The American Spectator

For me, as for most Republicans, this has been an amazing presidential primary, fraught with anticipation and excitement, especially the recent “Primary Air Hockey” game between Colbert and Governor Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee claims he can still win Texas because “I know barbecue.” Colbert has proclaimed the Governor “the new president of Texas.”

As an Irish-German urban Catholic, I was crushed that the GOP’s first ever Papist seriously contending for its presidential nomination was the ultra-heterodox Rudy Giuliani. It would have been grand to have one of our own (He is Italian; but you get my drift) to support for the nomination of the party to which my family has been committed for four generations. My family was generally pleased when Jack Kennedy was nominated by the Democrats in 1960, even though not one of them voted for him in the general election.

Alas, Rudy was wrong on all the issues that truly matter: life, love, and family.

Having carried my spear for Reagan in his victory in the 1976 Missouri caucuses against President Ford, I naturally gravitated to the candidate whom I thought resembled the Gipper’s true heir apparent, Fred Thompson. Sic transit gloria mundi. Fred’s best day was the day before he announced his candidacy.

Romney? What does that man truly believe in? He may be the most qualified executive in the race, and he is plenty smart. But what positions would he have taken on the important issues the day after he was sworn in as President? Everybody can change his mind, but for Governor Romney it happened too often and in too many elections. He may be back in 2012, seasoned and experienced, ready for a second look by those of us who respected his abilities but could not quite take his measure.

Dr. Paul? I am a Catholic, committed to subsidiarity and federalism, not a libertarian. He is a lovely man, a defender of the unborn, a tax-cutter, and deeply suspicious of adventurism overseas, but he is more Lockean than Burkean for my taste.

Catholic Republicans seem to be strongly supporting Senator John McCain both for his personal heroism and for his perfect voting record against abortion, notwithstanding his support of embryonic stem-cell research. He is a strong figure who picks his targets wisely, e.g., earmarks, the means by which the congressional Republicans have disgraced themselves the last seven years.

It is a mark of ecumenical progress that many GOP Catholics either don’t care or don’t know that John McCain is Scots Irish (Ulster Scots) whose compatriots in the old country still celebrate July 12 as the anniversary of Protestant King William’s victory over the Catholic James II in 1690 in the Battle of the Boyne, oh cursed Memory! These notorious “Orange marches” resulted in severe rioting in New York City in the 1800s. God bless America, James Madison, and the First Amendment for diffusing these sectarian conflicts.

During a photo session for the cover of Irish America Magazine, Senator McCain asked the editor, “Am I the first Scots-Irish person on your cover?” To which the editor replied, “Yes. But it’s all the same DNA.”

Of course, many of the lads also appreciate the Senator’s generally liberal support for immigration, legal and illegal, however you might characterize it in terms of amnesty or a path to citizenship.

I happen to agree with McCain on torture, God bless him. I make a point of telling my kids, usually during an episode of 24, that “when I was a boy, it was the Gestapo or KGB who did the torturing in TV shows and movies, not the Americans.”

Regrettably, McCain’s dismissive attitude toward the Marriage Amendment, his trashing of the First Amendment with his futile campaign funding reforms, opposition to supply-side tax cuts, and ambivalence about open borders leave much to be desired.

I also worry that he is more warrior than statesman. His parody of the Beach Boys’ song in which he sang, “Bomb, bomb, bomb… bomb, bomb Iran,” is hardly a performance one might expect of, say, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, or George Marshall.

His call for a Hundred Years War in Iraq, if necessary, and his repeated prediction of “more wars” in our future are worrisome.