I agree with you about holding all the candidates’ feet to the fire.
I vehemently oppose McCain-Feingold. Fred was mistaken in that he supported limits on soft money; he accurately assessed soft money corruption problems, but his solution was wrong. However, he also fought McCain and the Senate donks to substantially raise the limits on individual contributions, and made the case on the Senate floor that these contributions are free speech (let me know if you want the links — I don’t want to spam you). So, I think his record is mixed on that front.
Overall, his record is truly outstanding on the Constitution: he introduced the Federalism Enforcement Act and other federalism initiatives in order to get the federal government out of areas the states/people rightly own per the Constitution; he introduced the Regulatory Right to Know Act to rein in the unelected bureaucracy that increasingly writes the law; he commonly quoted our Founders and our founding documents when arguing for smaller, more accountable, Constitutional federal government.
So, in the context of this remarkably solid record consistently rooted in a Constitutional philosophy, I am much more apt to view his error on the soft money part of McCain-Feingold as a sincere mistake.
Giuliani’s record, on the other hand, seems to be based on nothing consistent except a quest for power. So, in my mind he has much less credibility. For me, the jury’s still out on Romney.
Interesting take...for me the jury is still out on a bunch of them; although I am leaning toward Thompson.
I was at a Cinco de Mayo street party celebration in a good-sized town in southern Arizona over the weekend and the local Republican Party had a tent-booth. I was talking with the folks manning the booth and expected them to be pretty firmly in McCain’s camp. All four were solidly, vocally against McCain and expressed the same longing for a real conservative to emerge so they could justify rallying for whoever it would be.