John Jacob Notgonnagetmyvote Schmidt

I was quite surprised by the anti-anti John Jacob reaction that my last post got. Seeing as how that was more of a light-hearted look at the convention and immediate reactions, for those of you who decided to come back and/or stick around I have some substantive criticism of John Jacob for you and the ultimate reasons why I didn't and won't be voting for him. I don't think anything will be of the soundbyte quality that my comments on the unofficial Jacob campaign theme song were (thanks to Utah Policy for grabbing that!), but it will be fairly comprehensive. I know that there will be people out there who will disagree with me (seeing as how there were 1100 3rd District delegates, at least 600 will), but these are serious concerns that everyone who will be voting in the primary ought to at least think about.
1. John Jacob is not well versed on policy issues and he hasn't shown the desire to get deep into policy. Exhibit A is his website, where he has lots of platitudes and nice thoughts, but he doesn't have any ideas about what to do about those issues he mentions. Sure it's great to obey our laws on immigration, but you are part of that lawmaking body if you get elected. What would you have the law be? Saying that we should obey the law is an easy way out of a very complicated issue. He's said that he's both for and against the Anchor Baby interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. He told Brett Tatton, a delegate who is strongly against illegal immigration, that he was pro-Anchor Baby and anti-Tom Tancredo (a noted and ardent opponent of illegal immigration). Then he changed his mind as a result of delegate pressure. For someone who is supposed to take those stands and say "here's why I voted for X, Y, or Z" that's pretty weak, especially since he's never said why he changed his tune. Another example is from one of my precinct chairs. He asked Jacob at an event about the trade deficit. Jacob made a glib comment and moved on. He asked the same question at an event a week later, thinking that perhaps Jacob would have looked into it and got the same response. Another example from his website is on national security. He says the greatest threat to our security is from the inside, which seems to me to imply that by giving too much to the President then we are destroying ourselves. It's actually a pretty good argument and one that the Left has deployed in a number of situations. At the same time it's because of outside influences that we'll be destroyed. I assume he's talking about the UN, but again he has no concrete examples, just generalizations. Are you for or against NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO, the UN, NATO, GATT, FTAA, and other multilateral agreements? Tell me, don't just paint everything with the same brush. On taxation and spending, will you agree to unilaterally eliminate any and all earmarks for Utah and/or Utah's 3rd District? Do you support Paygo? Why are you telling me about the widow's mite? After all, she gave that to Jesus. Does that mean that we should give our all to the government? Finally on governmental interference, you say that the Feds held up our roads and wasted our money. Because we earmarked money for that from the government and because it's they hold the strings to that, how is that not fair? I thought you wanted less taxes anyway, which would have completely eliminated those road projects that were funded through the earmark process.
2. His positions aren't in line with mine. While that shouldn't concern everyone who isn't me, I think that he's wrong in his current position on immigration and that he paints everything with too broad a brush in other areas. He needs to get down and specific about exactly what he would do or work to do on these other issues. He's too much of a wild card to send at this point in time.
3. That blasted song!