Kowabunga

John Cox At MN Straw Poll

Presidential Candidate John Cox of Illinois was the only candidate present at the Minnesota Straw Poll held this week. as such, he gave a good speech to the couple of hundred Minnesotans present for the event.

A shot video of his speech, splitting it into two parts so that it will fit into YouTubes 10 minute parameter for videos.

Part 1 of John Cox

Part 2 of John Cox

A lot of what Cox said resonates well with me, and I suspect with others as well. That being said, there were two points he made in regard to Iraq that put me off. The first is that he said if the current, democratically elected, government of Iraq doesn’t get off its keester and get its political act together, we can and should replace it, just as we got rid of Saddam Hussein. The second is that we need to get Iraq’s oil producing infrastructure up and fully operational and moving to the U.S.

The second point is the shorter one to explain why it bugs me, so I’ll start with it. By complaining about the lack of oil production in post-war Iraq, and the need to get it flowing plays into the leftist mantra that Iraq is a “war for oil.” This is not to say that he shouldn’t make mention of oil production in Iraq, but the way it is phrased is important.

The way he presents it makes it sound as though we are entitled to the oil (or, more accurately, it’s our oil). Getting oil production up and running to full capacity is important for Iraq for a number of reasons: Job creation, stabilizing the economy, and bringing in desperately needed revenues to facilitate the reconstruction of Iraq. It should not matter to whom Iraq sells their oil to (however I would prefer it not go to communist countries like China), and, sure, I would prefer it end up in our gas tanks in the long haul. But that is secondary to using the oil production to getting Iraq back on its feet, which is the primary goal.

Current oil production in Iraq is about 2 million barrels per day, only slightly below the target production of 2.1 million barrels. All in all, that’s not too shabby a record.

As for the point on replacing the government of Iraq, Cox needs to remember that it is a democratically elected government, and as such, it should not be our decision to replacing it with something that might be more “friendly” to us. It is also an ally, and one should not threaten to remove our allies from power.

There have been numerous mistakes made in Iraq, including by the government that we helped to build and hope to see achieve good things. The Iraqi government has, with our blessing, made deals with murdering thugs like Muqtada al-Sadr, who is more interested in destabilizing the government and bringing in a totalitarian theocracy such as that which rules its neighbor, Iran.

Iraq also has to deal with rebuilding all of its infrastructure, particularly its military and police forces. This is a big job, and even though there are plenty of Iraqis who have shown the willingness to step up to the plate, they have also made themselves big targets for the terrorists. How many police stations and recruitment depots have been bombed killing and wounding hundreds of people?

On the upside, Cox resonates well on many of the issues.

He supports replacing the IRS with the “Fair Tax,” which is a good move as it will encourage savings and investment by placing the tax burden on consumption.

He gets border security and illegal immigration. As he said, we don’t need to reform our immigration laws but enforce the current laws.

In fact, he is right on the money on nearly issue.

It’s just on those two points on Iraq that I found to be a turnoff. I hope that if he reads this he’ll understand where I am coming from and reconsider his position on those two points. If he does, he will resonate much better with the mainstream Conservatives that make up the GOP.

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Minnesota HRCC GOP Cox Straw Poll