While I have yet to decide whom to support for President, I am personally offended by self appointed king makers, consortiums and coalitions trying to tell me who is conservative, liberal, and worthy of my vote. Here is a novel idea: leave each campaign for President to campaign, continue to have debates, let the media report the news, and let each voter decide whom to vote for in the primaries and general elected next year. Yet obviously, we voters are stupid; we can not make these decisions for ourselves.

A case in point can be found in this morning’s Washington Times:

Rudy Panic set in for many Republicans this week, with conservative leaders both nationally and in Iowa concluding they need to settle on a single champion to prevent Rudolph W. Giuliani from winning the GOP presidential nomination.

They fear that victory by the socially liberal former New York mayor could permanently shatter the largely successful coalition of social, religious, economic and national defense conservatives that, more often than not, has worked electoral magic for Republican candidates at all levels.

“The main driving force behind all of that is a belief that Rudy Giuliani is positioned to win the nomination and a belief that, and I describe it this way, the four most central planks in our Republican platform would be sacrificed in the process: life, marriage, guns, border security,” said Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican. He said the calls and e-mails in Iowa grew “utterly intense in the last week” as Republicans urged one another to settle on an anti-Rudy candidate.

A new poll showing a statistical tie between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee for the Jan. 3 Iowa first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses is fueling the frenzy.

“What conservatives have to realize is that Giuliani is now relying on Mike Huckabee to take his most viable opponent, Mitt Romney, down in Iowa, and that anyone voting for him there in the caucuses will be inadvertently, and ironically, helping the New Yorker,” David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said earlier this week in a surprise endorsement of Mr. Romney.

You can read the rest here. Please, read it, become informed of the issues and where each candidate stands on them, decide for yourselves, contribute or not to the candidate of your choice, and vote.

While the king makers have the right to tell you whom to vote for or against, you have an equal right to ignore them.

The beginning of Peggy Noonan’s commentary, this morning, in the Wall Street Journal:

I will never forget that breathtaking moment when, in the CNN/YouTube debate earlier this fall, the woman from Ohio held up a picture and said, “Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Edwards, this is a human fetus. Given a few more months, it will be a baby you could hold in your arms. You all say you’re ‘for the children.’ I would ask you to look America in the eye and tell us how you can support laws to end this life. Thank you.”

They were momentarily nonplussed, then awkwardly struggled to answer, to regain lost high ground. One of them, John Edwards I think, finally criticizing the woman for being “manipulative,” using “hot images” and indulging in “the politics of personal destruction.” The woman then stood in the audience for her follow up. “I beg your pardon, but the literal politics of personal destruction — of destroying a person — is what you stand for.”

Oh, I wish I weren’t about to say, “Wait, that didn’t happen.” For of course it did not. Who of our media masters would allow a question so piercing on such a painful and politically incorrect subject?

I thought of this the other night when citizens who turned out to be partisans for Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards asked the Republicans, in debate, would Jesus support the death penalty, do you believe every word of the Bible, and what does the Confederate flag mean to you?

It was a good debate, feisty and revealing. It’s not bad that the questions had a certain spin, and played on stereotypes of the GOP. It’s just bad that it doesn’t quite happen at Democratic debates. Somehow, there, an obscure restraint sets in on the part of news producers. Too bad. Running for most powerful person in the world is, among other things, an act of startling presumption. They all should be grilled, everyone, both sides. Winter voting approaches; may many chestnuts be roasted on an open fire.

Her narrower point is the “media masters” seem more diligent when is comes to shielding the Democrat Party candidates. Yet, if so, they are not doing their preferred political party nor leaning voters a favor. Without the full spectrum of questions asked and answered early on, we, regardless of affiliation, are left to assume what each Democrat Party candidate would do should they be elected President.

Worse, it “favors” the supposed national poll leader (what a screaming mistake that turned out to be four years ago). Which is Ms. Noonan’s wider point: saddle up boys and girls of all persuasions for, from this day forward, the questions will only get tougher.

Don’t you want to know now whether your horse is up to circling the track or just a donkey headed for the stall long before the far turn?