Decision '08

Yes, yes it's much too early to be talking '08 candiates, well except for politicians, Patrick Ruffini, and well, Mark at Decision '08. Still, Island Passage and I are going to start a draft Ken Blackwell movement. We've been back and forth about who looks good, who's viable. No one really floats the boat. McCain? Rudy? Allen? Some of the people reading this blog are wondering if Allen is the first or last name of the candidate I'm talking about. No pizazz, no yeah baby moments.

Then Kathryn Lopez at NRO linked to this City Journal article. All I could think was: "I wish this guy could be our '08 candidate." From the article:

Ken Blackwell has so many people worried because he represents a new political calculus with the power to shake up American politics. For Blackwell is a fiscal and cultural conservative, a true heir of the Reagan revolution, who happens to be black, with the proven power to attract votes from across a startlingly wide spectrum of the electorate. Born in the projects of Cincinnati to a meat-packer who preached the work ethic and a nurse who read to him from the Bible every evening, Blackwell has rejected the victimology of many black activists and opted for a different path, championing school choice, opposing abortion, and staunchly advocating low taxes as a road to prosperity. The 57-year-old is equally comfortable preaching that platform to the black urban voters of Cincinnati as to the white German Americans in Ohio’s rural counties or to the state’s business community.

Also:

Heading into the 2006 elections, Blackwell is clearly on a roll. But as the election draws closer, he will have to deal with increasingly insistent accusations from within his own party that he is too conservative for Ohio, while Democrats, public-employee unions, and social-services advocacy groups try to paint him as an extremist. Indeed, already signs of how the campaign will play out are visible in the state’s mainstream press, which celebrated Blackwell’s early successes as an up-and-coming black politician but now increasingly dismisses him as outside the political mainstream.

And:

“This is what happens to you when you are a politician like Ken, who is more interested in change than in playing along with the old-boy network,” says former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich, who enlisted Blackwell to serve on one of his advisory groups in the mid-1990s. “Ken Blackwell is a guy who pursues big ideas.”

We need someone to pursue big ideas. Assuming Mr. Blackwell, is successful this fall he will have two years executive experience as Governor. Young, dynamic, and charismatic he's what the right needs. Draft Ken!