Choosing a horse

It's always amusing to go back and look at things I've previously written. Back in February, I had a post with the same title as this one. I generally avoid making predictions, and for good reason...here's what I predicted in February:

I suspect that Obama, Biden and Edwards will be out of the running pretty early on, and the race for the nomination will come down to Comrade Hillary and (wait for it!)...Al Gore. Yes, that single biggest contributor to anthropogenic global warming by virtue of his own hot air, Gore will enter the race. I'll go out on a limb now and predict that he'll get the nomination. Remember you heard it here first.

Sure, there's still time for Obama and Edwards to be "out of the running pretty early on", but I now doubt that'll be the case, at least for Obama. Biden looks like he's toast, so at least in baseball terms, I'm batting .333 which is pretty good if I'm David 'Papi' Ortiz, but I'm not. It's a crappy average if you're a political analyst, so it's a good thing I'm not one of those either. And it doesn't look like Gore's entering the race any time soon, so *bzzzzzt* wrong again.

Some recent poll numbers for you:

But I'm not really here to talk about Democrats, anyway. In the absence of any sudden traumatic brain injury, I'm not voting for any of them. Let's talk about the Republican candidates.

McCain: I still kind of like the guy, but his patented Maverick-ness has him plunking a discordant tune with most right-of-center voters like myself.

Huckabee: I started to think of Mike Huckabee as a bit of a dark horse with much appeal. I even wrote a positive post on him about a month ago. But as it turns out, Huckabee's a nanny stater. A word of warning to Republican candidates: leave the nanny statism at home. It's not gonna play well at the national level, even with most Democrats.

Romney: While he seems a bit too polished and slick for my taste (he's got the Republican version of John Edwards' hair style), I've yet to see any reason of substance to not support him.

Giuliani: I've liked Giuliani for a long time, and all the crap about his personal life is just that--crap. I'm hesitant about him simply because of his wobbly second amendment stance.

Thompson (Fred): Since he only officially entered the race last night, we've not heard much more from him than broad generalities. While I was excited about Fred early on, his little game of hard to get coupled with his staff instability has me a bit, well, less excited. Now that he's in it for real, I'll watch and reserve judgment for the time being.

And, just for you Ron Paul fans, some recent poll numbers for the Republican candidates: