August 3, 2005
Gallup has decided to get a head start on the next presidential election by beginning to build its polling data now to read trends and create projections for later in the cycle. However, one handicap presents itself -- a lack of declared candidates. Instead of waiting for volunteers, Gallup simply picks the two likeliest candidates from each side, in its own humble opinion, and asks registered voters who they prefer. Gallup predicts that John McCain and Rudy Giuliani will emerge as the GOP frontrunners. For the Democrats, Gallup predicts that Hillary Clinton will face John Kerry in the primaries as her biggest rival. In that, they must be the only people other than Kerry himself to take his remaining potential as a major candidate seriously. Their own polling shows that; for the first time ever, more voters disapprove of Kerry than approve of him (48-42). And Kerry hasn't even begun...
August 24, 2005
I have been remiss in not providing a link to the Ruffini Poll on the 2008 Presidential election. I think it's too early to take much of this seriously; after all, we need to find out who can get themselves re-elected in their current positions, and we have plenty of time for those who look like a lock now to do something foolish and take themselves out of the running. A great example would be John McCain, who torpedoed himself by jumping in front of the Gang of 14 earlier this year. Bear in mind that this poll isn't scientific, and really only reflects the hyperaware readers of the blogs -- all you highly educated and supremely tasteful CQ readers, for instance, across the entire political spectrum. If you hit the poll from the above link, we should be able to track the CQ preferences for the 2008 race. When...
August 26, 2005
Patrick Ruffini has wrapped up his highly successful and intriguing presidential straw poll, designed to not only determine the front-running Republicans in the blogosphere but to break down the demographics in several categories. Readers can see the results at this post, and use the drop-down boxes to see the breakdowns. Patrick even compares the results based on blogger endorsements, noting that I had withheld mine and asking me for it now. The win for Rudy Giuliani surprised me, given the less-than-centrist nature of the blogosphere. I love Rudy; he showed the world in the hours, days, and weeks after 9/11 that Americans would not allow themselves to be defeated. His grit, determination, and courage inspired all of us. He's great on the stump, too, one of the best speakers we have in politics on either side. But that's the problem with Rudy -- he's on either side in too many...
October 12, 2005
That may be the only campaign slogan left for John Kerry as he picked up an endorsement for the 2008 Presidential campaign -- even though he hasn't declared whether he'll run again. Ted Kennedy has decided to volunteer as anchor for the Kerry bandwagon by declaring his support for his fellow Bostonian three years in advance: Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) said Wednesday he would back fellow Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 even if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton also pursues a White House bid. "If he runs, I would support him," Kennedy told The Associated Press in an interview at his Boston office. While Kennedy has frequently entertained the New York senator and her husband, former President Clinton, he said his loyalty is to Kerry. Early polling shows Clinton and Kerry among the favorites for their party's nomination in 2008, but...
November 23, 2005
Hugh Hewitt has a Thanksgiving straw poll starting on his blog tonight, taking over for Patrick Ruffini now that Patrick has taken his official role for the Republican Party. Hugh's added a few twists of his own, of course, as he will! Use the link on this post to check out the selections, and we can see how CQ readers see the various GOP presidential elections. Also, don't forget about the 2005 Weblog Awards at Wizbang -- and feel free to nominate CQ for any of the many categories in which we might qualify ......
November 24, 2005
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has received plenty of media attention for his centrist politics and his national appeal as a possible alternative to Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Presidential campaign. That may now be over for the former college pitcher, who has long claimed to have been drafted by the Kansas City Athletics as part of his biography. He now admits that the claim was a lie: For nearly four decades, Richardson, often mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate, has maintained he was drafted by the Kansas City Athletics. The claim was included in a brief biography released when Richardson successfully ran for Congress in 1982. A White House news release in 1997 mentioned it when he was about to be named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And several news organizations, including The Associated Press, have reported it as fact over the years. But an investigation by...
January 25, 2006
Hillary Clinton may cruise to re-election for the Senate in New York, but the Democrats have grown increasingly nervous about the prospect of her run for the Presidency in 2008. The New York Sun reports that internal and external polling show that Clinton faces a hostile electorate, particularly in the South and Midwest, and would lose against most Republicans despite her predicted strength in the primaries: Senator Clinton's emergence as the early and perhaps prohibitive favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 is fueling anxiety among Democratic strategists and operatives who are worried she would lose to a Republican in the general election. Recent polling underscores some of those worries. In a CNN/USA Today/ Gallup poll made public yesterday, 51% of voters said they would definitely not vote for Mrs. Clinton if she chooses to run for president in 2008. In a separate nationwide poll conducted this month for...
February 9, 2006
Rasmussen reports that its polling shows support for a presidential run by Hillary Clinton at its lowest point in over a year. Only 27% would "definitely" vote for the former First Lady, while 43% have no intention of ever casting a vote for her: Support for Hillary Clinton's Presidential bid has slipped over the past month to the lowest levels recorded in two dozen surveys over the past year. Today, just 27% of Americans say they would definitely vote for the former first lady while 43% would definitely vote against. Still, 59% of Americans believe it is somewhat or very likely that she will be the Democrat's nominee in 2008. Among Democrats, the number who would definitely vote for Clinton dropped 11 percentage points over the past two weeks. Eleven points in two weeks is more than a statistical anomaly -- that's quite a meltdown. Hillary has had an eventful...
February 13, 2006
The London Times reviews the performance of the presumed front-runner for the Democratic ticket in 2008 and finds her performance wanting. Gerard Baker, the editor for its American desk, notes that Hillary Clinton not only cannot connect well in her appearances but cannot even escape the long shadow cast by her husband and most potent political asset: Few deny that Mrs Clinton is razor-sharp and politically savvy. But even supporters worry about her personal skills, at least before a large audience. She is a somewhat wooden speaker with a hectoring style at times more reminiscent of Al Gore than her husband. And unlike Bill, she projects a lofty, distant air that has been likened to the Queen of Sheba in a power suit. Last weekend Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, homed in on Mrs Clinton’s personality, saying that she was too angry. His aim was both to pinpoint...
February 21, 2006
ABC News profiles the efforts of John McCain to attract conservative support for his expected run at the 2008 presidential nomination, an effort that looked like a dead letter several months ago. After angering the base on several issues -- campaign finance and judicial nominations chief among them -- McCain now wants to consolidate his support among moderates while attracting enough conservatives to remain viable: In recent months, McCain has taken several steps to court his party's base: he has endorsed teaching intelligent design alongside evolution; he has backed a ban on gay marriage in his home state of Arizona; he has met with the Rev. Jerry Falwell. He has also described former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., as "the finest leader we've had" and questioned the commitment of media darling Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to ethics reform . And to top it off, he recently said he wouldn't...
February 23, 2006
According to Dick Morris, former Vice President and lunatic-for-hire Al Gore may have enough momentum to steal the nomination away from Hillary Clinton in 2008. Morris postulates that Gore has picked up enough credibility on the Left that he can make himself the frontrunner by just entering the race: The former vice president’s slashing attacks on the administration and his stalwart, if misguided, opposition to the Iraq war leave him without the complications and complexes that will devil Clinton as she seeks to appeal to the unforgiving left of the Democratic Party. And Gore may be a man whose time has come in his party. It was he who warned of climate change and predicted its consequences. Hurricane Katrina was just a fulfillment of the prophesies Gore wrote about in his late-1980s book Earth in the Balance. He has been an energy-conservation nut for years, and his obsessions with alternatives...
March 10, 2006
Chris Matthews reports at MS-NBC that John McCain plans to instruct delegates at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference to vote for George Bush as a write-in candidate instead of voting for him as the preferred nominee for 2008. Matthews says that McCain asks this to show support for the President, presently in a rough patch, and to keep the GOP's focus on 2006: It's early on at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference down here, but already we've learned some big news. Sources tell me that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., plans to shock his supporters tonight by asking them to NOT vote for him in the presidential straw poll that will be conducted by The Hotline on Saturday. Instead, McCain will urge his followers to write in President Bush's name. McCain will tell his supporters that this is not about 2008, but rather about 2006 and supporting the president. According to...
March 12, 2006
In the first event of the 2008 presidential run for the GOP, Bill Frist won the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll as expected, with 36% of the vote going to the Tennessee native in Nashville. However, instead of supposed frontrunner John McCain or southern favorites George Allen or Mike Huckabee grabbing the second spot, Governor Mitt Romney of Massachussetts rolled in right behind Frist with 14%: Frist won 36.9 percent of the 1,427 ballots cast here by delegates to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. The shocker of the evening was that Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney placed second, besting far better-known rivals Arizona Sen. John McCain and Virginia Sen. George Allen. Romney finished with 14 percent of the vote. Third place was shared by Allen and President Bush, each of whom won 10.3 percent of the ballots cast. Bush, who of course is not eligible to run again for president,...
The urge of Democrats to tinker with their primary season continues unabated. The Rules and Bylaws Committee has decided to schedule more caucuses ahead of the New Hampshire primary, which by their rules has to hold the first primary election in the party's presidential run. The introduction of more caucuses will dilute the impact of New Hampshire's primary, leading to a threat of escalation by the Granite State: The Democratic Party's Rules and Bylaws Committee yesterday dealt a blow to New Hampshire Democrats hoping to keep their coveted place in the presidential nominating schedule, agreeing by voice vote to a plan that would place one or two caucuses between the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 14, 2008, and the New Hampshire primary eight days later. The proposal, which grew from recommendations by a commission studying how to make the nominating process more diverse both racially and geographically, would also add one...
March 16, 2006
Hillary Clinton has attended fund-raisers for her Senate re-election campaign that were hosted by a South Korean businessman tied to a slush-fund scandal in Seoul, Meghan Clyne reports in today's New York Sun. The accusations involve the use of a cultural-exchange program aimed at improving relations with Pyongyang but actually operated as an illegal funding source for South Korean politicians: The contributions in question come from a New York-based real estate investor, Hyung Young "Daniel" Lee. According to records on file with the Federal Election Commission, Mr. Lee, 44, donated $4,100 to Mrs. Clinton's 2006 Senate re-election campaign through Friends of Hillary in May 2005. His wife, Eva, donated $5,100 in four separate contributions between August 2004 and May 2005. FEC documents show that the Clinton campaign refunded Mrs. Lee $1,000; FEC regulations cap donations to a candidate at $4,200 for an individual contributor during an election cycle. According to...
April 5, 2006
Russ Feingold has decided to embrace the far-left fever swamp in hopes of building momentum for his run at the Presidency in 2008, and yesterday announced his support for gay marriage as another step in that strategy. The Washington Post reports that Feingold blames Republicans for using the controversy as a wedge issue, but also notes that his fellow Democrats have not lined up in support of gender-neutral marriage either: Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a prospective 2008 presidential candidate, said yesterday that he thinks bans on same-sex marriages have no place in the nation's laws. Feingold said in an interview that he was motivated to state his position on one of the most divisive social issues in the country after being asked at a town hall meeting Sunday about a pending amendment to the Wisconsin state constitution to ban same-sex marriages. Feingold called the amendment "a mean-spirited attempt" to single...
April 9, 2006
John McCain still garners the most media attention of all prospective Republican candidates for the presidential nomination in 2008. His long-cultivated relationship with the media and his reputation as a "maverick" has provided endless fascination and a large boost to his prospects for capturing the ticket. However, now that he has to come to terms with his party, McCain now risks the very assets that propelled him to the top of the media dance card. The New York Times profiles McCain in transition in its Sunday edition: Senator John McCain began his week by embracing the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the conservative religious leader he once denounced as polarizing. He ended it by joining Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal Massachusetts icon, in a fight for an immigration bill opposed by many conservatives. Mr. McCain has long sought to present himself as a singular sort of American politician — straight-talking, iconoclastic...
It appears that one of Bill Clinton's power bases has soured on Hillary and her bid to win back the White House. The Observer (UK) reports that the glitterati in Hollywood have turned their backs on the putative Democratic front-runner, considering her too unreliable as a liberal to support: With its liberal politics and radical attitudes, Hollywood should be one place in America where Hillary Clinton can count on fervent and loyal support. But as the former First Lady gears up for a run at the White House her nascent campaign has hit an unexpected roadblock. A lengthening list of top Hollywood celebrities have publicly criticised her ambitions. From George Clooney to Sharon Stone to Susan Sarandon, the Beverly Hills set has turned on Clinton. Nor are they alone. Vast swaths of American liberals have begun to snipe at their former heroine, attacking her for supporting the war in Iraq...
April 12, 2006
Hillary Clinton may want to run for president as a banner-carrier of populist fervor -- can Democrats run as anything else these days? -- but her corporate ties may trip her campaign before it even gets running. The New York Times reports today on her cozy relationship with Corning, a major employer in New York and one of her biggest contributors. It turns out that the benefits have flowed bidirectionally between Hillary and Corning: In April 2003, a month after Corning's political action committee gave $10,000 to her re-election campaign, Mrs. Clinton announced legislation that would provide hundreds of millions in federal aid to reduce diesel pollution, using, among other things, technology pioneered by Corning. It was one of several Congressional initiatives Mrs. Clinton has pushed that benefit the company. And in April 2004, Mrs. Clinton began a push to persuade the Chinese government to relax tariffs on Corning fiber...
April 23, 2006
We should consider ourselves fortunate to live in John Kerry World. Most of us thought that we would have lost the humorous inanity that the Senator and erstwhile presidential candidate brought us throughout 2004, but he has been considerate enough to continue with his silly pronouncements well past his expiration date. Today on ABC's This Week, Kerry gave George Stephanopolous a tortured explanation of how he opposes leaks in all circumstances while trying to excuse Mary McCarthy for hers: SEN. KERRY: Well, I read that. I don't know whether she did it or not so it's hard to have a view on it. Here's my fundamental view of this, that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the white house for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in...
April 28, 2006
With John Kerry making more high-profile appearances and having his opinions published in the New York Times, everyone assumes he plans to make another presidential run in 2008. Despite having the advantage of Bush Derangement Syndrome on his side, not to mention CBS' 60 Minutes Wednesday, Kerry could not win the general election in 2004. Boston Globe columnist and Kerry supporter Ellen Goodman sees no reason to believe he could do better in 2008, either: The signs that John Kerry is going to run for president in 2008 are rising faster than the pollen count. There was the requisite New York Times op-ed -- How many days late? How many dollars short? -- on getting out of Iraq. There was the Globe op-ed that preceded the speech supporting war dissenters at Faneuil Hall to an audience of groupies yelling ''Run" and ''2008." There was Ted Kennedy's remark, ''If he runs,...
May 7, 2006
Newsweek's Eleanor Clift reports on the nascent Hillariphobia creeping through the ranks of Democrats as they begin to seriously consider their presidential prospects in 2008. Clift tries to sell the idea that Hillary Clinton somehow represents the Democratic version of Ronald Reagan, divisive yet full of courageous leadership that her party can ill afford to discard at this political juncture: The late great Jerry Garcia used to say the Grateful Dead were like black licorice. People who loved them loved them a lot. People who hated them really hated them. "Hillary Clinton is black licorice," says a Democratic strategist. "There's a huge upside, and there's a huge downside. And we don't know how it will balance out." When was the last time we had such a dominant front runner this early who raises such anxiety about electability? The answer is Ronald Reagan. It took a leap of imagination to believe...
May 8, 2006
Hillary Clinton may have owe a few explanations for the company she kept on her path to the Senate and her presumed presidential bid in 2008. The explanation for John Burgess and International Profit Associates will make for an interesting read, as the company's owner -- a convicted thief and john of an underage prostitute -- has emerged as one of Hillary's most prominent contributors: John R. Burgess makes for an improbable courtier of presidents, or of a senator who might become one. A disbarred New York lawyer with a criminal record for attempted larceny and patronizing a 16-year-old prostitute, Mr. Burgess owns International Profit Associates, a management consulting company in Illinois. Federal authorities are pressing a sexual harassment suit against the company on behalf of 113 former female employees. The Illinois attorney general is investigating accusations of deceptive marketing tactics, officials say, and the company has been the subject...
May 31, 2006
Howard Fineman uses his column at Newsweek to pump some much-needed drama into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, but instead reveals how desperately dull their prospects outside of Hillary Clinton truly are. The candidate Fineman highlights in his look at the Anyone But Hillary sweepstakes is Senator Chris Dodd, a man who exists to make Joe Biden look exciting: In presidential politics there are a series of concentric elections until the final one (in the Supreme Court.…). Money comes just after—and in conjunction with—the creation of buzz. Can Dodd create any? Unless you live in Connecticut, or followed the insider mechanics of the 1996 Clinton re-election race (when Dodd served an unhappy year as party chairman) you probably have no idea who he is. Let me tell you, briefly. At 62, with snowy white hair, Dodd is a lifer in politics and government, an insider’s insider—very...
June 17, 2006
If the lopsided vote against a duplicate of John Kerry's amendment to the defense authorization bill signaling surrender in Iraq didn't tell him that he had joined Fringeland, then a scolding from Martin Peretz at The New Republic should correct any misunderstandings. Peretz not only dislikes Kerry's stand on the war, but he believes that Kerry is the wrong messenger for the message: John Kerry can be trumped by just about anybody. But today, the titular leader of the Democratic Party was trumped by Mitch McConnell, consummate cynic and the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate. Kerry had announced that he would soon offer a measure requiring the administration to withdraw almost all of the American troops now in Iraq by the end of the year. What was in the tactical side of his brain when he made this pronunciamento before he had figured out the details of his proposal?...
June 19, 2006
In an early poll determining the strengths and weaknesses of the various potential candidates for the 2008 presidential race, both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry face a skeptical electorate. Both candidates have at least 47% of the voters opposing them already, the second-highest of any would-be Democratic contenders. Another previous nominee takes first prize, while a presidential brother takes the top spot for the GOP: With the presidential election more than two years away, a CNN poll released Monday suggests that nearly half of Americans would "definitely vote against" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Respondents were asked whether they would "definitely vote for," "consider voting for," or "definitely vote against" three Democrats and three Republicans who might run for president in 2008. Regarding potential Democratic candidates, 47 percent of respondents said they would "definitely vote against" both Clinton, the junior senator from New York who is running for re-election this year,...
June 26, 2006
John Kerry has split Democrats with his race to the left in order to gain some traction for the 2008 presidential nomination, his hometown newspaper reports. The Boston Globe notes some approbation coming from the antiwar netroots, but the party establishment has little trust in the man they think blew a winnable 2004 election: Senator John F. Kerry has intensified his quest to regain the Democratic presidential nomination with a sharp move to the left, presenting himself in high-profile speeches and Senate debates as an unfettered lawmaker and would-be presidential candidate who learned from his 2004 loss that he must fight harder for what he believes. In passionate remarks on the Senate floor and before party faithful last week, Kerry spoke directly to grass-roots Democrats, many of whom remain angry over his defeat in an election they believe Kerry was capable of winning. ``I think I'm a much better candidate...
July 8, 2006
Robert Novak hears the talk around the campfire, and the chatter says that Rudy Giuliani, America's Mayor, will run for the presidency in 2008. Novak says that the road will be difficult for one of the nation's most admired men: Well-connected public figures report that they have been told recently by Rudolph Giuliani that, as of now, he intends to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. The former mayor of New York was on top of last month's national Gallup poll measuring presidential preferences by registered Republicans, with 29 percent. Sen. John McCain's 24 percent was second, with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich third at 8 percent. National polls all year have shown Giuliani running either first or second to McCain, with the rest of the presidential possibilities far behind. Republican insiders respond to these numbers by saying rank-and-file GOP voters will abandon Giuliani once they realize his...
July 9, 2006
Leave it to Newsweek to burnish the reputation of a single-term politician with no legislative record whatsoever to report that the presidential candidate has a "retooled resumé". John Edwards has hit the presidential campaign trail again, making him perhaps the only politician in US history to have twice as many runs at the presidency as terms in any electoral office: It's Friday night in Iowa and an old politician is trying some new tricks. John Edwards is back—back, with the familiar deep drawl, dark tan and honeyed hair. Gone, though, are the old catchphrases—"two Americas" and "hope is on the way." In their place: a long meditation on America's moral obligation to confront the plight of its poor. "Thirty-seven million of our people, worried about feeding and clothing their children," he said to his audience. "Aren't we better than that?" It's not the stuff of great sound bites, but it's...
July 10, 2006
Yesterday I wrote about the obvious quid pro quo between Bill Clinton's presidential pardon of Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory and the loans given to Hillary Clinton's brother, Anthony Rodham, starting two months later. Clinton pardoned the Gregorys in March 2000 for bank fraud convictions going back to 1982. Without that pardon, United Shows (owned by the Gregorys) could not procure state contracts for handling carnivals. In May 2000, United Shows started issuing a series of loans to Rodham that eventually totalled $107,000, loans for which they never demanded payment and which Rodham never paid on his own. It was not until United Shows went into receivership that the loans came to light, and the receiver filed claims against Rodham for repayment of the $107,000, plus another $46,000 in interest. United and the Gregorys never intended to demand repayment of the loans, which is why they never tried to collect...
July 19, 2006
A new Gallup poll measures the viability of potential presidential candidates in 2008, and it contains a number of surprises. Gallup did not ask respondents to endorse one particular candidate but instead to indicate their acceptability or unacceptability as a potential party nominee. One name comes as a minor surprise for the Republicans: A recent Gallup Panel poll asked Republicans and Democrats whether they would find each of several possible contenders for their party's 2008 presidential nomination to be "acceptable" nominees. Unlike other nomination ballot questions that measure respondents' first choice from among a list of possible candidates, this question paints a broader picture of the level of potential support and opposition for each candidate. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner among Democrats when voters are asked to choose which one candidate they would prefer for the Democratic nomination for president, but the current poll finds Democrats are about equally...
August 21, 2006
John McCain continues his efforts to lock up the Republican nomination for President as early as possible, and as the New York Times reports, he's doing so by hiring political operatives before his competitors. McCain has leveraged his PAC money and his connections in DC to create a network of campaign support far ahead of most other presumed candidates: Senator John McCain is locking up a cast of top-shelf Republican strategists, policy experts, fund-raisers and donors, in a methodical effort to build a 2008 presidential campaign machine, drawing supporters of President Bush despite the sometimes rocky history between the two men. Mr. McCain’s effort to woo a diverse lineup of backers and scare off rivals has augmented his travel schedule on behalf of Republicans — which this week and next includes trips to Iowa, Louisiana, Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio and Florida. The effort is fueling a fund-raising operation that has...
August 25, 2006
Updated -- see below. John McCain has used the nickname "Straight Talk Express" for his campaigns for years, but it may now be a violation of truth-in-advertising regulations, if they applied to poltical statements. McCain has hired Democratic political operatives (see update, not hired) after denying any interest in them to at least one reporter who specifically asked about it: Senator McCain's latest additions to his 2008 presidential campaign team — a veteran of Democrat Howard Dean's presidential campaign, and a former Bush administration State Department official — are setting Washington to speculating about the ideological direction Mr. McCain's run for the White House might take. The new pledges of support for the Arizona Republican came from an Internet guru best known for Governor Dean's upstart presidential campaign in 2004, Nicholas Mele, and from a former State Department official and veteran trade negotiator, Robert Zoellick. ... "I have long admired...
September 3, 2006
The Times of London joins a growing number of media outlets that report on Hillary Clinton's supposed reluctance to run for President, in 2008 or anytime else. The Democrats share this reluctance based on consistently high negatives in polling and want her to stay in the Senate -- but another Clinton wants to live in the White House again: FRIENDS of Hillary Clinton have been whispering the unthinkable. Despite her status as the runaway frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president, some of her closest advisers say she might opt out of the White House race and seek to lead her party in the Senate. The former first lady longs to return to the White House with husband Bill as consort. Only last week she told television viewers America would be led by a woman one day. “Stay tuned,” she said. First, however, she has to win the election....
September 28, 2006
How did the Twin Cities land the Republican National Convention for 2008? It took a bipartisan effort that predicated itself on a gentleman's agreement: all Minnesota politicians would support bids for both conventions, and whichever party chose first would get unanimous support. The combination worked better than anyone could have hoped, as the Twin Cities made both short lists. However, in the end, Howard Dean's inability to make a decision cost the Democrats the spot: On an October day last year, Tom Mason, who served as Gov. Tim Pawlenty's chief of staff, finished breakfast at St. Paul's Downtowner with Pawlenty and visiting Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman and offered Mehlman a lift. While he drove, Mason listened as Mehlman raved about Minnesota's beauty, its fall weather and its political value as a swing state and thought "Gee, we might have a shot at long last." Mason's next call was...
September 29, 2006
Senator Bill Frist will retire from Congress at the end of the year, and he's widely rumored to be considering a run for the Presidency in 2008. Last year, Frist had plenty of critics, including me, for failing to get judicial nominations or much of the original agenda through the Senate. Now, however, Frist appears to be firing on all cylinders. He has pushed through the detainee bill, a border barrier, and the on-line federal budget database, among other accomplishments. Some of these bills appeared to have little chance of avoiding filibusters and delaying tactics, but the tall Tennessean worked some magic, or twisted some arms, to get real accomplishments out of this session. Here's a question for CQ readers: has Frist's valediction made the case for a 2008 run at the Presidency?...
October 4, 2006
It's early, but it's consistent with other polling taken over the last few months. The front-runners for the 2008 nominations are Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, and only Giuliani gets majority support in a general election, according to the latest Marist poll. Republicans who want to hold the White House need to look at these numbers; they're amazing. Giuliani gets majority support for his political views across almost all political demographics, and a plurality of Democrats. Thirty-two percent of Democrats want him to run in 2008. His candidacy has gained support from last year, something that only Newt Gingrich can say, and then only from fourth place. John McCain has suffered a significant drop in his support from February; perhaps his new emphasis on conservative values has caused some revisionism among his former fans on the Left. I like Rudy, but his positions on guns bother me. I'm not as...
October 9, 2006
The New York Times, never one of Rudy Giuliani's fans, does a profile of the former mayor today that reports on an intriguing quality Giuliani seems to have gained after 9/11. His performance under fire appears to have forged a political suit of Teflon for Rudy, one that deflects a number of issues that would derail other candidates: For many loyal Republicans — and more than a few independents and Democrats — his national security message seems to work, blotting out the central question facing his candidacy: whether a supporter of legal abortion, gay civil unions, immigrants’ rights and gun control; a thrice-married, Catholic New Yorker whose split with his second wife took place publicly and none too neatly, can win Republican presidential primaries and caucuses. “I’m well to the right of Rudy on social issues,” said Sid Dinerstein, chairman of the Republican Party in Palm Beach County, Fla., after...
October 11, 2006
GOP Bloggers have a new straw poll, and these are getting more and more sophisticated. We will be able to track responses by CQ readers as the poll continues. I'll check on it later this evening and update my post with the trends. UPDATE 9 PM CT: In 14 hours, CQ readers have cast over 4200 votes, and the results are interesting. In the votes for acceptability, Giuliani and Romney come close to a tie (2685-2650, Romney). However, in the first-choice selections, Giuliani leads substantially with 35.9% of all CQ readers. Romney drops back to 20.9%, barely ahead of Newt Gingrich with 19.9%. George Allen gets 6.8%, and everyone else winds up in the hash. The highest unacceptability ratings came from a surprising source. 54.2% of all CQ readers found Chuck Hagel unacceptable. George Pataki got 45.6% disapproval, and John McCain came in third at 42.3%. Bill Frist got 23.8%...
October 13, 2006
Virginia Governor Mark Warner bowed out of the 2008 presidential race yesterday, stating that he wanted to spend more time with his family rather than pursue the White House. By vacating the center, Warner has left a hole in the party's offerings -- and an opportunity for at least one Democrat to seize the moderate position: Mr. Warner, who five years ago became the first Democrat elected governor of Virginia since 1989, had drawn broad interest among party leaders assessing the potential 2008 field, both as a centrist elected in a Southern state and as a wealthy entrepreneur able to finance his own campaign. But at a news conference in Richmond and in a subsequent interview, he said he had increasingly turned against the idea of running as he found that the obligations of even exploring a candidacy were consuming him and taking him away from family obligations. He said...
October 15, 2006
Looking decidedly un-Presidential this weekend is Hillary Clinton and her camp, after Maureen Dowd related a quote from one of the Senator's advisors that belittled John McCain for a tape his North Vietnamese captors forced him to make while a POW. The Daily News blog pointed out the quote on its site yesterday: Privately, Hillary’s camp was not overly upset by the McCain swipe because it suspected he was doing the bidding of the White House and that he ended up, as one adviser put it, “looking similar to the way he did on those captive tapes from Hanoi, where he recited the names of his crew mates.” The "McCain swipe" was McCain's reaction to Hillary blaming the North Korean nuclear test on the Bush administration. McCain pointed out that the Kim regime had been violating the Agreed Framework signed by the Clinton administration as far back as 1997 according...
October 23, 2006
Yesterday's big political news came from Meet the Press, where Senator Barack Obama raised a few eyebrows with an admission of presidential ambitions. Obama, a first-term member of the upper chamber, contradicted earlier statements that indicated that he would not run in 2008 for the Democratic Party nomination: Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who won instant celebrity after his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic national convention, said Sunday he might run for president in 2008. "I don't want to be coy about this," Obama said on NBC's Meet the Press. "Given the responses that I've been getting over the last several months, I have thought about the possibility." After initially ruling it out, he said, the door has opened "a bit." The 2008 presidential race is wide open, and Obama has been urged by many Democrats, such as fellow Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, to run this time rather...
November 10, 2006
Republicans can be forgiven for not showing much enthusiasm for a poll this week, but in this case, we can guarantee that a Republican will win. This is the latest in a series of blogospheric straw polls on the 2008 Presidential nomiation, and obviously the first one since the midterm meltdown last Tuesday. GOP Bloggers has again staged this for the conservative bloggers and their readers to give their support to their favorite Republican candidates. I'll run this on top for the rest of the day, and we'll see how CQ readers feel about the national candidates after the Congressional switch. Be sure to leave your comments here as well....
Polls have usefulness as a thermometer of sorts; they measure the political temperature at any one moment, but it's tricky to use them to predict the temperature in the future, especially two years out. That's true of the so-called scientific polling, and more so of the self-selected sampling that occurs with these Internet straw polls. However, they do provoke interesting discussions about our political assumptions and attitudes. Take today's poll, just below us. GOP Bloggers registered 10,263 responses across the blogosphere in the last 24 hours -- and over 3600 came from CQ readers. The CQ results show some surprising strength for Rudy Giuliani, who garnered 30% of first-choice selections, followed by Newt Gingrich at 25% and Mitt Romney at 24%. Those three potential candidates were the only ones who scored positive on acceptablity, with Romney oddly winning that category with 62%, compared to 59% for Rudy and 44% for...
November 12, 2006
Russ Feingold has announced that he will stick with his current office of Senator from Wisconsin and forego a run for President in 2008. He told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he didn't have the fire in the belly necessary for a grueling national campaign: Sen. Russ Feingold will not seek his party's presidential nomination in 2008, the Wisconsin Democrat told the Journal Sentinel on Saturday. "I never got to that point where I'd rather be running around the country, running for president, than being a senator from Wisconsin," Feingold said in a phone interview from Madison. Feingold, 53, conceded that he faced long odds of winning the nomination. "It would have required the craziest combination of things in the history of American politics to make it work," he said. But Feingold said waging an underdog campaign appealed to him. What didn't appeal to him, he said, was "the way in...
November 21, 2006
Calling himself a "full scale Ronald Reagan conservative," Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas tossed his hat into the ring for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. Brownback, who has a consistent record of conservative positions, hopes to emerge as the strongest conservative in the race against a field that appears to tilt significantly towards Rockefeller Republicanism: Sen. Sam Brownback, who is considering a White House bid in 2008, said Monday the Republican field has room for a "full-scale Ronald Reagan conservative" and pledged to make a final decision next month. The Kansas senator said he was not discouraged from running by the Democrats' strong gains in this month's midterm elections, including majority control of the House and Senate. "It does not make it less likely," he said in an interview. "I really believe that the basic conservative ideas and ideals were not repudiated. Our execution was." ... Brownback, who was elected...
The 2008 presidential primaries had long been considered a coronation process for Hillary Clinton. Certainly, other names have surfaced as contenders for the throne, but most of them have been revealed as pretenders instead. John Kerry and Al Gore garner laughs and shudders, while Barack Obama just got to Washington two years ago. John Edwards has disappeared from view after his attempt to leverage half of his first term in any political office to become the Vice President -- except for that incident where his staffer went to the Evil Empire (Wal-Mart) to buy his kids a new game system. Part of the consideration of Hillary's inevitability came from the massive war chest she amassed for her re-election bid to New York's Senate seat in the midterms. Facing no real competition, analysts presumed she would retain most of it for the 2008 primaries, giving her a huge head start and...
December 1, 2006
My friend John at Power Line has an interesting look at the Republican contenders for the presidency in 2008, and wonders where the conservatives might turn. It's a little too long to excerpt to any good effect, so be sure to read it in its entirety. Conservatives appear to have some slim pickings, at least thus far. John McCain, who could reasonably compete as one, instead had better hope for independent and centrist support after his campaign reform legislation curtailed political speech, and his Gang of 14 shenanigans derailed more than a couple of fine judicial nominees. John refers to his willingness to sell out the Republicans in order to feed his own self-interest, and that's certainly the perception. Even if I was not willing to go as far as John, and I probably am, he's certainly proven himself fairly unpredictable, even on core issues such as tax cuts. Romney...
The Republican Governors Association meeting attracted attention from a wide range of people ... even presidential aspirants who have never served as governor. While many expected the RGA meeting to serve as another platform for outgoing Massachussetts executive Mitt Romney for his presidential bid, John McCain raised a few eyebrows by spending heavily on receptions and leaning on his personal connections to steal a little of Romney's thunder: Last anyone checked, Senator John McCain of Arizona is not — and has never been — a governor. But no matter. Mr. McCain turned up on Thursday morning at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa here for a guerrillalike visit to the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association. That is a group headed by Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts governor who is widely viewed as Mr. McCain’s chief rival for their party’s 2008 presidential nomination. As Mr. Romney gamely presided over the...
December 2, 2006
The latest story on Mitt Romney has the appearance of an early opposition attack on his presidential hopes, and in this case a rather silly attack. Echoing the travails of Kimba Wood, Bill Clinton's first nominee for Attorney General, the Boston Globe reported yesterday that Romney employed illigal immigrants as landscaping workers: As Governor Mitt Romney explores a presidential bid, he has grown outspoken in his criticism of illegal immigration. But, for a decade, the governor has used a landscaping company that relies heavily on workers like these, illegal Guatemalan immigrants, to maintain the grounds surrounding his pink Colonial house on Marsh Street in Belmont. The Globe recently interviewed four current and former employees of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, the tiny Chelsea-based company that provides upkeep of Romney's property. All but one said they were in the United States illegally. Wood had to withdraw her nomination when reporters...
The Boston Globe reports that John Kerry has decided to postpone the decision on his expected run for the presidency in 2008. Sources claim that the fallout of calling servicemen lazy idiots has stunned him: Senator John F. Kerry's election-eve "botched joke" about the war in Iraq -- and the fierce denunciations his comments drew from fellow Democrats -- has led him to reevaluate whether to mount a run for the presidency in 2008 and has led him to delay an announcement about his decision, according to Kerry associates. The Massachusetts Democrat is now leaning toward waiting until late spring before declaring his intentions, even as other candidates jump into the race and begin building organizing and fund-raising teams in early-primary states. Before the joke derailed his comeback, Kerry had signaled that he would decide whether to run by the end of January. Kerry -- who had methodically resurrected his...
December 4, 2006
Rumors have swirled around HIllary Clinton regarding her presumed run for the presidency in 2008, with some saying that a Barack Obama run will keep her out of the race and that she has not discovered the inner fire for the grueling campaign, a la Mark Warner. Now, however, she's begun meeting with Democratic power brokers, indicating that she's plowing ahead -- but Democrats do not appear completely thrilled by the prospect. So who's meeting with Hillary? Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has begun a calculated series of meetings with top New York Democratic officials to signal that she is likely to run for the presidency in 2008 and to ask for their support if she does, according to one state Democratic official who spoke with her and two others who have been briefed on her plans. Senator Clinton met last week with Charles B. Rangel, the dean of the New...
As I note below, Hillary Clinton has sucked most of the oxygen out of the discussions over the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2008, despite some major misgivings. A significant portion of the party wants to find some alternative to Hillary, and Barack Obama has materialized to help fill that need. Using terms like "rock star", Democrats have boosted Obama as a potential savior who can help bridge constituencies: Senator Barack Obama’s announcement that he might run for president is altering the early dynamics of the 2008 Democratic nominating contest. The move has created complications for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as she steps up her own preparations and is posing a threat to lesser-known Democrats trying to position themselves as alternatives to Mrs. Clinton, Democrats said Sunday. The declaration six weeks ago by Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, has set off a surge of interest in Democratic circles, which...
December 9, 2006
Mitt Romney has worked to position himself as a conservative alternative to John McCain and an ideological opponent of the more liberal Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 Presidential sweepstakes with Republican voters. He has successfully challenged both enough to get himself into the top tier for the nomination in these early days. However, the emergence of correspondence between Romney and the Log Cabin Republicans of Massachussetts in 1994 threatens to make Romney look like a (gasp!) libertarian: Gov. Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts Republican who has built a presidential campaign on a broad appeal for conservative support, is drawing sharply increased criticism from conservative activists for his advocacy of gay rights in a 1994 letter. Mr. Romney’s standing among conservatives is being hurt by a letter he sent to the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts saying that he would be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Senator Edward M. Kennedy,...
December 11, 2006
GOP Bloggers has their monthly Presidential Straw Poll running again, square in the middle of voting season here on the blogs. Once again, blog readers can cast their votes from their favorite blogs in order to allow analysis from each blog about their readers' choices. It looks like the latest entrants into the race have been added this time: Speaking of voting, John Hawkins has the results of his Warblogger Awards for 2006. CQ gets a few honorable mentions, for which I thank the judges, so be sure to check out the winners. And, as long as we're talking about voting, don't forget to cast your ballots for your favorites in the 2006 Weblog Awards. CQ is running in third place for Best Conservative Blog. The folks at The Moderate Voice have repeatedly boosted my blog for the awards, but they seem to have decided to end their own run...
The coyness continues from Barack Obama, who took his "aw, shucks" campaign to New Hampshire this weekend. In two appearances, he appeared humble and somewhat mystified about his sudden popularity -- but he used it to attempt to move the debate to the left: Senator Barack Obama came to New Hampshire for the first time in his life on Sunday, selling a message of hope while proclaiming himself wary of the wave of hype that surrounded his visit. His visit gave Democrats in two sold-out halls a chance to inspect the man who has emerged as their party’s strongest alternative to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as a presidential contender. “It is flattering to get a lot of attention, although I must say it is baffling,” Mr. Obama said here late Sunday afternoon. “I think to some degree I’ve become a shorthand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit that the...
John Kerry took another body blow to his hopes for another presidential run in 2008. With almost no one but John Kerry taking the idea seriously, Ted Kennedy strongly hinted that he has read the writing on the wall: Senator Edward M. Kennedy Monday dropped his public commitment to support Senator John F. Kerry in a 2008 presidential race, saying that he won't wait "indefinitely" for Kerry to declare his intentions while the Democratic primary field takes shape. Kennedy said he doesn't currently plan to endorse another candidate and still might support Kerry if Kerry decides to run. But in an hourlong interview with the Globe's Washington bureau, Kennedy offered strong praise for two of Kerry's possible presidential rivals: senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, calling them "formidable figures" who are connecting with rank-and-file Democrats. Kennedy said his oft-stated commitment to support Kerry again...
December 13, 2006
Jim Geraghty looks at the dynamic between Senator and presidential hopeful John McCain and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, and reaches a conclusion that I suggested almost two weeks ago. Pawlenty's early commitment to endorse McCain and his work on McCain's exploratory committee looks like a partnership meant for larger purposes -- and McCain himself seems to hint that Pawlenty could be his running mate in 2008: Mr. Pawlenty's presidential buzz was silenced by his political near-death experience this year. Despite the St. Paul Pioneer Press declaring: "Gov. Tim Pawlenty was a Republican rock that withstood a Democratic tidal wave washing across the state and nation Tuesday," talk of his presidential aspirations abruptly ended. In the meantime, the Republicans committed to holding their 2008 convention in St. Paul. The early contours of the GOP's 2008 strategy suggest that it wants to win over the remaining blue parts of the Upper Midwest...
December 14, 2006
Robert Novak sees the beginnings of a GOP effort to consolidate itself behind one candidate for 2008 even this early in the primary process, paralleling similar efforts in 1996 (Robert Dole) and 2000 (George Bush). In this case, the "corporate" choice might be John McCain: Some 30 invited corporate representatives and other lobbyists gathered at the Phoenix Park Hotel on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning to hear two senior mainstream Republican senators pitch the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain. They were selling him to establishment Republicans as the establishment's candidate. Nothing could be further from McCain's guerrilla-style presidential run in 2000, which nearly stopped George W. Bush. Invitations to Tuesday's event were sent by Trent Lott, the newly elected Senate minority whip. Over coffee, Lott and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) pushed McCain, though neither previously was seen as a McCainiac. They were not for McCain in 2000, and neither...
December 15, 2006
Barack Obama has enjoyed a boomlet in the opening days of the 2008 Presidential campaign, becoming the not-Hillary of the moment. He has positioned himself well for at least a shot at the VP slot on the ticket, and despite his lack of experience and youth (two years in national office and 45 years old) has become a serious contender for the top position. He generates crowds and energy, and the money will not be long in following. However, he has a potential scandal that has nibbled on the edges of political consciousness for the last few months. John Dickerson in Slate brings it a little closer to the center of debate for the 2008 race, wondering if it will prove damaging enough to Obama's hopes that it stops him: The Chicago Tribune broke the story back in November. It begins in 2004 with Obama's $1.9 million book advance for...
December 18, 2006
Thanks to the compressed news cycle and the impatience of the political class, we have seen the earliest serious launch of a presidential season in long memory. Normally candidates play coy until no more than eighteen months before a presidential election, but this cycle already has declared candidates and exploratory committees abound. In this rush to commitment, Newt Gingrich has decided to take a different and somewhat novel approach: A former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, said yesterday that he will consider entering the race for the Republican presidential nomination only if no other potential candidate looks to be a prohibitive favorite by September 2007. In an interview on NBC's "Meet The Press," Mr. Gingrich also praised several Republican politicians who are expected to make announcements soon about their presidential plans, Governor Romney of Massachusetts, Mayor Giuliani, and Senator McCain of Arizona. "Romney's had a good year. He's emerging...
December 19, 2006
In an attempt to set himself apart from the GOP field in the upcoming Presidential race, Brownback put a hold on a judicial nomination for her attendance at a same-sex union ceremony. However, Brownback overreached when he demanded that Janet Neff recuse herself from all cases regarding gender-neutral marriage issues: Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who blocked the confirmation of a woman to the federal bench because she attended a same-sex commitment ceremony for the daughter of her long-time neighbors, says he will now allow a vote on the nomination. Mr. Brownback, a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, said in a recent interview that when the Senate returned in January, he would allow a vote on Janet Neff, a 61-year-old Michigan state judge, who was nominated to a Federal District Court seat. Mr. Brownback, who has been criticized for blocking the nomination, said he would also...
December 20, 2006
Barack Obama has had a dramatic effect on the blogosphere since dropping his fat hint that he might run for president in 2008. I've written about Obama on more than a few occasions, since I think Obama will be with us for the long run, especially given the political balance in Illinois and his potent speaking skills. The port side of the blogosphere has mostly swooned over his steadfast support for the liberal party line, while the starboard side has started to look unhinged over his potential candidacy in 2008. The latest round started with Debbie Schlussel, who insists that Obama is a closet Muslim: I decided to look further into Obama's background. His full name--as by now you have probably heard--is Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Hussein is a Muslim name, which comes from the name of Ali's son--Hussein Ibn Ali. And Obama is named after his late Kenyan father,...
December 21, 2006
It's refreshing, if a little disheartening, to see that the nonsense about the true identity of Barack Obama is not limited to the fringes of the conservative blogosphere. Agence France Presse provides an interesting analysis of Obama's early support, which does not include the demograhic one would assume: US political darling Barack Obama has received enthusiastic support for a possible 2008 presidential bid -- except from fellow African-Americans, a group many believed would be among his staunchest backers. In contrast to the effusive reception Obama has received from white Americans, many US blacks so far have been cool, saying that while they may share skin color with Obama, they do not have a common culture or history. "Obama did not -- does not -- share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves," wrote African-American newspaper columnist Stanley Crouch last month in an article...
January 6, 2007
Hillary Clinton appears to be the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination for the 2008 Presidential campaign, but she has not won over the most activist part of her party. ABC reported yesterday that protestors picketing speeched by John McCain and Joe Lieberman did not spare Hillary from criticism: "I'm scared to death of Hillary Clinton," said Kirsten Loken of Falling Waters, W.Va. "She is a divider." Loken, a self-described feminist who has supported the National Organization for Women for many years, said she would "absolutely love" to see a female president of the United States. "But not Hillary Clinton," she said, "not Hillary Clinton." Loken is one of four West Virginians who met in 2004 while helping Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) general-election campaign against Bush. The four women, who traveled by car for more than an hour to Friday's protest organized by MoveOn.org, said they would "love" to...
January 7, 2007
Al Gore has banned coverage of an event again, this time in our neighboring South Dakota. Gore joined the Columbia School of Journalism as a lecturer in 2001 after his loss to George Bush and placed a gag order on his students, an ironic twist for students steeped in First Amendment principles. Now Gore has excluded journalists and TV cameras from his appearance at Augustana College for his latest lecture on the environment (via TMV): Reporters and TV news cameras will be banned from almost all of former Vice President Al Gore's appearance Jan. 23 in Sioux Falls. Gore is the Boe Forum speaker at Augustana College and plans a talk called "Thinking Green: Economic Strategy for the 21st Century." Kalee Kreider, a Gore staffer in Nashville, confirmed by e-mail that news media will be asked to leave his talk after the introduction and that Gore will not hold a...
January 9, 2007
Governor Mitt Romney conducted the first big fund-raiser of the 2008 Presidential campaign, and the Romneyites surprised even themselves with a spectacular success. They collected $6.5 million from their Boston Convention event, far surpassing their goal: White House hopeful Mitt Romney and 400 of his backers raised more than $6.5 million on Monday in a glitzy fundraising blitz that will force all Republican rivals to take notice. "They've come together and blown us away today, and humbled us at the same time," said the former Massachusetts governor as he clutched the hand of his wife, Ann. The figure dwarfed the $2 million that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., raised and the $1 million collected by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Like Romney, the two have created committees exploring bids for the GOP's presidential nomination. While Romney said he was not trying to send a message to anyone but his supporters,...
I'm not sure how many more of these stories the American media can produce, but the Boston Globe seems intent on telling us -- again -- that John Kerry still has not decided to run for President in 2008: After sending strong signals for two years about a second run for the presidency, Senator John F. Kerry has held no public political events in more than two months, even as his potential rivals ramp up their own campaigns. Behind the scenes, Kerry has been more active, hiring several top operatives and hosting several major fund-raisers with Democratic activists, including a breakfast yesterday in New York City and a birthday event at his Beacon Hill home last month, where he raised $250,000. Aides to the Massachusetts Democrat said he is still mulling whether he should run again for president in 2008. A decision is likely to be made before the end...
I'm not sure how many more of these stories the American media can produce, but the Boston Globe seems intent on telling us -- again -- that John Kerry still has not decided to run for President in 2008: After sending strong signals for two years about a second run for the presidency, Senator John F. Kerry has held no public political events in more than two months, even as his potential rivals ramp up their own campaigns. Behind the scenes, Kerry has been more active, hiring several top operatives and hosting several major fund-raisers with Democratic activists, including a breakfast yesterday in New York City and a birthday event at his Beacon Hill home last month, where he raised $250,000. Aides to the Massachusetts Democrat said he is still mulling whether he should run again for president in 2008. A decision is likely to be made before the end...
January 10, 2007
The upcoming presidential election will hinge on the use of technology and the rapid response to potentially damaging imagery. When a video clip from Mitt Romney's debate with Ted Kennedy in 1994 got YouTubed, opening another question about his pro-life credentials, Romney turned to Glenn Reynolds and a Podcast to set the record straight. Be sure to check out the Glenn & Helen Show....
January 11, 2007
Each month, the GOP Bloggers blog conducts a straw poll to take the temperature of the blogosphere for the upcoming Republican presidential primaries. They generally update the list each time to capture any new potential candidates; for instance, Jim Gilmore. the former Governor of Virginia, is included this time. The poll allows bloggers to conduct a survey of their own readership, which always produces some intriguing results. Keep checking back to see the results, and I will probably review them in the next 24 hours....
January 12, 2007
The Democrats selected Denver as their host city for their 2008 national convention, bypassing New York City in order to bolster their Western credentials. The move reflects shifting fortunes for both parties and follows Howard Dean's efforts to build national credibility for the Democrats: The Democratic Party chose Denver over New York on Thursday as the site for its next national convention, capping months of debate about which city had better logistics, deeper pockets and a more compelling backdrop to frame the party’s message. “If we’re going to have a national party, we’re going to have to have Westerners vote for us on a consistent basis,” the Democratic national chairman, Howard Dean, said in a telephone news conference. “At the end of the day,” Mr. Dean added, “that’s what tipped it to Denver.” Denver economic development officials said that by one important measure, the convention, to be held Aug. 25-28,...
The Washington Times reports that Hillary Clinton is slipping in polls for the first states in next year's presidential primaries, and that populists such as John Edwards and Barack Obama appear to be eclipsing her. One pollster draws comparisons between Hillary and the previous Democratic nominee that hardly intend to flatter her: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's popularity in Democratic presidential-preference polls has fallen in the nation's first caucus and primary states in the face of increasing support for her chief rivals for the 2008 nomination. Pollsters said her weaknesses in Iowa and New Hampshire were the result of the growing popularity of two major opponents -- former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama -- and their populist economic messages, as well as a deepening antipathy toward her among Democratic-leaning independents who dislike her support for the war in Iraq and who question her electability. "I think...
January 13, 2007
Yesterday I wrote about Hillary Clinton's troubles in the 2008 presidential campaign and how she has lost ground to the populists in Iowa and New Hampshire. Her deliberate centrism has undermined enthusiasm for her run at becoming the nation's first female President, and nothing touches off the MoveOn faction more than her support for the war in Iraq. It didn't take long for Hillary to start trying to turn that around, apparently: In an exclusive interview with ABC News in Baghdad, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., called the situation in Iraq "heartbreaking" and said she doubts Congress and the American people believe the mission here can succeed. "I don't know that the American people or the Congress at this point believe this mission can work," she said. "And in the absence of a commitment that is backed up by actions from the Iraqi government, why should we believe it?" Clinton spoke...
January 16, 2007
Last week I featured the monthly straw poll at GOP Bloggers, and once again CQ readers turned out in force to cast their ballots. Over 12,000 votes got cast for the January poll, and almost a third of them came from this blog -- and the results are a little surprising. Both among CQ voters and overall, Mitt Romney moved ahead of Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and especially John McCain. The overall percentages are: Romney - 27.6% Gingrich - 24.3% Giuliani - 21.1% CQ polling shows a little different order: Romney - 31.7% Giuliani - 25.4% Gingrich - 23.2% In candidate acceptability, Romney won by a landslide among CQ readers. His rating, 63.2%, outstrips his nearest competitors by almost 10 points. In fact, only the top three candidates had positive acceptability ratings. John McCain had a -23%, but Chuck Hagel and George Pataki continue to score even worse than McCain....
Barack Obama sort of ended all the suspense this morning, by doing exactly what everyone expected, only a little sooner. Obama announced that he would create an exploratory committee as the first step towards running for President in 2008: Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, whose best-selling books and political travels generated huge pressure to run for the White House, joined a crowded Democratic field yesterday, vowing to advance "a different kind of politics" in a campaign that could make him the nation's first African American president. Obama, a state legislator just three years ago, announced that he has formed a presidential exploratory committee, accelerating his already rapid emergence in national politics and establishing him as his party's most formidable rival to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the Democratic front-runner. Obama, 45, portrayed his youth and short tenure in Congress as an asset in a statement distributed via Web...
January 17, 2007
One of the more amusing aspects of any presidential campaign is the people who believe they have a chance to win the nomination. This year, we already have one from each party. The Democrats have Chris Dodd, a man so non-descript that even his own constituents have trouble recognizing him. The Republicans now may have its own Don Quixote in Tom Tancredo, who announced the formation of an exploratory committee that will have to include windmills and some heavy-duty tilting: Colorado's Tom Tancredo took his first official step Tuesday toward running for president. The Republican congressman from Littleton - known for his hard-line stance on immigration - announced his plan to file paperwork for a presidential exploratory committee. He set up a website and within four hours, he said, collected about $10,000 in campaign contributions. After spending the weekend in Iowa, where the earliest presidential nominating caucus is to be...
January 19, 2007
The New York Sun reports that some Clinton administration officials have decided to seek employment in other campaigns rather than join their old bosses. While Hillary's campaign says this reflects prior ties to the other candidates, one has to wonder what kind of time frame predates 1993: One of the biggest advantages Senator Clinton enjoys as she launches her presidential bid is the vast web of politically active Democrats who worked in the federal government under her husband, President Clinton. But not everyone who served during the Clinton years is promoting a reprise. A handful of top Clinton administration officials and a smattering of lower-ranking ones have taken up with Mrs. Clinton's rivals for the Democratic nomination. Most cite pre-existing personal or professional loyalties. In some instances, however, the Democratic activists seem to have concluded that they will have more of an impact in the leaner ranks of a rival...
January 20, 2007
In what has to be one of the most anticlimatic campaign announcements since Ronald Reagan in 1979, Hillary Clinton officially announced her candidacy for the 2008 Presidential nomination. The official notice came as a posting on her website: Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton embarked on a widely anticipated campaign for the White House on Saturday, a former first lady intent on becoming the first female president. "I'm in and I'm in to win," she said on her Web site. Clinton's announcement, days after Sen. Barack Obama shook up the contest race with his bid to become the first black president, establishes the most diverse political field ever. Clinton is considered the front-runner, with Obama and 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards top contenders. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who would be the first Hispanic president, intends to announce his plans on Sunday. "You know after six years of George Bush,...
January 21, 2007
Another candidate entered the race for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008 today, even if few notice it. The splashy entry of Hillary Clinton yesterday overshadowed the announcement of New Mexico governor Bill Richardson today: Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., said Sunday he is taking the first step toward an expected White House run in 2008, offering extensive experience in Washington and the world stage as he seeks to become the first Hispanic president. "I am taking this step because we have to repair the damage that's been done to our country over the last six years," said Richardson, a former congressman, U.N. ambassador and Energy Department secretary. "Our reputation in the world is diminished, our economy has languished, and civility and common decency in government has perished," he said in a statement. This should be the candidate that really worries the Republicans in 2008. Hillary sucks up most of...
January 22, 2007
Early on, it looks like Hillary Clinton's status as front-runner would only get a serious challenge from Barack Obama, the single-term Senator that has the media abuzz with delight. Obama looks to be the only candidate that can draw from the left and center in the Democratic Party enough to threaten HIllarys chances in the primary. However, the advent of Bill Richardson's candidacy may pose much more difficult problems for Hillary, if Richardson chooses to play hardball in the primaries: Richardson spent 15 years in Congress before being named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by President Bill Clinton in 1997. A year later he was appointed energy secretary. Richardson returned to elected office in 2002, winning the gubernatorial race. Last fall he cruised to a second term with 69 percent of the vote. Throughout his career in public life, Richardson has also served as a roving diplomat, dispatched to...
January 23, 2007
My Examiner column today focuses on Bill Richardson's quest for the Presidency and its threat to both the Republicans and Hillary Clinton. It's a distillation and extension of my thoughts over the past two days since Richardson announced for the race: The Republican front-runners have better track records than their Democratic counterparts, at least for the moment. Between them, Hillary Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards, and Obama have a total of 14 years of national office and only 21 years of electoral office experience. By comparison, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been in the Senate for more than 20 years, Rudy Giuliani served as mayor of New York City for eight years and Mitt Romney has one four-year term as governor of Massachussetts. Between them, these three GOP candidates have a dozen years just in executive experience, which the Democratic front-runners completely lack. McCain and Giuliani have notable biographies of...
January 25, 2007
Many people have dismissed Rudy Giuliani's run for the presidency, calling the former mayor of New York too liberal to win in the primaries. Critics point to his messy personal life and his centrist positions on abortion and gun control as insurmountable liberalism for a true Republican's vote. Steven Malanga responds with an intriguing portrayal of America's Mayor as an effective, pragmatic conservative during his terms in office running America's largest city: By the time Giuliani challenged Dinkins for a second time, in 1993 (his first try had failed), the former prosecutor had fashioned a philosophy of local government based on two core conservative principles vastly at odds with New York’s political culture: that government should be accountable for delivering basic services well, and that ordinary citizens should be personally responsible for their actions and their destiny and not expect government to take care of them. Giuliani preached the need...
Hillary Clinton may have expected a return to the kind of support enjoyed by her husband when he ran for President last decade, but she discovered yesterday that a key source of energy for Bill's campaign may not support her at all. Hollywood seems more taken with Barack Obama than in another triangulist, and they have begin to put their money where their mouths are: Is Hollywood abandoning Hillary? On Wednesday morning, hundreds of Hollywood's movers and shakers received an invitation that they may find hard to refuse. They've been invited to come meet Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party's new superstar. He already has the buzz, but can he bring home the prize? Movie moguls Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg want their Hollywood peers to join them at a Feb. 20 fundraiser the three are throwing for Obama. This presents a huge problem for Hillary. A large...
One of the topics we will discuss tonight on my regular-schedule debut of CQ radio at 9 pm CT will be the GOP slate of candidates for the Presidential nomination in 2008. Time Magazine did some early polling, and they see John McCain edging Rudy Giuliani for the ticket. These are early polls, and the numbers will shift widely over the next year, but some things will remain the same ... such as the silly questions pollsters will ask prospective voters: If the election were held now, Rudy Giuliani appears to have the support of the greatest number of respondents of both parties, with 56% indicating they would "definitely" or "probably" support him — followed by Hillary Clinton (51%) John McCain (50%) and Barack Obama (50%). But Clinton has a strong edge when the question is which presidential candidate people would most like to have over to their homes for...
January 26, 2007
Yesterday, ABC News reported that the court-appointed trustee for a bankruptcy judgment asked the court to schedule a hearing in the case against Hillary Clinton's brother Tony Rodham: A court-appointed bankruptcy trustee asked a federal judge this week to schedule a new court date in a case against Tony Rodham, the brother of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., accused of failing to repay $109,000 in loans from a carnival company whose owners received controversial pardons issued by President Bill Clinton in the last hours of his presidency. According to documents filed in the case, Rodham received the loans, before and after the pardons were granted, from United Shows of America, Inc., owned by Edgar Gregory and his wife, who had been convicted of defrauding several banks. ... With the company now in bankruptcy and Gregory dead, the court-appointed federal trustee for United Shows, Michael Collins, has spent two years trying to...
Two weeks ago, I asked whether Hillary Clinton will be 2008's John Kerry. With polls showing Hillary starting to sink in Iowa and New Hampshire and populists Barack Obama and John Edwards taking advantage, her front-runner status looks suddenly shaky, just as John Kerry's did after Howard Dean caught fire in 2003. Now one of the dextrosphere's most prominent bloggers also draws uncomfortable, and unflattering comparisons between the 2004 nominee and the presumptive favorite for 2008. Arianna Huffington told Der Spiegel that Hillary risks the same fate as Kerry from their shared trait -- disingenuity: SPIEGEL ONLINE: Right now, Sen. Obama appears to be faring better in the blogosphere than Hillary Clinton -- he's getting more mentions in blogs. Why? And how much influence does that blogging have on the general public? Huffington: Primary elections are always influenced by those who are the most politically engaged. Blogs are just another...
January 27, 2007
Governor Mitt Romney was our guest on today's Northern Alliance Radio Network, and we spoke with him for eighteen minutes as the Presidential candidate made his way between flights. Despite the frantic nature of his schedule today, Romney presented a calm, thoughtful, and unhurried demeanor as we introduced our audience to one of the presumptive Republican front-runners. Here's the entire interview, podcasted for your convenience: Romney Interview One of the more intriguing questions Romney answered had little to do with his own campaign. I asked him why the election cycle seems to have started so early in both parties, and instead of giving the usual analysis about the 24-hour news cycle and the rise of the bloggers, he said that the lack of a vice-presidential presumptive nominee seems to have forced everyone to start raising funds earlier. That got Mitch and I wondering later in the show about when we...
January 28, 2007
The media spent the middle Bush years fawning over the President's former primary rival, John McCain, as a Republican rebel. He garnered so much good press over his disagreements with the administration, as well as his "reform" efforts on campaign finance and political speech, that they often overlooked his hawkishness on the war and his opposition to abortion. They glorified his speeches against the Bush tax cuts and his tough-minded efforts against wasteful government spending -- until it became clear that he would run for President in 2008 and have the unmitigated gall to campaign as a Republican. Now, however, the media has discovered a new and shiny Republican maverick, and guess what? He's running for President, too! Chuck Hagel wears pain on his face. The senior senator from Nebraska earned two Purple Hearts in Vietnam, where a mine blew out his eardrums and delivered a sharp burn up the...
In a month where everyone and their brother has announced the creation of exploratory presidential committees, one man gets the New York Times' attention for not making a decision on entering the campaign ... even though he formed his committee last month. Rudy Giuliani gets the Gray Lady treatment for not doing what hardly anyone else has done -- explicitly declaring his candidacy (emphasis mine): Rudolph W. Giuliani, who developed a national reputation for decisive and reassuring leadership after 9/11, now faces the odd challenge of having to reassure some supporters that he can be decisive about a very different issue: running for president. Even as his fellow Republican John McCain and fellow New Yorker Hillary Rodham Clinton have all but formally declared their candidacies, Mr. Giuliani has proceeded more cautiously. Since last month, he has formed an exploratory committee, more aggressively recruited a campaign staff and moved to divest...
Attempting to defuse a controversy that threatened his claim to Republican conservatism, Governor Mitt Romney acknowledged that his views on abortion had changed during his years of public service. At the National Review's Conservative Summit, he gave his explanation of his transformation: "On abortion, I wasn't always a Ronald Reagan conservative," Romney told a gathering of conservatives. "Neither was Ronald Reagan, by the way. But like him, I learned from experience." During his 2002 campaign for Massachusetts governor, Romney said that while he personally opposed abortion, he would leave the state's abortion laws intact. In his speech Saturday, he said he had had a change of heart after a discussion with a stem cell researcher. Romney had to come up with an explanation for his change of heart on abortion. Pro-life conservatives would not have trusted Romney with the nomination unless they understood the shift in his position as coming...
January 29, 2007
The early start to the 2008 Presidential campaign has presented many bloggers with a challenge, especially the bloggers that identify with the GOP. Based on some reading of blogs, links back to my posts, and a slew of e-mails already hitting the In box, it appears that some people have felt the pressure to start endorsing candidates a full year before the first primary -- a move that I believe to be a mistake, both for independent bloggers and for the blogosphere as a whole. Center-right and conservative bloggers have not had any experience with a wide-open primary season. In 2000, the blogosphere hardly existed, and by 2004 we knew that George Bush would have no serious competition for his renomination. The 2008 campaign is tabula rasa for Republican bloggers, more so since we have no incumbent Vice-President vying for the nomination. As I wrote over the weekend, that situation...
Earlier, I posted about the pressure on bloggers that the early start to the 2008 Presidential nomination has created, and what I believe the solution to that pressure should be. Does the early start and long campaign constitute a serious problem for the United States? The New York Times believes it does, and its editors believe the federal government should fix it for all of us: The biggest factors, though, are money and an ever-compressed schedule. California, Illinois, Florida and New Jersey are all maneuvering to move up their primaries to next February. That has candidates rushing to lock up the big donors — and bypassing the public finance system. Senator Clinton has already made clear that she will be opting out for both the primary and the general election. Senator John McCain, a major supporter of campaign finance reform who is no longer sponsoring a big reform bill that...
January 30, 2007
Is it too early for polling in the Presidential race? You bet it is. Does that stop anyone from quoting the polls? Absolutely not. So, just for fun and not for serious consideration, take a look at this New Hampshire poll from Boston's CBS television affiliate, via Rich Lowry at The Corner: Sen. Clinton is the choice of 40 percent, followed by Sen. Barack Obama with 25 percent, and 2004 vice-presidential nominee John Edwards at 23 percent. Only nine percent preferred someone else. That's a strong showing for Obama, a newcomer to a state where Clinton and Edwards have campaigned for years. But the numbers could be a nightmare for him too. ... Our survey of Republicans shows former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani in a virtual tie with Sen. John McCain, 33 to 32 percent, with former governor Mitt Romney up sharply over recent polling at 21 percent. For...
January 31, 2007
I've commented before that the 2008 Presidential primary campaign seems very accelerated, but even I couldn't have predicted the parabolic trajectory of the Joe Biden campaign on its first official day. Biden has now apologized for his description of primary opponent Barack Obama as the first mainstream clean African-American: Sen. Joseph Biden has launched his bid for the White House on the issue of Iraq, but Wednesday his campaign was sidetracked over race. Like everybody these days Biden declared online, but it was old media that got him in trouble: Personal comments he made about another White House hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, recorded by a reporter for the New York Observer. "I mean, you've got the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a story-book, man," Biden said. ... Fearing the political damage of his comments Wednesday night,...
February 1, 2007
With the presidential primary race well under way, the meter has started running on fundraising and spending. Ironically, deficit hawk John McCain has taken the lead on the latter, lapping his competition while doling out over $7 million for his start-up and support for Republicans in the midterms: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) spent $7.8 million last year to assist other politicians and get his fledgling presidential bid underway, an early sign of the intensity of the spending that is expected to become a fixture of the 2008 campaign. Among those candidates who had filed 2006 year-end reports with the Federal Election Commission late yesterday, none had come close to spending so much so early on the preparations for the presidential election. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) spent $3.4 million, ex-New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) spent $2.4 million and ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) had spent $2.1 million from his...
February 2, 2007
The New York Times indulges itself in the latest oddity of racial politics today regarding Barack Obama. The meme that he will struggle to find support in the black community has floated in the media for the past few weeks; I noted an article from Agence France Presse on the topic six weeks ago. At the time, African-American radio host Stanley Crouch had written a column that rejected Obama's inclusion in black America as lacking the shared background and experience of the descendants of slaves. It turns out that he's not alone: The black author and essayist Debra J. Dickerson recently declared that “Obama isn’t black” in an American racial context. Some polls suggest that Mr. Obama trails one of his rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the battle for African-American support. And at the Shepherd Park Barber Shop here, where the hair clippers hummed and...
February 3, 2007
Yesterday, the Rudy Giuliani campaign promoted the results of polling by several groups last month, surveys which shows that Giuliani has more strength in traditionally blue states than other Republicans, especially the former "maverick" John McCain. Once expected to be the centrist candidate of choice, and even a risk for an independent bid that would capture the center from both parties, McCain seems to have ceded most of that ground to Giuliani, at least at this early stage of the campaign: StateMayor GiulianiClosest CompetitorSourceCalifornia33%19% (Gingrich)ARG - Jan. 11-17Florida30%16% (Gingrich)ARG - Jan. 4-9Illinois33%24% (McCain)ARG - Jan. 11-14Michigan34%24% (McCain)ARG - Jan. 4-7Nevada31%25% (McCain)ARG - Dec. 19-23, ‘06New Jersey39%21% (McCain)Quinnipiac – Jan. 16-22North Carolina34%26% (McCain)ARG - Jan. 11-15Ohio30%22% (McCain)Quinnipiac - Jan. 23-28Pennsylvania35%25% (McCain)ARG Jan. 4-8Texas28%26% (McCain)Baselice Jan. 17-21 The Battleground Poll, one of those cited by the Giuliani campaign, makes a less impressive case for Giuliani as the front-runner. The analysis by Ed Goeas...
Given the more liberal tendencies of Rudy Giuliani on abortion and guns, conservatives have expressed serious misgivings about his run for the nomination. However, the main effect that a President can have on these issues involves his or her outlook on the judiciary. The federal court system has been the main battleground for both issues, with Roe specifically precluding any kind of legislative action. Court nominations have become one of the essential considerations for presidential contenders -- and it may be more important for Giuliani than any other Republican candidate. Giuliani has hinted that he would nominate jurists in the mold of Antonin Scalia and John Roberts. Today, at a visit with the South Carolina GOP Executive Committee, an audience member pressed him for his position. His campaign office has supplied us with the transcript of his answer: On the Federal judiciary I would want judges who are strict constructionists...
February 5, 2007
Ralph Nader has not gone quietly into that good night, and instead might consider another round of rage against the dying of the political light. He refused to rule out another run for the White House, and punctuated it with a pithy deconstruction of the current Democratic Party front-runner: Asked on CNN's Late Edition news program if he would run in 2008, the lawyer and consumer activist said, "It's really too early to say. ... I'll consider it later in the year." Nader, 72, said he did not plan to vote for Clinton, a Democratic senator from New York and former first lady. "I don't think she has the fortitude. Actually she's really a panderer and a flatterer. As she goes around the country, you'll see more of that," Nader said. On whether he would be encouraged to run if Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, Nader said, "It would make...
Rudy Giuliani ended most of the speculation by amending his exploratory committee papers today to include a "statement of candidacy". It moves him closer to the eventual commitment to run, but Giuliani all but made that tonight on Hannity & Colmes on Fox News Channel: Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became a national hero for his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, suggested Monday that a formal presidential announcement was a matter of when, not if. "Today we just took another step toward running for president," the Republican said, hours after filing a so-called "statement of candidacy" with the Federal Election Commission, which moved him closer to a full-fledged campaign. "It's a big step, an important one. Quite honestly, we're probably ahead of schedule," Giuliani told reporters in Long Island while campaigning with a state Senate candidate. "We still have to think about a...
Continue reading "Rudy's In, Mostly" »
February 6, 2007
It has been amusing to see Democrats in Congress attempt to explain away their votes for the war in Iraq over the past year. Most of them have settled on the excuse that the Bush administration deceived them in October 2002 into authorizing military force based on the exact same intelligence that moved them to declare official American policy of regime change in 1998. The Democrats won a majority in the midterms by stoking Bush Derangement Syndrome, but for 2008 they face a daunting task -- winning elections without using the retiring George Bush as a bogeyman. John Edwards has found a solution by shifting blame yet again, and in the process exposing the "Bush lied" meme as a hypocritical dodge. In his Sunday appearance on Meet the Press, Edwards attempted to excuse his vote on the AUMF by blaming Clinton administration officials for confirming the intel coming from the...
Earlier today, I had an opportunity to participate in a conference call involving the John McCain campaign and several prominent bloggers. David All live-blogged the event, in which the McCain staff solicited our unvarnished opinions regarding McCain, his campaign efforts, his prospects for promotion through the blogosphere, and what we felt we would need from his campaign. I won't attempt to recreate David's excellent coverage, so I'll give you my overall evaluation of the event. It shows that McCain and his staff understand the need to address the skepticism (and in some cases, outright hostility) of the conservative blogosphere. Even though McCain enjoys a substantial level of support among voters at the moment, his numbers among blog readers have been abysmal. One person on the call noted that a recent straw poll put him at the same level as Fred Dalton Thompson, who is closer to running for an Emmy...
I linked to David All's live-blog of the conference call several bloggers held with the John McCain campaign earlier today. Mary Katherine Ham also participated in the call, and has a somewhat different take on the effort to engage conservative bloggers: Here's the deal. McCain wants to start a friendlier relationship with us bloggers, right? Now, when a man goes to his angry wife or ticked off girlfriend and says, "Baby, let's work this out. What's wrong?," what does she do? She yells at him, gets some things off her chest, maybe cries a little about how little he truly cares about her, right? We got that far on the call. I'm not gonna tell you who cried. But what's the next step? When you're talking to your girlfriend, even if you think she's being crazy and unreasonable (which I, for the record, do not think conservative bloggers are being),...
February 7, 2007
John Podhoretz explains the surprising popularity of Rudy Giuliani in the early stages of the 2008 presidential primary campaign, writing that Republicans want to like Rudy -- if he'll let them. In his New York Post column, Podhoretz notes more than a few of the hurdles that Giuliani faces, but insists that neither conservatives nor Giuliani want to go to war over them: Republicans not only like Rudy, they want to like him. Conservative Republicans want to like him. Socially conservative Republicans want to like him. In this respect, he represents a momentous change from prior candidates hailing from outside the party's socially conservative wing. Past "liberal" GOP candidates and would-be candidates have sought the nomination by taking strong stands counter to the views of the party's conservative base - like Elizabeth Dole opposing handguns in 2000. Those candidates, that is, were engaging in battle against the social conservatives. They...
The campaign of John Edwards, hailed for hiring two progressive bloggers for his 2008 Presidential campaign, has now said they will reconsider that decision in light of the blogging history of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. The episode reveals the lack of vetting done by the Edwards campaign before hiring the two bloggers, and sets back the ability of bloggers to mainstream themselves into traditional political roles: Two bloggers hired by John Edwards to reach out to liberals in the online world have landed his presidential campaign in hot water for doing what bloggers do — expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language. ... The two women brought to the Edwards campaign long cyber trails in the incendiary language of the blogosphere. Other campaigns are likely to face similar controversies as they try to court voters using the latest techniques of online communication. Ms. Marcotte wrote in December...
The apparent firing of two bloggers by the John Edwards campaign has generated a predictable debate in the blogosphere. Those who find themselves in sympathy with Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, either because or in spite of their inflammatory attacks on Christians in general and Catholics in particular, claim that the Edwards campaign surrendered to right-wing attacks. Some go further and try to pass off the entire incident through some weird filter of relativism. Alex Koppelman and Rebecca Traister at Salon claim that the "right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps", and try to pass off Marcotte's earlier writings as the equivalent of Michelle Malkin's on the latter's blog -- although neither can apparently come up with an example. Media Matters has leapt to Marcotte's defense by going through the writings of Patrick Hynes, John McCain's new media coordinator, and discovering that he called Chelsea Clinton "ugly". Somehow, the writings of...
February 8, 2007
The 2008 primary campaign still seems pretty young to lend much weight to state by state polling -- but we won't let that stop us from having fun with it anyway. Quinnipiac released its results for Florida, a key state for both parties and a must-hold for the GOP. Rudy Giuliani came out on top in the poll, besting Hillary Clinton within the margin of error, the only Republican to do so: In an early look at the 2008 presidential race in Florida, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has a razor-thin 47 - 44 percent lead over New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, while Sen. Clinton edges Arizona Sen. John McCain 47 - 43 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. These results are close to those in a January 30 poll of Ohio voters by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll, where Clinton squeaks past McCain...
The New York Times has a hot scoop on the 2008 Presidential campaign that will blow all of us away. It's a secret that may undo the efforts of Mitt Romney to challenge for the nomination. In fact, the news may wind up challenging American ideals of political access and religious tolerance in ways we have not seen in decades. Are you ready for this big scoop? Can you handle the truth? Well, okay, here it is -- Mitt Romney is a Mormon: As he begins campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is facing a threshold issue: Will his religion — he is a Mormon — be a big obstacle to winning the White House? Polls show a substantial number of Americans will not vote for a Mormon for president. The religion is viewed with suspicion by Christian conservatives, a vital part of the...
We'll be discussing this on CQ Radio at 9 pm CT tonight, with Daniel Glover of Beltway Blogroll. Be sure to join the conversation by calling 646-652-4889. John Edwards had to pick between two bad choices today in order to contain the damage from the controversial prior writings of two bloggers hired by his campaign as liaisons to Internet activists. The former VP nominee, stuck between offending Christians and angering the progressive community that the two bloggers were hired to engage, made the best possible lemonade from the lemons handed him by Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. He announced that, while he was "personally offended" by their attacks on Catholic and Christian belief, he would keep them on the staff: Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said Thursday he was personally offended by the provocative messages two of his campaign bloggers wrote criticizing the Catholic church, but he's not going to...
February 9, 2007
CBS News interviewed me after the conference call hosted by the John McCain campaign, involving several prominent conservative bloggers, including myself. David Miller interviewed Power Line's Paul Mirengoff as well, and wrote an interesting article about the intersection of political campaigns and independent bloggers -- a timely piece, given the controversy over John Edwards and his recent hires. Miller asked me what I thought the campaign hoped to accomplish by engaging with bloggers who had expressed serious criticism of their candidate: Republican John McCain's campaign faces a different problem: Despite leading in polls of GOP primary voters, many conservative bloggers don't like him and don't trust him. In particular, they take issue with the campaign finance overhaul law he co-sponsored in 2002. A frequent complaint on blogs is that the measure curtails free speech and — hitting closer to home — contains provisions that threatened to severely restrict the activity...
February 10, 2007
The Washington Post reports on an odd development in the 2008 Presidential primary race to acquire endorsements early in the cycle. The populist personal-injury attorney turned politician, John Edwards, had locked up the backing of the American Association for Justice in 2004 when he ran for President. Now, however, the litigator's group has decided to keep an open mind, and even bypassed Edwards for the keynote speech in favor of Joe Biden: In the last presidential election, John Edwards had the powerful support and deep pockets of the nation's trial lawyers behind him. But when the lawyers gather for their winter conference today in Miami Beach, it will be Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) delivering the meeting's keynote speech. Edwards, a trial lawyer who became a senator and now a presidential candidate, will be there, too. But the North Carolina Democrat no longer has a lock on the backing...
He only has two years of national office under his belt, and has not even faced a credible opponent. He has few legislative accomplishments for his resumé, and no executive experience at all. For the Democratic Party in 2008, that apparently makes Barack Obama the #2 candidate for the Presidential nomination behind Hillary Clinton, a position Obama assumed with his official announcement of candidacy a few minutes ago: Democrat Barack Obama declared himself a candidate Saturday for the White House in 2008, evoking Abraham Lincoln's ability to unite a nation and promising to lead a new generation as the country's first black president. The first-term senator announced his candidacy from the state capital where he began his elective career just 10 years ago, and in front of the building where in another century, Lincoln served eight years in the Illinois Legislature. "We can build a more hopeful America," Obama said...
February 11, 2007
Am I the only conservative with misgivings regarding John Howard's proclamation about Barack Obama? Howard, the Prime Minister of Australia and a great friend to the United States, wants to wage an aggressive war against al-Qaeda and radical Islamist terrorists. Australians have been brutally targeted twice in Bali, with hundreds of them dead from suicide bombers, and their proximity to Indonesia makes them well aware of the dangers of appeasement to Muslim extremists. However, I think Howard went too far today in involving himself in the next American election: Australia's conservative prime minister slammed Barack Obama on Sunday over his opposition to the Iraq war, a day after the first-term U.S. senator announced his intention to run for the White House in 2008. ... Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch Bush ally who has sent troops to Iraq and faces his own re-election bid later this year, said Obama's...
Conservatives have mistrusted John McCain for five years, ever since he teamed with Russ Feingold to pass the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. The pair intended on ending checkbook politics by restricting the rights of groups to advertise their political arguments while mentioning incumbents in the final 60 days of a campaign, among other restrictions. Well, time has a way of changing things. The Washington Post reports today that McCain has reversed himself in fact if not in policy by actively pursuing some of the same checkbooks the BCRA supposedly excluded from politics: Just about a year and a half ago, Sen. John McCain went to court to try to curtail the influence of a group to which A. Jerrold Perenchio gave $9 million, saying it was trying to "evade and violate" new campaign laws with voter ads ahead of the midterm elections. As McCain launches his own presidential campaign, however,...
Can Rudy Giuliani inspire the Republicans in the bluest of regions but with the reddest of blood? He seems to have answered that question in Sacramento, where the enthusiasm for his speech contrasted sharply with the polite but tepid response to one given earlier by the Republican Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger: Rudolph W. Giuliani came west to learn whether his brand of Republican politics has a chance among party members significantly more conservative than himself. By the time he had received a fourth standing ovation Saturday at the California Republican Party convention, the answer seemed clear. Equating the U.S. fight against terrorism with the Civil War and the Cold War, Giuliani told about 750 of his party's faithful that failure in Iraq would turn that country into a "massive headquarters for terrorism." "Having had a job where I didn't have any choice but to make a decision," the former mayor of...
February 12, 2007
Yesterday I wrote about the Washington Post article that reported on the financial alliances John McCain has begun to build with financiers he previously criticized for their involvement in 527s. Later that evening, I received a note from the McCain campaign complaining that the Post article had been unfair in its treatment of McCain, and I offered an opportunity for a rebuttal. I had planned to add it to the original post, but it makes more sense to offer it as a separate thread for CQ readers: The story's headline and central premise are inaccurate. This notion that there is a wide gulf between McCain the reformer and McCain the candidate is not borne out by the facts. Sen. McCain recognizes that if the FEC and Congress do nothing on 527s then Democrats and Republicans alike will use them. This is hardly an endorsement of 527s and the article would...
The Democrats can forget about the 2008 primary being a love-in. The same weekend that Barack Obama threw his hat into the ring, he also aimed a few brickbats at the front-runner over her vote on the war in Iraq. Obama wants to make a clear delineation between himself and Hillary Clinton as the obvious standardbearer for the Left: Senators Obama and Clinton banged heads over the Iraq war yesterday, marking their first dustup since the start of the presidential campaign. Just a day after officially announcing his candidacy in Illinois, Mr. Obama took aim at Mrs. Clinton's vote to authorize the war, saying, "I think the war was a tragic mistake and it never should have been authorized." Mrs. Clinton's vote is the one issue that has been dogging her thus far in the campaign. Otherwise, enthusiastic crowds have been giving her standing ovations on her proposals covering everything...
Well, this is about as pithy as it gets: Several potential Republican presidential candidates, including Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as well as Giuliani, have supported Bush's plan to add more than 20,000 troops to U.S. forces in Iraq. The major Democratic candidates have opposed the move. Several are senators who have advocated a nonbinding resolution condemning the buildup. "In the business world, if two weeks were spent on a nonbinding resolution, it would be considered nonproductive," Giuliani told the lunch crowd, setting off a burst of laughter. He called the concept "a comment without making a decision." America, he added, is "very fortunate to have President Bush." "Presidents can't do nonbinding resolutions. Presidents have to make decisions and move the country forward, and that's the kind of president that I would like to be, a president who makes decisions." That's the difference between legislators...
Once again, the folks at GOP Bloggers take the temperature of the conservative blogosphere in another straw poll of primary candidates. Results will be reported by state and blog, which gives CQ readers a chance to see where the candidates stand with our own community. Obviously this is not scientific, but it's always interesting to see the results:...
Amanda Marcotte resigned her position in the John Edwards presidential campaign today after spending the last week defending her past essays on her group blog. Having weathered the initial storm, Marcotte apparently decided that the controversy would prove too distracting for the Edwards campaign: One of the chief campaign bloggers for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards quit Monday after conservative critics raised questions about her history of provocative online messages. Amanda Marcotte posted on her personal blog, Pandagon, that the criticism "was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign." Marcotte said she resigned from her position Monday, and that her resignation was accepted by the campaign. Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, confirmed that Marcotte was "no longer working for the campaign." She declined additional comment. ... "No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on...
February 13, 2007
Hillary Clinton apparently feels the heat from Barack Obama already. Campaigning in New Hampshire, where her husband won the nickname of Comeback Kid with his second-place finish in 1992 after the first of the bimbo eruptions, she hid behind Bill's, er, skirts to pump up her own candidacy: As she made her first outing to New Hampshire as a presidential candidate last weekend, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton left her husband at home, yet she tried to tap his old political magic at nearly every turn. Mrs. Clinton, Democrat of New York, mentioned Mr. Clinton at least eight times on Saturday — at one point talking about “Bill’s heart surgery” to illuminate her own travails with health care bureaucracy — and a few times on Sunday, most memorably when she said of Republicans, “Bill and I have beaten them before, and we will again.” For the first time in her bid...
Today brings news from all three major Republican primary candidates in the 2008 Presidential race. It started with a formal announcement from Mitt Romney of his candidacy for the nomination, followed by an unusual endorsement for Rudy Giuliani, and winds up tonight here at CQ with a preview of an in-depth interview I conducted with Governor Tim Pawlenty, John McCain's national co-chair of his exploratory committee. I'll be playing the entire interview on my Thursday night talk show, CQ Radio: TP: On campaign finance reform, you have a lot of conservatives who are concerned about it from a First Amendment standpoint. I think it is fair to say that some reforms were in order, because you have interest groups that were wielding so much clout, leading to so many scandals that a cleaning up of the process, or at least an improvement of the process was in order. I don't...
February 14, 2007
Two prominent black politicians from South Carolina endorsed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama yesterday, but one of them Bidenized himself by declaring the Democrats losers if they nominated a black man for President. Robert Ford told the Associated Press that he wouldn't "kill himself" by endorsing Obama: Two key black political leaders in South Carolina who backed John Edwards in 2004 said Tuesday they are supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. State Sens. Robert Ford and Darrell Jackson told The Associated Press they believe Clinton is the only Democrat who can win the presidency. Both said they had been courted by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama; Ford said Obama winning the primary would drag down the rest of the party. "It's a slim possibility for him to get the nomination, but then everybody else is doomed," Ford said. "Every Democrat running on that ticket next year...
Confidential campaign documents have again surfaced from the Rudy Giuliani campaign that will embarrass the candidate and provide fodder for his opponents. A month after a recent campaign strategy book fell into the hands of the New York Observer, a private evaluation of Giuliani by his mayoral campaign in 1993 wound up on The Smoking Gun yesterday: Sometimes in politics, the most damaging accusations come from your own staff. Rudolph W. Giuliani learned that lesson again yesterday when a "vulnerability study," including warnings about his "weirdness factor" and other perceived liabilities, surfaced from his second campaign for New York mayor, 14 years ago. Last month, the New York Daily News obtained a secret blueprint for Giuliani's expected Republican presidential bid that detailed concerns such as his liberal views on social issues and his messy divorce from his second wife, Donna Hanover. The 1993 report by two aides in Giuliani's mayoral...
February 15, 2007
Eli Lake makes an important point in today's New York Sun about Hillary Clinton's zeal to restrict the military options of President Bush against Iran. When Hillary pronounced that Bush would have to come to Congress before launching any sort of attack against another country, specifically Iran, she seems to have forgotten the precedent set by her own husband eight years ago, and defended by her in October 2002: "It would be a mistake of historical proportion if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran without further congressional authorization," Mrs. Clinton said. "Nor should the president think that the 2001 resolution authorizing force after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in any way authorizes force against Iran. If the administration believes that any, any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to...
See lengthy update. One of the more tiresome aspects of Presidential campaigns is the Kabuki dance performed by the candidates regarding their status. Rudy Giuliani has come in for more criticism than most, although he has shown clearly that he intends to run for the Republican nomination. He made it even more clear on the Larry King show last night on CNN: Mr. Giuliani has behaved like a presidential candidate for months, forming an exploratory committee, raising money, building a campaign staff and making appearances around the country. But until now, he has repeatedly stopped short of a definitive statement of his intentions — even joking about his nondeclarations in recent days. Republican activists and consultants, citing his early withdrawal from the 2000 Senate race, said he needed to put to rest fears that he might not follow through. But in characteristic fashion, Mr. Giuliani said he would do things...
February 16, 2007
Ed Morrissey: What do you see, going back to the election here, what do you see as John McCain's toughest hurdles in winning the nomination and how do you see yourself as being part of the solution to help him overcome them? Tim Pawlenty: Well I think Senator McCain is going to do very well in this process because people are going to -- you know, evaluate him again not just in a vacuum compared to their idea of the perfect, but they are also going to -- and I think he is, like I said in my view, a once in a generation leader. Someone who is I think right for the time both for the nation and for our party. But I think his biggest challenge is going to be to make sure that that his message of commonsense conservatism actually is heard by republican activists and republican...
Ed Morrissey: Well lets talk a little bit about the couple of issues that have -- conservatives concerned about John McCain's campaign. Tim Pawlenty: Sure. Ed Morrissey: That would be Campaign Finance Reform, which he pushed in 2002 and got passed the BCRA and integration reform which he partnered up with Ted Kennedy on last year, it didn't go through but it's certainly probably going to go through this year. Tim Pawlenty: Yeah, on Campaign Finance Reform, you know, you have the -- a lot of conservatives who are concerned about it from a first amendment standpoint. I think it is fair to say that some reforms were in order because you have interest groups who were -- you know, yielding so much cloud and leading to -- I think -- back in old days number of scandals, that some cleaning up of the process or with improvement in the...
Below is the transcript of the interview I conducted of Tim Pawlenty, broadcasted yesterday on my CQ Radio show. I've broken it up into three posts. Be sure to listen to the podcast on my site for the live interview and my commentary. Ed Morrissey: This is Ed Morrissey and I'm welcoming Governor Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota Governor and National co chair of the John McCain for President campaign. Welcome Governor Pawlenty. Tim Pawlenty: Well thank you Ed and of course at this point I'm just co chair of the exploratory committee because Senator McCain hasn’t yet announced his candidacy. But we are hoping that he will soon. Ed Morrissey: That's a good point to make. And that brings me to actually my first question. It seems to me that the presidential cycle has really been expended and accelerated in this particular 2008 campaign. Does it seem that way to you...
February 17, 2007
John McCain enjoys wide popularity in Arizona as one of the two Republicans it sends to the Senate, the other being Jon Kyl. He regularly gets 70% or above in approval ratings, and has made himself almost as much of an institution as Barry Goldwater there. However, trouble has been brewing for his Presidential aspirations as Republican organizers in Arizona have begun planning some unpleasant surprises for their favorite son: No doubt about it, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who would like to be president, is a popular man in his state, having won re-election in 2004 with about 76 percent of the vote. But a vocal slice of the state’s most conservative Republicans, reflecting concerns about Mr. McCain held by some conservatives nationwide, are agitating against him in a way that they hope might throw off his incipient presidential campaign. In a recent telephone poll by Arizona State...
February 18, 2007
I guess if we're going to have to have an early primary race, we'll have to have early primary polls. CBS indulges us with its latest poll of Republican primary voters, although in the end that sample seems very small. CBS News polled 1142 adults, only 314 of which were Republican primary voters, too small to make a substantial national correlation. For what it's worth, then, here's how CBS sees Republican primary voters swinging: Senator John McCain of Arizona and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani – two of the front-runners for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008 – both enjoy favorable views from both Republican primary voters, a new CBS News poll finds, but early on in the race, voters favor Giuliani in a head-to-head match up. Views of Giuliani are especially positive among both moderates and the conservatives that he and McCain are courting. ... If the...
February 19, 2007
John McCain and Mitt Romney spent their weekends jogging -- to the right. McCain made his clearest statement yet on abortion, and Romney backpedaled from his previous stand on allowing gays to openly serve in the military. Both men appear to understand that the primaries will require significant support from social conservatives in the GOP, a group both men have eschewed at times during their careers. McCain's statement will probably end his reputation as a Republican maverick: Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the party's conservative voters, said Sunday the court decision that legalized abortion should be overturned. "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned," the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states. McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who "strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and...
The surprise endorsement of Hillary Clinton last week by two prominent African-American politicians in South Caroline raised eyebrows for one's statement that a black nominee would doom the Democratic ticket across the nation. Robert Ford's odd diatribe might have been the lighter part of the story. Earlier today, the AP challenged Hillary to explain a $10,000-per-month consulting contract with Darrell Jackson, the other state legislator who eschewed Barack Obama to endorse Hillary: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday denied that her campaign traded money for an endorsement from one of South Carolina's most influential black politicians. In an interview with The Associated Press, Clinton responded to questions about the consulting contract her campaign negotiated with state Sen. Darrell Jackson, who last week endorsed her candidacy rather than of top rivals John Edwards or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. "Senator Jackson was someone who was involved in my husband's campaigns....
February 21, 2007
Ruth Marcus takes a spin at the flip-flop of a Massachussetts politician on an important national issue. No, it's not John Kerry, but Mitt Romney, and she sets the stage by recalling an interview Romney did with Washington Post reporters two years previously: Precisely two years ago, Mitt Romney, then the governor of Massachusetts but already eyeing a 2008 presidential bid, sat in the coffee shop of a Washington hotel, doing his best not to explain his views on abortion. Romney was speaking to a few of us from The Post, and my colleague Dan Balz noted the similarity between Romney's expressed views on abortion rights and the stance of another Massachusetts politician, Sen. John F. Kerry: Both men said they were personally opposed to abortion but did not support making it illegal. From there, Romney proceeded to expound one of the odder positions I've heard in years of listening...
It's difficult to figure out what Hillary Clinton hopes to gain with her spectacular temper tantrum today, directed as it is against the wrong man. After Maureen Dowd briefly achieved relevancy by relating some tough criticisms of Hillary by Hollywood mogul David Geffen, the Democratic front-runner blamed Barack Obama for his newfound Geffen support. And make no mistake, Geffen drew blood: Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times today, in which she quoted former Bill Clinton supporter David Geffen offering a few caustic comments, has incited a strong Hillary Clinton campaign attack on Geffen -- and the candidate he now favors, Sen. Barack Obama. Then Obama's team fired back. "Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it’s troubling,” Geffen had said. Geffen said more than that, and most of it underscores the Democratic Party's unease with her rise to presumptive frontrunner for the...
February 22, 2007
The two Republican frontrunners have not yet signed a no-new-taxes pledge, despite the adoption of the pledge by rivals in the campaign. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani so far have not answered the query sent by the Americans for Tax Reform, usually an automatic for GOP nominees: The two front-runners for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination -- Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani -- have not signed an anti-tax-increase pledge that has been embraced by several of their rivals. The reluctance of the party's two leading candidates to sign the pledge, which has been signed by every Republican presidential nominee since 1988, raised concerns among conservative tax cutters about Mr. McCain's and Mr. Giuliani's commitment to reduce tax rates at a time when all of the Democratic presidential contenders have vowed to raise income taxes if they are elected. ... The pledge, which asks...
Talk about an accelerated campaign cycle! The Democrats rushed into their first debate almost a year before the first primaries, and did so in a format that took the debate out of the debate. Instead, the Los Angeles Times describes a round-robin press conference where most of the argument took place in the hallways after the event: The format, with contestants appearing one after another, was not a debate. Eight speakers — all the announced candidates except Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois — took turns giving set remarks and answering questions. Many were submitted by members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which hosted the forum. The closest public encounter between participants came as Clinton swept out of the Carson City Community Center to a clatter of camera shutters while Edwards stood talking to reporters about 10 yards away. Neither could see the other. ... The...
On Monday, I posted about the curious relationship between the Hillary Clinton campaign and Darrell Jackson, an African-American state legislator from South Carolina who had surprised some by endorsing Hillary over John Edwards and Barack Obama. Robert Ford, another black legislator in the same state, joined Jackson in dumping Edwards for Hillary, and explained that an Obama-led ticket would get killed in a general election. However, it turned out that Jackson had more mercenary motives for his endorsement of Hillary -- namely, a $10,000-per-month consulting contract. Today, Hillary faces new questions about other South Carolina endorsers who also will benefit from the same consultancy: Two more black South Carolina lawmakers endorsing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have ties to a media consulting firm hired by the White House hopeful. However, both the lawmakers and the campaign said Thursday their support has nothing to do with any business dealings. Clinton's campaign announced...
February 23, 2007
The eruption of hostilities between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns this week potentially creates an opening for another candidate to exploit to match or best the two front-runners. Josh Gerstein makes the case that John Edwards will gain the most traction from a Hillary-Barack feud, relying on a man with unfortunate experience in campaign meltdowns: As the dust settles from the first showdown between the presidential campaigns of Senators Clinton and Obama, political analysts are wondering who will benefit from protracted wrangling between the two top contenders for the Democratic nomination. A former senator of North Carolina, John Edwards, is emerging as one potential beneficiary of the spat that broke out over critical comments from a Hollywood supporter of Mr. Obama, David Geffen. Mr. Edwards "is clearly adept at letting two other candidates go after each other and slipping up the middle," a Democratic campaign adviser, Joseph Trippi,...
The London Telegraph has an interesting profile of Rudy Giuliani, using a South Carolina campaign stop to spotlight the paradoxes of his run at the Republican nomination. While the Telegraph describes Giuliani somewhat hyperbolically as refusing to kowtow to the GOP's conservative base -- Giuliani never says anything like that in the article -- it does point up Rudy's consistency as his greatest asset on the stump: Whereas his rivals John McCain and Mitt Romney are engaged in attempts to disavow previous statements and recast themselves as social conservatives, Mr Giuliani's pitch is that "for most it's never about one issue" and consistency is preferable to pandering. "I believe you've got to run based on what you are, who you really are," he told The Daily Telegraph. "I find if you do it that way even people who disagree with you sometimes respect you." Mr Giuliani noted that his pro-choice...
There's nothing more predictive than a hot, breaking poll less than 90 weeks before an election, so let's be sure we give this Rasmussen poll the attention it deserves. Okay, we'll give it more attention than it deserves, but we'll just say we're doing it for the practice. Snark aside, Rasmussen's new head-to-head polling on general election matchups shows an interesting phenomenon ... a strong streak of opposition to Hillary Clinton. That shines through the results of a Giuliani-Clinton matchup that may incentivize Hillary's Democratic primary opponents (via Hot Air): In a match-up between the early 2008 frontrunners, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) leads New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D) 52% to 43%. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Giuliani’s lead growing in recent months. His current nine-point advantage is up from a six point lead in January and a four-point lead in December. Giuliani...
February 24, 2007
If anyone doubts the ridiculous nature of the 2008 Presidential election cycle, the capitulation of Tom Vilsack eleven months before the first caucus gathers should confirm it. In a race where everyone expected Hillary Clinton and John Edwards to have high-profile campaigns, Vilsack withdrew because he hadn't raised enough money ... by February 2007: Former Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa ended his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on Friday, saying the crowded field had made it impossible for him to raise enough money to remain competitive in an accelerated coast-to-coast campaign. After making his announcement, Mr. Vilsack spent the afternoon taking calls from former rivals. They sent their best wishes, even as they began seeking his endorsement in Iowa, where the caucus early next year will kick off the process of selecting a nominee. “I’m not thinking about that today,” Mr. Vilsack said in a telephone interview, pausing for...
Are the media really this desperate to find some dirt on Mitt Romney? I guess they must be: While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great grandfathers had 12. Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president. Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice. Uh, okay. So? What exactly does that have to do with Mitt Romney and the race for the presidency? According to the Nosey Parkers at Cal State Fullerton -- my alma mater, natch -- it shows that it was...
February 25, 2007
One of the motivations behind the Hillary Clinton campaign's reaction to David Geffen's barbs this week was to mark the boundaries for the debate in the primaries and general election. Hillary has a better reason for that than most; she wants to avoid any debate or discussion of her husband's impeachment. Other Democrats, however, wonder how she can justify that while trotting Bill onto the hustings: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a new commandment for the 2008 presidential field: Thou shalt not mention anything related to the impeachment of her husband. With a swift response to attacks from a former supporter last week, advisers to the New York Democrat offered a glimpse of their strategy for handling one of the most awkward chapters of her biography. They declared her husband's impeachment in 1998 -- or, more accurately, the embarrassing personal behavior that led to it -- taboo, putting her rivals...
February 26, 2007
Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani has garnered some mild criticism for maintaining a fairly safe appearance schedule since forming his exploratory committee for his Presidential campaign. Conservatives have wondered when he would begin making appearances at events targeted at the conservative community. They can rest easy now; Giuliani has announced that he will speak at The American Conservative Union's CPAC event this weekend. Patrick Ruffini e-mailed me last night to point out the announcement on The Politico. If this is Giuliani's coming-out party, he's not alone. Mike Huckabee has been added to the CPAC agenda, a good event for the Arkansas governor. Newt Gingrich has signed up for the closing speech to the conservatives gathered there. Jim Gilmore, the former Governor of Virginia and a Presidential candidate who has not garnered much attention, will also deliver a speech. So far, no word on whether John McCain or Mitt Romney will become...
February 27, 2007
Rudy Giuliani, out to an early and somewhat surprising lead in the Republican presidential primary race, has begun addressing conservative groups to make his case for the nomination. The New York Sun reports that Giuliani has adopted a vision-style approach while retaining his strengths in policy, painting a future for the GOP as the party of freedom: Mayor Giuliani is calling on the Republican Party to redefine itself as "the party of freedom," focusing on lower taxes, school choice, and a health care system rooted in free market principles. Delivering a policy-driven overview of his presidential platform yesterday, Mr. Giuliani outlined the agenda in a Washington speech before a conservative think tank that sought to make clear distinctions between his vision and that of the Democrats, if not his rivals for the Republican nomination in 2008. The former New York mayor's proposed redefinition of the Republican platform would signal a...
The American Conservative Union must have its staff on call this week, because they keep getting last-minute RSVPs for the CPAC event that starts Thursday. No, I don't mean attendees, I mean speakers -- especially those who want the Republican nomination for the Presidential election next year. In the past couple of days, almost every GOP candidate announced and presumed have been added to the CPAC agenda. Today both Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo announced their addition to the list of impressive speakers addressing conservative activists: ALEXANDRIA, VA—The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) announced today that California Congressman Duncan Hunter will address the nation’s oldest and largest gathering of conservatives on Saturday, March 3, 2007 at 8:30 a.m. in the Omni Shoreham Hotel’s Regency Ballroom in Washington D.C. “For more than a quarter of a century, Congressman Duncan Hunter has been a strong and reliable voice in the U.S. House...
February 28, 2007
Keep in mind that polling this early in a presidential cycle has the same level of predictive value as Uncle Earl's trick knee has in alerting you to bad weather. With that in mind, if not in knee, the front-page article at the Washington Post on their latest polling does show some developing storms for the presumed frontrunner in the Democratic Party nomination race: The latest poll put Clinton at 36 percent, Obama at 24 percent, Gore at 14 percent and Edwards at 12 percent. None of the other Democrats running received more than 3 percent. With Gore removed from the field, Clinton would gain ground on Obama, leading the Illinois senator 43 percent to 27 percent. Edwards ran third at 14 percent. The poll was completed the night Gore's documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award. Clinton's and Obama's support among white voters changed little since December,...
March 1, 2007
Don't miss the update below! I missed this yesterday while I traveled to Washington DC for the CPAC conference, but John McCain explicitly announced that he would run for President in 2008. One might think that CPAC would have provided a good platform for that event, but instead he chose Late Night with David Letterman: Setting aside any doubt, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona announced Wednesday he would seek the presidential nomination. McCain, who had a presidential exploratory committee, made the declaration on the "Late Show with David Letterman," taped earlier Wednesday. "We are going to formally announce it in early April," John Weaver, a top adviser to McCain, told CNN. Obviously, Letterman's show has national reach, but it seems more than a little strange in two ways. First, it reminds people of Arnold Schwarzenegger's announcement on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, but with little of the surprise....
Show starts at 10 pm ET! I've completed my interview with Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, one of the presidential contenders in the GOP that has not garnered as much attention. It's not for lack of intelligence and commitment, as listeners will hear on tonight's show. Huckabee makes the case for a principled conservative, answers some of his critics, and insists that the Republican Party should nominate a Republican for President. Be sure to check out Mike Huckabee's website for more information on his campaign. In the second half of the show, I'll be joined by NZ Bear to discuss CPAC and the Victory Caucus. We'll also be taking your calls at 646-652-4889. Remember, the show airs live at 10 pm ET, and podcasts within minutes of its end....
March 2, 2007
The Hillary Clinton campaign will have a few more questions to answer about her husband's tenure in office after MS-NBC reported this morning that his administration demanded the suppression of her senior thesis at Wellesley: "I got a call from someone at the White House — I don't remember who — shortly after the inauguration, saying the Clintons had decided not to release her thesis," professor Alan H. Schechter told MSNBC.com. "I said, 'Why? It's a good thesis.' I got some mumbo jumbo about how they were beginning to work on health care and she had criticized Sen. Moynihan in the thesis, and didn't want to alienate him.'" In fact, the thesis from 1969 contains not a negative word about Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democratic senator from New York, and Schechter allows that the real source of fear must have been the subject of the academic paper: Chicago radical organizer...
March 6, 2007
Rudy Giuliani appears to be all in for the 2008 Presidential campaign, and he's got the receipt to show it. Giuliani divested his lucrative investment-banking business for an undisclosed sum, widely seen as a necessary step to his candidacy: An Australian-based firm bought Giuliani Capital Advisors LLC for an undisclosed amount. A source close to the Republican candidate who spoke on condition of anonymity said the sale is intended to free Giuliani from distractions as he pursues the White House. "This enables him to sustain his intense focus on his candidacy," the source said. Others viewed the sale as Giuliani's first step away from the lucrative private-sector career he built during the years he spent outside the public spotlight. Eric Abrahamson, a Columbia Business School professor, said he thinks Giuliani will have little choice but to start building a higher wall between his campaign and his business activities. ... The...
March 7, 2007
John McCain wants to get rule changes passed in California that will allow independents to vote in the Republican presidential primaries in order to defend against Mitt Romney, the Washington Times reports today. The "stealth" campaign would benefit McCain, his campaign believes, belying his stance that McCain represents the true conservatives in the primary: Sen. John McCain's campaign is mounting a stealth effort to change Republican presidential nomination rules in California to allow independents to vote in the Feb. 5 primary, party and campaign officials in the state have told The Washington Times. The impact could be huge -- and potentially damaging to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, currently the most acceptable to traditional-values voters among the three top-tier Republican presidential candidates. "If California changes its delegate selection rules to allow independent voters to participate in the Republican primary, it would be very helpful for McCain and for Rudy Giuliani,...
March 8, 2007
First we had the strikingly pale Bill Clinton proclaimed as America's First Black President by Toni Morrison as an odd reward for pandering to identity politics. Now, the New York Sun reports that the First Woman President may well have a Y chromosome, if John Edwards wins the White House: Toni Morrison famously dubbed President Clinton America's "first black president." With that barrier broken, the comments of a prominent feminist are provoking debate about who may lay a similar claim to the title of America's first woman president. The candidate being touted as a torchbearer for women is not Senator Clinton, but one of her former colleagues, John Edwards. At a rally near the University of California, Berkeley campus this week, a veteran of the abortion-rights movement, Kate Michelman, asked and answered the question she gets most frequently about her decision to back the male former senator from North Carolina....
March 9, 2007
One of the most effective strategies for defusing potentially damaging information is to have the person it damages release it early, before his opponents have the chance. It works equally well in litigation as well as in politics, if it gets out very early. Newt Gingrich knows this full well, and yesterday employed the strategy in dealing with a messy chapter in his own life: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group. "The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards....
... I will run for President in 2008: Nebraska's Chuck Hagel, the Senate Republican most outspoken in opposition to President Bush's March 2003 decision to invade Iraq, is expected to announce Monday that he will make a bid for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. ... The question on nearly every Republican's lips yesterday was whether Mr. Hagel can raise the $100 million-plus that campaign analysts say will be needed by the end of this year to be a serious 2008 nomination contender. Bwa-ha-ha! Stop it, you're killing me! Oh, wait ... he's serious? The big question isn't whether Hagel can raise $100 million for a credible campaign. The question is whether Hagel can beat Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo for last place. (via Power Line)...
March 10, 2007
The runors have flown for weeks that Hollywood celebrity and two-term Senator Fred Dalton Thompson might decide to run for President -- not on The West Wing but in the Republican primary. Yesterday, The Hill reported that the rumors may have more substance than first thought: Former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) is contacting powerbrokers in the Republican Party to build support for a 2008 presidential campaign by his one-time protégé, former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.). Baker, who Wednesday made a visit to the Senate, was asked by several Republicans about his involvement on Thompson’s behalf. “He said, ‘I am making a few calls and I think it’s a great idea,’” said one Senate Republican who heard Baker discuss his efforts to advance Thompson’s prospects. One Republican who discussed a possible bid with Thompson described his interest and Baker’s queries as “a friendly exploration.” Baker is a close friend...
Democratic actiivists have rejoiced this week in the cancellation of a presidential campaign debate in Nevada, arranged by the state party to air on Fox. They demanded that the candidates reject the debate even before Fox executive Roger Ailes made a controversial joke about Barack Obama, but the effort gained so much steam afterwards that all of the candidates acquiesced. Nevadans who had hoped to host an important party function are now outraged over the end of the event, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal has special derision for the activists who screeched with outrage over Fox's involvement: Hard-core liberals can't stand the Fox News Channel. Passing a television that's tuned to the conservative favorite forces many of them to close their eyes, cover their ears and scream, "La la la la la la la la la!" Then they dash to their computers and fire off 2,500 e-mails condemning the outlet,...
March 11, 2007
Newt Gingrich has reviled the extended primary season, calling it a jobs program for political consultants. Although widely expected to run for the presidency himself, he insists he will not make any announcements until autumn. Observers believe that this could be a brilliant strategy to allow the current front-runners to tire themselves out and jump into the race as a white knight just before the primaries. It seems that Gingrich may not be the only Republican thinking along those lines: WALLACE: There's been a lot of buzz, as we said, in Republican circles that there's no true conservative in the GOP presidential field. Now some top Republicans, including your friend former Tennessee senator Howard Baker, are putting out trial balloons about you possibly entering the race. Question: Are you considering running for president in 2008? THOMPSON: I'm giving some thought to it. Going to leave the door open. WALLACE: Well,...