President George Allen?

Link:

A National Journal poll to be released tomorrow of "congressional and political insiders" finds Sen. George Allen (R-VA) ranked first among 2008 GOP presidential candidates and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) ranked first among Democrats. Each of 215 insiders were asked to rank their top five choices.

On the Republican side, Allen finished with 229 combined points, while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) finished second with 217, Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) third with 184, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani fourth with 129 and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney fifth with 109 points.

On the Democratic side, Clinton led all Democrats with 388 points, followed by former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) with 192, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner with 166, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) with 125 and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) with 90.

George Allen?! Well, I had to do some research on this guy. (Does anyone know anything about him? Is he a former professional athlete or something?) We’ll get back to that in a moment.

A couple interesting points to note. The GOP top 5 slots eluded both Santorum and Jeb Bush, but not Frist. Huh. Also interesting is that Clinton is the first choice for Dems by a much larger margin, considering she’s actually a rather divisive figure among rank-and-file Dems. No real conclusions to be drawn, considering the results are from a fairly vaguely-defined source, but still worth noting. Make of it what you will.

Now, back to this George Allen character. He’s pretty much our basic nightmare.

He’s rated 20% by the ACLU, likely because of voting NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes (Jun 2002), YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping (Oct 2001), and supporting an anti-flag desecration amendment (Mar 2001). On the upside (if you’re a wealthy Republican fucknut), he’s got a 100% approval rating from the US Chamber of Commerce and he supported the bankruptcy bill.

He supports trying juvenile felons as adults, tougher sentencing for drug crimes, allowing the FCC to approve larger media conglomerates, and requiring minor mothers to live at home and forcing them to identify their children’s fathers. He’s rated 100% by the Christian Coalition, but 0% by NARAL (abortion rights), APHA (public health advocacy), ARA (rights of seniors), and SANE (anti-war advocacy).

And those are pretty much his good attributes.

I haven’t even covered his stances on tax reform, energy and oil, free trade, government reform, healthcare, or poverty. If you’re interested, go here.

And I think you should be. George Allen: All of the wingnuttiness of Frist and Santorum, but none of the well-known baggage. Watch out.