete Domenici announced his retirement a year ago and triggered a domino effect that has made New Mexico one of the most hotly contested states in the 2008 election, who would have thought that Democrats might win the state's five electoral votes in the presidential race, Domenici's Senate seat and all three open seats in the U.S. House?

Not me. But it's become clear that New Mexico may not send a single Republican to Washington next year. New Mexico could be what Democrats like to call "true blue" in January. [more]

Diary Of A Mad Voter: Heath Haussamen

In a recent conversation, my dad summed up the current financial crisis better than I could have: We're trying to figure out how to engineer a controlled crash landing instead of allowing an all-out nosedive into the ground.

I believe he's right. The situation is that serious. Democrats and Republicans alike, in their words and actions, have indicated that the collapse of America's financial markets may be imminent if Washington doesn't step in and do something drastic. Such a collapse could send us into the next Great Depression. [more]

Diary Of A Mad Voter: Heath Haussamen

Contrary to what many on the left are saying, the Sarah Palin pick has the potential to positively and dramatically shift attitudes toward women in this country.

Those who say otherwise apparently don't understand how John McCain's selecting Palin to be the second female vice-presidential candidate in America's history challenges a huge number of Americans to think outside the box in which they live.

Many among the GOP base of religious, conservative voters attend churches in which women aren't allowed to preach or fill a number of other leadership roles. And yet, many of those same people have become the most excited supporters of the McCain/Palin campaign, and it isn't because of the social moderate at the top of the ticket. [more]

Diary Of A Mad Voter: Heath Haussamen

I didn't originally think Barack Obama did much damage to his campaign when he said at an April fundraiser in San Francisco that many rural Pennsylvanians respond to their economic plight by becoming "bitter" and clinging to guns, religion, hostility toward people who are different from them and anti-immigrant and anti-trade sentiment.

All politicians make careless statements once in awhile, especially when they don't realize those words will become public. I figured it would blow over.

I now think I was wrong. I believe Obama's comment was the beginning of an avalanche that currently has the Democratic presidential nominee buried under the momentum Sarah Palin has brought to John McCain's campaign. [more]

It's no secret that, for two or three decades, the powers-that-be in America have ignored the looming energy crisis. The almighty dollar and a political system that encourages only short-term thinking have pushed common sense aside.

Diary Of A Mad Voter: Heath Haussamen

Shortly after the 2006 primary election, the Republican Party of New Mexico's central committee entered a closed-door meeting with J.R. Damron as its gubernatorial candidate and emerged with John Dendahl as its candidate. Damron's withdrawal from the race, which allowed the party to place Dendahl on the ballot, was a surprise move that didn't help the party at all: Dendahl was steamrolled by the Bill Richardson re-election train later that year.

The switcheroo earned the GOP some criticism. What happened in that private meeting? Was Damron pressured to drop out? Who orchestrated the change? Rank-and-file Republicans had no opportunity to vote in the primary for or against the man who represented their party at the top of the ticket that year -- a controversial, fire-breathing politico many Republicans loved but others were embarrassed to call their own. [more]

Diary Of A Mad Voter: Heath Haussamen

Barack Obama and John McCain claim to be candidates of principle and reform. But the actions of both related to public financing in the presidential race raise doubts.

McCain used the public-financing system when he needed it to jumpstart his campaign and rejected it when that was no longer necessary. In the meantime, his campaign took a huge amount of money from the very Washington lobbyists the system is designed to marginalize. Now that McCain is again facing a better-funded opponent, he’s returning to the public-financing system.

Obama said he would use the public-financing system when he needed to appeal to the progressive wing of his party that wants ethics reform. Meanwhile, he was planning a revolutionary attempt to raise a huge amount of money from average people. When that worked, and public financing became a hindrance, Obama also rejected the system.
[more]

Diary Of A Mad Voter: Heath Haussamen

There were signs when Gov. Bill Richardson returned to New Mexico after a failed presidential campaign that his power had decreased. A dropping approval rating appears to be another indicator of his lessening influence in the Land of Enchantment.

His approval rating in a May poll was 56 percent - still healthy but down 18 points from a year earlier, when Richardson's presidential campaign was at its height and he was climbing in the Democratic presidential primary polls largely because of clever television advertisements.

Richardson's campaign petered out after that. And his gubernatorial approval rating in the monthly SurveyUSA poll conducted for KOB-TV in Albuquerque started dropping. [more]

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