2008 Archives

August 3, 2005

Is It 2008 Already?

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

The Ruffini Poll

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

Ruffini Calls Me Out

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

I'm With Stupid

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

The Turkey-In-The-Straw Poll?

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

Richardson Balks With Phony Draft

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

Democrats Catching Up To Hillary's Negatives (Updated And Bumped)

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

Hillary Meter Slipping To New Lows

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

Hillary, You Are No Bill Clinton

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

Will McCain Successfully Woo Conservatives?

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

Al Gore On The March?

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

Why Has McCain Become A Bush Cheerleader?

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

Romney Stuns In Straw Poll

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,...

Going To War With New Hampshire

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 Benefactor Tied To Korean Slush-Fund Scandal

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

Feingold Claims The Fringe Left

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

McCain Shifting Gears

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...

The Hollywood And Hillary Rift

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

The Corporate Hillary

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

John Kerry Was Against Leaking Before He Was For It

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

Goodman: Stop Kerry Before He Runs Again!

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

Clift: Hillary Is The New Reagan

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

Meet Hillary's Backers, Dear John Edition (Bumped!)

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

Fineman Pumps Dodd

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

Kerry Loses The Center-Left

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

Hillary, Kerry, Gore Face Near-Majority No Votes

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

Kerry Splits Democrats With Renewed Presidential Aspirations

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

Rudy Running?

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

Er, What Resumé? (Updated)

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

The Hillary-Gregory Connection To The Pardons

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

Gallup Shows Rice Among Presidential Frontrunners

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

McCain Burnishing Bush Credentials, But Why?

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

McCain's Less Than Straight Talk Express (Updated)

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

Will Hillary Pass On Presidential Race?

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

Twin Cities Nod A Bipartisan Win

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

Has Frist Made The Case For 2008?

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

Rudy Gets A Majority

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

Did 9/11 Put Teflon On Rudy?

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 Straw Poll (Updated)

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

Warner Declines

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

Low Blow

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

The Depth Of The Democratic Bench

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

GOP Straw Poll

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....

Looking At The Results

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

The Cheese Stays Put

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

Brownback The Great Conservative Hope?

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 Decline Of The Democrats' Diva

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

The 2008 Lineup Looks Pretty Centrist So Far

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...

Poaching? Maybe Just A Little

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

Mowergate?

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...

Postponing The Immaterial

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

It's The Electability, Stupid

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...

How Desperate Are The Democrats?

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

Romney's Past Catching Up?

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 Straw Poll For December

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...

Obama Campaigns In New England

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...

Kennedy Backs Away From Kerry

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

A McCain-Pawlenty Ticket?

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

Is McCain Inevitable?

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

Scandal On The Edge Of Tomorrow

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

Everyone First

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

Early Setback For Brownback

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

His Record Is Enough

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

Not All Obama Nonsense Resides On The Right

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 No Favorite Of Anti-War Activists

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

Columbia Journalism Lecturer Al Gore Bans The Press At Event

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

Romney Launch Surprises

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,...

Still Delaying The Inevitable

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...

Still Delaying The Inevitable

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

Romney Uses Podcast To Respond To YouTube

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

GOP Bloggers Straw Poll For January '07

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

Democrats Made A Good Decision

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,...

Is Hillary The New Kerry?

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

That Didn't Take Long

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

Romney Moves Ahead In On-Line Straw Poll

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....

The Year Of Nick The New Guy

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

Don Tancredo

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

Hillary Loyalists Mostly Loyal

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

Stop The Presses -- Hillary Announces!

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

The Joe Lieberman Of 2008?

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

Is Richardson Hillary's Worst Nightmare?

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

Bill Richardson Revisited

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

The Conservatism Of Rudy Giuliani

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, You're No Bill

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...

The Silliness Of Early Polls

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

Hillary, The Pardon Scam, And Why It Matters

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...

Hillary As The New Kerry, Take 2

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

Mitt Romney Interview

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

Hagel As The New McCain

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...

What's The Rush?

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...

Romney Acknowledges Shift On Abortion

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 Wisdom Of Keeping The Powder Dry

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...

The Cure Is Worse Than The Disease

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

With Just A Year To Go ...

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

Slow Joe Crashes In Record Time

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

Hey, Big Spender

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

Obama Can't Count On The Black Vote?

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

Rudy's Polling Indicates Strength In Key Races

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...

Rudy On Judges

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

Please, Please, Please Say You'll Run

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's In, Mostly

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

Shifting Blame

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...

The Impact Of Blogger Outreach

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...

Mary Katherine On McCain

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

Republicans Want To Like Rudy, If They Can

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...

Edwards Campaign Reconsidering Blogger Hires

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...

Missing The Point Twice Over

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

Florida Shines For Giuliani

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...

Stop The Presses!

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...

Edwards Backs Down

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 On McCain Outreach

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

Even John Edwards Can't Appease The Trial Lawyers

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...

Obama Makes It Official

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

Even Our Friends Should Butt Out Of Our Politics

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...

McCain Backing Away From Campaign Finance Reform?

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,...

Rudy Pumps Up California GOP

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

A Response From Team McCain

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...

Obama Goes After Hillary

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...

Giuliani On Non-Binding Resolutions

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...

GOP Straw Poll For February

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:...

Marcotte Quits, Sun To Rise In East In The Morning

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

The Last Refuge Is The Scoundrel

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...

The Republican Runner Round-Up

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

Black Politician Says Black Nominee Would Drag Down Democrats

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...

The Giuliani Papers, Redux

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

The Evolving Clinton Position On Military Force

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...

Giuliani Announces, Mostly, And Bashes Bush On War Strategy

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

Tim Pawlenty On John McCain, Part III

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...

Tim Pawlenty On John McCain, Part II

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...

Tim Pawlenty On John McCain, Part I

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

Trouble For McCain At Home?

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

CBS Poll: Giuliani Up 50-21 Over McCain

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

Making Their Runs To The Right

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 Best Endorsements Money Can Buy

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, Arbiter Of Pro-Life Authenticity

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 Her Party, And She'll Cry If She Wants To

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

Read Their Lips?

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...

The Democratic Non-Debate

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...

Did Hillary Buy More Endorsements In South Carolina?

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

Who Wins In The Democratic Feud?

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,...

Giuliani: Consistency Trumps Pandering

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...

Giuliani Wins The Election! (Of February 2007)

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

At Least He Gave It His All

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...

... And Brigham Young's Great-Great-Great-Grandson Won A Super Bowl

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

The Full Bill

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

Giuliani And CQ At CPAC

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 Going Reaganesque

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...

Look Who's Coming -- And Not Coming -- To CPAC

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

Early Polling Shows Obama Gaining On Hillary

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

McCain Announces On Letterman

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....

Huckabee Interview Set For Tonight (Bumped)

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

Clinton White House Suppressed Hillary's Senior Thesis

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

In Case It Was Still In Doubt

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

McCain Pursuing Rule Changes To Attract Independents

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

Identity Politics Gone Wild

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

Checking His Baggage At The Door

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....

So Then The Rino Walks Up To The Podium And Says ...

... 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

Where Have You Gone, Fred Dalton Thompson?

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...

Crazy, Unlike A Fox

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

Thompson Says He's On Call

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,...

March 12, 2007

Another Billionaire Independent Bid?

Michael Bloomberg, New York Citry's billionaire mayor, will consider a run for the Presidency as an independent if he feels the two major-party nominees are too extreme, according to a key ally. His deputy mayor also keeps talking up an outsider bid, even though Bloomberg won the mayor's office as a Republican: Mayor Bloomberg is 80% likely to launch a bid for the White House if the two major candidates come from the "extreme wings" of their party, one of his first-term advisers said. The comment from a Columbia University professor, Ester Fuchs, keeps alive the notion that Mr. Bloomberg is mulling the possibility of entering the 2008 race even as the Democrats and Republicans who have already declared are traveling the country and campaigning. According to ABC News, which reported the comment on its Web site, Ms. Fuchs said it was "80% probable" that Mr. Bloomberg would run as...

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way Home From The March

Robert Novak points out some inconsistencies in Hillary Clinton's proclaimed personal history on the campaign trail. The woman who famously claimed to have been named after Sir Edmund Hillary after his ascent to the top of Mount Everest -- which happened when she was eight years old -- has attempted another bit of revisionism, this time on civil rights. After her attempt last week in Selma to drawl out her teenage epiphany from listening to Martin Luther King in 1963, Novak notes that she supported one of King's opponents: While Hillary Rodham Clinton came out second best to Barack Obama in their oratorical duel at Selma, Ala., a week ago, the real problem with her speech concerned her claimed attachment to Martin Luther King Jr. as a high school student in 1963. How, then, could she have been a "Goldwater Girl" during the following year's presidential election? The incompatibility of...

Journalism 101: Not A Prerequisite For The Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times visits the bubbling controversy over Rudy Giuliani's judicial appointments to the municipal bench while mayor of New York City, an issue that has some conservatives concerned over his presidential aspirations. Giuliani has sworn to nominate strict constructionists to the federal appellate bench if elected President, but the Times finds four appointments -- out of 127 -- that fail to fit that mold. And Tom Hamburger and Adam Schreck manage to miss a critical fact about judicial appointments in their supposedly comprehensive look at Giuliani's appointments: Rudolph W. Giuliani, in an effort to temper his support for abortion rights and his other socially liberal stances, has been assuring conservatives that as president he would appoint "strict constructionists" to the federal bench, in the tradition of Supreme Court jurists Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and John G. Roberts Jr. But now, some prominent conservatives are...

Dennis Kucinich, Profile In Courage

Who would have guessed that of all the candidates in the Democratic presidential primary race, Dennis Kucinich would show the most testicular fortitude? The man who demands a Department of Peace and the establishment of "peace math", etc, called out his fellow Democrats for redeploying over the debate horizon after left-wing extremists demanded that they pull out of a debate televised by the Fox News Channel: “If you want to be the President of the United States, you can’t be afraid to deal with people with whom you disagree politically,” Kucinich said. “No one is further removed from Fox’s political philosophy than I am, but fear should not dictate decisions that affect hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of others around the world who are starving for real leadership.” Kucinich said “the public deserves honest, open, and fair public debate, and the media have a responsibility to demand that...

Thompson Gets His First Frist Endorsement

With the growing rumors of a Fred Dalton Thompson run at the GOP nomination for the 2008 presidential race, it was only a matter of time before he started lining up endorsements. The first appears to be Bill Frist, his Tennessee colleague and friend, who announced on his blog that he wants to see Thompson jump into the race: I believe Fred Thompson should run for President. I've not talked with Fred personally about a potential run, so I am basing my thoughts simply on knowing him well, having worked with him in policy and politics everyday for 8 years, and knowing the people across America want a genuine leader who represents them. Fred understands real people and they understand him. He understands the legislative process and has a strong bipartisan appeal, though he is a real conservative. He has the experience of government service with a real appreciation for...

March 13, 2007

Chuck Hagel's Bogus Journey

I didn't blog about this yesterday, probably because (a) I was laughing too hard, and (b) how does one write about a non-event? Dana Milbank does a pretty good job answering the latter in his look at Chuck Hagel's much-ballyhooed press conference yesterday, when the nation's news organizations met to see the Senator show why he isn't qualified for an executive position: The 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a giant in the field of logic. The 21st-century philosopher Chuck Hagel? Not so much. The Republican senator from Nebraska, flirting with a 2008 presidential run, scheduled "an announcement on my political future" for yesterday morning in Omaha. Media types flew in from across the country. The state's governor and attorney general, along with 15 television cameras, crowded the room. Cable networks carried the event live while pundits went wild: Would Hagel jump into the race? Run for reelection?...

Hillary And Her Conspiracy Theory

Hillary Clinton has returned to her "vast right-wing conspiracy" theme, a development that will keep Beth blogging for at least another four years. She used her favorite bogeyman on the campaign trail this morning while speaking with municipal officials in New York City: Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton told Democrats Tuesday the "vast, right-wing conspiracy" is back, using a phrase she once coined to describe partisan criticism. Speaking to Democratic municipal officials, the New York senator used the term to hammer Republicans on election irregularities. ... On Tuesday, she asserted the conspiracy is alive and well, and cited as proof the Election Day 2002 case of phone jamming in New Hampshire, a case in which two Republican operatives pleaded guilty to criminal charges, and a third was convicted. "To the New Hampshire Democratic party's credit, they sued and the trail led all the way to the Republican National Committee," Clinton...

March 15, 2007

Novak: DeLay Not Likely To Endorse Gingrich

Apparently, Tom DeLay has some small amount of bitterness over his change in fortunes. According to Robert Novak, DeLay will blast Newt Gingrich as morally flawed, ineffective, and dishonest when DeLay's book hits the shelves next week -- setting back Gingrich's presumed plans to run for President: Newt Gingrich's attempted phoenix-like rise from his own political ashes to a presidential candidacy will run next week into a harsh assessment by his former House Republican colleague Tom DeLay. The former majority leader's forthcoming memoir assails Gingrich as an "ineffective" House speaker with a flawed moral compass. Gingrich is not the only erstwhile political ally to feel DeLay's wrath. In "No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight," DeLay is even more critical of his predecessor as majority leader, Dick Armey, and assails George W. Bush as being more compassionate than conservative. Even the man DeLay handpicked to succeed Gingrich as speaker, J....

March 17, 2007

Thompson Indicates A Move Away From The BCRA

Fred Dalton Thompson's flirtation with a presidential run has conservatives hopeful for a white knight in a field of compromise candidates in the GOP. The man whose career has spanned both Washington and Hollywood, and who has championed both conservatism and clean government, has a resumé that would make for compelling political theater. However, one issue in particular dogs every mention of his potential, and that is his support for the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, or McCain-Feingold -- the main reason conservatives distrust John McCain and have not supported his own presidential campaign. That may be changing. John Fund interviewed Thompson for the Wall Street Journal, and Thompson acknowledged the futility of the BCRA's approach: On issues, he addresses head-on the major complaints conservatives have about his record. He was largely stymied in his 1997 investigation of both Clinton-Gore and GOP campaign fund-raising abuses: Key witnesses declined to testify or...

March 18, 2007

The Beautiful American?

Americans have heard for decades about our reputation as travelers abroad -- encapsulated by the monicker, "the ugly American". The term, which actually came from a more complex novel than the name implies, now gets used to describe American foreign policy, especially regarding the war in Iraq. John McCain told the Sunday Telegraph that he wants to change how our allies and enemies abroad view us: John McCain, formerly the leading Republican presidential contender, has told The Sunday Telegraph that restoring America's sullied reputation abroad will be "a top priority" if he wins the White House. The Arizona senator, an Iraq war hawk, was talking aboard the revived Straight Talk Express - the vehicle that made his name during the 2000 presidential election and that he hopes will revive his faltering fortunes this time round. The bus ferried the senator, his aides, and journalists, to a series of public meetings...

March 19, 2007

Rudy Responds On Citgo

Rudy Giuliani responded yesterday to criticism for his indirect involvement to lobbying efforts on behalf of Citgo, the subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned petroleum company. Speaking with reporters in Tampa, he shrugged off the issue, saying that his firm tried to protect American jobs in Texas: Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Sunday defended his law firm's role in representing Citgo Petroleum Corp., which is ultimately controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying it was helping protect American jobs. Giuliani acknowledged though, that his opponents will try to exploit the news that a lawyer with Bracewell & Giuliani of Houston has been representing Citgo before the Texas legislature. The firm has had a contract with Citgo since before Giuliani joined it. "Oh, they'll exploit everything," Giuliani said in an interview. "There are things that make sense and things that don't make sense and that doesn't make any sense. It was one...

Another Silly Obama Meme

The early primary race is often called the silly season, but it seems that the campaign of Barack Obama inspires silliness in a league of his own, on both Left and Right. We've already heard carping about Obama's "authenticity" as an African-American on one hand, and breathless speculation as to whether Obama visited a mosque at age eight on the other. Now, to add to the circus of irrelevancy, David Ehrenstein scolds people for supporting Obama out of a desire to find the Magic Negro: AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House. But it's clear that...

Guest Post: Rep. Duncan Hunter

For this extended primary season, we have an extraordinary opportunity to get acquainted with the men and women who want to run for the Presidency. I have extended invitations to all campaigns to have their candidates post their messages to CQ readers. Today, I'm happy to introduce Representative Duncan Hunter, in an exclusive post regarding the surge strategy in Iraq. An Exclusive Post For Captain's Quarters On The Surge In Iraq I would like to thank Ed Morrissey for giving me the opportunity to write a guest blog at Captain’s Quarters about the surge in Iraq. The courtesy is much appreciated. Now, let me take a moment to talk about Iraq. What we're doing in that country is following the same basic pattern that we've used to expand freedom around the world for more than 60 years in places like Japan, Europe, and El Salvador. First, you stand up a...

Support, Si! Pander, No!

Memo to Presidential candidates: it is dangerous to use foreign-language slogans without learning the nuances of their history. Mitt Romney either never learned that or decided to try out his new Fidel Castro impersonation in front of the wrong audience (via SWLiP): People chuckled when presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon raised in Michigan and elected in Massachusetts, bungled the names of Cuban-American politicians during a recent speech in Miami. But when he mistakenly associated Fidel Castro's trademark speech-ending slogan -- Patria o muerte, venceremos! -- with a free Cuba, listeners didn't laugh. They winced. Castro has closed his speeches with the phrase -- in English, ''Fatherland or death, we shall overcome'' -- for decades. ''Clearly, that's something he was ill-advised on or didn't do his homework on,'' said Hialeah City Council President Esteban Bovo. ``When you get cute with slogans, you get yourself into a trap.'' It goes deeper...

March 20, 2007

Is Obama More Liberal Than Kucinich?

No wonder Dennis Kucinich scolded Democrats for deploying over the debate horizon when confronted with Fox News Channel's cameras for their Nevada debate. It turns out that Kucinich has harbored a secret conservative streak -- at least compared to the supposedly moderate Barack Obama. McClatchy reports on a National Journal analysis of the declared candidates for President from both parties and ranks those who have served in Congress (via Memeorandum): The most liberal member of Congress running for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination isn't Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. It's Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. And the Republican candidate who's grown less conservative over his years in Congress? Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Those are among the interesting findings in a recent analysis of votes by all the members of Congress who are running for president. They cut to the heart of debates going on among activists in both major...

March 21, 2007

But Will They Stop Taking His Money?

George Soros wrote an article for the New York Review of Books that attacked the US for its pro-Israeli policies. The Democratic Party underwriter made clear that he felt the US should start dealing directly with Hamas, despite its existence as a terrorist organization, and complained about the influence of AIPAC. That created a problem for Barack Obama, who has received support from Soros, as well as many other Democrats: Leading Democrats, including Senator Obama of Illinois, are distancing themselves from an essay published this week by one of their party's leading financiers that called for the Democratic Party to "liberate" itself from the influence of the pro-Israel lobby. The article, by George Soros, published in the New York Review of Books, asserts that America should pressure Israel to negotiate with the Hamas-led unity government in the Palestinian territories regardless of whether Hamas recognizes the right of the Jewish state...

Obama: Against The Funding Before He Was For It

Do you want to know why we don't elect Senators and Congressmen to the Presidency? Mainly, they have to cast votes that appear contradictory, or in some cases, actually are contradictory. In 2004, John Kerry got hoist on that particular petard when he told reporters that he "voted for the $87 billion [war supplemental] before I voted against it". Now Barack Obama might have the same problem in reverse, after ABC News uncovered a video of Obama insisting in 2003 that Congress should not have approved that supplemental -- before he voted four times for Iraq war funding himself: In video obtained by ABC News of a Winnetka, Ill., Democratic event from Sunday, Nov. 16, 2003, then-state senator Obama told a cheering crowd that it was wrong to vote to fund the war. "Just this week, when I was asked, would I have voted for the $87 billion dollars, I...

March 22, 2007

Edwards To Withdraw? (Updated & Bumped)

I'm no fan of John Edwards, but I hope his press conference today doesn't have the kind of bad news that rumors have indicated. After both he and his wife Elizabeth had to change their schedules to confer with her doctors, Edwards scheduled a presser to discuss developments in her health: John Edwards, the North Carolina Democrat making a second bid for the presidency, announced late Wednesday night that he would hold a news conference Thursday, a day after he and his wife, Elizabeth, visited Mrs. Edwards’ doctor to assess her health following her recovery from breast cancer. Mrs. Edwards, in a brief interview from her home in Chapel Hill, said she and Mr. Edwards would discuss her health at the news conference, but she declined to elaborate. ... The Edwards campaign announced the news conference at the end of a day when Mr. Edwards canceled a campaign appearance to...

March 23, 2007

Living In A BCRA World

Only in a political climate managed by the McCain-Feingold Act could a homemade video like "Vote Different" make national headlines for days on end. Instead of simply getting a chuckle and quickly disappearing from the national consciousness, people have obsessed on the origin and nature of the ad, resulting in the creator's termination from his job. Now the Washington Post wonders whether "old-fashioned political chicanery" was at work on an ad that said almost nothing about anything: The instant popularity of an attack video that mocked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) prompted plenty of talk this week about how an ordinary citizen can influence political discourse by tapping into the power of the YouTube culture. But the unmasking of the filmmaker as an employee of a company on the payroll of Clinton's Democratic presidential rival, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), raises questions about whether the more old-fashioned art of political chicanery...

March 24, 2007

The Politics Of Edwards' Decision

After the initial outpouring of sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards and the impact her new cancer diagnosis will have on her family, people have begun to consider its impact on the campaign of her husband. John Edwards announced the decision to continue his campaign for the presidential nomination, and Democrats found themselves wondering just how much the issue should be debated: After an early flurry of good wishes directed toward the Edwards family, political operatives have begun the awkward process of asking an inevitable question: How will news of Elizabeth Edwards's cancer recurrence, and her husband's decision to continue campaigning for president, affect the race for the Democratic nomination? Several Democratic operatives agreed that the couple's headline-grabbing appearance in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Thursday would probably boost former senator John Edwards at least temporarily, producing a groundswell of sympathy and raising his public profile. ... [T]he Edwards campaign, fresh off the...

March 25, 2007

Those Left Behind By Evolution

Mitt Romney has described the shift in his positions on abortion and other issues as an evolution, a gradual change that occurred when he broadened his perspective as time passed. Romney hopes that this evolution will please conservative Republicans enough to support him against the more liberal Rudy Giuliani and the mistrusted John McCain. However, in this case, Romney's evolution has left some bitterness behind in Massachussetts, as the Los Angeles Times reports: Though Romney's policy shifts have become widely known, his meetings with activists for abortion rights and other causes — which have received far less attention — show he put much work into winning support from Massachusetts' liberal establishment only a few years ago. Making personal appeals on the state's liberal touchstones — gay rights, abortion rights and the environment — Romney developed a persuasive style, convincing audiences that his passion matched theirs and that he was committed...

The Other Side Of The LA Times' Story

Earlier today, I wrote about the issues Mitt Romney would have to face in his presidential campaign regarding the evolution of his positions over his political career. This prompted some spirited discussion about the nature and value of consistency around the blogosphere and in the comments section here at CQ. This afternoon, I got a response from the Romney campaign regarding the points raised by the Times article, and I thought it intriguing enough to share. The response comes in three parts. First, while Romney did make overtures to NARAL on abortion, NARAL wound up endorsing Romney's opponent, calling Romney dangerous: “'He was very clear. He said over and over again that he supports the status quo in Massachusetts. He's not going to be a leader on this issue,' said Melissa Kogut, head of Mass NARAL's political action committee, referring to recent statements by the candidate. She called that stance...

March 26, 2007

Constitutional Relativity

A grad-school thesis has once again made its way into the 2008 Presidential race. Previously, a 40-year-old treatise by Hillary Clinton lauding a radical leftist caused a few moments of consternation for her campaign, mostly because her husband's administration kept it suppressed until now. This time, Barack Obama may have to answer some questions regarding his views from law school about the elasticity of the Constitution, views which are less than two decades old: Is Barack Obama a space cadet? The man who would become senator of Illinois and a top Democratic presidential contender was credited for editorial or research assistance in a page-one footnote of what may be the zaniest-titled article ever published by the Harvard Law Review: "The Curvature of Constitutional Space: What Lawyers Can Learn From Modern Physics," authored by noted legal scholar Laurence Tribe. The 39-page densely argued treatise — think "The Paper Chase" meets "Star...

Poll: Thompson Pulls Giuliani Votes, McCain Holds Steady

USA Today and Gallup offer their latest in polling for both parties in the extended presidential primary race, and a couple of changes have raised eyebrows. First, even the rumor of a bid by Fred Thompson has dented Rudy Giuliani's momentum, while John McCain's decline in support appears to have leveled off: On the Republican side, former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson shook up the field with his announcement that he would consider getting into the presidential race. Thompson is familiar as the actor who plays District Attorney Arthur Branch on NBC's Law and Order. Chosen by 12% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters, Thompson is third in the Republican field. He trails former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, at 31%, and Arizona Sen. John McCain, at 22%. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich is at 8%. Thompson's support seems to come largely from voters who had supported Giuliani. In the USA TODAY...

March 27, 2007

Turning The College Kids Into Pros

No, I'm not talking about college athletes in high-revenue sports, such as basketball and football players, getting a share of the millions their schools make. Mitt Romney wants to pay college students who raise funds for his campaign a percentage of what they generate for his campaign: A millionaire thanks to his work as a venture capitalist, Mitt Romney is acutely aware of the motivating power of money. His presidential campaign hopes it will have a similar effect on college students, which is why it's offering them a cut of their fundraising. Participants in "Students for Mitt" will get 10 percent of the money they raise for the campaign beyond the first $1,000. While candidates often offer professional fundraisers commissions up to 8 percent, campaign experts believe the Massachusetts Republican is the first to do so with the legion of college students who have historically served as campaign volunteers. "For...

Punching Above His Weight

The AP wonders whether the Barack Obama boomlet has run its course. According to political reporter Nedra Pickler, Democrats have been wondering where the beef is, too: The voices are growing louder asking the question: Is Barack Obama all style and little substance? The freshman Illinois senator began his campaign facing the perception that he lacks the experience to be president, especially compared to rivals with decades of work on foreign and domestic policy. So far, he's done little to challenge it. He's delivered no policy speeches and provided few details about how he would lead the country. ... The differences were on display Saturday in Las Vegas, where the Democratic candidates answered questions about health care. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, the only other candidate to serve less time in elective office than Obama, described in detail his health care plan to provide insurance for all Americans. New...

March 28, 2007

Blankley: Don't Count On Obama To Take Out Hillary

Tony Blankley, the editor of the Washington Times, warns Republicans to get their act together now if they expect to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2008 for the White House. The Bush administration has begun playing into her one strength -- competence -- and the Republicans cannot rely on Barack Obama or John Edwards to stop her march to the Oval Office: With every passing week it becomes more likely that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party nominee for president. This thought, alone, should provide the strongest possible motivation to the Bush administration and the Washington Republicans to get their acts together so that the eventual Republican nominee for president doesn't start the general election campaign in too deep a hole. The polls that show half the country saying they won't vote for Hillary should be discounted. At the election, the choice will not be Hillary or not Hillary --...

Rudy Hits A Homer

Rudy Giuliani has made a surprising entry into the primary race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Not known as a conservative, Rudy has nonetheless stuck to his public policy stands -- and has been rewarded with broad, if not deep, support from the GOP. He has built momentum despite expectations that he will eventually falter on the basis of his pro-choice, gun-control past. Now he has garnered an endorsement that will not fail to impress fiscal conservatives: Fiscal conservative Steve Forbes on Wednesday endorsed former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's bid to become the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 race for the White House. Forbes, chief executive of Forbes magazine who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in 1996 and 2000, is considered a leader of the party's pro-business and tax-cutting wings. "He is the man who can lead America in a world that is uncertain, fight the...

Maverick Is His Name?

Past Democratic Party leaders tell The Hill that John McCain negotiated for two months with them to abandon the Republican Party at around the same time that Jim Jeffords crossed the aisle. Tom Daschle and Tom Downey told Bob Cusack that unlike their efforts with Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee, McCain's top aide came to them: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was close to leaving the Republican Party in 2001, weeks before then-Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) famously announced his decision to become an Independent, according to former Democratic lawmakers who say they were involved in the discussions. In interviews with The Hill this month, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and ex-Rep. Tom Downey (D-N.Y.) said there were nearly two months of talks with the maverick lawmaker following an approach by John Weaver, McCain’s chief political strategist. Democrats had contacted Jeffords and then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) in the early months of 2001 about...

March 30, 2007

Two For The Price Of One, Redux

Rudy Giuliani told Barbara Walters in an interview that will air tonight that his wife Judi will be welcome to attend Cabinet meetings. Judi Giuliani, a nurse prior to her marriage to Giuliani, has said that she will take a special interest in health-care policy, which raises the specter of a Republican Hillary: Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani told ABC News's Barbara Walters that he would welcome his wife, Judith, at White House Cabinet meetings and other policy discussions if he were elected president next year. "If she wanted to," Giuliani said in the "20/20" interview to be broadcast tonight. "If they were relevant to something that she was interested in. I mean that would be something that I'd be very, very comfortable with." Giuliani, who is leading the Republican field in early polling, called his wife an important adviser to him. His wife, a nurse, said that...

April 1, 2007

Tommy Thompson Hits The Hustings

Add another entrant to the 2008 Republican Presidential Sweepstakes, and another Thompson. Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson has entered the primary race, declaring himself the "reliable conservative" in a race that has seen a few candidates claim that mantle: Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson on Sunday joined the crowded field of Republicans running for the White House in 2008 and proclaimed himself the "reliable conservative" in the race. Thompson, who was health and human services secretary during President Bush's first term, also said he is the only GOP candidate who has helped assemble both a state and federal budget. Since announcing last year he was forming a presidential exploratory committee to raise money and gauge support, Thompson has lagged behind better-known rivals. Thompson, 65, has focused his strategy on Iowa, which holds the nation's first caucuses for presidential nominees. He has made weekly visits to the state and sought to...

April 2, 2007

Barone: Nation Shifts Democratic

The invaluable Michael Barone takes a look at the latest polling and sees trouble for the Republicans in 2008. Over the last five years, party identification in the US has shifted in favor of the Democrats. Part of it, Barone says, comes from a lack of demonstrated competence on the part of the administration, which erodes one of the GOP's key arguments for Republican rule. Will this allow the Democrats to sweep the 2008 elections? Barone looks at a similar situation in Britain and thinks not: In the early 1990s, Britain's Conservatives were regarded as nasty but competent. Then, Britain was forced to devalue its currency. Mortgage payments shot up, and the Conservatives' reputation for competence vanished. The result: Tony Blair's Labor Party won huge victories in 1997, 2001 and 2005. The scenario here would be for Democrats to enlarge their congressional majorities and sweep to a 40-state presidential victory...

Hillary Smashes Fund-Raising Record (Caption Contest!)

Hillary Clinton has announced the results of her fund-raising efforts for the first quarter of 2007, and it smashes the old record for contributions in the first quarter of a year prior to an election. Of course, many candidates will be able to say that this year due to the unprecedented early start of the 2008 primaries, but Hillary did pull in an impressive amount: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination said Sunday that it had raised $26 million during the first quarter of this year, about three times as much as the previous record at this stage of a presidential race. Officials from several other Democratic primary campaigns voluntarily announced their fund-raising totals as well, just hours after the quarter closed at midnight on Saturday night. Former Senator John Edwards raised over $14 million, about twice what he raised in the same quarter for his...

Romney Racks It Up

In a surprising turn, the biggest fundraiser in the Republican primary race turns out to be Mitt Romney. Earlier today, the Romney campaign announced that they had raised $23 million in the first quarter of 2007, far outstripping frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, who didn't get his money machine into full swing until last month: Republican Mitt Romney reported raising $23 million for his presidential campaign during the first three months of the year, shaking up the GOP field and rivaling the total reported a day earlier by Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton. Meanwhile, the Republican front-runner in the polls, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said his donations totaled $15 million — including more than $10 million raised during March alone. Both Republican numbers blew away past party presidential fundraising standards, while Romney's figure put the former Massachusetts governor in competition with Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. The New York senator on Sunday...

April 3, 2007

Florida Is Rudy Country

The key state in the last two presidential elections has been Florida, and pollsters have focused more attention on the Sunshine State the last few years to test the electoral mettle of candidates declared and presumed. Quinnipiac takes the latest look at Florida's political temperature, and it finds Rudy running hot: Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has opened double-digit leads over top 2008 Democratic presidential contenders in Florida, beating either New York Sen. Hillary Clinton or former Sen. John Edwards 50 - 40 percent, and topping Illinois Sen. Barack Obama 52 - 36 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. This compares to a 47 - 42 percent Giuliani lead over Sen. Clinton in a March 7 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. ... In this latest survey, Giuliani leads the Republican pack with 35 percent, followed by Arizona Sen. John McCain with 15 percent, former...

Kerry's Magic Veep

Jonathan Singer at MyDD published an interview with John Kerry today that has sent ripples through the blogosphere. In the interview, Kerry claimed that John McCain approached him about being Kerry's running mate in the 2004 election, contrary to a number of published reports at the time: Jonathan Singer: There's a story in The Hill, I think on Tuesday, by Bob Cusack on the front page of the paper talking about how John McCain's people -- John Weaver -- had approached Tom Daschle and a New York Congressman, I don't remember his name, about switching parties. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what your discussions were with him in 2004, how far it went, who approached whom... if there was any "there" there. John Kerry: I don't know all the details of it. I know that Tom, from a conversation with him, was in...

April 4, 2007

Brownstein Waxes Nostalgic

I had to read Ronald Brownstein twice today to make sure the Los Angeles Times had not started a new satire section. The Times' political analyst writes an entire column decrying the lack of intimacy in the 2008 Presidential primary race, and blames ... well, everybody: And yet the size, scope and speed of the 2008 race are transforming the process of picking the president in discouraging ways. Intimate events aren't extinct; Democratic contender Barack Obama, who has drawn the largest crowds, heard impassioned and sometimes wrenching pleas for a single-payer healthcare system at a forum limited to 100 people in Portsmouth on Tuesday afternoon. But even in Iowa and New Hampshire, the traditional citadels of person-to-person politics, such opportunities for close encounters with a candidate are diminishing. Just as important, the top candidates are losing the chance to spend quiet time listening to the problems and concerns of voters...

Why Tom Tancredo Is Not A Serious Candidate

Tom Tancredo announced his intention to run for President this week, which initiated the question of credibility. After all, Tancredo is mostly known for his hard-line views on illegal immigration and his threat to bomb Mecca, and most candidacies of sitting Congressmen have amounted to little more than vanity tours. Tancredo appears to have answered that in an interview with Hugh Hewitt and his reaction afterwards: Of over 25 radio programs that Tancredo was on yesterday, it was Hugh Hewitt Show that had the chance to illuminate an issue that millions of Americans support us on, but instead he chose to educate Tancredo about the merits of supporting an illegal alien amnesty bill. After talking with Congressman Tancredo he told me his response to Hewitt's show: "Why would we come back on his show? I know it makes good radio to be engaged in an hour for a yelling match...

Obama Right Behind Hillary

Barack Obama has raised $25 million for his presidential bid, coming in only a million behind Hillary Clinton's record-breaking performance. What makes it even more impressive is the number of donors who contributed to the total: Sen. Barack Obama raised at least $25 million for his presidential campaign in the first quarter of the year, putting him just shy of Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, who made a splash with her announcement Sunday that she had drawn a record-breaking $26 million. Obama (D-Ill.) appears to have surpassed Clinton in several ways: He raised $6.9 million through donations over the Internet, more than the $4.2 million than Clinton (N.Y.) raised online. He reported donations from 100,000 people, double the 50,000 people who gave to Clinton. And of Obama's overall receipts, $23.5 million is eligible for use in the primary contests. Clinton officials have declined to disclose how much of her...

Where Rudy Lost His Groove

What a shame; Rudy Giuliani had been doing so well in convincing conservatives that he could represent them even while differing on social policy. He had advanced the argument that he would appoint strict constructionist judges to the federal bench, relying on textual references for Constitutional debates rather than "living document" notions that have driven conservatives up the wall. All of that work appears to have flown out the window with this CNN interview today: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told CNN Wednesday he supports public funding for some abortions, a position he advocated as mayor and one that will likely put the GOP presidential candidate at odds with social conservatives in his party. "Ultimately, it's a constitutional right, and therefore if it's a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected," Giuliani said...

April 5, 2007

Giuliani Transcript On Abortion

After Rudy Giuliani's surprising statement on federal funding for abortions yesterday, several commenters expressed reservations about the credibility of CNN to report what Rudy said honestly. Here is the transcript from the relevant portion of the interview, so that we can see the remark in context: BASH: There's something on -- you know, on YouTube from 1989. It's flying around the Internet. It's -- it's a clip of you. [tape]GIULIANI: There must be public funding for abortions for poor women. We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decision about abortion because she lacks resources. [applause] I have also stated that I disagree with President Bush's veto last week of public funding for abortions. BASH: Is that also your -- going -- going to be your position as president? [live]GIULIANI: Probably. I mean, I have to reexamine all those issues and exactly what was at stake then....

The Welcoming Void

The New York Sun reports that recent polling has encouraged Fred Thompson to seriously consider a run for the Republican Presidential nomination. Jim Geraghty, the blogger behind NRO's HillarySpot, says that Thompson fills a void left by the unexpected loss of George Allen in last year's midterm elections: When George Allen fell to Jim Webb in the Virginia Senate race, it opened up a slot in the upcoming Republican presidential primary: the role of the reliable longtime lawmaker who has no serious disagreements with the conservatives who make up the party's base. That slot is moving closer to being filled by a former senator of Tennessee, Fred Thompson. The potential candidate is about "50–50" on running "because the polls have caught his eye," a source close to Mr. Thompson told National Review. The AP suggested this week that a bid by the former "Law and Order" actor would be hindered...

Giuliani On Federally-Funded Abortions, Take 3

It appears that Rudy Giuliani, intelligent man that he is, understands the damage he did to his efforts to connect with conservatives in his CNN interview yesterday. As Kathryn Jean Lopez posted at The Corner, Giuliani has started to climb down from his support of funding abortions with tax dollars: MAYOR GIULIANI: What I said yesterday is what I've been saying throughout, I think in the last number of months publicly and privately for quite some time, which is I'm against abortion, I hate it, I wish there never was an abortion and I would council a woman have an adoption instead of an abortion but ultimately I believe an individual right and a woman can make that choice. I also, on public funding or funding of abortion said I would want to see it decided on a state by state basis. And what that means is I would leave...

April 6, 2007

Romney Fundraising A Spook Story For The NYT

The New York Times appears willing to damn Romney for being rich and both using his own money for his presidential campaign and not using his own money for his presidential campaign. In seeking to explain Romney's success at fundraising, David Kirkpatrick doesn't give Romney much benefit of the doubt in an article headlined, "Romney Used His Wealth to Enlist Richest Donors": Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire founder of a giant private equity firm, knew he did not need other people’s money to mount a presidential campaign. But as they began planning a campaign more than two years ago, Mr. Romney and his advisers wanted to avoid the fate of two other millionaires, Steve Forbes and Ross Perot, whose self-financed campaigns went down as quixotic indulgences. “By Mitt or anyone else self-funding, you don’t have a lot of people making investments in you,” said Spencer Zwick, 28, the campaign’s fund-raising director...

Blaming Bloggers For Discussing The Issues?

Did Rudy blame bloggers for his tough week after his remarks on abortion and federal funding? Some apparently believe so, including Matt Lewis , who read Roger Simon's report for The Politico. Roger asked Rudy about whether he realizes how tough the race will get, and he got this response (via The Corner): Has it crossed your mind that this may be an extremely rough primary in 2008? I asked him. "It has, and it will be," Giuliani replied. But he also said he did not think the attacks would come directly from other Republican presidential candidates. "I think more of this comes from the atmosphere in the blogging atmosphere, in the instant news atmosphere, and the minute analysis atmosphere," he said. If Rudy spoke in reference to the abortion debate this week, then I would agree with Matt. It's hardly an "attack" to discuss the policy positions of the...

April 7, 2007

Not Time To Panic For McCain

John McCain's campaign will try to re-establish itself after a tough first quarter, the Wall Street Journal reports, and as the WSJ notes, he needs the re-set. His fundraising hasn't met expectations, and McCain's efforts to support the war has apparently alienated some of the moderates he hoped to attract: In short order, John McCain has gone from Republican presidential front-runner to political death watch. On Wednesday, the Arizona senator kicks off a month of high-profile events, seeking a resurrection of sorts. He badly needs it. Mr. McCain just reported raising $12.5 million for the first-quarter -- behind Republican rivals Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, as well as Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. Most analysts won't go so far as to bury Mr. McCain, citing his Republican rivals' own baggage: Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani are suspect among social conservatives for their records supporting abortion and...

Fred Thompson, Redstate, Red Meat

Fred Thompson, who has flirted with the notion of entering the Republican presidential primary race as a conservative savior, has his first blog post on Redstate today. He digs right into the war on terror and national security, the focus of GOP voters in this primary season, by going after the Iranian mullahcracy: Tony Blair doesn't appear to be in much of a mood for celebrating. I don't know how he could be, given the troubling spectacle of British soldiers shake the hand of their kidnapper as a condition of release. In the old days, they would have kissed his ring -- but wearing Iranian suits and carrying swag more appropriate to a Hollywood awards ceremony may have been as embarrassing. Ironically, Blair's options are fewer by the day as his own party moves to mothball the British fleet, once the fear of pirates and tyrants the world over. Some...

April 9, 2007

Why Is The Media Obsessed With Mormons? (Bumped)

The New York Times features yet another editorial by yet another journalist giving yet another slate of advice for Mitt Romney to address his "Mormon problem". This time Newsweek's Kenneth Woodward, their reporter on religion, offers all of the reasons that Americans are apparently hysterical about the prospect of having an LDS president: IN May, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and 2008 Republican presidential hopeful, will give the commencement address at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. What better opportunity for Mr. Romney to discuss the issue of his Mormon faith before an audience of evangelicals? When John F. Kennedy spoke before Protestant clergymen in Houston in 1960, he sought to dispel the fear that as a Catholic president, he would be subject to direction from the pope. As a Mormon, Mr. Romney faces ignorance as well as fear of his church and its political influence. More Americans, polls show, are...

April 10, 2007

Rethinking McCain

Jonah Goldberg warns conservatives not to ignore John McCain in the presidential primary race in his latest LA Times column. Conceding that McCain has angered the Republican base on a number of occasions, he also advises that McCain has a long track record of supporting most of the conservative agenda. And on the all-important issue of terrorism and the war, Goldberg asks which of the present candidates has put more on the line to support it than Barry Goldwater's successor in the Senate: In the eyes of his conservative detractors — among whom I've long counted myself — McCain has a maddening habit of proving his political independence by winning accolades from the New York Times editorial board. On campaign finance reform, global warming and opposition to tax cuts, the "maverick" has too often racked up points by scoring against his own team. Sometimes he stands to the right of...

Competence And The Mayor

John Podhoretz, who has supported Rudy Giuliani since he wrote Can She Be Stopped? about Hillary Clinton early last year, wants to brace America's Mayor after a tough two weeks. John writes an open letter to Rudy in today's New York Post, making it clear that Giuliani has to show his normally encyclopaedic grasp of issues and details and demonstrate a high degree of competency if he hopes to win conservatives in the Republican primary: So where is it now? The vision seems to be there. But not the competence. ... [T]he answer to your pro-choice difficulty with social conservatives on the matter of abortion isn't to blather about how much you "hate it" and then ruminate on whether the government should be responsible for helping pay for one. That's what you did last week, and you must never, ever do anything like it again - if, that is, you...

Democrats Fear Fox, Part II

Democrats have once again gone running in fright from Fox News Channel for a political debate -- or more accurately, have run from fear of their anti-war base. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama join John Edwards in refusing to appear on Fox for a debate sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus: Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) yesterday joined former North Carolina senator John Edwards (D) in deciding to skip a debate scheduled for September that Fox News is co-sponsoring with the Congressional Black Caucus. Liberal activists, particularly the online group Moveon.org, have called for Democratic presidential candidates not to participate in debates by Fox, which they say is biased against Democrats. Clinton campaign aides said she would participate only in the six events sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee and two other events she had already agreed to. Several candidates, including Edwards, last month withdrew from...

Gallup Polling: The Rich Get Richer ...

... and the challengers fall back. According to Gallup's latest surveys on the presidential primaries, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton put more distance between themselves and their nearest challengers, despite missteps by both candidates since the last polling. The results tend to contradict some of the analyses published since the first-quarter fundraising numbers got released last week. First, the GOP: The April 2-5 Gallup Poll finds 38% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents favoring Giuliani for the 2008 nomination, well ahead of his closest pursuer, McCain (16%). Two unannounced but potential candidates -- Gingrich and Thompson -- tie for third at 10%. The remaining 10 candidates tested in the poll all score below 10%, led by Mitt Romney at 6%. Romney had drawn the most money out of Republican donors in the last cycle, while McCain had finished weakly, but it has not changed Romney's relative position at all. Despite his...

The Tragedy Of Consistency

I'm an avid reader of E.J. Dionne, not because I sometimes agree with what he writes, but because he writes one of the most reasoned liberal columns. Today, Dionne looks at what he sees as a tragic transformation of John McCain, and laments McCain's missed opportunity to tell truth to power: There is another tragic element: McCain suffered mightily during the 2000 presidential primaries at the hands of George W. Bush's political machine, which smeared the senator on everything from his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam to the racial identity of his adopted daughter. Yet McCain is being dragged down now by his loyalty to the very same Bush and his policies in Iraq. Earlier in the war, McCain was a fierce critic of the president's strategy and tactics. But those criticisms count for little now. Bush destroyed McCain's candidacy by design the first time and is...

April 11, 2007

Fred Has Manageable Cancer (Update: Fred's Showing His Hand)

See below for updates. Fred Thompson, whose potential entry into the 2008 presidential race has him already third in Republican polling, announced today that he has a manageable form of lymphoma: Republican Fred Thompson, the actor-politician who is considering a bid for president, said Wednesday he has lymphoma, a form of cancer. In an interview with Fox News, the former Tennessee senator said he is in remission and the diagnosis shouldn't affect his life expectancy. Thompson, 64, told Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto that he has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but hasn't been ill or had any symptoms. ... Some of these subtypes are termed "indolent," meaning they typically respond well to treatment — patients often go into remission for long periods, but the disease is not cured and may need to be battled back again periodically. This may throw some cold water on the Thompson boomlet. Some voters have expressed reservations...

McCain: I Blame Rumsfeld For Iraq

I took part in a blogger conference on my lunchbreak today with Senator John McCain on the topic of Iraq. McCain, who gave a speech on Iraq at the Virginia Military Institute earlier today, wanted to reach out to New Media sources for his perspective on the progress of the war, the critical nature of our effort there, and the need to persevere until we succeed. McCain did not pull many punches in this call. Speaking as bluntly as I have heard in some time, he acknowledged the credibility deficit of the Pentagon and White House on the war. Saying that “too often, we misled the American people in the past” about deadenders, mission accomplished, and so on, McCain said that the press has become too reluctant to report actual progress in Iraq. He feels that bloggers and radio hosts can help get real information to the American people and...

April 12, 2007

Hoffa: We'll "Blow Up" Denver For Dem Convention (Updated)

The Democrats may stage an homage to Chicago 1968 in Denver for their 2008 convention. The AP reports that the party's union base objects strongly to the selection of the right-to-work city for the convention and are threatening to disrupt the proceedings if Denver doesn't start using closed shops: The Democrats' choice of Denver to anoint their presidential nominee in 2008 has stirred up angst among unions, one of the party's core groups, because of Colorado's reputation as an unfriendly place for organized labor. ... Last month, the AFL-CIO threatened to force Democrats to abandon Denver after Colorado's Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter vetoed a bill making it easier to set up all-union workplaces. "Unless we can be assured that the governor will support our values and priorities, we will strongly urge the Democratic Party to relocate the convention," said the AFL-CIO's executive council. Teamsters President James Hoffa chimed in last...

LA Times Poll: Fred Gains As McCain Drops Back

The Los Angeles Times reports on its latest polling for the Republican presidential primaries, and the only one who should be smiling is the scowlin' Volunteer, Fred Thompson. Rudy Giuliani polls at less than 30%, while McCain drops behind his good friend into a distant third place: Sen. John McCain, once considered the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has fallen to third place in a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, and is running behind Fred Thompson, an actor and former senator who has not even entered the race. Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani leads the crowded field of announced and potential contenders with support from 29% of probable Republican primary voters surveyed, followed by Thompson with 15% and McCain with 12%. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and a fundraising powerhouse, had 8%. The Arizona senator's showing in the poll is his lowest in any national survey...

April 14, 2007

Is Fred 'Someone Else'?

The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes takes a look at the Fred Thompson phenomenon in the Republican presidential primary race and concludes that he embodies None of the Above, at least for the moment. Make no mistake, Hayes warns -- he won't play that role for long. If conservatives find themselves disheartened by the passive (or nonexistent) conservativism of the Bush era, Thompson promises a more assertive, robust form that could hearken back to Ronald Reagan: The presence of the cigars and the absence of a press chaperone were clues that Thompson is taking a different approach to his potential candidacy. A campaign flack would have insisted on hiding the cigars--Senator, how did you get those Cuban cigars? Isn't there a trade embargo?--and might have dampened Thompson's natural candor. On subjects ranging from Social Security to abortion, the CIA and to Iran, there would be lots of candor over the next...

April 15, 2007

Thompson On Taxes

Fred Thompson appeared on the pages of the Wall Street Journal yesterday to assess tax policy and its impact on the American economy. To no one's great surprise, Thompson favors tax cuts to incentivize capital investment -- and to no one's great surprise, he articulates that vision very, very well: The results of the experiment that began when Congress passed a series of tax-rate cuts in 2001 and 2003 are in. Supporters of those cuts said they would stimulate the economy. Opponents predicted ever-increasing budget deficits and national bankruptcy unless tax rates were increased, especially on the wealthy. In fact, Treasury statistics show that tax revenues have soared and the budget deficit has been shrinking faster than even the optimists projected. Since the first tax cuts were passed, when I was in the Senate, the budget deficit has been cut in half. Remarkably, this has happened despite the financial trauma...

Hillary's Conundrum

Hillary Clinton has had a difficult conundrum facing her ever since the beginning of her presidential campaign. Her vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq and Saddam Hussein in October 2002 has the anti-war base revved up to defeat her in favor of a more capitulationist candidate like Barack Obama or John Edwards. She has tried to alternately defend the vote and claim that she was misled as a defense against the activists within her own party. Last night. however, she ran into someone who refused to buy what she's been selling (via Instapundit): After fielding many questions ranging from mental health care to veteran affairs at a Town Hall Meeting in Hampton, NH, Senator Hillary Clinton received a heated question about Iraq. A woman who had traveled from New York asked Sen. Clinton if she had read the report given to her in 2002 on intelligence and...

April 16, 2007

Such A Tease!

The Republicans' dream candidate gave yet a further hint yesterday that he will run for the presidential nomination for the 2008 ticket. Was it Newt Gingrich? Perhaps Fred Thompson got spotted having lunch with Mitch McConnell? Did Jeb Bush change his last name to Reagan? No -- this is even better than that (via Memeorandum): Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) reopened the door to a possible 2008 presidential campaign during a book signing in Denver and then again, in an interview with 9NEWS. The 2004 Democratic nominee told a crowd of more than 250 at the Tattered Cover bookstore in lower downtown Denver that he had no desire to endorse any candidate for the office right now, choosing to wait to see how they addressed the issue of global warming. ... Afterwards, while answering a question from a viewer on the program YOUR SHOW about why he chose not to run,...

Hillary Losing Donors To Obama

Hillary Clinton and her supporters had thought that the 2008 primary race would be nothing less than a coronation march, as the supporters of her husband all came together to return the White House keys to the Clinton family. It turned into a dogfight instead, and some of her husband's former colleagues have decided to back another dog in the fight. Barack Obama has managed to convince some of Bill's big fundraisers to support his candidacy over that of the former First Lady: As Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks to reassemble the Democratic money machine her husband built, some of its major fund-raisers have already signed on with Senator Barack Obama. Among the biggest fund-raisers for Mr. Obama’s campaign are as many as a half-dozen former guests of the Clinton White House. At least two are close enough to the Clintons to have slept in the Lincoln bedroom. At minimum,...

McCain Tackles The Tax Code

John McCain, looking for some conservative mojo to break out of an early slump on the stump, will outline his plan to overhaul the federal tax code at a speech today in Memphis. Speaking in the heart of what may soon become Fred Territory, McCain will pledge to end the "Byzantine" tax laws that have created an entire industry out of determining how to pay Uncle Sam: In a major economic policy speech today, Senator McCain will pledge to fix what he calls an "incomprehensible" and "Byzantine" federal tax code, casting himself as the candidate who will fight for changes that others have failed to achieve. The speech to the Economic Club of Memphis is the second in a series of substantive addresses Mr. McCain is delivering in an effort to revive an ailing campaign and recapture the sharp-tongued candor that won him support in his first presidential bid eight...

Did Rudy Tell Pro-Lifers To Get Over Themselves?

The Des Moines Register reported that Rudy Giuliani told a crowd that social conservatives had to "get beyond issues" like abortion in order to elect Republicans. Thomas Beaumont's report sent a few shock waves through the blogosphere: Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani warned GOP activists in Des Moines on Saturday that if they insist on a nominee who always agrees with them, it will spell defeat in 2008. “Our party is going to grow, and we are going to win in 2008 if we are a party characterized by what we’re for, not if we’re a party that’s known for what we’re against,” the former New York mayor said at a midday campaign stop. Republicans can win, he said, if they nominate a candidate committed to the fight against terrorism and high taxes, rather than a pure social conservative. “Our party has to get beyond issues like that,” Giuliani said,...

April 17, 2007

The Party Of Government

John McCain continues his efforts to assume the mantle of fiscal discipline in the Republican presidential primary. In a speech yesterday in Memphis, he assured his audience that a McCain presidency would exhibit responsible stewardship of the nation's treasury -- and scolded Republicans for becoming the "party of government": Senator John McCain of Arizona acknowledged Monday that his fellow Republicans “forgot who we were” in recent years by spending too much, and said that as president he would rely on low taxes, greater fiscal restraint and free trade to lift the nation’s economy. Mr. McCain, whose presidential campaign has been viewed with suspicion by some conservatives because of his initial opposition to the Bush administration’s tax cuts, used the first major economic address of his campaign to reaffirm his commitment to the free market but said he would move to overhaul the nation’s unemployment programs to help people find jobs...

He Likes Bagels, Too

Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson discovered the perils of paying compliments to ethnic groups in a speech yesterday in Washington, DC. He told an audience at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism that he admired Jews for their ability to make money: Former Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential hopeful Tommy Thompson told Jewish activists Monday that making money is "part of the Jewish tradition," and something that he applauded. Speaking to an audience at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington D.C., Thompson said that, "I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money. You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that." Thompson later apologized for the comments that had caused a stir in the audience, saying that he had meant it as a compliment, and had only wanted...

April 18, 2007

How Many Donors Paid For Edwards' Hair?

I'm the last person who should tallk about hair, I suppose, although I can talk a good game of scalp. The only reason I pay as much as I do for haircuts these days is because my stylist charges a finder's fee. Still, I pay the square root of what John Edwards pays for his haircuts, and unlike Edwards, I'm not using political contributions to pay for mine: Looking pretty is costing John Edwards' presidential campaign a lot of pennies. The Democrat's campaign committee picked up the tab for two haircuts at $400 each by celebrity stylist Joseph Torrenueva of Beverly Hills, California, according to a financial report filed with the Federal Election Commission. FEC records show Edwards also availed himself of $250 in services from a trendy salon and spa in Dubuque, Iowa, and $225 in services from the Pink Sapphire in Manchester, New Hampshire, which is described on...

Obama: Insults, Outsourcing 'Violence'

The culture of victimhood has a new champion, according to the Texas Rainmaker, and that champion is Barack Obama. Faster than someone can say "Ismail Ax", Obama used the Virginia Tech massacre to decry violence in American lives -- but as it turns out, "violence" covers a lot of ground in Obama's political lexicon: Dem presidential hopeful Barack Obama condemned a violence obsessed culture in his first Wisconsin campaign stop, reflecting on the shooting deaths of more than 30 people at Virginia Tech earlier in the day. ... The Senator described a culture in which "the violence of children and communities" is ignored, working class jobs are outsourced overseas, and foreign policies are put into place favoring military responses. Obama also referenced comments radio host Don Imus made last week about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. "There’s a lot of different forms of violence in our society, and so...

April 19, 2007

A Contrarian Position Conservatives Might Like

John McCain appears to have decided on a more aggressive approach on the campaign trail, and an avoidance of political correctness. Just two days after the massacre at Virginia Tech has people talking about enacting stricter gun control measures, McCain gave a forceful defense of gun rights at an appearance in Summerville, South Carolina. Saying that we need to improve our ability to identify dangerous people before they can kill, McCain insisted that restricting gun ownership would not solve the problem of shooting sprees: Republican presidential candidate John McCain declared Wednesday he believes in "no gun control," making the strongest affirmation of support for gun rights in the GOP field since the Virginia Tech massacre. The Arizona senator said in Summerville, S.C., that the country needs better ways to identify dangerous people like the gunman who killed 32 people and himself in the Blacksburg, Va., rampage. But he opposed weakening...

Giuliani Slips In Latest Polling

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that Rudy Giuliani has started coming back to the pack after a surprisingly successful first quarter. John McCain has managed to hold his ground, and Fred Thompson appears to be the beneficiary of Rudy's retreat. Meanwhile, Hillary has widened the gap between herself and #2 Barack Obama, but because Obama lost a little ground since the previous poll in February. First, the Republicans: Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's lead over his Republican presidential rivals has narrowed considerably, while Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has maintained her advantage in the race for the Democratic nomination, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), whose candidacy has been buffeted by lackluster fundraising and his embrace of President Bush's troop surge policy in Iraq, runs a solid second among GOP hopefuls. But there is fresh evidence in the new survey...

April 20, 2007

Don't Cry For Her, America

Just in case the thought of Hillary Clinton's devastation if she loses the 2008 nomination for the presidency keeps you up nights, Bill Clinton offers some soothing words. He told Larry King that Hillary will have no problem resuming her Senate term if she doesn't win the election, and that the two of them will "have a great life": Former President Bill Clinton told CNN Thursday his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, will have no qualms about returning to the Senate if she loses her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. "You know she's not -- some people who run for president can't wait to get out of the Senate, or out of whatever other job she's got. She loves it. She's still doing it. She's still going to her committee meetings, going to upstate New York and trying to run for president as well," Clinton told CNN's Larry...

April 22, 2007

Gore To Run For 2008 Nomination

Al Gore has insisted that he has no interest in returning to electoral politics and wants to focus on his media interests and on solutions to global warming. The former Vice President has shown no inclination to run against the wife of his former boss, at least not publicly. However, the London Telegraph reports that Gore has secretly begun to recruit a campaign staff and will challenge Hillary Clinton for the nomination: Friends of Al Gore have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House. Two members of Mr Gore's staff from his unsuccessful attempt in 2000 say they have been approached to see if they would be available to work with him again. Mr Gore, President Bill Clinton's deputy, has said he wants to concentrate on publicising the need to combat climate change, a case...

McCain Falters In Former Stronghold (Updated)

John McCain will formally announce his candidacy for the 2008 Presidential nomination in South Carolina next week, but the state's Republicans made it clear he should have showed up this week. Instead of appearing for the party's straw poll yesterday, McCain sent former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating -- and South Carolina sent him a third-tier finish: The weekend before Arizona Sen. John McCain makes his official presidential announcement in South Carolina, polls show he's not popular with local Republican voters. The Republican parties in Greenville, Spartanburg and Richland counties held conventions Saturday, where the candidates had the chance to speak and voters participated in polls. McCain did not attend and opted to send former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating to appear in his place. Spartanburg County Republican Party Chairman Rick Beltram blamed McCain's absence for his poor showing. "I thought that McCain missing these South Carolina conventions was a major error...

April 24, 2007

Hillary Losing Critical Constituency

During the first quarter of this extended presidential primary season, people discounted Barack Obama's candidacy for a number of reasons, but one related to his supposed lack of resonance in the African-American community. The New York Times reported in early February that Obama was not considered "black enough" by activists within the African-American community. Now, less than three months later, the Gray Lady reports that they have discovered that Hillary looks a lot more pale in comparison: Only a few months ago, the vast majority of black elected officials in New York were expected to support the presidential candidacy of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. But no longer. In a series of interviews, a significant number of those officials now say they are undecided about whether to back Mrs. Clinton or one of her main rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the only black politician in the...

April 25, 2007

Rudy: Democrats Want A 9/10 World

Of all the candidates running for president, Rudy Giuliani knows best what a 9/10 mentality means in an age of radical Islamist terror. He had to deal with the aftermath of bureaucratic confusion and politically-correct counterterrorism on 9/11 and the weeks afterward as the mayor of a city who saw almost 3,000 of his citizens killed by terrorists. So when Giuliani talks about the folly of returning to the defense against terrorists, he knows of what he speaks: Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani wrapped up a day of campaigning in New Hampshire on Tuesday night by issuing a stark warning that Democrats would put the country on defense in the campaign against terrorism and needlessly prolong a conflict that he said America can and must win. ... "If one of them gets elected, it sounds to me like we're going on the defense," he said. "We've got a...

McCain Announces Today

John McCain makes his formal entry into the presidential race today from Portsmouth, New Hampshire this afternoon: Republican John McCain — senator, ex-Navy pilot and former Vietnam captive — is casting himself as the most qualified person to lead the country in wartime as he officially opens his second presidential bid and tries to succeed where he once failed. ... McCain was largely using the speech and a four-day romp through early primary states and his Arizona home to make the case for his candidacy, outline his vision for the country and promise "common sense, conservative and comprehensive solutions" to the nation's problems. The high-profile events also give McCain an opportunity to restart his campaign and inject momentum into it after a troubling four-month period. He went from presumed front-runner for the GOP nomination at year's end to trailing former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in national polls and...

April 27, 2007

Debate Drones

I skipped watching the first Democratic presidential debate, but according to all accounts, I didn't miss too much. The New York Times tried to frame the evening in the best possible light, but even the Gray Lady conceded that it turned into an ennui to forget: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was professorial and emphatic as she spoke Thursday night about health care, Iraq and whether Wal-Mart was good for America (a “mixed blessing,” she decided) . Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, by reputation a dynamic performer, was reserved and cautious as he talked about a donor with a shady past, how he would respond to a terrorist attack on American shores and his biggest mistake (not doing more to stop Congress from intervening in the Terri Schiavo case, he said). The setting was the first Democratic presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, a surprisingly sedate and meandering affair, filled with...

April 28, 2007

Did Obama Blow The Debate?

That's the question I pose at Heading Right, after the Washington Post reports that Hillary Clinton has focused on Barack Obama's less-than-muscular response to a hypothetical question about a terrorist attack on the US. What did Obama miss that Hillary, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson get right -- and is it the Kitty Dukakis question of this primary season?...

April 29, 2007

The New Reagan?

Fred Thompson has captured the imagination of conservatives who find themselves dissatisfied with the current crop of presidential contenders. They want to find a nominee who combines the charisma of Rudy Giuliani, the firmness on the war of John McCain, and the conservative domestic policies of Duncant Hunter and Mike Huckabee. In short, conservatives want another Ronald Reagan. According to some of those who worked for Ronald Reagan, they may have it in Thompson: Ronald Reagan's closest allies are throwing their weight behind the White House bid by the late president's fellow actor, Fred Thompson. The film star and former Republican senator from Tennessee will this week use a speech in the heart of Reagan country, in southern California, to woo party bigwigs in what insiders say is the next step in his coming out as a candidate. A key figure in the Reagan inner circle has now given his...

Obama, The Neocon (Updated)

Is Barack Obama an interventionist neocon in sheep's clothing? Robert Kagan apparently thinks so, and makes his case in today's Washington Post. I provide an answer at Heading Right, and note that one speech does not a hawk make. UPDATE: With Democrats howling over the supposedly unprecedented politicization of the Bush White House -- as if they'd forgotten all about James Carville and Vernon Jordan -- Newsweek reminds them that Democrats hardly qualify as ethics scolds: Sen. Barack Obama vows to bring a "new kind of politics" to Washington. But a copy of a 36-page fax from Obama's Senate office, obtained by NEWSWEEK, shows that the rookie presidential candidate, riding the biggest wave this side of his native Hawaii, needs to keep a sharp eye on the details of his own campaign. Senate ethics rules allow senators with active campaigns to "split" the work time and salary of official schedulers...

April 30, 2007

Edwards: Clinton Tax Levels Are Just The Beginning

John Edwards has a refreshing strategy in the presidential primaries: pretend the center doesn't exist. He wants to win the Democratic nomination by running hard to the left, especially on economics. In that vein, he told California Democrats at their state convention that not only will he raise taxes on high-income families, he considers that just a starting point: Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said yesterday raising taxes for higher-income families back to their levels under the Clinton administration is a floor, not a ceiling, and he would consider even higher tax increases. "What I believe is the starting place is to go back to the Clinton levels," Mr. Edwards told reporters after addressing the 2,000 delegates to California's state Democratic Party convention. ... "I believe it is more important to bring about the transformation," he said, pointing to his universal health care plan, achieving independence from foreign energy and...

A Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy?

Hillary Clinton has complained for years that her critics come from a vast right-wing conspiracy to discredit and defame her and her husband. Will she now add Carl Bernstein to the conservative cabal out to get her? Bernstein will soon release an extensively-researched biography of the Democratic front-runner, and the Watergate reporter apparently has discovered a number of discrepancies between her official biography and the records he found. I posted about this at Heading Right, the group blog of the conservative talk show hosts at Blog Talk Radio. Given the solidly liberal background of Bernstein, Hillary will have a difficult time escaping the impact of an exposé....

GOP Straw Poll (Update & Bump)

It's time again for another GOP straw poll from our friends at GOP Bloggers. Actually, it's past due; I haven't kept up with the monthly polls. In the meantime, they've added a couple of new options, including Fred Thompson and Jim Gilmore. As always, the poll will count the selections for Captain's Quarters readers separately, allowing us to take the temperature of the CQ community. Tomorrow, I'll report on the results from the first day of polling. UPDATE & BUMP, 4:20 PM CT: Once again, CQ has generated the largest number of straw-poll votes on the first full day, and it's a runaway for Fred Thompson. He has 55.9% of the first-choice CQ vote, followed by Rudy Giuliani at 20.9%. Mitt Romney comes in third at 8.7%, while McCain trails (None) with only 2.2%. Acceptability ratings gives Rudy better news. Sixty-one percent of CQ readers thus far consider Rudy acceptable,...

May 1, 2007

McCain Ditching The UN?

File this one under Conservative Red Meat -- John McCain wants to form a League of Democracies to take action when the UN fails to do so. Warning that the US has to find a global structure for its security policies, McCain told a Stanford University audience that lasting peace comes from spreading freedom: Republican presidential candidate John McCain envisions a "League of Democracies" as part of a more cooperative foreign policy with U.S. allies. The Arizona senator will call for such an organization to be "the core of an international order of peace based on freedom" in a speech Tuesday at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "We Americans must be willing to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies," McCain says, according to excerpts his campaign provided. "Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we...

Fred Doesn't Chase The Gray Ladies, Though

The New York Times finally weighs in on Fred Thompson, the conservative hope for the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, and they hit below the belt. Actually, that's true literally but not figuratively, as their profile actually remains balanced and positive, with the one exception about discussing his personal life between marriages: Making speeches at carefully chosen appearances, doing an occasional interview and fielding questions from Republican congressmen, Mr. Thompson, 64, is running something of a guerrilla exploratory effort. He even weighed in recently on a conservative blog to offer a detailed defense of his ideas on federalism. Behind the scenes, Mr. Thompson has been consulting with his inner circle — including former Senators Bill Frist and Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee and experienced Washington aides like Mark Corallo, a former Justice Department official — about how he could pull together the money and staff he would need to run....

May 3, 2007

Quinnipiac Poll Shows Rudy Coming Back To The Pack

On the eve of the first televised debate for the Republican presidential contenders, Quinnipiac shows that the race continues to fluctuate in the early primary season. Rudy Giuliani has lost significant ground over the last month to the undeclared Fred Thompson, but neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney has taken advantage: Giuliani leads the Republican field with 27 percent, down from 40 percent, followed by 19 percent for Arizona Sen. John McCain, 14 percent for former Sen. Fred Thompson and 8 percent each for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The Democrats have not changed positions much at all. Hillary Clinton leads the pack with a substantial 14-point lead over Barack Obama (32%-18%), despite other polling that indicated Obama had caught up to Hillary. Al Gore comes in third with 14%, meaning that the #3 person in both parties is an undeclared candidate -- not...

Debate Live-Blog -- Debate Central Wrap-Up Next!

Were live-blogging the debate at Heading Right. Come by and join us! We're starting the post-debate discussion at 9 pm CT -- be sure to join us!...

Debate Analysis: Romney Wins

The first Republican debate has finished, and the analysis and spin will begin in earnest. I'm sure that by morning, my e-mail will be filled with messages insisting on promoting one candidate over another, but I already have a few conclusions to share with CQ readers and to inspire debate in this comment thread. * Who won? -- Mitt Romney won this debate. He looked relaxed, answered clearly, showed real warmth and a sense of humor, and actually answered the questions asked of him -- even the stupid ones, to which I'll return shortly. After Romney, one has to think that Jim Gilmore and Mike Huckabee may have made some strides in breaking out of the third tier. They also showed that they could connect emotionally to the audience and give clear, thoughtful answers. * Who lost? -- Not everyone who didn't win lost, but a couple of candidates obviously...

May 4, 2007

NRO Debate Forum

Last night, I had the pleasure of analyzing the debate with my excellent co-bloggers at Heading Right as it happened, and then recapping it at Debate Central in a half-hour roundtable which has now been podcasted by BlogTalkRadio. Afterwords, National Review offered me the opportunity to participate in their Symposium on the Reagan Library Debate, along with Yuval Levin, Kathleen Parker, John F Pitney Jr, Peter Robinson, Lisa Schiffren, and of course, Kathryn Jean Lopez. The consensus appears to be that the debate format was so awful as to make it almost inconsequential. Everyone agreed that Rudy did not help himself, although apparently Survey USA's snap poll showed Rudy winning the debate among California watchers. Perhaps that was because he didn't get to talk as much as the other candidates, as Chris Matthews at times seemed to play keep-away from Rudy. After that, the responses vary, and all are intriguing....

Cinema Fredité

I see the Los Angeles Times has spent decades living in and reporting on the film community without learning anything about acting. In their Celebrity News section, Tina Daunt wonders whether voters will confuse Fred Thompson the politician with the roles performed by Fred Thompson the actor. She speaks with a USC professor who apparently doesn't understand the difference, either (via Hot Air): But in the age of YouTube, this performance could raise an intriguing political question: How does a performer eyeing a presidential run deal with a video history that can be downloaded, taken out of context, chopped into embarrassing pieces and then distributed endlessly though cyberspace? Some conservative political blogs are already considering the problem. "Not only do politicians have to worry about getting comfortable with a crowd and saying something that might be caught on tape," said USC professor Leo Braudy, a pop culture expert, who has...

May 5, 2007

Fred's Debut

Fred Thompson appeared last night at the Lincoln Club, an influential group of California power brokers in the GOP, giving a speech which broadly outlines his agenda. Given that the Lincoln Club could have invited almost any of the 2008 primary candidates to speak at their annual dinner, the choice of Thompson gives the impression of a tacit endorsement of his candidacy -- and the Lincoln Club’s endorsement (tacit or otherwise) carries a powerful weight to anyone fortunate enough to receive it. The speech itself serves as an excellent entrée into the race. On the Iraq war, he remained steadfast in its central importance to American global security. On economics and taxes, he stayed close to the federalist philosophies that have become his hallmark. Thompson also attacked government waste, red tape, and its intrusion into areas without a Constitutional mandate -- and its poor performance when it does. I've extensively...

May 6, 2007

Fred And John

Readers can tell that the media has begun to take Fred Thompson seriously as a candidate, because the profiles on him have become more sharp and land on the front pages. Today, the Washington Post takes a turn at Fred, noting the similarities between his positions and that of his friend and colleague, John McCain -- and wonders why the base pines for Fred and mostly eschews McCain: Fred Thompson fervently backed the Iraq war, railed against an expanding federal government, took stands that occasionally annoyed his party and rarely spoke about his views on social issues during his tenure as a senator from Tennessee or in his writings and speeches since leaving office. In short, the man some in the GOP are touting as a dream candidate has often sounded like the presidential hopeful many of them seem ready to dismiss: Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). With some in the...

Newsweek Practicing Early For Poll Follies

Newsweek publishes a breathless account of how George Bush's approval rating has dropped to 28%, and how leading Democrat contenders now outpoll the Republicans across the board for the 2008 presidential race. Coincidence, Newsweek asks? They should have asked that question of their pollsters: It’s hard to say which is worse news for Republicans: that George W. Bush now has the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation, or that he seems to be dragging every ’08 Republican presidential candidate down with him. But According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, the public’s approval of Bush has sunk to 28 percent, an all-time low for this president in our poll, and a point lower than Gallup recorded for his father at Bush Sr.’s nadir. The last president to be this unpopular was Jimmy Carter who also scored a 28 percent approval in 1979. This remarkably low rating seems...

May 7, 2007

Richardson: Strength Through Surrender

Bill Richardson made his appearance on BlogTalkRadio's Heading Left show this afternoon, and he spoke about his position on the Iraq war. Not surprisingly, he favors a complete deauthorization of the war, along the lines proposed by Hillary Clinton and Robert Byrd. However, Richardson would go even farther than most Democrats. He would pull American troops out of Baghdad, but also from Anbar and Diyala, where they face al-Qaeda terrorists and where we have made a lot of progress in engaging the local tribes. Here's Richardson on his vision for Iraq: What I would do is call for a deauthorization on the war, on the basis of the authorization is now, I believe invalid, because there were no weapons of mass destruction, as that language indicated, in the initial war authorization. So I would deauthorize the war, I would set a timetable of all troops out by the end of...

May 9, 2007

The Rest Were Pledged

When evaluating leadership, people usually value two traits the most -- getting the facts straight and remaining calm enough to absorb them. Barack Obama failed in both yesterday, as he used the Kansas tornadoes as a talking point on the campaign trail and informed the audience that 10,000 people had died in them( via QandO): Barack Obama, caught up in the fervor of a campaign speech Tuesday, drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying 10,000 had died. The death toll was 12. "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died - an entire town destroyed," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser. His campaign manager later said that Obama had meant "at least ten". Well, why not just get the facts straight and say twelve? That...

May 10, 2007

Rudy To Embrace Pro-Choice

Rudy Giuliani has had a tough four weeks on one particular issue. In trying to make his pro-choice positions more palatable, he has damaged the image of consistency and toughness that makes his candidacy compelling in the first place. During the last debate, he fumbled on a question about whether a repeal of Roe v Wade would be beneficial, which made him look confused. Apparently, Rudy has had enough of ducking and weaving, and has decided to hit the abortion issue head-on in an attempt to get it behind him: After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday. At the same time, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign —...

May 11, 2007

Edwards To Grow The Federal Government By 36%

For those who believe the federal government has grown too large and its budget a threat to the nation's economic health. neither party has offered much in the way of good news over the last few years. The Republicans offered tax cuts while increasing spending at an astonishing rate for supposed small-government conservatives. The Democrats have been worse, wanting to rescind the tax cuts so they can spend the extra money they believe the new taxes will raise. However, as bad as both parties have been, John Edwards promises something new and different. He promises to make it worse by adding so much new spending that it would create a budget 36% larger than FY2007, within just eight years: Presidential candidate John Edwards is offering more policy proposals than any other candidate in the primary and his ideas are winning loud applause from Democratic audiences. The question is whether other...

May 12, 2007

When Sports Analogies Attack!

If politicians insist on using sports analogies, they should at least tailor them for the audience they intend to impress. Unfortunately, Sam Brownback may have learned that lesson the hard way today. The presidential aspirant from Kansas called an Indiana quarterback the best ever in front of a Wisconsin crowd, and got booed as a result: Note to Sen. Sam Brownback: When in Packerland, don’t diss Brett Favre. The Kansas Republican drew boos and groans from the audience at the state Republican Party convention Friday evening when he used a football analogy to talk about the need to rebuild the family. “This is fundamental blocking and tackling,” he said. “This is your line in football. If you don’t have a line, how many passes can Peyton Manning complete? Greatest quarterback, maybe, in NFL history.” How did Brownback manage to get this one wrong? I'd bet that at least 10% of...

Should Candidates Release Their Tax Returns?

Ever since Watergate, presidential candidates have released their tax records in order to show that they have nothing to hide. Only one major candidate refused to do so in the last twenty years, and Bill Clinton changed his mind for his re-election bid in 1996. This year, however, it looks like anyone releasing that information will be the exception rather than the rule (via Instapundit): In a break with the tradition of recent presidential campaigns, most of the major presidential candidates aren't releasing their income-tax filings. Edwards has indicated that he will keep his tax returns private, and while Romney is still considering his options, he has never released his returns in previous runs for office. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., aren't saying whether they will or not, but neither has released income tax forms filed this year. That means voters are likely to know less...

May 15, 2007

Hagel To Tilt At Windmills, Bloomberg To Be Sancho Panza

It's not too early to get some laughs from the presidential primaries. I missed this yesterday, but Chuck Hagel has begun mulling over an independent run for the presidency -- and apparently already has a running mate in mind: The Republican Party has been "hijacked" and led away from its core values, Chuck Hagel, the Republican Senator from Nebraska, said Sunday on Face The Nation. Hagel, who is still considering his options for the 2008 race, left open the possibility of becoming an independent and sharing a ticket with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "I am not happy with the Republican Party today," Hagel said. "It's been hijacked by a group of single-minded almost isolationists, insulationists, power-projectors." My friends at Power Line already have had their laughs over the "insulationists" part of Hagel's comment, but the rest of it makes no sense either. Hagel complains about isolationism and power...

Fred! Overshadows The Debate ... Again

Michael Moore challenged Fred Thompson to a debate. Fred Thompson replied --- and once again managed to cast his long shadow over the Republican presidential debate. It's 38 seconds of a down-home rhetorical spanking that manages to both address Moore and belittle him. I'm thinking Jack Palance in City Slickers, telling Bill Crystal, "I crap bigger than you." In Moore's case, though, it would be strictly figurative. Which do you think will have a more positive and lasting impact on Republican voters -- these 38 seconds or anything said in tonight's 90-minute debate? Oh, now, let's not always see the same hands ... UPDATE: Man, I could watch this over and over again. Talk about pitch-perfect ... and if you're wondering who Thompson references, there's a short explanation here. Thompson himself wrote about Guillen almost two weeks ago....

Debate Live Blog At Heading Right, Roundtable At Blog Talk Radio

Tonight, the second Republican presidential primary debate airs at 8 pm CT -- and Blog Talk Radio and Heading Right will team up to cover it. The entire team at Heading Right will be posting live at the site, offering a running conversation as the 90-minute debate progresses. Over a dozen top conservative BTR hosts will debate the debate, live, at the site. In fact -- we've already begun! At 10 pm CT, about thirty minutes after the end of the event, we will meet at Debate Central, the new live Internet debate forum for BTR. I will moderate a post-debate roundtable with a number of BTR hosts for 30 minutes. We'll talk about the highs and lows, who gained and who lost ground, and the impact on the early primary efforts. We can even take your calls, live, to address how you felt about the debates -- so...

Giuliani Wins, But Paul Threw The Game

Team Rudy should send a hundred roses to Ron Paul -- yellow roses, of course -- after the Congressman essentially tossed the debate to Giuliani. Rudy had a pretty good night going anyway, but when Paul as much as said that the terrorists had a point in killing 3,000 Americans, Rudy let fly with the righteous indigation that an entire nation was busily hurling at their television screens. Ron Paul -- the Black Sox of Republican debaters. Rudy needed a good night after a lackluster first debate, and he got it. He also managed somehow to be the only candidate to criticize a Democrat on specific policy stands. However, he wasn't the only candidate who benefitted. John McCain did considerably better than his Angry Man performance in the first debate, coming across as measured and poised. Mitt Romney continued to show that he has mastered the format. Even Mike Huckabee,...

May 16, 2007

Gallup On GOP Race: Already Outdated?

Gallup reports on a survey taken last week on the presidential primary races that shows Rudy Giuliani dipping down to his lowest level of the campaign, while John McCain seems to be rebounding a bit. Rudy took a nine-point hit over the past five weeks, while McCain went up seven: The national front-runners for the 2008 presidential nominations continue to be former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the Republican Party and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party. Giuliani's pro-choice views were openly vetted during the Republican debate held earlier this month at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, and he has since tried to clarify them. It is not yet clear whether the resulting controversy has significantly harmed him among Republican voters. ... Some of the changes in Giuliani's and McCain's support levels can be attributed to support for actor and former Tennessee Sen....

May 18, 2007

Fred: Kucinich Is Chavez Lite

Normally I'd put a post about the Fairness Doctrine in the First Amendment category, but not this one. Fred Thompson serves up more red meat, this time on Dennis Kucinich's back, by comparing the Democrat's efforts to revive the speech-limitation legislation to Hugo Chavez' media clampdown in Venezuela: I had planned on talking a bit today about Venezuela. The president there doesn’t like the way his media is covering him, so he’s doing away with the free press. He’s established rules on what he thinks is fair, and he’s denying licenses to television and radio stations that don’t play by government rules. I can’t criticize him now, though. After all, how would it seem for me to complain about another country, when our own congressional leadership is trying to put the same sort of rules in place here? To do so, they’re pulling the Fairness Doctrine out of the dustbin...

May 21, 2007

Mitt's Move

This far out from the primaries, most polling has little significance. It takes a national temperature for a process that plays out very carefully through selected states, and at a time when most people still have yet to see the candidates speak directly to them. However, the Des Moines Register knows how to poll Iowa caucus voters, and so far, Mitt's the man: Mitt Romney has sprinted ahead of presidential competitors John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in a new Iowa Poll of likely Republican caucus participants. The Des Moines Register poll shows Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, is the top choice of 30 percent of those who say they definitely or probably will attend the leadoff Iowa caucuses in January. McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona, nips former New York Mayor Giuliani for second place — 18 percent to 17 percent. This should get more serious analysis. Mitt has hardly...

May 22, 2007

Ron Paul Boomlet To Implode In 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ...

I have watched with some amusement as centrist, liberal and uncategorizable blogs attempt to herald Ron Paul as a reasonable conservative, especially after his statement in the last debate that claimed that American foreign policy invited the 9/11 attacks. That blame-America, 18th-century isolationist thinking appeals to a large subset of the voting population, and for the past week we have been treated to an avalanche of paeans to Ron Paul in the blogosphere. However, Republicans have always known that Ron Paul is a loose cannon waiting to blow up in the face of unsuspecting followers. Some intrepid bloggers, such as Curt at Flopping Aces, have a few more examples of Ron Paul's "truth-telling" that will also surely get the endorsement of these same bloggers. Right? Eleven years ago, the Houston Chronicle reported that Ron Paul's newsletter highlighted what he saw as a criminal community (emphases mine): Paul, writing in his...

Getting Rich Off Of Poverty

It turns out that poverty can be a lucrative industry -- if one charges colleges $50,000 to talk about Two Americas. Carla Marinucci reports from her San Francisco Chronicle blog that John Edwards charged that much to speak at UC Davis in January 2006 on the topic of poverty (via Memeorandum): Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who as a Democratic presidential candidate recently proposed an educational policy that urged "every financial barrier" be removed for American kids who want to go to college, has been going to college himself -- as a high paid speaker, his financial records show. The candidate charged a whopping $55,000 to speak at to a crowd of 1,787 the taxpayer-funded University of California at Davis on Jan. 9, 2006 last year, Joe Martin, the public relations officer for the campus' Mondavi Center confirmed Monday. That amount -- which comes to about $31 a person in...

May 24, 2007

Team Hillary Dumping Iowa?

Hillary Clinton's campaign tried to do damage control after an internal memo revealed that they have considered stiffing Iowa caucus voters in January. Thus far, Hillary has not captured the imagination of Iowans, and her third-place status behind John Edwards and Barack Obama had at least one of her advisors considering a retreat: Aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) scrambled late yesterday to control the fallout from a leaked memo advocating that she pull her campaign out of Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses, where she is trailing in polls. The memo, written by Clinton deputy campaign manager Mike Henry, exposed a rift among Clinton advisers over her approach to the first real test of the presidential campaign. Henry advocated focusing the senator's resources on the Jan. 22 New Hampshire primary and the wave of states that follow with contests on Feb. 5. Skipping Iowa would be a stunning move for the...

May 25, 2007

Fred Tries To Touch All The Bases

Fred Thompson continued his pre-campaign campaign for the Republican presidential nomination yesterday in Connecticut, giving a speech to a gathering of state Republican activists. Ryan Sager at the New York Sun attended the speech, and gives it rather high marks for both delivery and content, in contrast to his Lincoln Club speech in California earlier this month. Fred gave a rather flat delivery of a good speech in terms of content in that venue, but this time delivered on the enthusiasm that his efforts have produced among his supporters. However, Fred seems to want everyone to love him, except perhaps Democrats. Despite scorching some fellow Republicans for the immigration reform compromise, he led off the speech by hailing Rep. Chris Shays for his work in Congress. As I explain at Heading Right, Shays hardly provides a model of conservative tenacity. He co-sponsored the House version of the BCRA, and the...

May 29, 2007

Choosy Social Cons Choose Rudy

According to Pew Research and the Politico, a significant part of Rudy Giuliani's national polling lead comes from conservatives at odds with his domestic policy views. Rudy gets 30% of the social conservatives in the GOP, a factor which keeps him in the lead over John McCain, who gets only 19% of that bloc. What does that tell us about the Republican primary voter base? Has pragmatism won out over ideology, or is there an overriding ideology that commands that support? At Heading Right, I take a look at some of those dynamics and propose my own analysis....

Romney Pulls Into Second Place

Just a few days ago, I asked Duane "Generalissimo" Patterson why Romney had such a difficult time progressing in the polls. He seemed mired at 8% support despite having the best organization and fundraising operations in the GOP. Now, however, a new Rasmussen poll shows that Romney may have found some wind for those massive sails as he outpolled John McCain and moved into second place by a razor-thin margin: The immigration reform debate may be shaking up the race for the Republican Presidential nomination. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has inched past Arizona Senator John McCain for second place in the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone poll. Just two weeks ago, Romney was in fourth place among GOP hopefuls. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) remains on top with 25% support. That’s essentially unchanged from last week. In fact, Giuliani has been at 25% or 26% in...

May 30, 2007

Fred Takes The First Step (Updated)

Fred Thompson will take the first step towards declaring himself a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, according to Ryan Sager at the New York Sun. After reportedly meeting with campaign-finance advisors, Thompson will launch a presidential pre-exploratory committee, in a move that will delight Republicans and satirists in equal measure: Speculation over whether Fred Thompson is serious about running for president just went toes-up. Mr. Thompson's not-yet-a campaign has confirmed: He's dipping his toes in. Specifically, a Thompson adviser told The New York Sun yesterday, he will announce the formation of a presidential "testing-the-waters" committee early next week — possibly as early as Sunday. A "testing the waters" committee is a step before the more familiar presidential exploratory committee. It allows the former Tennessee senator to raise money and hire staff. But it also prevents him from doing a number of other things: advertising his candidacy, referring to himself...

The Romney Interview

I just finished my one-on-one exclusive interview with Governor Mitt Romney as we traveled between campaign stops in West Des Moines. The weather turned poor and we battled road noise, but in 15 minutes, Romney gave an impressive performance as a man with a solid grasp on policy -- and of someone completely confident in his ability to master it. This comes as no surprise, of course. Romney built a billion-dollar business, rescued the Salt Lake City Olympics, and won the governor's race in Massachussetts as a Republican. Someone with that kind of resumé could be forgiven a little cockiness, but Romney comes across as completely grounded and accessible, even in the tight confines of a minivan, talking with a citizen journalist. I asked Governor Romney some tough questions regarding his immigration stance. Readers of Heading Right have already learned of Romney's specific issues with the current immigration proposal....

May 31, 2007

Thompson Gets Serious

Up to now, Fred Thompson has brilliantly remained coy about his presidential ambitions -- to the point of exasperation among some of his would-be fans. Now, however, Fred has made clear that he intends to run, and in a USA Today interview, how he plans to do it: In an interview with USA TODAY, however, the former Tennessee senator not only makes it clear that he plans to run, he describes how he aims to do it. He's planning a campaign that will use blogs, video posts and other Internet innovations to reach voters repelled by politics-as-usual in both parties. ... Thompson could reshape a GOP contest in which each of the three leaders has significant vulnerabilities and none of the seven second-tier contenders has broken through. Without formally joining the race — he's preparing to do that as early as the first week of July — Thompson already is...

June 3, 2007

Giuliani Lead Steady But Softer

A new ABC/Washington Post poll shows Rudy Giuliani maintaining a strong lead over most of the Republican challengers for the presidential nomination. However, the underlying internals of the poll show that his popularity has softened, which leaves room for Rudy's opponents to make inroads on his lead: A softening of underlying confidence in Rudolph W. Giuliani, including some damage on the abortion issue, could hearten his current -- and future -- opponents for the Republican presidential nomination. Giuliani's hardly in trouble; he maintains large leads over his opponents on key personal attributes including leadership and electability. But he's lost ground on empathy, honesty and inspiration; his support is not strong -- and a third of Republicans now flatly rule him out because of his position on abortion, up from just under a quarter earlier this year. Giuliani remains the Republican frontrunner, with overall candidate preferences stable compared with an ABC...

June 4, 2007

Is It Newt's Time Yet?

Newt Gingrich hinted in even stronger terms this weekend that he will run for President. He plans to spend the summer lecturing, and after a workshop series in late September will make his decision, he told Fox News: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) fueled further speculation Sunday about entering the Republican race for president by taking shots at the Bush administration. “The government is not functioning,” Gingrich said on Fox News. “It’s not getting the job done, and Republicans need to confront this reality.” The face of Republican opposition to President Clinton’s administration, Gingrich said he will hold workshops on Sept. 27 and 29 to discuss “fundamental change.” He hinted he will make a decision about running after the workshops. Asked about his favorites in the GOP race, Gingrich said Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and prospective candidate Fred Thompson each “bring their unique strengths." But they need to do...

Mitt Romney Interview Transcript Published

The transcript from my one-on-one interview with Mitt Romney is now available at Heading Right, and I think that CQ readers and CQ Radio listeners will find it very revealing. As I noted when I first broadcast the interview, I wanted to press Romney on foreign policy, a topic that has not received much attention so far in this campaign other than the war on terror. Before we got to that, though, I asked the Governor about immigration. He had talked about his opposition to the current compromise under consideration in the Senate based on the Z-visa plan, and I asked him to elaborate on how he would change that part of the legislation: EM: ... Now, your main problem in this bill as you explained in the interviews today, has been the “Z” provisions which is something that kicks in, it’s supposed to kick in after the triggers but...

Four-State Fred

The strategy for Fred Thompson's presidential run has begun to coalesce, reports the Wall Street Journal, and to no one's great shock, it relies heavily on the Internet. However, the WSJ points out an opening that hasn't seen much reporting -- and one that Fred could easily use to his advantage: As a late entry into the crowded, expensive, presidential campaign, Fred Thompson's first big test of viability will be his ability to raise money quickly. A major part of the former Tennessee senator's strategy is a heavy reliance on the Internet to get his message out and to raise funds. He is also trying to tap into the large number of well-heeled Republican financiers who have yet to commit to a 2008 hopeful, amid widespread disaffection among party loyalists with the current field. Yet a late start and signs that Mr. Thompson may adopt an unconventional campaign style --...

June 5, 2007

Flashback To Impotence

The Bush administration has rightly scotched the idea of a revival for a particularly inane Jimmy Carter policy -- the Olympic boycott. Both the White House and the USOC have immediately rejected a suggestion by Governor Bill Richardson that the US boycott the Beijing Olympics for its indifference to the genocide in Darfur: The Bush administration and American Olympic officials are rebuffing calls to consider a boycott of the Olympic Games in Beijing next year to protest China's sluggish response to the genocide in Darfur. The U.S. Olympic Committee pointedly rejected the idea of a boycott, which was floated by Governor Richardson of New Mexico on Sunday night during a debate for Democratic presidential candidates. "We completely disagree with the point of view expressed by Governor Richardson," a spokesman for the committee, Darryl Seibel, said yesterday. "The Olympic movement is about sport, not politics, and, as has been demonstrated in...

Fred Moves Into Second

It's amazing how far a non-candidate can go in a race. Fred hasn't begun to run for the Republican presidential nomination, and Rasmussen shows him almost within the margin of error for the lead: With former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson taking his first formal steps towards a Presidential run and the immigration debate creating challenges for Arizona Senator John McCain, the race for the Republican Presidential nomination has an entirely different look this week. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) remains on top, but his support has slipped to 23%. That’s down two points from a week ago and is his lowest level of support all year. Earlier, Giuliani had consistently enjoyed support in the mid-30s. That was before Thompson’s name was added to the mix and before Giuliani stumbled on the abortion issue in the first GOP debate of the season. Thompson, who just formed an exploratory...

Debate Live Blog And Roundtable At Heading Right & BTR

Tonight, the crew at Heading Right will live-blog the Republican presidential debate ob CNN. Afterwards, we'll conduct a roundtable with Rick Moran, Frank P, Macranger, and Jim Lynch at Debate Central, starting at 9 pm ET. Be sure to join the conversation!...

Post Debate Analysis: Giuliani Keeps The Crown For Now

The third GOP debate is over, although there may be some who haven't realized it yet. What it lacked in firepower, it more than made up in pointlessness. And while CNN may not have been anywhere near as bad as MS-NBC, they should still be embarassed that their audience asked better questions than CNN's journalists. The format for tonight's debate seemed forced and odd. First, Wolf Blitzer promised everyone that he wouldn't let the candidates dodge questions -- and then asked questions that made little sense. He wanted the candidates on stage to talk about Fred Thompson. He wanted answers on Genesis, and he wanted them now. Romney got to answer the same old question about his Mormonism. The audience participation section went better than it did with MS-NBC -- and in fact better than the first half of CNN's show. The candidates got to actually answer questions on policy...

June 6, 2007

Fred Kicks Off

Fred Thompson took another small step towards his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination yesterday. He launched his new web site, I'm With Fred, the first overt act he's made since dropping big hints in March. Right now, the site has little content, other than his introductory message. He has a postscript to it that promises "a lot more coming," and asks viewers to return often. The site has functions for donations and volunteers, and even includes a web widget for supporters to place on their websites to pass through donations to his campaign. Given the amount of essays Fred Thompson has written in the last few weeks, I'm guessing the content -- his policy positions -- will shortly arrive. In the meantime, for those interested in supporting Fred, the website gives them the opportunity....

Pew Poll: Most Voters Dim

Last night, I complained about the repetitive nature of the questioning at the debates. For the third straight debate, Rudy Giuliani had to state his position on abortion, and Mitt Romney had to answer for his change of position over the last two-plus years. As it turns out, though, CNN may have had a good reason to ask the same plodding questions over and over again, as Pew Research discovered that less than half of the voters have paid attention: The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted May 30-June 3 among 1,503 adults, finds that overall voter engagement in the presidential campaign remains somewhat limited, despite intense press coverage of the race. Just 33% of all voters say they have given a lot of thought to the presidential candidates, up only modestly from December (27%). However, Republican voters have caught up...

Have The Democrats Leapt To Faith?

To read Ruth Marcus this morning, one would believe that the Democrats had begun a revival tour rather than a presidential primary. She describes the latest talk from the campaign trail as a conversion movement that will roll holy rollers to the Democrats, but manages to miss the fact that none of these stories involve any influence on actual policy: You know it's a different kind of candidate forum when Hillary Clinton allows that she sometimes prays (no doubt, she says, to some divine eye-rolling) "Oh, Lord, why can't you help me lose weight?" and describes how "prayer warriors" sustained her through the public dissection of her husband's infidelity. When Barack Obama muses on the nature of good vs. evil. When John Edwards recounts that he "strayed away from the Lord" in adulthood, only to find that "my faith came roaring back" after the death of his 16-year-old son. ......

June 7, 2007

Go Away, Kid, Ya Bother Us

Robert Novak reports that John Edwards has problems within the Democratic Party, even though his candidacy seems to have gained some momentum in Iowa. He has disenchanted the power brokers with his move towards class warfare, and the revelations of his financial dealings make the Democrats very nervous about Edwards as a potential nominee: Even though Edwards may end up being the party's nominee, prominent Democrats are surprisingly candid about him. Mark Siegel, a 35-year party insider, told me: "He came to Washington as a 'New Democrat,' but he's not that kind of Democrat anymore. He's into class warfare." Edwards has not worn well with party colleagues. Campaign consultant Bob Shrum was enthusiastic about Edwards after working on his 1998 Senate victory in North Carolina and unsuccessfully advised Gore to make him his 2000 running mate. But Shrum chose Kerry over Edwards as his 2004 presidential client. In his newly...

June 8, 2007

The Next Children's Crusade

In the thirteenth century, the fabled (and almost certainly mythical) Children's Crusade set out to bring peace to the Holy Land. According to the legend, a young boy proselytized throughout central Europe that Jesus had told him in a vision that an army of pure children could liberate Jerusalem just by showing up, and that the waters of the Mediterranean would part to greet them when they arrived in Italy. They set out in boats instead, sail to Tunisia -- where they all get sold into slavery and are never heard from again, even in legend. One might think that anyone relying on this kind of strategy 800 years later would automatically discredit himself as a leader. However, John Edwards thinks this is a better way to fight terror than actually fighting terror: Senator Edwards is outlining a new national security strategy that hinges on the creation of a 10,000-person...

Will Fred Damage McCain? (Update: No Big Loss?)

The advent of Fred Thompson has been seen by analysts as a challenge to the top three Republican candidates for the presidential nomination -- Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. Conservatives dissatisfied with the options have wanted a traditional conservative with less political baggage to enter the race as a white knight, and so far, Thompson fits the bill. Today, though, the Washington Post reports that McCain may be especially vulnerable to Fred's entry, especially at the organizational level: John Dowd represented Sen. John McCain in his darkest hour, the "Keating Five" scandal. He supported McCain the first time he ran for president in 2000 and signed up to be a major fundraiser for him in this year's presidential race. But when former senator Fred D. Thompson began thinking about running, the Washington lawyer changed his mind. For McCain (Ariz.), who started off as the favorite to win the...

The Culture Of Corruption, Presidential Version

The midterm election theme of the "culture of corruption" functioned as an argument for Democratic control of Congress, after several scandals rocked the Republican caucuses. The Democrats apparently like the theme so much that they plan to incorporate it into their presidential campaign -- but perhaps not in the manner some might expect (via Big Lizards): The Clinton Campaign today announced that Florida Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Congressman Alcee Hastings have been named national Campaign Co-Chairs. "We need a leader with a clear vision and sound judgment, who can work with a Democratic Congress to renew the promise of America. Hillary is that leader," Rep. Wasserman Schultz said. Rep. Hastings said, "When we elect the next President Clinton, this country will be a much better place for the African-American community, Floridians and all Americans." Both Reps. Wasserman Schultz and Hastings serve in the Democratic leadership in the House of...

June 10, 2007

The Fred Movement Started Early

Stephen Hayes reviews the Draft Fred movement, which most believe started last March, but in reality began just after the midterm elections. In one sense, the narrative Hayes gives Weekly Standard readers shows that the notion of a draft is somewhat fanciful, but it also shows that the grassroots response to the Fred Thompson candidacy has exceeded everyone's expectations: On November 29, 2006, Tennessee senator Bill Frist said that he would not be running for president. The same day, the Wall Street Journal noted that the announcement "leaves a Republican void in the South, and underscores the absence of any major center-to-right Southern figure in the Republican Party's presidential field thus far." Others saw the same void. Thompson fielded calls from several friends and former colleagues in the following days. Spencer Abraham, who had resigned as George W. Bush's secretary of energy shortly after the 2004 election, knew Thompson from...

Continuing The Bigotry

Sally Denton uses today's Los Angeles Times op-ed page as a launching pad for the movie based on her book, "American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857," and as a means to propagate more anti-Mormon bigotry at the expense of Mitt Romney. Denton insists that Romney has to respond about the nature of his faith if he expects to win the nomination for the Presidency -- and uses a lot of 19th-century examples to "prove" her case: MITT ROMNEY'S Mormonism threatens his presidential candidacy in the same way that John F. Kennedy's Catholicism did when he ran for president in 1960. Overt and covert references to Romney's religion — subtle whispering as well as unabashed inquiries about the controversial sect he belongs to — plague his campaign. None of his responses so far have silenced the skeptics. Recent polls indicate that from 25% to 35% of registered voters...

June 11, 2007

Is Colin Powell An Obama Advisor?

See Eli Lake's response below. The New York Sun offers a tantalizing headline that makes it appear that Colin Powell has changed his political affiliation from Republican to Democrat. In an Eli Lake article titled "GOP's Powell Is Now Advising Obama", the Sun appears to report that Powell has joined Obama's team: Colin Powell, who only a decade ago was being discussed as a possible Republican presidential nominee and who more recently served as President Bush's first secretary of state, is advising a Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Obama of Illinois. Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday, Mr. Powell said it was "too soon" to say whether he would endorse the Republican nominee for president, and he added that he is reserving judgment for now. Lake doesn't clarify what this means until the third paragraph: "I've been around this town a long time, and I know everybody who is running...

Will Swings And Misses

George Will attempts to pop the Fred Thompson boomlet in his latest Newsweek column. Unfortunately for Will, Fred Thompson is not the lightweight cipher he dismisses so casually, and the normally excellent Will winds up looking a little bit of a lightweight himself: Some say he is the Republicans' Rorschach test: They all see in him what they crave. Or he might be the Republicans' dot-com bubble, the result of restless political investors seeking value that the untutored eye might not discern and that might be difficult to quantify but which the investors are sure must be there, somewhere, somehow. One does not want to be unfair to Thompson, who may have hidden depths. But ask yourself this: If he did not look like a basset hound who had just read a sad story—say, "Old Yeller"—and if he did not talk like central casting's idea of the god Sincerity, would...

June 12, 2007

LA Times Poll Spells Trouble For Democrats

The new Los Angeles Times poll shows Democrats in trouble in both Congress and the presidential race. Support for Congress has dropped to historic lows, and the luster has worn from Nancy Pelosi's historic win as House Speaker. Hillary Clinton looks stronger than ever for the nomination -- but that may be bad news as well. At Heading Right, I dissect the poll, check the sample, and determine that it looks better for Republicans than one might think. One Republican will certainly delight in the survey -- and may light up a cigar to celebrate. UPDATE: Meanwhile, Rasmussen has even better numbers for Fred (via Hot Air): Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has to share his spot atop the field of Republican Presidential hopefuls this week. The newest face in the race, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, is now tied with Giuliani. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone...

June 13, 2007

Post Scolds Hillary On Trade

Hillary Clinton announced her opposition to a free-trade deal with South Korea this weekend, citing concerns over reciprocity and an imbalance in existing trade. Today, the Washington Post editorial board scolds her for short-sightedness, and wonders what kind of pandering to both labor and manufacturing we can expect from her as President: THERE ARE pluses and minuses, it's often said, to having a former first lady running for president. On the debit side, for example, is the oligarchical aura of two families passing the presidency back and forth for 24 or possibly 28 consecutive years. On the positive side is the experience Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) gained during eight years in the White House, experience that ought to translate into a broader national perspective than a senator or governor can attain. But has it? That's the question raised by Ms. Clinton's announcement over the weekend that she will oppose...

The Problem With Primary Oppo (Updated)

Fred Thompson’s entry into the presidential race will raise the flag on another feature of the campaign: opposition research and attack. The Politico reports that other campaigns have prepared for Fred’s entry, and they are poised to dent his momentum by focusing on his professional career and his track record, certainly legitimate targets. Some of the selected topics appear overblown, however, and veer more into the nature of personal attack -- such as Thompson's status as a trial attorney and his limited lobbying career. However, the nature of these pushbacks may backfire on the other campaigns, and calls into question whether they have forgotten the long-term goal of the primaries. At Heading Right, I ask whether this will help the party elect a Republican to the White House, and also talk through some of the points that the other campaigns hope to use as traction against Fred. In short, they...

June 14, 2007

The Wrong Direction

Yesterday I explained at Heading Right that primary campaigns should chiefly focus on positive promotion of their own candidates rather than spend much of their time attacking their colleagues in the primaries. According to The Politico, John McCain's campaign has not taken that advice. Instead, they have decided to focus their guns on another Republican presidential hopeful -- and it's not even one that's ahead of them: In another sign of John McCain's plan to assault former Mitt Romney over his alleged flip-flops, the Arizona senator's campaign has purchased the website "www.mittvsfact.com" and will launch it in the coming weeks as a compendium of what they say are the former governor's differing stances. The McCain camp yesterday attacked Romney on abortion under a "Mitt vs Fact" letterhead that aped their rival's campaign logo. Late in the day, a tipster pointed out that a URL of the same had been purchased...

June 18, 2007

Obama Recedes, Fred Surges

The new Gallup poll for the presidential campaigns shows the front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, still leading their respective races. The action takes place below as the contenders jockey for position -- and Obama has dropped off the pace just a little: A USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted earlier this month found Clinton's chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama, pulling even with Clinton. However, in the current poll Obama has fallen back to a tie for second place with former Vice President Al Gore. At 21%, current support for Obama is near the low end of the support range seen for him since January, while Gore's 18% ties with an early March poll as his best result. Former Sen. John Edwards, once tied with Gore for third place, has been stalled in the 11% to 12% range since May. The only other candidate earning the support of at least 5% of...

More Rezko Woes For Obama

Barack Obama has worked mightily to distance himself from former fundraiser Tony Rezko, but the Chicago Sun-Times keeps finding more bread crumbs between the two. According to their sources, the indicted businessman contributed three times as much money to Obama's campaigns, including some critical assistance in the primaries for his current position in the Senate: During his 12 years in politics, Sen. Barack Obama has received nearly three times more campaign cash from indicted businessman Tony Rezko and his associates than he has publicly acknowledged, the Chicago Sun-Times has found. Obama has collected at least $168,308 from Rezko and his circle. Obama also has taken in an unknown amount of money from people who attended fund-raising events hosted by Rezko since the mid-1990s. But seven months ago, Obama told the Sun-Times his "best estimate" was that Rezko raised "between $50,000 and $60,000" during Obama's political career. Obama, who wants to...

June 19, 2007

Hillary -- Inevitable?

The line on Hillary Clinton in this election cycle has her as an inevitability for the Democratic presidential nomination. Despite misgivings over her strong negatives, the Democrats have not seen any candidate of substance challenging her in the primaries. Her two closest announced challengers have a grand total of eight years' experience in national office combined, and Hillary has run an adept and disciplined campaign. However, as Howard Kurtz points out, that still hasn't ended the questions about Hillary's negatives and the nagging feeling among some Democrats that they are heading for a fall: That, at least, is the consensus view of media wizards, strategists, pollsters and other kibitzers, that HRC is a virtual lock for the nomination. An official with a rival campaign told me that Hillary has an 80 percent chance of being the party's candidate, and most neutral observers would probably go with a higher number. So...

Thompson Hits #1 With A Bullet

Rasmussen's latest polling shows that enthusiasm continues to build for a Fred Thompson candidacy. In fact, Fred pushed his way to the top of the poll, dislodging Rudy Giuliani from the top spot for the first time: The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson earning support from 28% of Likely Republican Primary Voters. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani attracts support from 27%. While Thompson’s one-point edge is statistically insignificant, it is the first time all year that anybody but Giuliani has been on top in Rasmussen Reports polling. A week ago, Thompson and Giuliani were tied at 24%. It remains an open question as to how Thompson will hold up once he actually enters the campaign and has to compete directly with other candidates. To date, he retains the allure of the new kid in town while GOP voters already know the...

Rudy's Very Bad Day

When Rudy Giuliani has a bad day, he goes all out. America's Mayor spent June 19th parrying three different national stories, all of them reflective on his campaign for the presidency, and none of them complimentary. The first story was his sudden drop into second place in the latest Rasmussen poll. The second was his sudden departure from the Iraq Study Group: Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said. Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war....

June 20, 2007

Democratic Fire Sale Renewed

Remember the 1992 presidential campaign, and the two-for-one deal offered by Bill Clinton? A vote for Bill also got Hillary as a bonus. Now, Carl Bernstein tells the London Telegraph, Hillary has renewed the offer -- but Bill will run the White House behind the scenes. At Heading Right, I look at the implications of this end-run around the 22nd Amendment. If Bill has better political judgment than Hillary, then why isn't the Democratic Party looking for a President who can stand on his/her own two feet instead? UPDATE: 22nd Amendment, not 25th. Back to civics class! Thanks to CQ commenter AA for the correction....

Rudy: Against The Line-Item Veto Before He Supported It?

Rudy Giuliani has had a tough week, and he's making it even more difficult. Today, Giuliani sang the praises of the line-item veto, an idea conservatives have boosted even during Democratic administrations. However, Rudy omitted a little personal history regarding the line-item veto that Congress passed in 1995: In his speech, Giuliani called for the country to enact a constitutional amendment that allows for a line-item veto so the president could strip wasteful spending from legislation. "The president doesn't have that power under our Constitution," he said. "You're only going to change that with a constitutional amendment." As mayor in the 1990s, Giuliani successfully sued to challenge the constitutionality of the line-item veto that would have given President Clinton that such power. Technically, this isn't entirely inconsistent. Giuliani wants a Constitutional amendment adding the line-item veto -- so that people like Rudy Giuliani can't sue to end it if it...

June 21, 2007

Arising From The Dead Yet Again

Ralph Nader has Democrats looking for a wooden stake and a truckload of garlic. Nader, who helped bury two Democratic presidential campaigns, threatens to run again -- and has already taken aim at the frontrunner: Ralph Nader says he is seriously considering running for president in 2008 because he foresees another Tweedledum-Tweedledee election that offers little real choice to voters. "You know the two parties are still converging -- they don't even debate the military budget anymore," Nader said in a 30-minute interview. "I really think there needs to be more competition from outside the two parties." ... And while Nader, 73, realizes he might once again be accused of being a "spoiler" candidate, he says the Democrats could win in 2008, unless they spoil things for themselves. "Democrats have become, over the years, very good at electing very bad Republicans," Nader said. "Democrats always know how to implode, how...

June 22, 2007

Helping Others By Helping Himself?

It looks like John Edwards believes that charity begins at home after all, even when home is a 28,000-square-foot mansion. Edwards' Two Americas rhetoric has given him a reputation as a voice for the poor, but the New York Times reports that his non-profit for fighting poverty mostly benefitted the vote-poor John Edwards: John Edwards ended 2004 with a problem: how to keep alive his public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that could finance his travels and pay for his political staff. Mr. Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005, and — unlike a sister charity he created to raise scholarship money for poor students — the main beneficiary of the...

Look Who's On BlogTalkRadio!

Arkansas Governor and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has discovered the power of BlogTalkRadio! The Huckabee team has created a BTR channel for their campaign to keep their supporters informed of Governor Huckabee's activities. Their premiere show aired today at 10 am CT, and they have another scheduled for tomorrow morning at 2:30 pm CT. Of course, just as with any other BTR show, you can download the podcasts and bookmark the RSS feed -- so be sure to add it to your feedreader. CQ Radio listeners can listen to my BTR interview with Gov. Huckabee here. UPDATE: I had the times wrong; the Huckabee show for Saturday will air live at 2:30 pm CT....

June 24, 2007

You Go, Boyfriend!

Guess whose ex-GFs think he's all that -- and a cowboy hat? According to the Times of London, Fred Thompson has attracted the beautiful women, and the beautiful women still appear charmed by the chivalrous Tennessee lawyer years later: IN the battle for the women’s vote, Fred Thompson has a secret weapon against Hillary Clinton - the legions of former girlfriends who still adore him and who want him to be president. The Hollywood actor and former Tennessee senator racked up an impressive list of conquests during his swinging bachelor days in the 1990s, but he appears to have achieved the impossible and kept their friendship and respect. Lorrie Morgan, a country singer who dated Thompson and considered marrying him in the mid1990s, told The Sunday Times: “I couldn’t think of a bad word to say about Fred if somebody put a gun to my head. “Fred is a perfect...

June 25, 2007

Don't Bet On It

The Times of London lost track of the calendar yesterday in their analysis of the presidential campaign. Sarah Baxter claims that John McCain may drop out of the race after the latest fundraising numbers come out next week, as pundits predict another lackluster quarter for McCain's campaign. Did they notice that it's still only June? THE former presidential front-runner, John McCain, may drop out of the 2008 race by September if his fundraising dries up and his poll ratings continue to drop, according to Republican insiders. The speculation, vigorously denied by McCain’s camp, is sweeping Republican circles after a disastrous few weeks in which the principled Arizona senator has clashed with the party’s conservative base on immigration and also alienated independent voters by backing President George W Bush’s troop surge in Iraq. Randy Pullen, chairman of the Arizona Republican party, said: “He’s a battler, so I’d expect him to carry...

Democrats Fret Over Fred

How do Republicans know when a good candidate has entered the primary race? If the Democrats start launching attacks before his official entry, that's a good indication that they're worried about him. Today they opened up on Fred Thompson, painting him as a lobbyist who has no qualms about whom or what he represents: Even before his expected July announcement, Fred Thompson's all-but-declared entry into the Republican presidential stakes has prompted the Democratic National Committee to attack him as a potential GOP front-runner and to use his prospective candidacy to raise money. Democratic strategists say Thompson's populist style and show-biz allure could prove extremely appealing in a general election at a time when voters are so down on Washington. So the party has launched a preemptive campaign against him that includes a DNC fundraising e-mail branding Thompson, "The inside-outsider." "Remember the Republican culture of corruption?" the letter asks. "The revolving...

June 26, 2007

The Hillary-Carmela Connection

Did Hillary Clinton inadvertently underscore the ambivalence felt by some Americans over her role in her husband's scandals in a humorous campaign ad last week? Margaret Carlson believes that Hillary made a mistake in playing the Carmela role in her Sopranos spoof, and that voters may see her in a similar light to Edie Falco's compromised and enabling wife: The ad touches close to the mother lode of Hillary's vulnerability among some women. When you ask them why they don't like her, they say it's because they don't understand why she makes goo-goo eyes at a guy who broke her heart multiple times and humiliated her daughter. After that, pretending to be a teenager in love makes them wonder what else she might be faking. The Carmela-Hillary juxtaposition has been made before by others, and not in Hillary's favor. For staying with a repeat philanderer, Carmela got to live in...

Visiting Misery On The Twin Cities

The anarchists and anti-globalists have already started organizing for next year's Republican National Convention, according to the Star-Tribune. Have they started getting signs printed and policy position papers ready to engage in an intellectual challenge to the GOP? Not quite: Anarchists and antiwar organizations preparing for the Republican National Convention are planning dozens of traffic blockades, are targeting perceived vulnerable spots in the Twin Cities metro area and are readying to spring from Internet promises to real-world action. An online posting by a group called Unconventional Action notes "the narrow on and off ramps" of Interstate Hwy. 94 and that Minneapolis and St. Paul are "12 miles apart, separated by a wide river spanned by 5 bridges and connected primarily" by I-94. "For these and other reasons, many believe that the RNC presents strategic vulnerabilities unique to any trade summit or party convention of recent years," the posting said. Basically,...

June 28, 2007

Auditioning For Second Fiddle?

Bill Richardson has failed to gain much traction in the Democratic primary race, remaining mired in single digits. A majority of respondents have never heard of Richardson, the two-time Governor of New Mexico and the owner of perhaps the best resume in either primary campaign. Dana Milbank reports that Richardson has the look of a candidate who's hoping for second best: Running for the vice presidency is a delicate operation, but Bill Richardson seems to be getting the hang of it. The New Mexico governor is running for president, of course, but should that fail he has already mastered the first responsibility of the running mate: Don't overshadow the top of the ticket. This trait was in evidence yesterday when Richardson gave a lunchtime foreign policy speech in Washington at the exact moment Hillary Clinton was giving one of her own. Leading a detailed, hour-long discussion about Iran in which...

June 29, 2007

Giuliani Claims Centrist Position

Rudy Giuliani either has given up attempting to sound conservative or has forgotten that all presidential primary politics is national in today's media environment. While trying to woo Californians, Rudy claimed that he would govern in the same manner as Arnold Schwarzenegger has in the Golden State -- a promise that may not thrill Republicans in or out of California: Mayor Giuliani is telling California voters wondering what kind of president he would make that they need to look no further than their popular Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. "I governed very much like your governor does," Mr. Giuliani said as he described his tenure as mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001. "I got results and I want people to look at that and say that's the way I would govern as president of the United States. I would get results," he said. In a deft bit of political...

Gore Clears His Schedule? (Update: Gore Says No)

A blurb in the Taipei Times may telegraph a shakeup in the Democratic primary race, which has settled into a contest for the second spot already. Hillary Clinton may have a tougher fight on her hands, as a cancellation in Al Gore's schedule portends a presidential bid by the former Vice President (via Power Line and The Corner): ■ ENVIRONMENT Al Gore visit postponed Former US vice president Al Gore will not be able to make it to Taiwan this September to address the issue of global warming, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) said yesterday. Tien, who invited Gore to visit Taiwan to promote awareness on global warming, told reporters yesterday that she received an e-mail from the Harry Walker Agency, which has the exclusive right to arrange Gore's speeches, saying that Gore had canceled all his scheduled events in the next six months. The visit to Taiwan...

Which Candidate Benefits From The Immigration Bill's Demise?

Now that the comprehensive immigration reform bill has died, analysts have looked at winners and losers of the contest. Almost certainly, one of the main losers has to be George Bush, who pushed hard publicly and privately for its passage. US News says, "Bush Sinking Along With Immigration Bill," a fairly clear conclusion based on the extensive roundup they provide. He put his credibility on the line for this bill, and in the end could not even get a majority of his own Senate caucus to support him. But which of the candidates to replace Bush gained the most from the bill's failure? The Politico argues that could be John McCain: While his office put out the requisite statement expressing disappointment that the immigration compromise failed, a McCain aide I talked with sounded more relieved that the issue was off the table. While lamenting that its failure was "bad for...

Hillary's Baggage Bigger Than Previously Thought

Hillary's reign at the top of the polls for the Democratic primary has always worried party activists, knowledgeable of her negatives in a general election. The sense of her inevitability has been tempered with the recognition of the high hurdles between winning a nomination and winning a general election with a large number of voters hostile to her candidacy. Now NBC reports that a new poll puts that number at a majority: According to a new Mason-Dixon survey, given exclusively to NBC/MSNBC and McClatchy newspapers, Clinton is the only major presidential candidate -- either Democrat and Republican -- for whom a majority of likely general election voters say they would not consider voting. In addition, she's the only candidate who registers with a net-unfavorable rating. In the poll, 48% say they would consider voting for Clinton versus 52% who say they wouldn't. By comparison, majorities signal they would consider voting...

June 30, 2007

Losing Momentum?

The presidential campaigns have a deadline approaching for announcing their second-quarter fundraising numbers, and they have already begun jockeying to manage expectations. Hillary Clinton surprised pundits by announcing a firm number early -- $27 million -- and then telling everyone they could that they expected Barack Obama to do better than that. Now Mitt Romney's campaign has started to get the word out that fundraising efforts had dropped off from their impressive Q1 totals: Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who led Republican candidates in money raised during the first three months of the presidential race with $21 million, told top fundraisers yesterday that his campaign will bring in less during the second quarter and that he continues to lend money from his personal fortune to ensure that more voters hear his message. "This tells only part of the story given this cycle's unprecedented nature, and the competing needs of less...

A Fred Of Two Tales

Fred Thompson paid a visit to New Hampshire this week, his first as a certain presidential candidate -- and he got a taste of what media coverage would be like from this point forward. One reporter from McClatchy did his best to pour cold water on Fred's appearance, while the New Hampshire Union-Leader's editorial page editor pronounced it a rousing success. First, McClatchy's Steve Thomma focused on the brevity that was the soul of Fred's wit: When Fred Thompson made his debut on the presidential stage here this week, he left some Republicans thinking he needs more work before his nascent campaign matches the media hype it's gotten in advance. The former Tennessee senator with the baritone drawl showed up Thursday in New Hampshire, the site of the first primary voting, and gave a speech that lasted only nine minutes, skipping over hot-button issues such as Iraq and immigration to...

July 2, 2007

Obama Raises The Stakes

The presidential campaigns continue to release their second quarter numbers, but Barack Obama has put an exclamation point on Q2. His announced total, $31 million, exceeded expectations again, both in total and in organization, and the gap between himself and Hillary is even more significant than it looks. Their combined draw sends a big message to the GOP, too: Sen. Barack Obama raised $31 million for his presidential primary campaign over the past three months, surging past Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's fundraising machine by nearly $10 million for the quarter to take the lead in contributions in the crowded Democratic field. Obama became the first Democrat to surpass $30 million in a quarter during a non-election year, a feat his campaign said was accomplished not just with help from wealthy, traditional donors but also with a strong showing among small contributors. The Illinois senator trails Clinton in most polls, but...

Another Swing And A Miss At Thompson

Apparently the New York Times has not found much on Fred Thompson to derail his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination -- so the Gray Lady decided to take on his sons. The lobbying careers of Tony and Daniel Thompson get a load of innuendo, but in the end, the Times can't even find smoke, let alone fire: But attending Brentwood Methodist Church in Nashville that night, Tony Thompson ran into the departing incumbent senator, Harlan Mathews, a Democrat. Mr. Mathews invited Tony to join him in a Nashville lobbying business, a job that would let him capitalize on his father’s new position. “I don’t just believe in the tooth fairy,” Mr. Mathews said. “A lot of people were seeking access — not necessarily unfair access, but seeking access — so Tony was employed in a number of areas where his father had made a reputation or his father’s advice...

McCain Camp Expecting Cutbacks

Rumor had it that the John McCain camp would have organizational news, and the AP says the news is layoffs. Fifty staffers will lose their jobs as the second quarter numbers have apparently come in, and come in low: John McCain's campaign, trailing top Republican rivals in money and polls, is undergoing a significant reorganization with staff cuts in every department, officials with knowledge of the shake-up said Monday. Some 50 staffers or more are being let go, and senior aides will be subject to pay cuts as the Arizona senator's campaign bows to the reality of six months of subpar fundraising, these officials said. ... Once considered the front-runner for the GOP nomination, McCain came in third in the money chase behind Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, raising $13.6 million in the first three months of the year. He is struggling to reach that total in the second financial...

July 3, 2007

Rasmussen: Thompson Still Leads

The new Rasmussen poll out this morning shows Fred Thompson continuing to lead the GOP presidential primary race, 27%-24% over Rudy Giuliani. Rasmussen declares the contest "stabilized", with Fred holding an advantage among conservatives: After weeks of turmoil and change, the race for the Republican Presidential nomination has stabilized. Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson remains on top in Rasmussen Reports national polling with 27% support. That’s unchanged from a week ago. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is three points behind at 24%. Thompson has a 16-point advantage over Giuliani among conservatives while Giuliani holds an even larger edge among moderate voters. However, in the race for the Republican Presidential nomination, there are always more conservative voters than moderates. A separate survey found that Thompson is currently viewed as the most conservative of all GOP candidates. Giuliani remains the best liked candidate. Seventy-four percent (74%) of Republicans now have...

Romney, Giuliani Announce Their Numbers

The campaigns of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giulani announced their second-quarter fundraising numbers -- and neither of them set the world on fire. Rudy raised as much in three months as he did in the previous two, and Romney dropped off his Q1 numbers by a third: Republican Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign reported an estimated $15 million in primary election contributions from April through June and Mitt Romney trailed closely behind with $14 million raised. ... Overall, Giuliani saw an increase in his fundraising over the first quarter, when he reported nearly $16 million in contributions. About $1 million of that sum was for the general election. Romney's fundraising fell short of his first quarter, when he raised $20.6 million and lent himself $2.35 million. All of Romney's money is for the primary election. The Romney camp reported $12 million cash on hand, equal to the amount he had in...

July 5, 2007

Who Knew $400 Was A Discount?

The Washington Post extends the story of John Edwards' haircuts by interviewing his stylist in today's Section C. We find that Joseph Torrenueva had his feelings hurt by Edwards when the presidential candidate attempted to convince people that his staff had arranged the appointment as a one-off, when Edwards has been a Torrenueva customer for years -- and that $400 wan't the least-expensive do Torrenueva did: It is some kind of commentary on the state of American politics that as Edwards has campaigned for president, vice president and now president again, his hair seems to have attracted as much attention as, say, his position on health care. But when his campaign reported in April that it had paid for two of his haircuts at $400 each, the political damage was immediate. With each punch line on late night TV his image as a self-styled populist making poverty his signature issue...

Contemplating Navels In Iowa

Politics had a harmonic convergence in Fairfield, Iowa this Fourth of July, thanks to the campaign stop of the Left's Messiah at an event heavily attended by the town's Transcendental Meditation practitioners. As Obama aligned himself with the rotation of the earth, the followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi proclaimed him as their own Messiah as well: To the frustration of the cameramen in the Fairfield town square, Obama delivered his remarks facing east, with the setting sun behind him blotting out their shots. But here, there’s a power even higher than the television networks: Obama had positioned himself in alignment with the rotation of the earth, in accordance with the teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose followers moved en masse to this small Iowa city more than 30 years ago. The Maharishi’s transcendental meditators, along with vacationing pilgrims from the East Coast, turned out in large numbers in the...

Guiliani Conference Call

The Giuliani campaign invited bloggers to a conference call on Rudy Giuliani's fundraising numbers for Q2. Total cash on hand: $18 million Spent: $11.2 million in Q2 Donors: over 60,000 Proof of success in both finance and polling. They are the only GOP campaign to increase their numbers from Q1 to Q2. Very proud of the fact that they have zero debt; shows efficient and disciplined campaign and stewardship of donor money. They feel very strongly that they have the best positioning to win a general election. They claim they can put New Jersey, New York, and the New England states, which other candidates cannot. They rattled off their #1 position in state polling, arguing that they're also positioned well to win the primaries. Most of them fell outside the first races, although they rattled it off so quickly that I can't recall all of the states where they claim...

Rasmussen: Fred, Hillary Tied

Given Fred Thompson's decision to enter the primaries late, one might expect him to fare poorly in head-to-head matches, especially with candidates of the other party. Rasmussen's latest polling will surprise some, as it shows Fred in a dead heat with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton: The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D) tied with former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson (R) in an Election 2008 match-up. Both candidates attract support from 45% of voters. Given a Clinton-Thompson match-up, 5% of voters say they’d pull the lever for some other candidate and 4% are not sure. The survey also found Clinton holding a four-point advantage over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R), 46% to 42%. In that match-up, 9% would prefer some other candidate and 3% are not sure. The survey was conducted June 27-28, 2007, just before the July 4th holiday festivities began to...

July 6, 2007

The Pending Mudslinging (Update: Show Me The Money!)

It's easy to tell when a candidate has the potential to do well in a campaign -- the opposition starts throwing mud as early as possible. This appears to be doubly true with Fred Thompson, as the Los Angeles Times will shortly publish a new story about a purported client of Fred's when he worked as a lawyer and lobbyist. The American Spectator steals the Times' thunder: The Washington Prowler column has learned that the Los Angeles Times intends to publish a story that would attempt to link former Sen. Fred Thompson to a Washington-based, pro-abortion organization. Thompson, through a spokesman, is said to go on the record in the story as having no recollection of ever doing work for the organization in question during a period in 1991 when the first Bush administration was in power. During that time, Thompson, was "of counsel" at the Arent Fox law firm...

July 8, 2007

Someone Must Be Very Worried (Bump: Smelly Indeed)

Fresh on the heels of the Los Angeles Times attack on Fred Thompson's lobbying, the New York Times lowers the bar by attacking Fred Thompson's wife. Calling Fred "grandfatherly" and Jeri Kehn Thompson a "trophy wife", the Gray Lady wonders whether America can deal with a May-December romance in the White House: AS the election of 2008 approaches with its cast of contenders who bring unprecedented diversity to the quest for the White House, the voting public has been called on to ponder several questions: Is America ready for a woman to be president? What about a black man? A Mormon? Now, with the possible candidacy of Fred D. Thompson, the grandfatherly actor and former Republican senator from Tennessee, whose second wife is almost a quarter-century his junior, comes a less palatable inquiry that is spurring debate in Internet chat rooms, on cable television and on talk radio: Is America...

When Did Fred Start At Arent Fox?

An interesting question came to me from CQ reader Adam W regarding the Los Angeles Times' story about Fred Thompson and his supposed work for the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association in 1991. The only evidence of this work comes from a copy of the NFPRHA's board minutes from September 14, 1991 that claims that the group had hired "Fred Thompson, Esq. as counsel to aid us in discussions with the administration" to end the rule barring abortion counseling at clinics that received federal funds. A couple of the group's principals swear that they hired Thompson; Thompson denies working for them, and the man whom Fred would have had to meet categorically states that he never discussed the gag rule with Fred at all. Now a new bit of indirect evidence has been found. Arent Fox brought Thompson into the firm to be "of counsel" in 1991 for...

July 9, 2007

McCain's Pain -- Fred's Gain?

The New York Sun reports that the recently terminated staffers from John McCain's campaign may not collect unemployment for long. Fred Thompson, supposedly disadvantaged in organizational strength by his late start, may benefit from his friend's electoral struggles: The downsizing of Senator McCain's presidential campaign is coming at an opportune time for Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator who is likely to jump into the race officially any day now and seeking to build a campaign staff in the early primary states. Struggling with a shortage of cash, Mr. McCain's campaign announced last week that it was laying off dozens of staff members, including about half of his paid team in Iowa and New Hampshire. While there is no evidence of an outright pillaging of Mr. McCain's departed aides, Republican sources in those states say Mr. Thompson's emerging campaign is the likeliest landing spot. Aside from Mr. Thompson's obvious need...

July 10, 2007

McCain's Top People Out

How serious is John McCain about running for president? Apparently, serious enough to have his top two people exit as the campaign attempts to turn its fortunes around in time for the primaries. He may also be considering a resignation from the Senate to show his commitment: John McCain's campaign manager and chief strategist quit Tuesday, the second major staff shake-up in a week for the Republican presidential candidate who trails his rivals in money and polls. In a statement, the Arizona senator said Terry Nelson and John Weaver offered their resignations, "which I accepted with regret and deep gratitude for their dedication, hard work and friendship." Nelson, a veteran of President Bush's successful 2004 re-election effort, said he stepped down as campaign manager and Weaver, a longtime aide who ran McCain's failed 2000 presidential bid, said he left his post of chief strategist. Both resignations were effective immediately. Some...

July 11, 2007

Did Fred Thompson Want To Dump Party Platforms?

A column by CBN's David Brody discusses statements by Fred Thompson in 1996, when he ran for re-election to a full term in the Senate, about the uselessness of party platforms. Saying that the Republicans "deserve to lose" if they spent the convention arguing over planks in the GOP platform, Fred suggested that no one cared about the end result of the debate: First off, it appears Thompson wasn't a big fan of the GOP having any sort of platform back in 1996. In April of 1996, this is what The Memphis Commercial Appeal wrote: Thompson wants to change the way the 1996 Republican National Convention is conducted. For starters, he wants to abolish the party platform - just toss the archaic thing away. 'It's the most useless device I've ever heard of,' Thompson said during a recent visit to Memphis." Thompson also said this in a separate article from...

How Many Times Will McCain's Political Obituary Run?

After yesterday's exodus at Team McCain, pundits lined up declare John McCain's presidential aspirations dead, and perhaps his Senate career as well. Most of the newspapers followed suit, doing everything but have pipers sound "Amazing Grace" across the Potomac. One exception comes from the Wall Street Journal, which notes that the struggling fortunes of the campaign almost demanded a housecleaning if McCain was to remain in the race: Yesterday's shakeup of John McCain's top campaign staff is giving the media who once loved him a chance to bury his Presidential campaign. But it's also possible the shakeup will give his candidacy another chance to connect with the priorities of GOP primary voters. In the mainstream media telling, the decline of Mr. McCain's campaign is a modern Greek tragedy: He rose as a brave reformer who defied GOP orthodoxy, then fell as he gave up the iconoclast's mantle to court conservatives...

Fred On The Nature Of Representation

Fred Thompson sent an essay over to my good friends at Power Line to discuss the nature of legal representation -- and what it means for the lawyers. He notes that the current smear tactic of branding the attorney with the views of the client has been tried by his opponents before. Of course, Fred hasn't lost a race yet: A lawyer who is a candidate or a prospective candidate for office finds himself in an interesting position because of the nature of the legal profession and the practice of law. This is true when the practice was as varied as mine, and it’s especially true when the office being considered is the Presidency of the United States. The easiest and most generally used tactic when running against a lawyer is to trade off a general perception that most people dislike lawyers. Goodness knows that a lot of lawyers have...

July 12, 2007

New Gallup Poll Challenges Assumptions

Gallup has its latest national polling on the presidential primaries, and it challenges a few recent assumptions. On the Democratic side, the addition of Al Gore has much less impact on the support for the two frontrunners. For Republicans, the addition of Thompson would shake up the race, but a more recent declaration of rigor mortis seems far off base: With only about six months remaining before the Iowa caucuses, the races for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations remain in a steady state. Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat Hillary Clinton continue to hold statistically significant leads over the rest of their respective fields of competitors. The most notable recent change this year has been on the Republican side, where John McCain's recent dip in the polls and Fred Thompson's recent gains have resulted in the two switching second and third places. Even though Al Gore would draw significant support...

Tomorrow On CQ Radio: Charles Hill

Earlier this week, Rudy Giuliani announced the expansion of his advisory staff with new appointments on foreign policy. Among the distinguished new members of the staff are notables such as Norman Podhoretz, one of the original conservative thinkers and writers, as well as being the father of our friend at NRO and the New York Post, John Podhoretz; former Wisconsin Senator Bob Kasten; and Martin Kramer, the scholar and expert on Middle East studies, among others. The choices show Giuliani tilting to a solidly conservative national-security approach to foreign policy, undoubtedly intended to assure the GOP base about the direction of a Giuliani presidency. The man in charge of the group, Charles Hill, will join me tomorrow morning at 10 am CT. Hill has served under George Schultz at State during the Reagan administration, following an extraordinary career in the foreign service that put him in the world's hot spots...

July 14, 2007

Overstating The Case

Normally I think Chris Cilizza's political analysis is top notch, but everyone has a bad day now and then -- and today is the day for Chris, Michael Shear, and Dan Balz. In giving the backstory on the conflicts behind the scenes that caused the housecleaning at Team McCain, they wildly overstate McCain's position in the race when it began: After weeks of internal struggles over who would run John McCain's presidential campaign, three key aides went to the candidate in January and told him he had to take action. Rick Davis, the campaign's chief executive, they said, should be pushed aside, and McCain had to make it clear that Terry Nelson, the campaign manager and a veteran of President Bush's 2004 team, was in charge. But the senator from Arizona refused, telling the three aides -- John Weaver, Mark Salter and Nelson -- that he would not strip Davis...

Gilmore Goes

One Republican presidential candidate has called it quits -- and probably not the one most would have guessed. Jim Gilmore, former governor of Virginia, has decided to end his campaign after two quarters of having no impact on the race at all: Former Virginia governor James S. Gilmore III ended his long-shot Republican presidential campaign yesterday, saying he was unable to raise enough money to communicate his conservative vision to Americans. He held out the possibility, however, that he might soon run for public office again in Virginia. Gilmore, the son of a butcher who had improbably risen to become a local prosecutor, a state attorney general and a governor of Virginia, dropped out of the crowded GOP primary field a day before reporting that he had raised $211,000 between April and June. Since January, he has raised $381,000, while his rivals have collected tens of millions of dollars. In...

July 16, 2007

Thompson Building A Winning Hand

Everyone wants to know why Fred Thompson hasn't officially declared his candidacy yet. After all, with Jim Gilmore's departure, the Republicans have an empty podium for the next debate. Why doesn't Fred jump in and start getting tested? One answer could be that Fred wants to hit the hustings in the top spot -- and that's he's building his coalition carefully before his launch. US News reports that Fred has had some success in getting evangelical groups to consider supporting him, reaching out to one group that could give him instant momentum. At Heading Right, I look at advantages he might have over some of the other GOP candidates, and the strategy of holding cards close to the vest until one gets a winning hand. UPDATE: The Democrats think Fred has other motivations for his long flirtation: The “Law & Order” actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee is delaying...

Rudy Launches His Gravitas Offense

Rudy Giuliani's ability to win the Republican primary hinges on convincing GOP voters that he supports federalism and constructionist views on the Constitution. It takes his socially-liberal policy views off the table to a large extent if he can convince Republicans of his sincerity on those points, and nowhere will that be more evident than in his appointments to the bench. His new effort in that regard seems solidly calculated to confirm that commitment: GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani will unveil his "Justice Advisory Committee" this week on a two-day swing through heavily Republican western districts of Washington, D.C., home of the first presidential caucuses in 2008. The committee signals an important moment for building his relationship with social conservatives a he tries to convince skeptical Iowans he can compete seriously in the caucuses. Former U.S. solicitor general under President Bush, Ted Olson, will chair the panel. Former Bush administration Deputy...

July 17, 2007

Backscratching, Hillary Style

Tom Vilsack dropped out of the Democratic presidential race in February, one of the first significant also-rans to acknowledge reality. The former governor of Iowa endorsed Hillary in March, giving her a boost in the key state. However, that seems to have come as part of a quid pro quo, as her backers have piled contributions onto the defunct Vilsack candidacy -- and some of the money wound up in Vilsack's pockets: Shortly after endorsing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack received nearly $90,000 in donations to his defunct presidential campaign from some of Clinton's major backers, campaign finance reports show. The donations, disclosed in Federal Election Commission filings over the weekend, came from Clinton fundraising bastions of New York, California, Texas, and Washington, D.C. None came from Iowa, where Vilsack served two terms as governor. ... In May and June, at least 45 Clinton...

Polls Show Little Movement In Presidential Races

The weekly poll numbers have come out from Gallup and Rasmussen, and the news is that there is not much new. Hillary's lead has remained constant for two months now, and it looks like the race has concluded for the Democrats' top slot on the ticket. The only suspense is who will get to bask in Hillary's glory at the bottom of the ticket, and get free passes to funerals if elected. The GOP looks a little more murky. The two polls disagree on the frontrunner, as I note at Heading Right. We discover that a dead man has not reached rigor mortis after all. Also, a surprising figure has surged to the top of the second tier in this week's poll, replacing Mike Huckabee and probably disquieting the power structure of the GOP -- or at least delighting his legion of on-line fans....

July 19, 2007

Billing Records Resurrected? (Updated & Bumped)

The Los Angeles Times will report in the next day or so that billing records have been found at Arent Fox which show some consultations between Fred Thompson and the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. The records will show that Arent billed the NFPRHA for nineteen hours of consultation over a period of fourteen months. The time period corresponds roughly to the time frame between when the NFPRHA claims they hired Thompson as a lobbyist, in September 1991. We can expect the billing records to make a big splash in the blogosphere. However, a few points should be noted. Fred Thompson made it clear that he never represented this group as a lobbyist, and that he never lobbied John Sununu on their behalf. Sununu verified Thompson's denial. Thompson never denied nor confirmed that he provided some consultation on their behalf through Arent Fox, saying that he could not...

The Liberal Fantasy Of A Conservative

As I have written before, one can gain a sense of a candidate's viability by the volume and nature of the attacks against him (or her). That might be especially true when the candidate has not yet entered the race, as with Fred Thompson. So far we've seen attacks based on 19 hours of consultations (see below), smeared his sons, and all but called his wife a bimbo. And Fred hasn't even officially declared himself as a candidate! This continued yesterday with the normally sane New Republic, which apparently thought it got to the heart of Fred's appeal to conservatives. Michelle Cottle instead built up a strawman of a supposed conservative obsession with masculinity, which says a lot more about Cottle and TNR than it does about Fred or conservatives: If there's one thing conservatives are obsessed with these days, it's manliness. Saddled with a president they once cheered as...

McCain's Not Quitting

It's become fashionable to write obituaries for John McCain's presidential campaign, and the recent housecleaning at the Straight Talk Express has convinced many that McCain will end his bid sooner rather than later. Chris Cillizza at The Fix reports that John McCain is not among those so convinced. The Senator has met with staffers to draw comparisons between the status of his campaign and that of another Republican, who went on to some degree of success. Chris reviews two memos making the rounds: The first document seeks to draw parallels between Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential bid and the current state of McCain's operation. "During the summer of 1979, Ronald Reagan's campaign reported that it was broke," begins the memo. "The candidate had to explain his weak fundraising and big spending, as well as overcome doubts about his age and ability." After firing much of his top campaign staff just before...

July 23, 2007

Transcript: Dean Ronald Cass On CQ Radio

Ronald Cass, Dean Emeritus of Boston University’s college of law, appeared on CQ Radio last week. Cass, a member of Rudy Giuliani’s advisory board on judicial matters, spoke about the candidate’s direction on judicial appointments. I've posted the transcript at Heading Right, and it's an interesting look into the direction that the Giuliani campaign has gone thus far to assuage conservatives about Giuliani's policies. The Mayor's social liberalism has gotten a lot of play, perhaps even more so than his efforts to clean up New York City through hard-nosed enforcement of laws that could hardly be claimed as liberalism run amuck. First, I asked about the composition of the judicial panel, with plenty of representation from the Federalist Society: MORRISSEY: Now going over the list of people here who are on the committee with you, it’s a very impressive list. I noticed there are at least a couple people here...

McCain The Tax Cutter?

John McCain took a lot of heat for opposing the sweeping tax cuts during George Bush's first term. He warned that the cuts would starve government of the funds needed to fuel the war, among other issues -- and got proven wrong. Now as McCain looks to reconnect with Republican primary voters, he has vowed to cut taxes as President, starting with the alternative minimum tax that has ensnared more and more middle-class taxpayers: Republican presidential hopeful John McCain is pledging to repeal the alternative minimum tax and hold down government spending with vetoes and line-item-veto authority. The Arizona senator, in remarks prepared for delivery Monday evening to the Economic Club of Southwest Michigan, promised to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which he said would affect as many as 30 million people by 2010. The tax was originally intended to make sure the wealthy do not exploit tax loopholes. "I...

July 24, 2007

YouTube Lost This Debate

When YouTube and CNN announced that they would stage a debate in which the questions came from the American people, where the questioners would momentarily star on national television, it created a lot of excitement. It rated as a watershed moment in citizen journalism, where ordinary people closed the gap between the electorate and the elite. Journalists who embedded their agendas into debate questioning would get bypassed, and the American people would get real answers to the tough issues of the day. I missed the show, but if the transcript is any guide, YouTube and its citizen journalists missed the boat. The questions ranged from the inane to ... well, the inane. Here are the first five questions posed by the YouTubers selected by CNN (via Memeorandum): 1. Issues don't matter. How are you different? 2. Dennis Kucinich, how are you better than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? 3. Hillary,...

Rudy: Energy Independence Vital

Rudy Giuliani, who has spent the summer hiring an impressive roster of experts on foreign policy and the judiciary, has turned his attention to energy policy as well. In a campaign stop in San Francisco, Giuliani gave his views on energy independence, although the California audience may not have received some of his platform with great enthusiasm. And therein lies the rub. It's safe to say that everyone knows what it will take to achieve energy independence It’s just that almost no one likes the solutions as a whole. At Heading Right, I review the path to energy independence, and ask whether America can unite for another "moon shot" scientific quest -- and whether Rudy is the leader who can bring us together for it. Tomorrow on CQ Radio, I'll speak with Rudy's energy advisor, Thomas Gaskill, to find out more....

McCain Conference Call

John McCain has gotten back to holding regular conference calls with bloggers, and today he talked about his economic plan for a McCain presidency. He spoke about the issues surrounding displaced workers, and he underscored the need for some efforts to support and possibly retrain the unemployed. He did manage to mention his outrage over the suspension of consideration for the defense authorization bill -- for the first time in forty-five years, the bill is at risk. McCain called this "disgraceful", especially since Harry Reid has not scheduled its consideration on the Senate floor as of yet. Questions: Robert Bluey: Barack Obama committed to meeting with Ahmadinejad, Catro, Chavez, and others -- A bit naive. Face-to-face negotiations tend to bolster the credibility of tyrants. What's going to be the topic of discussions? The elimination of Israel? Jennifer Rubin: Do you feel that some of your GOP competitors are "softening" on...

Let's Prepare For The Next YouTube Debate (Update: Accountability?)

The problem with last night's debate didn't have so much to do with the venue or the format, or even the use of questions through YouTube -- but with the quality of those questions. As I wrote earlier, the questions selected had little substance, which allowed the candidates to use tired campaign talking points instead of talking about real issues. After writing this, one CQ commenter reminded me that we have two months before the Republican YouTube/CNN debate, which will air from the key primary state of Florida. Teresa challenged me to get YouTube, CNN, and the candidates prepared for the debate by hosting our own contest for the CQ community -- to produce intelligent, cogent YouTube video questions that will produce specific answers from our Republican candidates. That sounds terrific to me! We'll start immediately. Contestants can either post the YouTube code to the comments section here, or better...

July 25, 2007

The Next Fred Smear?

I noticed that the Washington Post has published a legal brief from 1981 on its website without an accompanying story, at least as of noon CT, and that piqued my curiosity. The amicus brief relates to a First Amendment challenge in Illinois that involved the sale of magazines with drug references at a local store. It didn't take long to see why the Post published the brief; it was filed on behalf of American Businesses for Constitutional Rights by Fred Thompson. Apparently, the Post wants to argue that this will somehow shake conservative confidence in Thompson. They're very wrong, and a quick read of the brief will explain why: Vague laws offend several important values. First, because we assume that man is free to steer between lawful and unlawful conduct, we insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that...

July 26, 2007

Thompson -- The New Maverick?

Yesterday, I noted the strange appearance of two appellate briefs relating to the legal career of Fred Thompson and wondered aloud what the Washington Post had in mind by publishing them. Today the Post ran a front-page story that looks at Thompson's record as an attorney and his resistance to federal regulation and tort reform, as well as noting the apparent dichotomy of running for the Republican nomination and his involvement in these cases: Before he was elected as a tough-on-crime U.S. senator from Tennessee or played a New York prosecutor on TV's "Law and Order," Fred Dalton Thompson worked as a lawyer who argued against the government's authority to regulate drug paraphernalia or to search a boat packed with 14 tons of marijuana. Once, two decades ago, he urged that more witnesses refuse to testify before grand juries by invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination, boasting that "I start...

July 27, 2007

The Monty Hall Forum

The buzz around the political blogs has the Republican presidential campaigns backing away from the September YouTube debate. Mitt Romney has publicly sniffed at the notion that serious candidates should take questions from talking snowmen, and Marc Ambinder reports that Giuliani will likely bow out. Patrick Ruffini says that most of the rest of the field will back out because of the lack of top-tier candidates;John McCain and Ron Paul are so far the only two committed to appear. Romney took offense to the question selection by CNN: In an interview Wednesday with the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, Romney said he's not a fan of the CNN/YouTube format. Referring to the video of a snowman asking the Democratic candidates about global warming, Romney quipped, "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman." Danny Glover says that CNN deserves...

Krauthammer: Obama Is The New Tom Hagen

One of the nagging questions that has trailed Barack Obama on his meteoric rise to the top tier of Democratic presidential candidates took on new import this week after the YouTube debate on CNN. Obama's assertion that he would meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar Assad, Kim Jong-Il, and Fidel Castro drew a sharp rebuke from Hillary Clinton and most others as "irresponsible and naive," which drew attention once again to the very thin resumé Obama brings to the race. Charles Krauthammer points out that Obama made the same mistake in an earlier debate, and concludes that Obama is no wartime president: To be on the same stage as the leader of the world's greatest power is of course a prize. That is why the Chinese deemed it a slap in the face that President Bush last year denied President Hu Jintao the full state-visit treatment. The presence of an American...

Thompson's Philosophical Campaign

John Solomon does a better job in today's Washington Post in reporting on the non-campaign campaign strategy used thus far by Fred Thompson than yesterday's attempt to use his law-practice client list as a political football. Solomon notices that, far from the attempt to paint Thompson as substanceless, the advocate for federalism has been offering a blizzard of policy positions all year long -- and that might have a price later in the campaign: On the Internet sites where conservatives gather to read and chat each day, Fred D. Thompson, the as-yet-unannounced Republican presidential candidate, has been laying out his positions on dozens of issues with little public notice and plenty of rhetorical flair. ... The musings seem to constitute Thompson's early effort at assuring the core conservatives of the Republican Party that he is one of them -- despite his run-ins with the bloc as a U.S. senator who...

July 28, 2007

Will Obama's Debate Answer Impact Your Wallet?

Pundits have been chewing on the answer Barack Obama gave in the YouTube debate Monday night about meeting with heads of state from rogue nations such as Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and the potentially rogue Venezuela. Hillary Clinton's public scolding of Obama as "irresponsible" raised the stakes and gave her an opportunity to highlight the difference in experience between herself and Obama. It may wind up strengthening her grip on the nomination. Wall Street Journal reporter John Harwood has just launched his new Political Capital blog at CNBC, and he argues that these events could carry a cost for taxpayers -- and it's good to start planning early: The world of business and finance may consider the fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over foreign policy, which emerged at this week's YouTube debate, as irrelevant to their concerns. That view is wrong. It's true that, in a narrow...

Everyone Talks About The 10th Amendment ...

One of the themes that recurs in Republican politics is federalism, which its proponents use to move power back towards the states and closer to the electorate where it belongs. The 10th Amendment forms the great touchstone of federalism, in which all powers not expressly delegated to the federal government in the Constitution should remain with the states. Small-government advocates argue that the 10th Amendment got overrun by FDR in the New Deal and has never recovered its proper place in limiting federal power. However, the 10th Amendment has much in common with Mark Twain's observation about the weather: it gets plenty of discussion, but no one does anything about it. Fred Thompson says he'll do more than just talk if elected President: A good first step would be to codify the Executive Order on Federalism first signed by President Ronald Reagan. That Executive Order, first revoked by President Clinton,...

July 29, 2007

The Naivete Sweepstakes

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have finally broken out into an extended debate with each other over a substantive issue, and the Democratic primary race finally looks interesting as a result. Unfortunately for the rookie, the debate favors his opponent. Obama wants to communicate a change in direction for American foreign policy that evokes Kennedy, but most everyone else understands he's evoking Carter instead: Senator Barack Obama, who has spent the first six months of his presidential campaign focusing on his own attributes, has found a new anecdote in his quest to convince Democrats that he is a fresh voice of change: his foreign policy dust-up with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. .... The quarrel emerged from this week’s debate in South Carolina, when Mrs. Clinton said she would not meet with foreign leaders, including those of Iran and North Korea, without preconditions. She later criticized Mr. Obama’s response as “irresponsible...

A Proposal To CNN

The Republican reluctance to engage in the scheduled September YouTube debate has created a fierce debate in the blogosphere, including something of a civil war at Hugh Hewitt's Townhall blog. Hugh himself has adamantly insisted that Republican candidates eschew the substanceless spectacle of the YouTube/CNN enterprise as a media setup. Patrick Ruffini, his co-blogger, insists that a refusal will show an unwillingness to engage directly with citizens. I argued that the YouTube debate amounted to a political equivalent of the game show Let's Make A Deal, while Rick Moran casts it as a test of political courage. Michelle Malkin and Mark Steyn agree with Rick, while Jasmius at Heading Right says the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. Clearly, though, we have competing interests here and everyone has something right in this debate. The Republicans have to do better in reaching out directly to voters. In fact, given...

July 30, 2007

As The Meme Turns

When the media began to portray Senator John McCain as the presumptive front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, many in the blogosphere scratched our heads and wondered what brand the punditry had been drinking. Later, as McCain's numbers started to drop during the immigration debate, the media published a series of political obituaries for McCain, even though he raised nearly as much money as Mitt Romney in Q2 and outperformed John Edwards. Some predicted that the media would shortly begin to write comeback stories, painting McCain as a courageous underdog, sometime in the fall. Those predictions turned out to be incorrect -- in their timing: John McCain has been campaigning in New Hampshire for months, but when he took the stage last week at a town-hall meeting in Keene, it felt like a reunion tour. Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" pumped on the sound system, and when the onetime GOP presidential...

Fred Flop Or First Fruits?

Apparently, three million dollars doesn't go as far as it used to go. According to The Politico, that's how much money Thompson raised in his first month as an official non-candidate. The number comes a little south of expectations, which has some people in panic mode prematurely: Fred Thompson plans to announce Tuesday that his committee to test the waters for a Republican presidential campaign raised slightly more than $3 million in June, substantially less than some backers had hoped, according to Republican sources. Thompson plans to make the disclosure in a filing with the Internal Revenue Service, as he continues to operate his prospective campaign as a political organization that does not require disclosure to the Federal Election Commission. ... Some are already saying a prospective Thompson run is a flop. “I just don’t see it anymore,” said a key Republican who had been extremely enthusiastic about a Thompson...

August 1, 2007

Obama: Let's Pull Out Of Iraq And Invade Pakistan (Update: Obama's Website Emphasizes Punitive Invasion)

Democrats have been demanding a withdrawal from Iraq for the past two years, and Barack Obama knows exactly what he'll do with the troops once they withdraw. He'll send them on an invasion of Pakistan: In a strikingly bold speech about terrorism scheduled for this morning, Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will call not only for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but a redeployment of troops into Afghanistan and even Pakistan -- with or without the permission of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. "I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges," Obama will say, according to speech excerpts provided to ABC News by his campaign, "but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out...

August 2, 2007

Interviews Upcoming With Romney, Huckabee (Update: Audio Added)

Earlier today, NZ Bear from the Victory Caucus joined me in two interviews today with Republican presidential candidates. First, we had Mitt Romney for about ten minutes to discuss his new Surge of Support for military personnel and families. While I had him available, I asked him about Barack Obama's contention that he would send American troops into Pakistan if Pervez Musharraf didn't shape up. Romney laughed at Obama's bluster: ROMNEY: I think Barack Obama has been demonstrating through his statements over the past several weeks a very limited understanding of the nature of conflict and diplomacy. Hillary Clinton, whom I rarely agree with, said that he's showing a naivete that is quite alarming I think naive is the right word in this case. He had a few choice words for Obama's pledge to visit Fidel Castro, among others. Be sure to catch this interview later today. Also, Mike Huckabee...

August 3, 2007

Another Do-As-I-Say Moment For Edwards

The man who decries the "Two Americas" while building a 28,000-square-foot mansion strikes again. John Edwards' presidential campaign has become so desperate that he has started running against Rupert Murdoch, who isn't running for office. He now demands that all of his opponents for the Democratic nomination pinky-swear that they will snub Murdoch and Fox News -- after Edwards took close to a million dollars from the man (via Memeorandum): John Edwards, who yesterday demanded Democratic candidates return any campaign donations from Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., himself earned at least $800,000 for a book published by one of the media mogul's companies. The Edwards campaign said the multimillionaire trial lawyer would not return the hefty payout from Murdoch for the book titled "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives." The campaign didn't respond to a question from The Post about whether it was hypocritical for Edwards to take money from...

August 4, 2007

Trophy Wife Or Machiavellia?

The press can't get enough of Jeri Thompson, it appears. They also can't quite get their minds settled on a narrative for her, either. They either consider her a trophy wife, or some sort of manipulative harridan, as this latest non-story from Michael Cooper and Marc Santora proves: One Friday afternoon last month, Jeri Kehn Thompson took attendance at the testing-the-waters presidential campaign headquarters of her husband, Fred D. Thompson. Mrs. Thompson checked to see which staff members were working at their desks, said a Republican close to the campaign, and went on to chide those who were A.W.O.L. The spot-check is just one of many indications that Mrs. Thompson, a former political consultant herself, is taking an active, hands-on role in the effort to propel Mr. Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, into a presidential candidacy. Admirers say the role makes sense, not only because of her background working in...

August 5, 2007

Another Story About Jeri Thompson Hits The Front Page

Today, the Washington Post joins the New York Times in its passion to write exposés about Jeri Thompson, the wife of presidential candidate Fred Thompson. With two glaring exceptions, the piece actually appears rather balanced and fair, although it appears that Republican wives get a lot more critical attention than Democratic wives in this cycle: In the nascent Thompson campaign -- anticipated with high hopes by many conservatives unsatisfied with the current crop of GOP candidates -- Jeri Thompson plays a role arguably as influential as those of two better-known spouses of Democratic candidates, Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Edwards. She helps shape her husband's conservative message and image, has been a strong voice urging him to run and recently helped instigate a shake-up that pushed aside Thompson's first campaign manager and his research director. ... The current GOP presidential field provides two examples of the political perils of a controversial...

August 6, 2007

Huckabee In Motion?

The Politico reports that Iowans have warmed up to a second-tier candidate in the Republican presidential primary race, one with executive experience and conservative bona fides. Governor Mike Huckabee has pulled into a fourth-place tie with John McCain among likely caucus voters, perhaps signaling a move from the pack to the frontrunners: Going into Sunday's Republican presidential debate, most of the Iowans noshing on English muffins in the sun room of the neon-bedecked Drake Diner had never heard of Mike Huckabee, or knew very little about the ex-preacher and former governor of Arkansas. But by the debate’s end, they knew a lot more — and liked what they saw. .... Fetters and Holland were among 29 GOP voters from the Des Moines area assembled here by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and political consultant, and by Fox News. “Huckabee is hitting it out of the park with these people,” Luntz,...

August 8, 2007

Claiming Reagan's Mantle?

Fred Thompson took another step in readying his campaign for its long-awaited launch on September 5th. He appointed Bill Lacy, a former Reagan advisor, to be "committee manager" and take full operational control over the campaign. Lacy has the long-term connections to the GOP that Tom Collamore lacked, some good history with Fred, and he also has the connections to the Republican Party's secular saint that Thompson needs: Bill Lacy, a former strategist for Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and Republican National Committee, will run day-to-day operations of Thompson's committee to "test the waters" for a presidential run. "He turned around my campaign for Senate in 1994 and, as I move toward a decision on whether to run for president, I am confident he will take our operations to the next level," Thompson, the former Tennessee senator and "Law & Order" actor, said in a statement. "I'm here for the long...

Divestment For Thee ...

ABC News reports that a major benefactor to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has ties to companies doing business with the Sudanese government currently committing genocide in Darfur. Despite Hillary's prescription for "moving quickly on divestment" to spur an end to the conflict in Darfur, Warren Buffet has no intention of selling his stock: Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have taken tough, conscientious stances against the genocidal Sudanese government and the companies which help fund it. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, America's second richest man, has not. In what activists are calling "a definite contradiction," Buffett -- whose estimated $3 billion in Sudan-linked holdings have been disparaged by anti-genocide watchdogs -- is helping raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the White House aspirants. Over the past several years, the Sudanese government has been widely accused of sponsoring the killing of more than 400,000 of its own...

August 9, 2007

The Christmas Caucus?

The race for states to gain more influence in the primaries has intensified in South Carolina. In a decision that may give a 2007 start to the 2008 primary race, the state has bumped the Republican primary to January 19th, which may set off a domino effect that could push the Iowa caucus into the Christmas season. At Heading Right, I look at the reasons why this move will almost certainly force a December 2007 start to the 2008 primary race. What can we do to stop these games? We can ask the RNC and DNC to follow their rules and start punishing states who play them -- and we all know the best way to send that message....

Do As I Say, v2.0

The naivete sweepstakes continue in the Democratic presidential primary campaign. Hillary Clinton rightly scolded Barack Obama for effectively negating our nuclear deterrent by proclaiming them "off the table" earlier this month. While the Hillary campaign used that to show how inept Obama is at foreign policy, Fox News did a little digging (via Hot Air): Her views expressed while she was gearing up for a presidential run stand in conflict with her comments this month regarding Obama, who faced heavy criticism from leaders of both parties, including Clinton, after saying it would be "a profound mistake" to deploy nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table," he said. Clinton, who has tried to cast her rival as too inexperienced for the job of commander in chief, said of Obama's stance on Pakistan: "I don't believe that any president should make...

Progressive For Racist Smears? (Update: Progressive Wises Up A Little Late)

Note: the site in question is now Not Safe for Work or family viewing. See Update III. 5:15 -- Now safe; see update IV. It doesn't take long for provocateurs to crawl out of the woodwork to attack candidates, especially in stealth attacks. With Fred Thompson, they've apparently started before he officially enters the race -- and in one case, race is the operative word. Apparently hoping to confuse web surfers looking for Fred's website at www.imwithfred.com, a new site has appeared at www.imwithfred2008.com -- only this site welcomes people to the Ku Klux Klan, "Bringing a Message of Hope and Deliverance to White Christian America!" It includes links to a variety of disgusting racist sites. Who would post something like this as a smear on Fred Thompson? Someone a little too stupid to cover his tracks, possibly? A DNS search gives us an answer. The domain name, registered through...

August 10, 2007

Day 2: Henry Reynolds Still Silent

After yesterday's story about Santa Monica attorney Henry Reynolds and his Klan-promoting website, many people wondered whether Henry himself would ever contact me. As I wrote, I did call and leave a message at his law office, asking for comment on the story -- and I would have gladly included it in the original post. Instead, we heard nothing but silence as the MoveOn and DNC contributor changed his Fred Thompson smear site from a white-supremacist linkfest to a John Edwards donor plea, and then to a disgusting pornography portal, and finally to a Wiki homage to his old professor, Frederic Jameson, who taught at Reynolds' alma mater UC Santa Cruz. So far, I have not heard anything from Henry, and I doubt that I will. The frantic content switches and DNS registration changes tells me that Reynolds wants to distance himself from this fiasco at light speed. However, it's...

August 12, 2007

Ames Poll Produces Winner -- And It May Not Be Romney

The Ames straw poll in Iowa has concluded in a racous day of policy and showmanship, and in the end the man who spent the most money in Iowa won the most votes. However, the real winner may be the man who spent nothing but time and effort in hopes of breaking out of the second tier: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney emerged on top at Iowa GOP’s straw poll Saturday in Ames. The win boosted the former Massachusetts governor’s standing as the party’s frontrunner in Iowa, although attendance at this first show of Iowa campaign strength appeared to fall short of expectations. ... Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee had said his campaign’s future depended on a strong showing in Ames. He finished in second place, with 2,587 votes or 18.1 percent. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas placed third with 2,192 votes, 15.3 percent after campaigning aggressively to be the...

So Long Tommy, We Barely Knew You

After tonight, anyone writing about a presidential candidate named Thompson will not feel forced to use his first name. Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and Bush administration official, has withdrawn from the race tonight after a disappointing result in the Ames straw poll: Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson dropped out of the race for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination tonight, a day after he finished a disappointing sixth in the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. "I have no regrets about running," Thompson said in a statement released by his campaign. "I felt my record as Governor of Wisconsin and Secretary of Health and Human Services gave me the experience I needed to serve as President, but I respect the decision of the voters." Thompson is the first casualty of Saturday's Straw Poll. He had pledged to leave the race if he didn't finish first or second in the non-binding...

August 13, 2007

Huckabee A Threat To Fred?

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at Mike Huckabee's surprisingly strong performance in Iowa and wonders whether conservatives might take a second look at the governor of Arkansas. Unlike Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback, Huckabee didn't bring busloads of supporters to Ames, nor did he spend vast amounts of money on the straw poll. Yet he managed to beat Brownback and steal Romney's thunder on the basis of a live performace of "Free Bird" and a large dose of conservative stumping: The biggest winner of Iowa Republicans' weekend straw poll of 11 presidential rivals may well turn out to be not Mitt Romney, whose first-place finish here was expected, but surprise runner-up Mike Huckabee, the guitar-picking former governor of Arkansas. Should Mr. Huckabee capitalize on his second-place showing here Saturday to get a second look from demoralized Republicans unhappy with their choices -- and to get much-needed funding --...

Democrats: We Fear Hillary

The nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for President appears to be the most clear point in a murky primary. She has consistently led the field since the start of the year, and the Clinton political machine has trained for this moment for six years. Barack Obama's recent foreign-policy stumbles seem to have reversed his momentum, and no one else has the standing to challenge Hillary. Does that frighten Republicans? Not as much as it does Democrats, according to the AP's Ron Fournier: Looking past the presidential nomination fight, Democratic leaders quietly fret that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton at the top of their 2008 ticket could hurt candidates at the bottom. They say the former first lady may be too polarizing for much of the country. She could jeopardize the party's standing with independent voters and give Republicans who otherwise might stay home on Election Day a reason...

YouTube Debate Revived

CNN has rescheduled the YouTube debate for Republican presidential candidates for the week after Thanksgiving. Most of the field has committed to the debate, with the notable exception of Mitt Romney (via Memeorandum): The Republican Party of Florida, CNN and YouTube will announce Monday that the organizations' Republican presidential debate will be held on Nov. 28, two months before Sunshine State voters hold their gateway primary into "Super Tuesday." Originally, the three partners targeted Sept. 17 as the date for the debate that will feature video questions submitted by voters through YouTube. But some campaigns expressed concerns about the timing of the event and the debate partners worked to find an alternative date. .... (NYT) The campaigns of Rudolph W. Giuliani and Senator John McCain have signed on, according to CNN, which will broadcast the event. CNN said it had not heard from Mitt Romney, who has been critical of...

CBS: Rudy Strengthens His National Polling Lead

This post will need multiple disclaimers. First, the CBS poll has had sampling issues in the past, and this one has a relatively small sample of Republican voters (only 302 respondents). Second, national polls do tell an important story, but not as important as state-by-state polling. Third, this poll got conducted over a weekend, which tends to skew polls more to the center and left. Given that, CBS reports that Giuliani continues to strengthen his lead, and Fred Thompson may be falling back: According to a new CBS News poll out Monday, Rudy Giuliani retains a significant lead nationally among Republican primary voters in the race to become the party’s presidential nominee. In all, 38 percent of Republican primary voters favor the former New York City mayor, a slight increase from last month. Senator-turned-actor Fred Thompson is next; he's favored by 18 percent of Republican primary voters, a seven-point drop...

August 14, 2007

Are The Wheels Coming Off For Obama?

The primary campaign has turned into a very long dance for Barack Obama, who seems determined to prove at every opportunity that he has two left feet. In New Hampshire, Obama told a crowd that the US military effort consists mainly of "air raiding villages and killing civilians" -- which his tone-deaf campaign confirmed moments later to reporters (via The Corner): Obama defended his push to prosecute a tougher military effort to root out al-Qaida on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which drew criticism from primary rivals for sounding too bellicose. “Now you have narco drug lords who are helping to finance the Taliban, so we’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops that we are not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there,’’ Obama said. Campaign spokesman Reid Cherlin said Obama was not endorsing the current Bush...

She's Got 2 Million Little Secrets

The Clinton Presidential Library holds an estimated two million documents relating to Hillary Clinton's activities as First Lady -- a record on which she has explicitly based her campaign for the presidency. She has a page dedicated to it on her campaign web site. Her mantra, "strength and experience", rests on her tenure in the White House. So why won't the Clinton library open these records to the public? The Los Angeles Times reports that the presidential library won't release them until after the 2008 election. At Heading Right, I note the contradiction of a candidate running on a record she won't publicly release, even though other First Ladies have been more forthcoming with their papers....

August 15, 2007

Giuliani: No Palestinian State Without Recognition Of Israel

Rudy Giuliani took a hard turn to the right on foreign policy yesterday in an essay published in Foreign Affairs magazine. As Eli Lake reports for the New York Sun, Giuliani eschewed almost two decades of American efforts towards a two-state solution and demanded Palestinian compliance with lawful governance before proceeding any further on their national ambitions: The election of Hamas in the Palestinian-controlled territories is a case in point. The problem there is not the lack of statehood but corrupt and unaccountable governance. The Palestinian people need decent governance first, as a prerequisite for statehood. Too much emphasis has been placed on brokering negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians -- negotiations that bring up the same issues again and again. It is not in the interest of the United States, at a time when it is being threatened by Islamist terrorists, to assist the creation of another state...

August 16, 2007

Gallup: Obama Won't Win Nomination By Appealing To Intellect

This has to be the headline of the political season. A Gallup Poll analysis shows Barack Obama heading for the rocks because of his narrow appeal to educated Democrats. The headline reads, "Obama's Appeal to Well-Educated Not Conducive to Winning Nomination," and Gallup warns that only one Democratic candidate has won the nomination in the past generation while winning that demographic: Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is a clear second place behind New York Sen. Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but he is highly competitive with Clinton among the most educated segment of the party. That appeal may be one reason he has met or surpassed Clinton's fundraising totals despite not gaining much ground in voter support this year -- well-educated Americans tend to have greater income. An analysis of historical Gallup Poll data on rank-and-file Democrats' nomination preferences shows that at least one candidate has...

Fred The Fearless?

David Broder sat down for a cup of coffee with America's most anticipated primary-race entrant, Fred Thompson, to talk about why Fred wants to run for President at all. He had a great gig at Law and Order, the one television series that has its own retirement plan and subsidiaries. He has a new family and plenty of money to spend the rest of his days relaxing on his Tennessee porch, if he so desired. So why run? "There's no reason for me to run just to be president," he said. "I don't desire the emoluments of the office. I don't want to live a lie and clever my way to the nomination or election. But if you can put your ideas out there -- different, more far-reaching ideas -- that is worth doing." Thompson, like many of the others running, has caught a strong whiff of the public disillusionment...

Rudy Hitting His Stride?

Rudy Giuliani got good news earlier this week from a CBS poll that most people have learned to mistrust -- for good reason -- but Rasmussen may provide some corroboration today. According to the normally reliable pollster, Rudy has his first significant lead in head-to-head polling against Hillary Clinton, and the crosstabs show some surprising depth (via Instapundit): After being virtually tied with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for several months, Republican contender Rudy Giuliani now leads Clinton up 47% to 40% in the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. In the match-up of the frontrunners, this result marks a significant shift. For the last three months the two frontrunners have never been further apart than three percentage points. Last month, Giuliani and Clinton were separated by just a single point. Senator Clinton fares modestly better against former Senator Fred Thompson. Clinton now has a three point edge over him,...

August 17, 2007

Richardson Campaign Tripped Up By Brothel Allegations

Bill Richardson's presidential campaign had shown some signs of life over the last few weeks, perhaps enough to get onto the short list for Hillary's VP selection, but a new scandal may throw cold water on those hopes. A campaign organizer in Nevada has an outstanding felony warrant in California, and new revelations of his ties to brothels could embarrass the campaign even further: One of Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson's top organizers in rural Nevada resigned Thursday after the campaign learned he had worked for a brothel and was wanted on a felony arrest warrant in California. "We did not know about all of this," Richardson spokesman Josh McNeil said after the staffer's record was brought to the campaign's attention by The Associated Press. "We accepted his resignation today." Kristian Forland, the campaign's eastern Nevada field director, is being sought by Los Angeles County authorities for failure to appear...

John Edwards, Exploiter Of The Poor

John Edwards has spent plenty of campaign time talking about the Bush administration's callousness towards the victims of Hurricane Katrina. He's also hurled some invective at the latest economic villains for the Democrats, subprime lenders. According to the Wall Street Journal, Edwards knows more than he lets on about both: As a presidential candidate, Democrat John Edwards has regularly attacked subprime lenders, particularly those that have filed foreclosure suits against victims of Hurricane Katrina. But as an investor, Mr. Edwards has ties to lenders foreclosing on Katrina victims. The Wall Street Journal has identified 34 New Orleans homes whose owners have faced foreclosure suits from subprime-lending units of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Mr. Edwards has about $16 million invested in Fortress funds, according to a campaign aide who confirmed a more general Federal Election Commission report. Mr. Edwards worked for Fortress, a publicly held private-equity fund, from late 2005 through...

August 18, 2007

Edwards Jumps The Shark

In 1992, one could tell the precise moment when George H. W. Bush lost his grip and the election. In a late campaign speech, he referred to Bill Clinton and Al Gore with sarcastic name-calling. I can't find the exact quote (see update below), but as I recall, he called Gore "Eco Boy" and Clinton something equally silly. It made Bush look immature and desperate; he managed to make Clinton look more presidential than the sitting President. At least George Bush shot off his mouth at his actual political opponent. John Edwards has apparently decided he's competing with Ann Coulter to see which can prove themselves the most immature: Former Sen. John Edwards on Friday fired the latest round in his ongoing verbal feud with Ann Coulter, calling her a "she-devil" at a public event before quickly adding that he shouldn't engage in name-calling. Edwards, D-N.C., was railing against the...

Barack Cuts And Runs On Debates

That's how his opponents will likely cast Barack Obama's decision to forego any more debates than those to which he's already committed. Obama has eight debates on his schedule between now and the Iowa caucuses, and he will refuse invitations to any more, complaining that they interfere with his campaigning: Inundated by dozens of invitations, Sen. Barack Obama will turn down requests to join future debates and forums this fall, his Democratic presidential campaign announced Saturday. Obama will honor his commitment to eight more debates (five sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, one by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision and two in Iowa), but he does not plan to accept many invitations for forums, where the candidates appear sequentially. The announcement could affect such key Democratic constituencies as the Congressional Black Caucus, Iowa AARP and League of Conservation Voters, campaign sources confirmed. On one hand, it's hard to get too critical...

August 20, 2007

The Clinton VP Sweepstakes

With Hillary Clinton having just about wrapped up the Democratic nomination for president, speculation has begun on her choice of running mate. For a while, Barack Obama seemed the perfect choice, but his performance of late has tarnished his image and reminded people of his inexperience. Instead, Robert Novak reports that Hillary's backers have looked away towards Dixieland: Anticipating that Sen. Hillary Clinton will clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, some supporters are beginning to argue against her choosing her principal rival -- Sen. Barack Obama -- for vice president. They maintain Obama provides no general election help for Clinton. As an African-American from Illinois, he represents an ethnic group and a state already solidly in the Democratic column. This school of thought advocates a Southerner as Clinton's running mate. The last time Democrats won a national election without a Southerner on the ticket was 1944. Prominent Democrats from the South...

McCain Conference Call Live-Blog

John McCain conducted another of his blogger conference calls this morning to promote his speech later at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Kansas City. In taking a look at the speech released by his campaign before the event, McCain focuses on national security and the war in Iraq. He also quotes from his recently-released book, Hard Call, as well as updates the VFW on his analysis of the war on terror: As we meet, in Iraq and Afghanistan, American soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen are fighting bravely and tenaciously in battles that are as dangerous, difficult and consequential as the great battles of our armed forces’ storied past. As we all know, the war in Iraq has not gone well, and the American people have grown sick and tired of it. I understand that, of course. I, too, have been made sick at heart by the many...

Romney Bumps And Grinds

Gallup shows that Mitt Romney got a pleasant surprise from his efforts at the Ames, Iowa straw poll. He jumped from his consistent 8% national polling to 14%, putting him past John McCain and close to Fred Thompson, moving to a solid third-place finish: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has posted modest gains over the last two weeks, both in his favorable rating and in his positioning in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. One presumption is that Romney's gains reflect the visibility that followed his win in the Iowa Republican Party straw poll last weekend, although data in the new Gallup Poll show that only a third of Republicans nationwide are directly aware that Romney won this unofficial contest. Romney now receives 14% of Republicans' votes when they are asked whom they would like as their party's presidential nominee, up from 8% in each of the two previous...

Edwards An Empty Suit

John Edwards had a tough week. Not only has he descended into an immature name-calling obsession over Ann Coulter, not only did the Wall Street Journal expose him as a towering hypocrite on predatory lending, but on Friday Edwards demonstrated that he has no real knowledge of foreign affairs or of movies -- even the films he recommends. When pressed in Iowa as to whether the US should adopt the Cuban model for healthcare, his answer exposed his lightweight status (h/t CQ reader Rush L): When an Iowa resident asked former senator John Edwards Thursday whether the United States should follow the Cuban healthcare model, the 2004 vice presidential contender deflected the question by saying he didn't know enough to answer the question. "I'm going to be honest with you -- I don't know a lot about Cuba's healthcare system," Edwards, D-N.C., said at an event in Oskaloosa, Iowa. "Is...

August 21, 2007

The Stampede To January Continues

Michigan has now caught the same Primary Fever as Florida, California, and several other states that want more influence on the presidential selection process. Both Democrats and Republicans in Michigan want the state to change its primary date to January 15th, perhaps even earlier than that, if Carl Levin has his way. The move will put even more pressure on New Hampshire and Iowa to go backwards -- possibly into 2007: Michigan is poised to move its presidential primaries to Jan. 15 or earlier, becoming the latest state to leapfrog to the front of the voting calendar in the ongoing battle for relevance in choosing the next White House occupant. The move by Michigan lawmakers is the latest to push the campaign season ever closer to New Year's Day and the holiday season, and renews the possibility that Iowans could be gathering to vote in December, despite pledges from state...

You Can Tell A Candidate By His Book

Presidential campaigns have developed a side industry in book publishing. Most of the candidates in this race have written and published books or have one under contract. With few exceptions, however, the books tend to be as popular as the candidates -- which means they should focus on their current jobs in both cases: The top-tier presidential candidates have some personal finance numbers in common — six- or seven-figure book deals. Writing a book has become a prerequisite to running for president — a means to explain views in depth, to set the record straight and to add a bit of gravitas. But while nearly all the candidates put pen to paper, it is mainly those ranked high in the polls who make any real money out of it. ... Still, big book profits are not a reality for many White House hopefuls, even if they're well-known. "I think it's...

August 23, 2007

Did Romney Flip-Flop On Abortion?

Mitt Romney has had a tougher time on abortion than Rudy Giuliani in this presidential cycle. Rudy had a momentary stumble that finally forced him to state his support for abortion rights. Romney has tried to play down his earlier support of abortion through acknowledging his change of position and assuring voters that he will remain strong on the subject. Unfortunately, he stumbled yesterday, not so much on abortion as on federalism: Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said this week that as president he would allow individual states to keep abortion legal, two weeks after telling a national television audience that he supports a constitutional amendment to ban the procedure nationwide. In an interview with a Nevada television station on Tuesday, Romney said Roe. v. Wade should be abolished and vowed to "let states make their own decision in this regard." On Aug. 6, he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that...

AARP Poll Shows Fluidity On Both Sides Of The Aisle

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) conducted a wide-ranging survey of its membership in five key primary states. Contrary to some analyses of the overall electorate, the AARP found that Democrats and Republicans alike were overwhelmingly open to changing their minds about their favored candidate -- and that the change would most likely come on financial and health-care issues: Two domestic issues of importance to AARP members - financial security and health care - are explored in depth with questions about how well candidates address each issue and who can best break through special interest and partisan gridlock to make real progress in these areas. In general, AARP members in all five states are following candidate coverage, but have not settled on presidential preferences which may change as they learn more about candidates' positions on the issues. A majority of respondents planning to participate in the primaries or caucuses...

Fox, CBC Throw In The Towel (Update: Blacks, Native Americans Hardest Hit)

The Congressional Black Caucus and Fox News finally surrendered to reality and canceled the presidential debate scheduled for September 23rd. Most of the Democratic candidates refused to attend, claiming that Fox was so biased that they couldn't endorse it by appearing on their network (via Memeorandum): Fox News and a black political group say they will not hold a Sept. 23 Democratic presidential debate in Detroit, which the leading candidates already were planning to skip. A new date had not yet been set, Fox News spokesman Michael Murphy said Thursday. The campaigns of U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards had said they would not participate in the debate. Opponents have criticized Fox as biased against Democrats. What did the CBC have to say about this disrespectful snub of their debate? CBC member Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) wrote at his website that the problem...

August 24, 2007

Has Fox Flamed Fred?

According to alert CQ reader Shelbysbest, an ardent Fred Thompson supporter, Fox News showed a rather dismissive attitude towards the proto-candidate on last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume. During the roundtable discussion in the second half of the show, the panel led by Hume made their distaste clear. At Heading Right, I have Shelbybest's transcript of the segment (Fox doesn't have it available yet). Understanding that this part of the program is explicitly opinion and not news, it doesn't cross any lines for me in terms of institutional bias. In fact, I like the roundtable that Brit Hume leads, especially for its inclusion of diverse points of view from Juan Williams and Mara Liasson. In this case, though, they have it wrong -- and I explain where they went off the rails on Fred....

August 25, 2007

Winning The Jimmy Carter Sweepstakes

The Barack Obama campaign won an endorsement that sounds more like a kiss of death to anyone who survived the Jimmy Carter era. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who oversaw the disastrous foreign policy of the Carter administration, picked Obama to be the next Carter: Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most influential foreign-policy experts in the Democratic Party, threw his support behind Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, saying the Illinois senator has a better global grasp than his chief rival, Hillary Clinton. Obama ``recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world,'' Brzezinski said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's ``Political Capital with Al Hunt.'' ``Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand,'' Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, said. ``He has a sense of what is historically relevant, and what is needed from...

DNC Attacks Florida Democrats?

For once, Howard Dean is right, and he's likely to pay a large price for it. Dean warned Florida Democrats that he would refuse to certify their delegates at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 for their participation in fouling up the primary schedule, which has Florida Democrats irate: Florida lawmakers angrily assailed the Democratic National Committee and its chairman, Howard Dean, saying he is threatening to "disenfranchise" the state's voters by considering a plan to invalidate the state's presidential primary. The DNC's rules committee is to vote today whether to sanction Florida for violating party rules by moving its primary up to Jan. 29 and violating a party rule against holding a primary before Feb. 5. The action would deny Florida its delegates at the party's national convention next year and prohibit Democratic presidential candidates from campaigning in the state before the primary. In a conference call with reporters...

August 26, 2007

The Sobriety Of Fred

The Politico reports on Fred Thompson's latest speech in Indianapolis, and concludes that the soon-to-be candidate may have decided on a theme of even straighter talk than his friend, John McCain. The Midwestern Republican Leadership Conference got a sobering look at the challenges facing the nation from the former Senator, a surprising change from the normal upbeat presentations that other candidates normally give. Fred has a prescription for what ails America, too: Fred Thompson thinks the country faces a tough road ahead and he's not glossing over the problems we face. In fact, he's anxious to outline the daunting litany and appears to be basing his forthcoming campaign on the assumption that his party shares the same outlook. In a 25-minute after-dinner speech to attendees of the Midwestern Republican Leadership Conference here, Thompson offered a stark assessment of what he described as America's perilous condition. "I simply believe that on...

August 28, 2007

Me And My Shadow

The Wall Street Journal has noticed a strange correlation between the donations of a major contributor to Hillary Clinton and a family living in a modest Daly City, California home. Despite having an annual income that would likely qualify as John Edwards' other America, the Paw family has contributed over $45,000 to Hillary's electoral campaigns -- on the same days as mega-donor Norman Hsu, who once lived at the same address: The Paw family is just one set of donors whose political donations are similar to Mr. Hsu's. Several business associates of Mr. Hsu in New York have made donations to the same candidates, on the same dates for similar amounts as Mr. Hsu. On four separate dates this year, the Paw family, Mr. Hsu and five of his associates gave Mrs. Clinton a total of $47,500. In all, the family, Mr. Hsu and his associates have given Mrs. Clinton...

August 29, 2007

Hsu On The Lam

One of Hillary Clinton's major fundraisers turns out to also be a major felon on the run. Yesterday, connections to Norman Hsu turned up in a Wall Street Journal investigation into large donations from a family of modest means at Hsu's old address. Today, the Los Angeles Times reports that Hsu lammed it after agreeing to serve a three-year stretch for grand theft (via Hot Air): For the last 15 years, California authorities have been trying to figure out what happened to a businessman named Norman Hsu, who pleaded no contest to grand theft, agreed to serve up to three years in prison and then seemed to vanish. "He is a fugitive," Ronald Smetana, who handled the case for the state attorney general, said in an interview. "Do you know where he is?" Hsu, it seems, has been hiding in plain sight, at least for the last three years. ......

Edwards: One Of The Americas Can Engage In Conspicuous Consumption

John Edwards got a big round of applause from union workers in Florida when he shared his policy direction on the environment. He told the crowd that Americans should be prepared to sacrifice, and the first sacrifice should be the sports-utility vehicles that American drivers prefer: Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told a labor group that he would ask Americans to make a big sacrifice: their sport utility vehicles. "I think Americans are actually willing to sacrifice," Edwards said Tuesday during a forum held by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. "One of the things they should be asked to do is drive more fuel efficient vehicles." The former North Carolina senator was asked specifically if he would tell them to give up their SUVs, he said, "Yes." Well, SUVs have been the target of environmentalists for years, even as most of them have become more efficient. They...

Primary Whack-A-Mole With A Marshmallow Hammer

Earlier this week, the Democratic National Committee touched off a feud with its state party in Florida by threatening to bar their delegates if they did not change their primary date back to comply with the rules. The Republican National Committee followed suit with warnings to four states who have tried to elbow their way to the front of the line on primary election dates. Florida, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Michigan all face the loss of delegates to the convention if they do not take action to comply with party scheduling rules. At Heading Right, I ask whether either party can actually instill discipline at this point, even if they wanted to do so. Which of the two major parties want to have a scene of protest and disunity on the cusp of a presidential election? If the only other option is federal intervention, will the parties be able...

August 30, 2007

Fred Thompson Interview Transcript

On Monday, I had the opportunity to interview Fred Thompson briefly between stops at the Minnesota State Fair. I aired the recording of the interview the same day on my CQ Radio show, along with a recording of the press conference that preceded it. For those who missed the show, I have the transcript of my one-on-one walking interview with the presidential aspirant, who discusses the tone he wants to set with his upcoming campaign. EM: I’m Ed Morrissey from Captain’s Quarters. FT: Oh, Captain’s Quarters, yea EM: Well thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me for a little bit here Senator. FT: Well, not at all … Captain’s Quarters! I’m a big fan of yours. We’ve dealt with similar subjects in times past EM: Yes we have, Federalism is among them. … Senator, what do you see as the most pressing foreign policy issue outside of...

Hillary Not Hsu Happy

Hillary Clinton has decided to return some of the money donated to her campaign through Norman Hsu after learning of his outstanding warrant for fraud and failure to appear. She will direct $23,000 to charity, less than half of the amount identified by the Los Angeles Times that came from the Paw family, whose connections to Hsu led to his exposure as a convicted con man: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign said yesterday that it would give to charity $23,000 it had received from a prominent Democratic donor, and review thousands of dollars more that he had raised, after learning that the authorities in California had a warrant for his arrest stemming from a 1991 fraud case. ... On his own, Mr. Hsu wrote checks totaling $255,970 to a variety of Democratic candidates and committees since 2004. Even though he was a bundler for Mrs. Clinton, his largess was spread...

Thompson Launch Date Set

Fred Thompson has announced his announcement date, a sentence that only makes sense in the Byzantine world of American campaign finance law. He will officially declare himself a Presidential candidate on September 6th, a move that will allow him to publicly argue for his election based on specific policy proposals, raise cash, and attend debates: Republican Fred Thompson, whose entry into the presidential race has been long anticipated, will officially launch his candidacy Sept. 6 in a webcast on his campaign site, followed by a five-day tour of early primary states, the Associated Press has learned. A tour of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina will quickly follow the Internet announcement, with stops in Florida as well, and a homecoming event in Lawrenceburg, Tenn. on Sept. 15. Thompson brings to the eight-man GOP field a right-leaning Senate voting record with a few digressions from GOP orthodoxy and a healthy dose...

August 31, 2007

Will Anyone Notice?

Three Democratic presidential candidates have committed to staying out of states who have defied party rules and bumped up their primaries. The blow to these states will be tempered by the fact that no one would have noticed them in any case: Democrats Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden on Friday became the first presidential candidates to promise not to campaign in states that hold early nominating contests in violation of party rules. The three quickly signed onto a pledge circulated by Democratic leaders of the four states that have the party's blessing to hold early contests — Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina. The pledge says they will avoid competing in any other states that vote before Feb. 5. Aides to Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton said they were reviewing the pledge. Clinton's aides have previously said she is committed to competing wherever there is a...

September 1, 2007

Justice Opens Investigation Of Hsu

The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the fundraising activities of Norman Hsu, the man who put over a million dollars into Democratic coffers while remaining a fugitive con man. They want to find out whether more than just coincidence linked heavy donation activity between Hsu and at least two households of more modest means -- and the answers could prove very embarrassing for top Democrats: The U.S. Justice Department is investigating possible campaign-finance violations by top Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, according to people familiar with the probe. On Friday, Mr. Hsu surrendered to California officials on an unrelated grand-theft charge dating to the early 1990s. Mr. Hsu, who, until earlier this week was one of the biggest fundraisers for Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, was booked at the San Mateo County jail, where he was handcuffed and later released on $2 million bail. Wearing a black...

The New Hamsphire Debate, Brought To You By Fred Thompson

Fred Thompson will officially announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday, September 6th, which means he won't take an official role in the previous night's debate in New Hampshire. However, Thompson has decided to take another role for that event instead -- sponsor: Fred D. Thompson, the soon-to-be-official presidential contender, has come under a good deal of criticism in New Hampshire this week for scheduling his formal announcement for next Thursday morning and thus skipping the Republican debate in Manchester on Wednesday night. But that does not mean that television viewers watching the debate will not see him. Campaign officials said Friday that Mr. Thompson had bought a 30-second spot that would be televised nationally on the Fox News Channel, the network carrying the debate, just as viewers are tuning in at the onset. One campaign official familiar with the decision said the spot would be a...

A Meaningless Quiz Show With No Prizes

Earlier today, I noted Fred Thompson's sponsorship of the Fox broadcast of the next Republican debate, and called it a "shrewd move", which resulted in some, ahem, mixed reviews from CQ readers. It occurred to me that I hadn't explained why I found Thompson's tweak of the debate such a sound move, or at least not in quite a while. Put simply, presidential debates are disasters waiting to happen to candidates. Good things almost never happen at them, and the format is calculated to play gotcha games with candidates in both parties. It forces a "lightning round" mentality onto complex policy issues that rewards simpletons and punishes the thoughtful. What candidate in his or her right mind would want to participate in that exercise? As an example of this, I've spent my afternoon racking my brain trying to find one debate appearance for any Republican candidate that actually resulted in...

September 2, 2007

Top Democrats To Punish Florida, Michigan

On Friday, three also-ran Democractic presidential candidates vowed to skip campaigning in Michigan and Florida after the DNC sanctioned the states for breaking rules on primary schedules. The impact of that pledge seemed marginal at best. It would take the top three candidates signing the pledge for it to have any effect -- and surprisingly, they have signed it: The Democratic candidates have signed a pledge that would forbid them from campaigning in states such as Michigan and Florida that have sought to move their presidential primaries into January 2008. The move ended weeks-long jockeying over which states get to hold early primaries. Democratic leaders in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, the four states that had been designated by the Democratic National Committee to hold early primaries, demanded in letters Friday that the candidates not participate in the early primaries of other states. The candidates either had to...

September 3, 2007

See Your Doctor Or Go To Jail?

John Edwards has a strange way of distilling foolishness to its essence, and he showed that talent yesterday when talking about his vision of health care. In remarks curiously ignored by newspapers today, Edwards insisted that his plan would force people to seek health evaluations, whether they desire one or not. It reveals the arrogance and the authoritarianism that waits around the corner when government-run healthcare gets imposed on a free society: Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care. "It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go...

Hillary's Other Problematic Bundler

Having one major contributor with a criminal history of fraud can just be bad luck. Having two of them starts looking like a pattern. The Washington Post reports that Norman Hsu has some company with the Hillary Clinton campaign in Sant Charwal, who fled India ahead of the law but still has plenty of cash to throw at Hillary's campaign: Sant S. Chatwal, an Indian American businessman, has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaigns, even as he battled governments on two continents to escape bankruptcy and millions of dollars in tax liens. The founder of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, Chatwal is one of a growing number of fundraisers in the 2008 presidential campaign whose backgrounds have prompted questions about how much screening the candidates devote to their "bundlers" while they press to raise record amounts. Chatwal's case reached from his native India...

September 4, 2007

Is Minnesota Thompson Territory?

Straw polls have dominated the news of late, what with the Ames poll in Iowa resulting in a boomlet for Mike Huckabee and the Texas poll giving Duncan Hunter a much needed, and much deserved, second wind. Two polls in Minnesota have shown surprising strength for Fred Thompson, one all the more so because he wasn't even listed as a candidate. On August 22nd, the state GOP held a straw poll designed to help boost party donations at the River Center in St. Paul, emceed by local radio host Jason Lewis. Campaign activists for most candidates produced video presentations for poll attendees, but none for Thompson, who was at the time (as now) a non-candidate. His name did not appear on the ballot. On the strength of write-ins, though Thompson won the poll. Exact percentages were not given, nor could I get candidate totals after a phone call to the...

And The Lord Spake, Thou Shalt Caucus First In Iowa

Guess who said this in Sioux City over the weekend as a reason to bolster Iowa's pre-eminent place in the primary structure (via Instapundit): “Iowa, for good reason, for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord should be the first caucus and primary." I'll give you a hint: it's not Pat Robertson or George Bush -- but if it was, can you imagine the outcry? At Heading Right, I reveal the identity of the prophet and wonder whether the usual suspects will start clamoring about the separation of church and state. For that matter, will Constitutional scholars be able to dissect the reference? UPDATE: Was this a joke? The attendees didn't think so, and the next line from the candidate reminded the audience that he signed the pledge to protect Iowa's position. Michael van der Galien has more: We also see a double standard at work, although the people...

Footing The Bill For Hsu

Flip Pidot at Suitably Flip has done a marvelous job in ferreting out the financial contributions of Norman Hsu to the Democratic Party and dozens of its candidates over the last few years. Whether bundling the donations of others or contributing directly, the convicted con man has made himself indispensable to high-powered Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Ed Rendell, and Eliot Spitzer. In fact, Hsu has raised over $1.5 million for Democrats in one way or another, and his modest-means associates have donated some eye-popping amounts as well: Hillary Clinton took by far the most money from Hsu and his suspect donor network - $174,000 net of refunds. Clinton has agreed to turn over only Hsu's direct contributions (just 13% of the total) to charity. Tied for the biggest windfall from Hsu directly were New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and New York Governor (and former Attorney General)...

Privatization Never Works: Hillary

Hillary Clinton has an interesting view of the American economy, if her remarks to the AARP serve as any sort of guide. She told its legislative conference that Social Security is the "most successful domestic program" in American history, and that only government can make the necessary decisions for its beneficiaries (via reader Online Analyst): "This is the most successful domestic program in the history of the United States," Clinton said to applause from seniors gathered in Washington to push their policy agenda. "When I'm president, privatization is off the table because it's not the answer to anything." She also said she does not support cutting benefits or increasing the retirement age. Seniors can begin collecting partial benefits at age 62, with full benefits available at age 67 for those born in 1960 or later. Clinton said instead she will protect the program through fiscal responsibility and criticized President Bush's...

September 5, 2007

NYT: Hsu Shows Need For Government Control Of Election Financing

The New York Times editorial board takes up the case of Norman Hsu and Sant Chatwal today, but not to excoriate their Senator, Governor, and state Democratic Party for their dealings with the pair. Instead, the Gray Lady claims Hsu and Chantwal as exhibits A and B for their argument to push for public financing of elections: The presidential candidates’ gross money marathon is leaving them increasingly open to shady backslappers securing privileged access with big bags of campaign cash on the barrelhead. Senator Hillary Clinton has been burned twice lately by so-called bundlers — aspiring power brokers who harvest large amounts of smaller donations and bundle them into irresistibly giant packages. One Clinton bundler turned out to have an outstanding arrest warrant for business fraud; the other has a history of tax liens, fraud charges and bankruptcy proceedings on two continents. Other candidates in both parties have been similarly...

Ask Your Questions Of Fred Thompson

The announcement of Senator Fred Thompson's bid for the presidency is scheduled for tomorrow, after tonight's New Hampshire debate. That has some people frustrated that Thompson won't take part in the debate tonight (he will advertise at the beginning of the show instead), and wonder when Thompson plans to engage. This morning, the Thompson campaign answered with a new program designed to answer directly to blog readers, such as the community here at Captain's Quarters: On Thursday, Fred Thompson will be kicking off his campaign for the presidency in Des Moines, IA, touring through the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina before visiting Florida and returning to Lawrenceburg, TN for a homecoming celebration. While on this tour, Fred Thompson will be answering the tough questions, whether they come from a voter at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire or from the nation’s top journalists. However,...

Hsu On The Lam -- Again

Who'd have predicted this? Norman Hsu, the convicted con man and Democratic fundraiser extraordinaire, has skipped bail -- again (via Michelle Malkin): California businessman Norman Hsu, a former New York apparel executive and major contributor to Democratic candidates and causes, failed to appear for a bail reduction hearing Wednesday, leading to speculation that he again is a fugitive from the law, FOX News has learned. Hsu's attorneys say they do not know his whereabouts, and that their client did not surrender his passport. Let's see. After pleading guilty to fraud in 1991, Hsu jumped bail rather than appear at his sentencing hearing for his agreed-upon three-year stretch. Fifteen years later, the long arm of the law finally caught up with Hsu after funneling over $1.5 million to Democrats around the country. So what did the California court do? Let him out on bail again -- and Hsu has apparently skipped...

Obama's Fundraiser Woes (Update: More Info On Jaws' Connections)

UPDATE: A commenter tries to pass this off as a smear by the Post by claiming that Alexi Giannoulias didn't administer the loans to Michael "Jaws" Giorango and that Giannoulias was only 18 years old when Jaws got convicted of his crimes. Donna uses one out-of-context sentence from this Rich Miller column in 2006 to bolster that argument -- "There’s no real indication that the Giannoulias family bank did anything illegal. The younger Giannoulias didn’t even work at the bank when most of this stuff went down." However, that's not really true. First, Jaws got convicted of crimes in 1989 and 1991, when Alexi Giannoulias was 13 and 15, respectively, but also in 2004, when Alexi was 28 and in charge of loans at the family bank. He also admitted to approving loans to Jaws and his associates in 2005 in order for them to buy a casino fleet in...

Presidential Debate Live Blog & Roundtable At Heading Right

Tonight, the crew at Heading Right will live-blog the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire. The debate starts at 8 pm CT and runs to 9:30 pm CT on Fox News Channel. We'll have several of our A-list hosts commenting on the debate in real time, so be sure to keep hitting the refresh button and follow along with the analysis. At 10 pm CT, I'll moderate a post-debate roundtable with four BTR hosts. Fausta Wertz, Rick Moran, Jim Lynch, and Mac Ranger will review the event and talk about the high and low points for the participants. I imagine we'll also discuss Fred Thompson's decision to announce tomorrow rather than earlier and miss this debate. Be sure to tune in! UPDATE AND BUMP: We're under way!...

Debate Wrap-Up

The New Hampshire debate has finally ended, and once again, nothing will really resonate past the next couple of days. Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani had a pretty good night. Both of them sounded sharp and handled the tough questioning by Fox. Giuliani gets the edge here in that he really had no bad moments in the debate; he took a couple of potential problem questions and worked them to his advantage, including one about his personal life. Romney got hit pretty hard by a military father who was clearly upset by Romney's glib answer about his sons volunteering to help his political campaign as somewhat equivalent to military service. He also had a bit of a wobble on Chris Wallace's "Fee-Fee" characterization, which will stick with Romney, I think; it's just too funny to miss. And it's one of the reasons I think these debates are nothing but campaign...

September 6, 2007

Thompson Announces On Leno

Fred Thompson managed to overshadow the New Hampshire presidential debate by officially announcing his candidacy earlier in a taped session of The Tonight Show. Noting that "it's a lot more difficult to get on the Tonight Show than a presidential debate," Thompson wound up getting more air time -- and more questioning -- than any of the debate's attendees: After months of false starts, staff shake-ups, and questions about the seriousness of his intention to run for president, Fred Thompson rolled out his presidential candidacy this evening with a two-pronged, guerrilla-style entry into the race that sought to take the spotlight from his Republican opponents as they squared off in a debate. Choosing “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” to declare “I’m running for president of the United States,” Mr. Thompson said, “I don’t think people are going to say, ‘That guy would make a very good president but he...

California Didn't Consider Hsu A Flight Risk

Sometimes politicians can be so adorable when they're clueless, and California Deputy Attorney General Ralph Sivilla is a case in point. The New York Times' Leslie Wayne and Carolyn Marshall asked Sivilla why the state didn't ask to keep Hsu locked up without bail, and Sivilla had to defend that decision while Hsu high-stepped it to Oakland and perhaps points beyond: Ralph Sivilla, a deputy California attorney general, said the government had believed that Mr. Hsu was not a flight risk, based on the amount of his bail, his promise to relinquish his passport to the court and the fact that he had turned himself in. “Those circumstances had seemed to suggest that he was not a flight risk,” Mr. Sivilla said. “There was something hanging over his head. There were things in place.” When asked whether he thought Mr. Hsu had left the country, Mr. Sivilla said, “I would...

Thompson Has Your Questions

Yesterday, the campaign team for Fred Thompson asked the Captain's Quarters community to participate in a new kind of interactive forum. They gave us the opportunity to ask specific, substantive questions of Senator Thompson and submit a few representative entries to the campaign. Next week, Thompson will answer these questions as well as some from a few other blogs in videotaped messages through his campaign website. Earlier today, they asked me to select the questions for the candidate. In order to allow reader participation for the selection as well as the generation of questions, I asked longtime faithful readers Peyton and Deb to form a committee with me. Together we came up with six -- we pushed the limit a little on that -- and sent them to the campaign late this afternoon. They've indicated their delight with the process, and we should start seeing the answers soon. Most of...

September 7, 2007

Slippery Hsu Caught In Colorado

State and federal authorities arrested the fugitive of the year, Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, last night in Colorado. Paramedics took him off a train heading for Chicago on a backboard, and he spent the night in the hospital with an unknown illness or injury (via Memeorandum): Fugitive political fundraiser Norman Hsu, who skipped out on San Mateo County authorities this week rather than face sentencing for a 1992 fraud conviction, was apprehended Thursday night by federal and local lawmen in Grand Junction, Colo. Authorities said Hsu was taken into custody at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction at 7 p.m. local time. He had been on the lam for almost two days after failing to appear in a Redwood City courtroom Wednesday to surrender his passport. Hsu was taken off a passenger train at the Grand Junction train station earlier in the day by paramedics who requested a backboard to...

Thompson Will Challenge For Iowa

Fred Thompson spent the day of his official launch campaigning in Iowa, seeking to exploit the diffidence Republican voters have felt over the slate of GOP candidates in the state. Some wondered whether Thompson might have focused on Super Tuesday states first, especially in the South, but the campaign feels that Thompson has an opportunity to surprise people in Iowa: Fred D. Thompson took his bid for the White House to the campaign trail Thursday, vowing to compete aggressively for the support of Iowans and pitching steady, experienced and conservative leadership. "I still have the same common-sense conservative beliefs I did when I ran in 1994," the former senator said in a speech at a Des Moines conference center, a not-so-subtle reference to criticism about the changing positions of his main Republican rivals, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. "The preseason is over,"...

September 8, 2007

Hsu On The Other Foot

Most of the focus for Norman Hsu's dubious fundraising has fallen on Hillary Clinton, who benefited enormously from Hsu's efforts. Less attention has been given to Hsu's connections to her main rival Barack Obama, but the Washington Post reports that Hsu did a little walking for the candidate who claims to want a different kind of politics. Hsu brought Obama one of his biggest fundraisers: Before becoming a major bundler for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, disgraced Democratic donor Norman Hsu helped host a 2005 California event for Barack Obama's political action committee and introduced the senator from Illinois to one of the biggest fundraisers for his presidential bid. Federal Election Commission records show that Hsu gave $5,000 to Obama's Hopefund PAC in connection with the fundraiser and that people publicly identified with Hsu and his companies gave an additional $19,500 to the PAC in 2005 and 2006. Mark...

September 9, 2007

A Challenge For A Real Debate

Fred Thompson has noted, as I have recently, the ineffectiveness of presidential debates in their current format. On the day of his official launch into the presidential race, Thompson told Sean Hannity that the format did little to enlighten American voters on the issues or where the candidates really stand on policy: It is not designed really to illuminate people's thoughts and feelings. Thirty-, 40-second sound bites, you know, to questions that hopefully will elicit some kind of a comment about one of the other participants, something like that, to make a little story, that sort of thing. I kind of think that Newt's idea of going back to the Lincoln-Douglas debate-type format, where you have two people sit down or stand up and, you know, take an hour or so, and maybe an hour-and-a-half and discuss maybe one particular category, one particular topic, and get in-depth and go back...

Fashion Companies Nothing But Spats For Hsu

The New York Times has its reporters wearing out some old-fashioned shoe leather in attempting to trace down the source of Norman Hsu's prodigious amounts of money, used to float $1.6 million in personal and bundled contributions to Democratic candidates and organizations. The result? The Times discovered that the companies Hsu listed appear to have only one produce -- salaries for Democratic contributors: At the center of the ever-deepening mystery of Norman Hsu, the fugitive fund-raiser who was captured after a brief flight from the law last week, is the question of how he evolved from a bankrupt swindler in 1992 to a wealthy donor to many Democratic candidates, and a bundler of campaign contributions to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2007. A review of financial records for one of Mr. Hsu’s companies begins to shed light on some of his recent activities, including his dealings with a circle of...

The Gore Endorsement - The Non-Story

Will Al Gore's endorsement bring a boost to whomever he blesses, or will it represent the kiss of death to its victim? The Washington Post analyzes its potential and comes up with little more than a shrug: Former vice president Al Gore's pronouncement that he is likely to endorse one of the Democratic candidates for president before the primary season is over has set off a slew of speculation about who his choice might be. Truth is, the courting of the "Goreacle" began many months ago. Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Gore huddled in Nashville in December, and Gore has also met with former senator John Edwards (N.C.). Gore and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) conferred as recently as last week. ... It seems safe to predict that Gore will not be endorsing the bid of the senator from New York. A more open question might be whether he would...

Fred's Answers Coming Soon

Captain's Quarters readers participated in a new kind of interactive campaign rolled out by the Fred Thompson campaign on their launch date. The Thompson team asked our community to give them a handful of substantive questions, and the Senator would answer us directly in taped video responses. We had scores of questions from which to choose, and we sent six to the campaign as respresentative of the whole. I've been told that the campaign will start to release Thompson's answers later today or tomorrow. Stay tuned, as we will have the video available here when it's ready!...

September 10, 2007

Did Romney Team Set Up Phony Fred Site? (Update: Team Romney Responds)

People have wondered which candidates would fear a Fred Thompson candidacy the most. Tonight we may have an answer. The appearance of a snarky anti-Thompson website got journalists interested in its origin -- and that led to a surprise: An opposition research-laden website called "phoneyfred.org" has surfaced that hammers the GOP's newest presidential candidate for his policy positions, lobbying work, previous dating life and ties to John McCain. There is no disclaimer on the site and the anonymous e-mailer who sent along the link declined to identify himself/herself. The domain was secured last month from a Utah-based web-hosting provider, Bluehost.com. Reached by phone, an employee of the company declined to identify who had purchased the site. Clearly, though, this is no amateur effort. The volume of information and the way that it's sourced reeks of a grasstops hit-job. Repeatingly calling Thompson "Phoney Fred" in the on-message style of political operatives,...

September 11, 2007

Hillary Hears A Hsu

After days of tortured explanations of why her campaign would hold onto bundled donations from Norman Hsu even after donating his direct contributions to charity, Hillary Clinton finally announced that her campaign would return Hsu's funneled money to their donors. Her campaign also announced how much money that would involve, and it turned out to be many times more than first thought: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign announced tonight that it would return approximately $850,000 to about 260 donors who had been recruited or tapped by Norman Hsu, the disgraced Clinton campaign fundraiser who recently fled arrest and is now under investigation for his fundraising practices. The Clinton campaign also disclosed tonight that it had decided to begin running criminal background checks on its bundlers — the dozens of individuals who raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors on behalf of a candidate, as Mr. Hsu had done for...

Was Thompson In Unforgiven?

If not, he's doing a pretty good impression of it on the campaign trail today. After Mitt Romney attempted to distance himself from the Phoney Fred website, Thompson blasted Romney in no uncertain terms. Romney's team says 9/11 should be a day free from political consequences: The statement from Todd Harris, communications director for Fred Thompson, accuses Mitt Romney's campaign of a "half-baked cover-up" of what he alleges is the association between a Romney consultant and a hastily pulled website that said nasty things about Thompson. Harris concluded with the kind of rhetoric that tends to warm Democratic hearts: "This latest episode only serves to prove what many voters are already figuring out: Mitt Romney will do anything, say anything, smear any opponent and flip flop on any position in order to win. The American people in general and the Republican Party in particular deserve better than this." Romney spokesman...

September 12, 2007

Hsu Ran With The Money

The Wall Street Journal has tracked down the source of Norman Hsu's cash, and the good news is that the People's Republic of China didn't provide the funds -- at least, not some of them. However, the bad news is that Hsu apparently moved from Ponzi schemes to outright embezzlement as a former Woodstock backer proved as inept at background checks as the Democratic Party: New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who was one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That money, Mr. Rosenman told investors this week, is missing. Mr. Hsu told Mr. Rosenman the money would be used to manufacture apparel in China for Gucci, Prada and other private labels, yielding a 40% profit on each...

Why Didn't Clinton Team Heed Hsu Warnings?

The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party received warnings that Hsu had a bad record with money as early as June of this year, several sources report, but did nothing to distance themselves from the Hillraiser. Jack Cassidy, a California businessman who recognized Hsu as a shady character, sent messages imploring Democrats to avoid Hsu, to no avail: Hillary Clinton's campaign couldn't explain yesterday why it blew off warnings about felon-turned-fund-raiser Norman Hsu - and the Daily News learned FBI agents are collecting e-mail evidence in the widening scandal. Clinton was forced Monday to give back a whopping $850,000 raised by convicted scam artist Hsu after learning his investment ventures were being probed by the FBI as a potential Ponzi scheme. ... Yesterday, the campaign insisted it did all it should to vet Hsu after California businessman Jack Cassidy warned in June that Hsu's investment operation was fishy. Cassidy...

Hsustock!

Looking for the perfect scandal name for the Norman Hsu scandal? The connection noted in today's Wall Street Journal gives a perfect opportunity to create an enduring label for the rapidly-expanding scandal behind one of the Democratic Party's biggest fundraisers. The apparent con of Joel Rosenman, the man behind the Woodstock concerts in 1969 and 1994, makes this ... Hsustock! Speaking of music, Hillary Clinton remains tone-deaf about the damage that Hsu's money has created for her and her Democratic allies. After finally announcing that her campaign would return Hsu's bundled donations, Hillary suggested that the recipients return the refunds: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose campaign is returning $850,000 in contributions linked to disgraced fundraiser Norman Hsu, indicated Wednesday that donors who contributed that money could donate to her presidential campaign once again. "We're not asking that that be done," she said in a teleconference with reporters. "But I believe...

September 13, 2007

Hsustock: Suicide Note At Disappearance

Norman Hsu sent a suicide note to a distribution list of friends and associates before he jumped bail last week. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that the missives, which arrived via FedEx last Thursday, explicitly warned that he would kill himself over the exposure of his past business practices: Before Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu skipped a court hearing and temporarily vanished last week, he typed out a suicide note and sent copies to several acquaintances and charitable organizations, according to people who received it. The one-page note, signed by Mr. Hsu, "very explicitly said he intended to commit suicide," said one of the recipients in an account corroborated by others, including law-enforcement officials. Mr. Hsu also apologized for putting anybody "through inconvenience or trouble," the recipient said. The letter, which began, "To whom it may concern," arrived by FedEx at the addresses of several recipients last Thursday, the...

Hsus And Socks

You can tell the man who boozes, by the company he chooses ... and the pig got up and slowly walked away. The poem by Clarke Van Ness warns people that they will be judged by the actions of those with whom they choose to associate -- and even a pig has enough sense to walk away from disaster. Hillary Clinton has a big problem with her associates, and it's self-inflicted. Lost in the Norman Hsu shuffle, the news that Hillary has asked former Clinton national-security adviser Sandy Berger to join her campaign should cause even more questions about her judgment and her ethics: The more experienced Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has relied largely on her husband and a triumvirate of senior officials from his presidency—former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke and former national-security adviser Sandy Berger (who tries to keep a low profile after pleading...

September 14, 2007

Hsustock: The Definition Of Insanity

If the definition of insanity is repeating the same actions over and over despite consistent failure, then the American judiciary needs a shrink when it comes to Norman Hsu. Despite having run out on his sentencing for a nolo contendere plea on fraud 15 years ago, and despite having jumped bail when finally brought to justice for jumping bail before, a Colorado judge set a $5 million bail for Hsu: A judge ordered a cash bond of $5 million for Norman Hsu, the shadowy Democratic fund-raiser, after Colorado authorities told the court here that Mr. Hsu might have been involved in another multimillion-dollar fraud investigation involving dozens of investors in Orange County, Calif. The revelation that Mr. Hsu, a fugitive for 15 years in a California fraud case, might be implicated in another fraud investigation came after New York investors learned this week that $40 million they had invested with...

September 16, 2007

Hsustock: What Did Hsu Want?

The Washington Post asks the question at the base of the Hsustock scandal, but comes up with few answers. What did Norman Hsu hope to gain by flooding the zone with millions in contributions to Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton? Where did he get the money at the beginning, before apparently fleecing Woodstock founder Joel Rosenman of $40 million? His investors would like the answers to all of the above: To raise $850,000 for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign in just eight months, Norman Hsu tapped an eclectic group of donors that included wealthy investors in his apparel ventures, hotel shopkeepers, a 96-year-old in a Florida retirement home and an auto-body worker who mistakenly thought he would get a tax break for his political generosity. The Clinton campaign has not yet released any information about the 260 donors whose contributions it is now refunding because they were credited to the...

Fred Answers Your Question, Part 1

The Fred Thompson campaign has begun answering questions from Captain's Quarters readers as well as those of other blogs. In the first response, Senator Thompson answers this question on tax policy, submitted by Dan J on 9/5: Our tax code is overly complex and it seems people spend more time and money finding loopholes or for compliance than anything else. Several options have been floated for reform. Two that interest me are the Flat Tax and The FairTax Act (HR 25, S 1025). Between the Flat and Fair tax, which do you feel would have a better chance or being enacted and would a Thompson administration make reforming--not applying Band-Aids or allowing more bad re-writes of the same terrible rules--the tax code a priority? Here's the answer: More answers will be forthcoming soon. In the meantime, what's your evaluation of the answer and this process?...

September 19, 2007

Jesse Jackson: Obama 'Acting Like He's White'

One of the sillier memes of this political season has been whether Barack Obama is "black enough" for African-American support. Jesse Jackson has chimed into the debate, but not on the side one might expect. The former presidential candidate told South Carolina voters that Obama acts like a white man because he doesn't make a bigger issue of the Jena case in Louisiana (via Hot Air): Jackson sharply criticized presidential hopeful and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for “acting like he’s white” in what Jackson said has been a tepid response to six black juveniles’ arrest on attempted-murder charges in Jena, La. Jackson, who also lives in Illinois, endorsed Obama in March, according to The Associated Press. “If I were a candidate, I’d be all over Jena,” Jackson said after an hour-long speech at Columbia’s historically black Benedict College. “Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment,”...

The Hsu-To-Mile-High Choo-Choo On Wrong Track: Spokesman

The Norman Hsu case continues on its strange path today, as the Democratic fundraiser waived his extradition challenge to return to California. His spokesman attempted what will certainly be his excuse when he appears in a San Mateo courtroom, by claiming that a disoriented Hsu got on the wrong train: Disgraced Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, wanted in California on a 15-year-old felony theft conviction, agreed Wednesday to return to the state without a fight. Hsu appeared in court, his hands cuffed and his ankles shackled, as he read legal documents waiving his rights and signed four copies of the paperwork. He also answered Judge Brian Flynn's questions about giving up his right to fight extradition. ... A Hsu spokesman said Wednesday that he had intended to appear for his court date in California but may have mistakenly boarded a train out of state. Jason Booth said Hsu was "sick and...

September 21, 2007

Hsu's Method To His Madness

Most people who puzzle over the efforts of Norman Hsu focus, and rightly so, on where Hsu came up with the boatloads of money that went to Democratic candidates and organizations. Flip Pidot at Suitably Flip decided to ask another question -- why did Hsu donate to certain candidates and not others? Flip discovers an indirect link to Bill Clinton's cabinet: This is peculiar. As an A-list Democratic fundraiser, Hsu is typically the bundler in these transactions, not the bundlee. So what gives? Lillian Vernon is a trinket catalog company, perhaps best known for its constant lampooning on Mad TV. It was founded by Lillian Hochberg in Mount Vernon, NY (clever, eh?) in 1951. Lillian's son Fred is the current CEO and his brother David is an executive at the company. If you run a search for Fred Hochberg's own federal political contributions, the telltale Hsu pattern once again emerges....

September 22, 2007

Celebrity Endorsements, Political Contributions, And Hsu

The fallout continues from the exposure of Norman Hsu as a world-class con man. A Laguna Beach investment firm filed a lawsuit against the Democratic Party fundraiser for defrauding investors of $23 million, which apparently makes them Victim #3 in the FBI's complaint against Hsu. Given the description of the suit in the Mercury News, Briar Wood Investments may add some celebrities and politicians as codefendants: A Laguna Beach investment firm filed a lawsuit against Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu on Friday, claiming he defrauded investors out of at least $23 million and required them to donate to Democratic candidates. According to the lawsuit filed by Briar Wood Investments, Hsu persuaded the company's operator to do business with him by taking him to star-studded Democratic Party events. There, the 56-year-old Hong Kong native was praised by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and others, the lawsuit...

Will Criticizing Republicans Help Romney?

In the primaries, the best strategies are those which encourage voters to engage on the widest scale. That usually involved optimism and an argument why one's party offers the best opportunity for success. Mitt Romney has decided to take a different tack -- and while it may not be what Republicans want to hear, it may also be what Republicans need to hear: Republican Mitt Romney bluntly challenged his own party to "put our own house in order" as John McCain and Rudy Giuliani assailed Democratic rivals while courting activists in a state that's now a player in the nomination march. "Washington is failing us," Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, said in remarks prepared for delivery Saturday, part of an effort to cast himself as an agent of change. "The blame doesn't all belong to the Democrats. We Republicans have to put our own house in order." ... In an...

'Why Didn't They Go Get Him?'

Another Norman Hsu story escaped my attention last night, but it's interesting enough to add as an additional post rather than update my earlier post on the subject. The San Mateo Superior Court apparently learned a lesson from Hsu's hotfoot to Colorado, holding him this time without bail. Meanwhile, his attorney wondered aloud why California never sought Hsu even though he operated in plain sight of California elected officials -- and may have inadvertently answered his own question: Fallen Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was ordered held without bail Friday, and his attorney accused the FBI of extracting a confession while the convicted swindler was recovering from an apparent suicide attempt. Hsu appeared briefly in San Mateo Superior Court on a 15-year-old grand theft conviction, one day after federal authorities charged him in New York with bilking investors out of $60 million. Investigators say he donated some of that money to...

September 24, 2007

Hillary Against The Free Press

Both Hillary Clinton and GQ have a lot of explaining to do if the Politico has this story correct According to Ben Smith, Hillary's campaign pressured GQ to kill a piece critical of her by threatening to withhold Bill Clinton's cooperation in the future. The editors of GQ caved into the threat and spiked the article: Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president learned that the men’s magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland. So Clinton’s aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton. Despite internal protests, GQ editor Jim Nelson met the Clinton campaign’s demands, which had been delivered by Bill Clinton’s spokesman, Jay Carson, several sources familiar with the conversations said. Instead of...

September 25, 2007

Republicans Making A Mistake In Avoiding PBS Debate

J.C. Watts has wisdom for the Republican presidential candidates that they have not yet incorporated into their campaigns, to the party's detriment. Watts and Newt Gingrich both scold the GOP frontrunners for declining an invitation to the PBS debate at a historically black college in Baltimore: A former member of the House Republican congressional leadership -- and the last African-American to serve as a member of the GOP in Congress -- harshly criticized Tuesday the decision of the Republican presidential front-runners to not attend a debate focused on minority issues. "I think the best that comes out of stupid decisions like this," said former Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts, is "that African-Americans might say is, 'Was it because of my skin color?' Now, maybe it wasn't, but African-Americans do say, 'It crossed my mind.'" All four GOP presidential front-runners -- former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., former...

September 26, 2007

Hsu's Strings Tied To Hillary

If Hillary Clinton had hoped that the Norman Hsu story would start to fade, she will find disappointment in an unlikely place this morning. The Boston Globe reports that Hsu's seemingly odd and disjointed list of benefactors had something in common -- most of them endorsed and supported Hillary (via Instapundit): Disgraced fund-raiser Norman Hsu did a lot more than just pump $850,000 into Hillary Clinton's campaign bank account: He also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local, state, and federal candidates who have endorsed Clinton or whose support she courted. A major fund-raiser for Democrats since 2003, Hsu became one of Clinton's biggest bundlers - gathering scores of individual checks and sending them to her campaign. But since revelations last month that Hsu was a fugitive in a 15-year-old California fraud case, Clinton has said she would return the $850,000 she has taken from him and his associates....

Would Hillary Choose Obama For Veep?

Roger Simon at the Politico says no, but goes through a lot of reasons why Hillary Clinton might select Barack Obama as her running mate once she wins the nomination. Simon mentions the need for unity after a fractious primary, Obama's draw among black voters, and his organizational skills. Simon waits until the concluding paragraphs to give what he sees as the countervailing argument (via Memeorandum): So why wouldn’t Hillary put Obama on the ticket? There are two unbreakable rules for picking a running mate: Never pick anybody who might overshadow the top of the ticket, and never pick anybody you cannot completely control. So Obama might be eliminated on both counts. Then there is the Rule of Firsts. The Clinton campaign does not want to force too many “firsts” on the American electorate. Electing the first woman president will be challenge enough. Electing the first woman president and first...

September 27, 2007

How Petraeus Moved The Debate, Literally

How far has General David Petraeus moved the debate on Iraq? His testimony on the surge, and the effects of the surge itself, has made it much more difficult for Democrats to argue for withdrawal and defeat. In fact, at last night's debate, the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination couldn't even commit to a withdrawal -- by 2013: The leading Democratic White House hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013. "I think it's hard to project four years from now," said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation's first primary state. "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. "I cannot make that commitment," said former Sen. John Edwards of...

Ron Paul Supporters Will Like This

I'm back in the session with Sean Hannity, who is now broadcasting the first two hours of his show live. We're actually in the final hour of the show, and Newt Gingrich has been his guest for most of these two hours. Hannity challenged Gingrich about his kind words for Hillary Clinton this weekend and at other times, saying that Gingrich's graciousness drives some of his listeners up the wall. Gingrich gave a humorous answer for that, noting that out of her ten-page healthcare proposal, there had to be one page that made some sense, and we should encourage common sense when it occurs. Earlier, Sean Hannity noticed a Ron Paul supporter in the back of the room while he was on the air. He was easy to spot; he wore a t-shirt that had RON PAUL in large letters. Sean engaged him in a little banter, and in the...

September 28, 2007

John McCain Conference Call

John McCain conducted another in his series of blogger conference calls this afternoon, and I had the chance to participate. It took a few minutes to get the conference going, but he did make it from his Detroit speech to the Hispanic business community. McCain talked about entrepeneurship and the need to get government out of the way of private enterprise. He said that he's still pleased with the status of his candidacy. He's even more pleased that the leading Democrats would not commit to a date certain for withdrawal even before 2013. He says that General Petraeus gave a good case for continued commitment, and took the fight out of the Democrats over their demand for a withdrawal timeline. Ryan Crocker represents "the best" of what we have have to offer in the foreign service. McCain also came out in favor of the new sanctions from George Bush against...

Clinton: Let's Add A $20 Billion Entitlement (Update & Bump - Context?)

Fresh off of pushing for an expansion of S-CHIP into the middle class and adding tens of billions of dollars on insurance subsidies, Hillary Clinton decided to create another entitlement program for her cradle-to-grave nanny state vision. In her address to the Congressional Black Caucus, Hillary said she'd like to spend $20 billion each year on checks to newborn infants: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that every child born in the United States should get a $5,000 "baby bond" from the government to help pay for future costs of college or buying a home. Clinton, her party's front-runner in the 2008 race, made the suggestion during a forum hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus. "I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school...

Newt's Running ... In 2012

My friend and all-around brilliant political analyst Patrick Ruffini deduces that Newt Gingrich has decided to enter the 2008 presidential race. He takes a look at Newt's pledge scheme and figures that Newt only needs to find 14,000 donors to contribute the maximum $2300 in order to reach the threshold of $30 million Newt demanded as a prerequisite to opening a nomination bid: Newt would need only 14,000 of his fans to flood the site with $2,300 "pledges" in order to declare a broad public groundswell for his candidacy. Sound far-fetched? You've seen what Ron Paul supporters do. You think Newt fans wouldn't do the same if they believed his entry into the race depended on it? And if Newt's people actually left the system this open -- i.e. didn't require you to leave a credit card that could then be charged -- I guarantee this hack would spread like...

September 29, 2007

Huckabee Hits The Bush Administration

Mike Huckabee has decided to make a clean break with the Bush administration on foreign policy. In a speech yesterday, Huckabee supported the surge in Iraq but came out against the White House on most other foreign-policy issues, including the conduct of the war on terror: Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee ripped the Bush administration's war against terrorism Friday, delivering a bold and potentially risky speech that could establish the former Arkansas governor as the maverick among top Republican candidates and test his party's loyalty to President Bush. "This administration's bunker mentality has been counterproductive both at home and abroad," Huckabee said in opening a broad indictment of Bush's style and policy. The speech came after several top Republican candidates started distancing themselves from Bush, vowing change on such issues as illegal immigration and federal spending even as they endorsed Bush's foreign policy. By going much further than his rivals...

I Hate To Say I Told You So, But ....

... well, I did tell you so. Newt Gingrich has announced through his spokesman that he will not run for President in this cycle. Running American Solutions makes it legally impossible to conduct an exploratory campaign: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will not run for president in 2008 after determining he could not legally explore a bid and remain as head of his tax-exempt political organization, a spokesman said Saturday. "Newt is not running," spokesman Rick Tyler said. "It is legally impermissible for him to continue on as chairman of American Solutions (for Winning the Future) and to explore a campaign for president." Gingrich decided "to continue on raising the challenges America faces and finding solutions to those challenges" as the group's chairman, Tyler said, "rather than pursuing the presidency." Over the past few months, Gingrich had stoked speculation he might enter the crowded GOP field, despite the seemingly insurmountable...

October 1, 2007

Christian Conservatives For Hillary

When parties fall out of power, they tend to go through a battle between Puritans and Big Tenters. Inevitably, when Puritans control the debate, they tend to ensure a longer term in the wilderness, and when they don't, they threaten to leave. Perhaps the developments in Salt Lake City, at a meeting of the Council for National Policy, indicates that the Republican center-right has begun to take the lead in GOP politics: Alarmed at the chance that the Republican party might pick Rudolph Giuliani as its presidential nominee despite his support for abortion rights, a coalition of influential Christian conservatives is threatening to back a third-party candidate in an attempt to stop him. The group making the threat, which came together Saturday in Salt Lake City during a break-away gathering during a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy, includes Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who...

Winning The Ponzi Endorsement

Hillary Clinton seems to attract all the right money from all the wrong people. Right on the heels of Norman Hsu, the New York Post reports that another Ponzi-scheme operator has pumped almost $30,000 in contributions to her campaign (via Michelle Malkin): A purported pyramid-scheme operator who was run out of Arkansas when Bill Clinton was governor has reinvented himself as the head of an upstate group accused of being a "cult" - and his devotees have pumped thousands into Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential run. Executives and top associates of the Albany-based NXIVM group - along with their family members - donated $29,900 to Clinton's presidential campaign, according to federal records. On March 14 and April 13, records show, more than a dozen contributions poured into Clinton's coffers from NXIVM, an executive and group-awareness training organization led by Brooklyn-born Keith Raniere, 47. ... In his previous incarnation, the Svengali-like Raniere...

October 2, 2007

A Slow Start?

The Los Angeles Times takes a look at Fred Thompson's fundraising in the third quarter -- a period of time in which he was an official candidate for 24 days -- and declares him "behind". Instead of looking at a fundraising rate that seems fairly impressive, Dan Morain makes the trenchant analysis that the candidate who just joined the race last month finds himself behind other candidates who have raised money for their third straight quarter: In an indication that his presidential campaign is off to a slow start financially, Republican Fred Thompson raised $8 million in the third quarter of 2007, which included his first month as a declared candidate. Combined with the money he raised while he considered joining the race, Thompson has gathered $11.5 million for the year, putting him a distant fourth in the GOP money race behind Mitt Romney, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sen. John...

Hair Of The Dog

Hillary Clinton’s proposal to give a $5,000 bond to every newborn has received a lot of attention, and most of it critical. Today, the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board gives it a once-over, noting the silly arguments that Democrats have used to excuse Hillary’s pandering. The Tribune advises Democrats to let Hillary’s baby boon die a natural death. At Heading Right, I take a look at the proposal that one can spend their way out of a deficit -- a notion not completely restricted to Democrats, either. This case is so blatantly transparent that other Democrats might be doing Hillary a favor if they just shut up and pretend she never said anything....

Has Pawlenty Kept McCain Strong In Minnesota?

John McCain shows surprising strength in the latest Star Tribune poll. Minnesota voters have him only trailing Rudy Giuliani by five points, and eight points ahead of third-place Fred Thompson. The strong showing may have its roots in the endorsement of Tim Pawlenty, who signed onto the McCain campaign early and has remained adamant in his endorsement: McCain's relative strength in Minnesota -- he trails Giuliani by just 5 percentage points among poll respondents -- could have several explanations, starting with the fact that Gov. Tim Pawlenty is his marquee Minnesota supporter, Hofrenning said. "There could definitely be a Pawlenty effect at work," he said. "But we've also got a maverick streak here, going back to strong support for Perot. And he [McCain] is the pro-war, anti-Bush candidate." In fact, the poll showed that McCain's supporters were far more likely than supporters of any other GOP candidate to disapprove of...

October 3, 2007

Hillary Gets Stronger, Rudy Doubles Up

The Washington Post/ABC News poll shows the national frontrunners remaining strong with just three months to go before the primaries, if we're lucky. Hillary Clinton has now attracted a majority of Democratic voters and has commanding leads on all issues over her Democratic opponents. Rudy Giuliani has not yet reached those heights, but he has double the support of his nearest rival, Fred Thompson. Clinton seems to be solidifying the perception of her inevitability: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has consolidated her place as the front-runner in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, outpacing her main rivals in fundraising in the most recent quarter and widening her lead in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. For the first time, Clinton (N.Y.) is drawing support from a majority of Democrats -- and has opened up a lead of 33 percentage points over Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.). Her popularity, the poll suggests,...

Paul Campaign Looks A Little More Serious

He's been the butt of jokes, the focus of derision, and the candidate everyone wished they could ignore. Now he's the man who outraised most of the second tier in the third quarter, and he wants some respect. Ron Paul took over $5 million in donations, the same as John McCain and much more than Mike Huckabee, who had started to make a case for himself as a first-tier candidate (via Memeorandum): Texas Congressman Ron Paul, an anti-war libertarian making his second run at the White House, will report having raised $5.08 million in the third quarter. The number, which rivals those of John McCain and Bill Richardson, was boosted thanks to last-minute online fundraising that brought in more than $1.2 million in the last week of the quarter alone. Paul has drawn himself in sharp contrast with the rest of the field, often engaging in loud exchanges with fellow...

October 4, 2007

Photo Finish In Q3

The Republican fundraising numbers have been revealed for the third quarter, and it looks like a three-way photo finish at the top. Rudy Giuliani raised $11 million, half a million going to the general election fund. Mitt Romney raised over $18 million in primary funding -- but $8.5 million comes in the form of a personal loan, which puts his actual donations at slightly under $10 million. And Fred Thompson sandbagged just a little in his announcement earlier, pulling in $9.3 million for the quarter -- but only spending 24 days of it as an actual candidate. So who wins? It certainly looks like Fred Thompson has the momentum at the moment. He's adding dollars more quickly than the other candidates. The 24-day cycle for him would have extrapolated out to around double of what Romney and Giuliani received, and put him ahead of everyone in the race except Hillary...

October 7, 2007

Thompson Shakes Up Iowa

Fred Thompson's entry into the race just a month ago has already made a big impact in the key battleground state of Iowa. While Mitt Romney and his excellent organization has managed to maintain the lead among likely caucus-goers at 29%, Thompson has moved into second place with 18%, significantly ahead of Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee (via Memeorandum): Mitt Romney still leads in Iowa but Fred Thompson, a relative newcomer to the presidential race, has emerged as his nearest competitor in a new Des Moines Register poll of likely Republican caucus participants. Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani are in a close fight for third place in the Iowa Poll taken over three days last week. ... Thompson, a former Tennessee senator who officially entered the race for the Republican nomination a month ago, grabs second place in the new poll at 18 percent. The poll was conducted while he...

October 8, 2007

Old Scoop, Fresh Outrage

Bill Sammon belatedly discovers that Hillary Clinton has welcomed Sandy Berger to her campaign advisory panel, more than a month after Michael Hirsh at Newsweek mentioned it in passing as part of a profile on the Democratic frontrunner. While the news may not be new, the fact that Hillary continues to associate herself with a man who pled guilty to stealing national-security documents during a bipartisan investigation should continue to generate outrage: Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Berger, who was fired from John Kerry’s presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton’s campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008. This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton’s admirers. “It shows poor judgment and a lack of...

The Context Of The Kingdom

People have jumped all over Barack Obama for his comment, "We're going to keep on praising together. I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth." Mark Finklestein wonders, "What if a Republican Called, Like Obama, for God's 'Kingdom on Earth'?" My friend Nick Gillespie complains about "another layer of moralizing goo to the seven-layer bean dip that we've already got when it comes to sanctimonious pols telling everyone how they should live." Andrew Stuttaford links to Nick's other observation that "[e]stablishing the kingdom of heaven on earth always means rendering more to Caesar than what was originally due." Frankly, this is somewhat akin to Obama's flag pin flap -- much ado about nothing. Obama probably worded it a little inartfully, but he used that particular comment in a religious sense, not an explicitly political sense. Earlier, Obama was speaking about the lack of credibility of...

October 9, 2007

Showtime For Fred

Fred Thompson finally makes his bones today in the presidential race, participating in his first televised debate. Thompson meets the rest of the Republican candidates in Dearborn, Michigan for the second debate moderated by Chris Matthews, potentially unfriendly territory in both senses of the venue: In an unusual political season that seems to offer up a presidential debate every week or so, the Republican debate tomorrow is expected to offer something new: Fred D. Thompson. Untested in debate against his opponents until now, Mr. Thompson, a late entrant to the race, chose to skip the last contest in favor of announcing his candidacy on “The Tonight Show” early last month — a decision for which he was roundly criticized. Many have been wondering how Mr. Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, will do. By his own admission he is “a bit rusty” when it comes to debating, and he has...

Debate Live Blog!

Know how a baseball game just doesn't feel right without a hot dog? Will, it just isn't a Republican debate without a Heading Right liveblog, either! Be sure to join us as we present live analysis of the GOP Presidential debate in Dearborn, Michigan, starting promptly at 3 pm CT. At 5:30 pm CT, we'll present a post-debate roundtable at Debate Central, so make sure to tune in there as well!...

Fred Wins, Chris Loses (Update: My Prediction Comes True)

The first debate with Fred Thompson was expected to reveal whether the lanky actor had what it takes to make a national run for the office. Instead, it revealed Chris Matthews as a hack of the first order, one who tried his best to torpedo Thompson -- and failed utterly. He got so desparate that he demanded to know whether Thompson knew who the Canadian Prime Minister was -- and he did. Matthews grew so frustrated that he openly critiqued one of Thompson's answer for being too detailed, which prompted a scolding from Thompson. That was the game behind the debate, and Thompson stomped Matthews into a laughingstock. In the rest of the debate, Thompson showed that he was comfortable and prepared, even for the silly attacks from other candidates. Mitt Romney went into a long, telegraphed, and obviously gag-written punch about how the debates resemble "Law and Order" and...

October 10, 2007

Isn't This Privatization?

Does anyone get the idea that Hillary Clinton has decided to toss out entitlements like sugared almonds at a Sicilian wedding as a campaign strategy? Fresh off the laugher "baby bonds" program she endorsed without much thought, she announced a new plan yesterday to boost American savings -- through more government spending. Hillary proposed spending even more money annually to open and fund 401K plans for every American: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York unveiled the second biggest domestic policy idea of her Democratic presidential campaign today, proposing to spend $20 billion to $25 billion a year to create 401(k)-style retirement accounts for all Americans and provide federal matching money of up to $1,000 to middle-income people. Under the plan, the government would give a dollar-to-dollar match for the first $1,000 saved by Americans who earn up to $60,000 annually. For those who earn $60,000 to $100,000, the government...

Romney Walks Back The Tax Feud

Mitt Romney marred an otherwise fine performance in yesterday's debate by attempting to pick fights with Rudy Giuliani over tax and spending policies in New York City and Massachussetts and the line-item veto. Rudy brushed off the attack and kept focused on Hillary. This morning, Romney tried walking back a bit on the feud on the Today show, in an interview with Matt Lauer: ML: He says that as mayor of New York he lowered taxes, and he says as Governor of Massachussetts, you raised taxes. You say the opposite is true, that you lowered taxes, so only one of you can be right. How do you think that the average voter should sort this out? MR: Well, I don't think the average voter is going to be able to go through the statistics, and frankly, both of us lowered taxes, both of us tried to rein in spending. But...

October 13, 2007

Can Rudy Talk The Pro-Life Crowd Into His Corner?

Fred Barnes gives Rudy Giuliani a warning and some free advice in the next edition of the Weekly Standard. The warning covers familiar ground -- his pro-choice position in a pro-life party. While some see it as a demonstration of party strength, others see it as a general-election nightmare, including Barnes: That's where the social conservatives come in. If Giuliani is the Republican nominee--and he's the frontrunner at the moment--a pro-life candidate is bound to run on a third party ticket. Richard Land, a prominent Southern Baptist leader, says the pro-life presidential effort would be "significant." The question is how significant. In 2000, Ralph Nader won only 2.74 percent of the vote nationally, but he got enough votes in Florida to keep Al Gore from taking the state and becoming president. Of course this assumes most Nader voters would have voted for Gore over George W. Bush had Nader not...

October 15, 2007

McCain Still Standing

The media does love a good narrative, and they may have one handed to them this fall. After writing off John McCain this summer, and not for altogether unrealistic reasons, the presidential candidate has proven unwilling to disappear. He has retooled his campaign and returned to the feisty and sometimes disquieting habit of speaking his mind on the stump. At Heading Right, I take a look at why Republicans may be giving McCain a second look. He still has plenty on his record to criticize, but as GOP voters have discovered, so do the other front-runners. With social conservatives threatening a revolt over Rudy, Mitt's disavowal of Ronald Reagan hitting YouTube, and Fred's stamina in question, McCain may wind up being the default candidate in the end. We'll talk with Senator McCain on today's Heading Right Radio at 2 pm CT....

October 16, 2007

Hillary: Surveillance For National Security? Bad. Surveillance For Election? Good.

According to a book on Hillary Clinton, she personally reviewed transcripts of cell-phone conversations illegally tapped by members of her husband's first presidential campaign in 1992. The Hill notes that the calls took place between members of opposition campaigns, and would have been as illegal then as they are now. It places Hillary in the position of demanding limitations on surveillance of terrorists while having pursued wiretaps on political opponents: In their book about Clinton’s rise to power, Her Way, Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at The New York Times, and Jeff Gerth, who spent 30 years as an investigative reporter at the paper, wrote: “Hillary’s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign aides; and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of...

Jeri Speaks

Jeri Kehn Thompson garnered a lot of attention when her husband officially was a non-candidate for President. Now that Fred Thompson has entered the race, however, the press has mostly dropped the "trophy wife" and "May-December" narratives to focus on the race itself, and Jeri seems happy to see the spotlight dim, in a rare interview at the Joliet Herald News: Q: In your interview last month with the Tennessean, you mentioned your mom and grandmother being hurt by some of the ugly aspects of political life. Was that a reference to the negative press? A: Oh sure, yeah ... I think you do get a little bit used to it, because you understand if folks think that you're a threat -- either they're running, or if you're changing a system that they're not comfortable with you changing the rules with--they're going to go after whatever they think might hurt...

October 17, 2007

More Nanny-Statism From Hillary

Hillary Clinton has conducted an impressive campaign to get the Left to forget her vote on the Iraq war. Over the last few weeks, she has offered a blizzard of nanny programs designed to bolster her standing with traditional liberals, including a program to give each newborn a $5,000 bond. Now she wants to have the federal government fund an expansion of the Family Leave Medical Act to the states: Speaking in New Hampshire, Senator Clinton yesterday announced a plan to expand paid family leave laws on the state and national level. "Too many Americans feel trapped between being a good parent and being a good worker," Mrs. Clinton said. "It's about time we stopped just talking about family values and started pursuing policies that truly value families." Under Mrs. Clinton's proposal, the federal government would spend more than $1 billion a year to encourage states to operate their own...

We Couldn't Possibly Be This Lucky

She follows the Truthers into thinking that the government aided the 9/11 attacks. She rails against the supposed Jewish influence on American politics. She slaps DC police for doing their job. She can't even win in her own district anymore. Why not have Cynthia McKinney run for President -- and what better party to represent? Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D), who lost her congressional seat last year after her publicized scuffle with a Capitol Hill police officer, registered to vote in California -- and is being pushed by some to run for president as a Green Party candidate, the AP reports. Despite McKinney posting a letter on her Web site last month, saying she is not interested in the Green Party nomination, a group called "Run! Cynthia! Run!" is trying to draft her as a candidate in California. McKinney and six other Green Party candidates, including Ralph Nader were nominated...

October 18, 2007

Brownback To Withdraw

Aides to Senator Sam Brownback have leaked to the AP that he will withdraw from the presidential race tomorrow. Brownback has not gained any traction at all in the race despite the widely reported frustration of pro-life activists with the GOP frontrunners: Brownback, a longshot conservative contender, had trouble raising money to compete in the race. He is expected announce his withdrawal in Topeka, Kan. He raised a little more than $800,000 in the third quarter of this year, his lowest quarterly amount since entering race. He has brought in more than $4 million overall and is eligible for $2 million in federal matching funds. What more is there to say? Brownback has never really captured anyone's imagination. He hasn't moved at all since entering the race, and has never really made a case why he himself should carry the Republican banner in the 2008 election. His failure, however, calls...

October 19, 2007

Is Hillary More Black Than Obama?

It’s the nadir of ethnic politics and at the same time a repudiation of them, but Barack Obama somehow has managed to come across to African-American voters as less black than Hillary Clinton. CNN’s Roland Martin delivers that analysis, which scolds Obama for his emotional “detachment” and focus on policy rather than engagement in exploitative histrionics that Martin apparently believes black voters want. According to CNN’s poll, Martin has it correct that something appears to be missing from Obama’s campaign. At Heading Right, I question the entire basis for Martin's analysis. He seems to disregard entirely the notion that black voters might consider Hillary Clinton the better candidate for rational reasons unrelated to emotional appeals. Martin doesn't give these voters any credit for making rational choices, which seems doubly strange since Hillary isn't exactly a model of empathy and emotionalism on the stump, either. Perhaps Martin has a fear of...

The Big, Bad Bundlers

Hillary Clinton's contributors made headlines again at the Los Angeles Times, which helped break the Norman Hsu scandal into the national media. Their investigation of Hillary's fundraising records show a lot of dishwashers and waiters sending hundreds and thousands of dollars into her campaign's accounts. The Times also can't account for a large number of these donors at their listed addresses, calling their existence and legitimacy into question (via Memeorandum): Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown. At this point in the presidential campaign cycle, Clinton has raised more money than any candidate...

October 20, 2007

Whither The Evangelicals?

The Values Voters summit has all but completed, and Jim Geraghty and NZ Bear have brought us live-blog coverage of the speeches and events. The event culminated in a speech by Rudy Giuliani to the presumed-hostile Family Research Council audience, and they have responded at least warmly to the Mayor's address, as NZ Bear notes: Giuliani received a standing ovation (like every other candidate to speak thus far). No sign at all of any negative reaction, and his standing O seemed at a genuinely enthusiastic one. OK, my reaction. I think this was a truly great speech: nearly pitch-perfect for the audience and about as well received as could possibly be hoped for by the Giuliani camp. I'm about ready to declare it "brilliant", in fact. Given how potentially hostile this audience might have been, the fact that he received positive applause throughout his delivery that seemed honestly enthusiastic is...

October 21, 2007

The Chinatown Dodge

Hillary Clinton keeps having problems with donations from the Asian-American community. First her biggest bundler, Norman Hsu, turns out to be a convicted con man and the donations he bundled appear to have come from families whose modest incomes do not lend themselves to the large donations he claimed. Now another set of donors from similar communities appears to have been a front for other bagmen (via Power Line): A search of Chinatown donors yesterday by The Post found several bogus addresses and some contributions that raised eyebrows. Shin K. Cheng is listed twice in federal records for giving $1,000 donations to Clinton's campaign on April 17. But the address recorded on campaign reports is a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases, hemorrhoids and skin disease. No one at the address knew of a Shin K. Cheng. Another donation came from a Shih Kan Chang on Canal Street. But the address...

October 22, 2007

A Good Night For Republicans

Last night, the Republican candidates for President met in Florida and debated on Fox, and by all accounts, all of them acquitted themselves well. They focused on Hillary Clinton more than each other, except in the debates opening moments when the Fox News Channel questioners pushed them into some intramural criticisms. The one conclusion easily drawn from the transcript is that the second tier have begun to fade from moderator attention. The Washington Post leads with the criticisms, of course: The leading Republican presidential candidates staged their most contentious and personal debate of the long campaign season here Sunday night, clashing sharply over abortion, immigration, tort reform and their readiness to challenge Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in a general election. The debate's opening minutes included a series of personal exchanges that illustrated the growing stakes in the nominating battle and set the tone for the 90-minute encounter. Former New...

Has The Silence Begun To Crack?

Hillary Clinton's fundraising scandals have kept the blogosphere amused and certain pundits occupied, but the story has not moved much beyond the Los Angeles Times and the New York Post in the mainstream American media. However, the Washington Post editorial board has sent a small signal that her latest fundraising peccadilloes warrant more attention. At Heading Right, I note that the editorial amounts to weak tea as scoldings go. However, its appearance alone demonstrates that these scandals may have developed some legs. Democrats concerned about her already-established negatives may have to consider the effect of having Hillary as a banner-carrier in a year when they have to defend their Congress from the party base and convince independents to join their coalition....

Did Fox Massage The Debate For The BoSox/Tribe Game?

Today on Heading Right Radio, Jim Geraghty and I spoke with a few of the campaigns in reviewing last night's Republican debate. Jon Henke joined us from the Thompson campaign and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum spoke on behalf of Rudy Giuliani, and both covered the high points of their candidate very well. However, Mitt Romney advisor Ben Ginsberg made an observation that surprised me -- that Fox News Channel cooked the first part of the show to highlight the four frontrunners. According to Ginsberg, Fox -- which aired Game 7 of the American League Championship Series on its regular broadcast affiliates -- set up the questions to maximize the airtime of the top-tier candidates. Knowing that the first pitch would come roughly 20 minutes into the debate, Ginsberg alleged that the FNC panel focused on questions that would generate sniping between the candidates, and deliberately shut out the second-tier...

October 23, 2007

Thompson Goes Wonk On Immigration

Fred Thompson has made his first foray into serious policy debate with an outline of his immigration plan. More a list of parameters than a plan, Thompson stakes out some hard-line turf in the Republican primaries, with plans for attriting out illegals through tough enforcement. He also wants to broaden legal immigration and put a rational system of management in place of the failing bureaucracy we have now: 1. No Amnesty. Do not provide legal status to illegal aliens. Amnesty undermines U.S. law and policy, rewards bad behavior, and is unfair to the millions of immigrants who follow the law and are awaiting legal entry into the United States. In some cases, those law-abiding and aspiring immigrants have been waiting for several years. 2. Attrition through Enforcement. Reduce the number of illegal aliens through increased enforcement against unauthorized alien workers and their employers. Without illegal employment opportunities available, fewer illegal...

October 24, 2007

The 2008 Subway Series?

The Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released today shows the frontrunners of both parties solidifying their leads, although the Republican primary still looks wide open to Rasmussen. Both frontrunners have at least doubled up the number of their closest rival, and in Hillary Clinton's case, none of her competitors show any sign of reversing the trend She also has head-to-head leads on all of the Republicans, with Giuliani coming the closest to matching her in a general election. The news is not all good for either, however: Clinton is favored for her party's presidential nomination by almost half -- 48% -- of Democratic-leaning voters nationwide; as The Times' Peter Wallsten writes, that gives her a formidable lead in the contest. Her number is right on track with the average of her support -- 48.5% -- in several other recent national surveys, as aggregated on the RealClearPolitics Website. And trend lines could...

October 25, 2007

Rudy Targeted By The Mob

Rudy Giuliani wins admiration from people because of his leadership in the 9/11 attacks, but that pales in comparison to his showdown with the Mafia. As a US Attorney, Giuliani led the federal effort that broke the back of the Mob in New York City, a dangerous undertaking at the time. Newsday reports just how dangerous it got: The bosses of New York's five Cosa Nostra families discussed killing then-federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani in 1986, an informant told the FBI, according to testimony Wednesday in Brooklyn state court. But while the late Gambino crime boss John Gotti pushed the idea, he only had the support of Carmine Persico, the leader of the Colombo crime family, according to the testimony. "The Bosses of the Luchese, Bonanno and Genovese families rejected the idea, despite strong efforts to convince them otherwise by Gotti and Persico," said an FBI report of the information given...

McCain Blogger Conference Call: 'Make 'Em Famous'

John McCain conducted another of his blogger outreach conference calls this morning, and the main topics were the DREAM Act and sanctions on Iranian Quds force. McCain had returned to the Senate to help confirm Judge Leslie Southwick to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. He derided the opposition's position that Southwick "had the appearance of intolerance." McCain said he would have opposed the DREAM Act, and that he got the message on the last round of immigration reform. He will not proceed with any other reforms until the borders are secured. On Iran, McCain says that we need other nations engaged. He saluted the French for their action in pressuring Iran, but we need a "league of democracies" to get around the Russians and the Chinese. We need Western Europe on board. He's calling from Iowa, where McCain and Mike Huckabee will engage in an AARP debate on health...

October 26, 2007

Ron Paul's Donor Problem

The Lone Star Times has found an embarrassing donation in the Ron Paul records. The new husband of David Duke’s ex-wife Chloe and a supremacist in his own right gave $500 to Paul’s campaign, which reignited a past controversy of an earlier Paul campaign. It also calls into question just how much responsibility a candidate has for its donors. At Heading Right, I urge a little caution before leaping to a conclusion about the Paul campaign on this score. In the first place, no one has any indication that the Paul campaign even knew who David Black is when the donation came into the campaign. There is a vast difference between solicited and unsolicited donations, and until someone shows that Paul solicited the donation, holding him responsible for its appearance is a dangerous precedent -- as I explain at HR. Paul's campaign should do the right thing quickly and jettison...

October 27, 2007

Edwards Wants Censorship?

John Edwards fights for social justice while ensuring that his campaign offices remain in tony neighborhoods. That formed the basis of a critique by a college student which aired on YouTube -- and started a fight between the Edwards campaign and the University of North Carolina. A UNC journalism professor now accuses the Edwards campaign of demanding the deletion of the video as a prerequisite for UNC's access to his campaign events (via Memeorandum): In this rough-and-tumble campaign season, the major presidential campaigns have sought to leave no charge unanswered from wherever it may come. Even, it now seems, if the fight takes them into the realm of student journalism. A journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is accusing aides of John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, of demanding that he remove from YouTube a student report critical of Mr. Edwards’s Democratic presidential...

Is The Ship Sinking?

Barack Obama started strongly in his half-draft campaign for the presidency. In the first two quarters, he out-raised and out-organized Hillary Clinton despite the Clinton machine's readiness for her campaign, turning an expected coronation into a real contest. However, Obama's numbers have begun to falter in polls and fundraising, and now a member of his national committee has switched sides: A longtime Democratic fundraiser has abandoned Barack Obama's campaign to help rival Hillary Rodham Clinton win the party's presidential nomination. Bob Farmer, who was a top fundraiser for several past Democratic presidential candidates, had served on Obama's national finance committee. Farmer did not respond to a request for comment after a message was left at his home in Bal Harbour, Fla. But Kirk Wagar, Obama's Florida finance chair, said Farmer let him know he was switching sides without saying why. The Obama campaign noted that Farmer had never raised any...

Why Is Ron Paul's Campaign Paying Alex Jones? UPDATE: A 'Partial Refund'?

The question of what Ron Paul represents has burned through the blogosphere this week, followed shortly afterwards by a revelation about an apparently unsolicited donation from a white supremacist. Today brings a much more revealing look at the Paul campaign, as Hot Air and MVRWC have discovered a payment from Team Paul to Alex Jones -- the 9/11 Truther leader -- for $1300 in "services". Allahpundit notes: Assuming it’s the same Alex Jones, which seems a safe bet, pray tell what might that payment have been for? The likeliest explanation is that it’s some sort of service fee, either Jones doing something on behalf of the campaign or allowing the campaign to do something using his property. Either way, I’m mighty curious to know what special service might have been provided such that Paul’s people couldn’t have gone elsewhere and gotten the same deal from someone who isn’t a degenerate...

October 29, 2007

Rock Star Or Novelty Act?

The Los Angeles Times takes a critical look at the Barack Obama phenomenon — or rather, the apparent non-phenomenon. They headline the piece, “Polls don’t reflect Obama’s star power”, a self-contradicting statement, since popularity forms both star power and poll standing. It speaks to both a misrepresentation of Obama’s attraction from the very beginning and the media narrative that has tried mightily to keep interest in a Democratic primary that was long ago a foregone conclusion. Hey, Weird Al Yankovic has star power, too, but don't expect him to headline a Monsters of Rock concert. At Heading Right, I point out that there is a large difference between being a rock star and a novelty act. Obama has charisma but no experience, no heft, and it has shown in his campaign this year. Iowans have responded better to John Edwards than Barack Obama, and neither of them have a chance...

October 30, 2007

Rudy's Brain On Foreign Policy

Quite a bit has been made of Rudy Giuliani's connection to conservative pioneer Norman Podhoretz and his hard-line approach to Iran. Giuliani's foreign policy chief, however, once worked for the UN and has a different approach to international relations, as Eli Lake reports in the Sun today. Charles Hill will start taking a more active role in the campaign in order to clarify Rudy's perspective on American foreign policy: For all the recent attention paid to the hawkish circle of foreign policy intellectuals around Mayor Giuliani, the Giuliani campaign's version of Condoleezza Rice is a retired career foreign service officer who once worked as an aide to U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali. Meet Charles Hill, the former executive assistant to Secretary of State Shultz, who is the Giuliani campaign's chief foreign policy adviser. The campaign says that in the coming days and weeks, the Yale University professor will be setting...

Said The Personal-Injury Lawyer

John Edwards has decided to take a different direction in his campaign against Hillary Clinton -- and it's one Republicans might watch with more than an academic interest. Apparently frustrated by an inability to gain traction on policy, Edwards will explicitly attack Hillary's character in an attempt to stop her momentum: Democrat John Edwards is trying to turn the Democratic presidential race into a referendum on honesty and integrity, areas where polling has shown that voters are divided about Hillary Rodham Clinton. The argument marks a shift in a race where Edwards and Clinton's other Democratic opponents have criticized her stance on policy but usually have avoided taking on her character directly. In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, Edwards said Clinton is part of a corrupt Washington system. "Good people are caught up in this system, and I've given some examples of the places that I think she's...

Ceilings And Canaries

Has Hillary Clinton hit the ceiling in her bid for the presidency? The Rasmussen analysis of head-to-head general election matchups involving Hillary Clinton has created considerable buzz. She has not been able to gain a majority of voters in any of the matchups with the Republican frontrunners, although she maintains slim leads against all of them except Rudy Giuliani (46%-44% Giuliani). Does this put her in a losing position in 2008, and should the Democrats start looking elsewhere in the primaries? At Heading Right, I look at the canary in the coal mine, but caution against overanalyzing a race that hasn't really yet begun. These numbers may shift when Hillary starts speaking to more people than just the hard-Left activist base. I'll talk with Jim Geraghty about this on Heading Right Radio today at 2 pm CT....

October 31, 2007

How To Tell We Have Had Too Many Debates

Perhaps the proximity of the Democratic debate to Halloween tempted the moderators at MSNBC. Maybe they have just run out of questions to ask candidates. Either way, the nadir of presidential debates came late in the show, when a mainstream media moderator felt compelled to ask about UFOs: In the weird last minutes of the debate (the period, by the way, when The Fix made it onto the basketball court in high school) Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) gave us a highlight. Asked about the statement by actress Shirley MacLaine that Kucinich had seen a UFO at her house, Kucinich said that he had. He quickly sought to clarify -- an "unidentified flying object" he said holding up his hand -- but man oh man. The big news tonight: DENNIS KUCINICH HAS SEEN A UFO. No, the big news from the debate is that MSNBC thinks UFOs are so important that...

A Record Time For A Reversal

The charges of flip-flopping get leveled too often in politics, and usually in the wrong context. John Kerry lived with the accusation after attempting to explain a reversal on a Iraq war supplemental by saying, "I was for the $87 billion before I was against it." People extended it for use whenever a politician changed his mind on any policy or any time frame, even over a period of years and even when moving in a preferred direction, as with Mitt Romney. However, the monicker definitely applies when the reversal happens within the space of two minutes, especially when it gets televised for the nation to see: McKinney said Clinton grew testy when pressed on whether she agrees with a proposal her home state governor has to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. She first expressed support for the idea. But when Dodd objected, Clinton grew defensive and said she...

November 1, 2007

Hillary Stumbles, Needs More Cash: Advisors

Hillary Clinton's campaign admitted the scope of her debate debacle in a conference call with supporters yesterday. Despite raising the most amount of money in the campaign thus far -- well over $80 million -- they implored backers to start getting even more money for the work necessary to reverse the damage she did this week: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) top advisers, doing damage control after the candidate’s debate performance Tuesday, told supporters on a conference call Wednesday that the campaign needed more money to fight back. Mark Penn, Clinton’s senior strategist and pollster, and Jonathan Mantz, the campaign’s finance director, told the supporters on the call, which The Hill listened to in its entirety, that they expect attacks from Clinton’s rivals to continue, and she will need the financial resources to deflect their attacks. Clinton came under withering assault in the Philadelphia debate, and some supporters on the...

Did The Post Miss A Step In Chinatown?

According to one of Hillary Clinton's donors, the Department of Justice has begun investigating the candidate's fund-raising activities. The AP reports that the DoJ came calling to one donor whose contribution came among many from New York's Fujian community, which have come under as much scrutiny as those bundled by the notorious Norman Hsu. However, the story shows a potential glaring error on the part of the New York Post's reporting on the story: On the wall of Hsiao Yen Wang's apartment, a cramped, 17th-floor public housing unit on the city's Lower East Side, are photographs of her husband, David Guo, a cook who specializes in Fujian cuisine. One photo stands out: Guo shaking Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's hand, a memento from a $1,000-a-person fundraiser for the New York senator held in New York's Chinatown last April. Last week, Wang got another memento — a calling card from a Justice...

November 2, 2007

Feminist Damsel In Distress

Ruth Marcus doesn't care much for the post-debate spin coming from Hillary Clinton or her spin teams. In a mild rebuke, Marcus tells Clinton that acting like a damsel in distress hardly helps uphold the feminist ideal. Instead of crying sexism, Clinton should revel in her front-runner status: The Hill newspaper, listening in on a conference call with Clinton fundraisers, quoted chief strategist Mark Penn being even more explicit about the "backlash" he was detecting among female voters: "Those female voters are saying, 'Sen. Clinton needs our support now more than ever if we're going to see this six-on-one to try to bring her down.' " Please. The Philadelphia debate was not exactly a mob moment to trigger the Violence Against Women Act; if anything, this has been an overly (pardon the phrase) gentlemanly campaign to date. Those other guys were beating up on Clinton, if you can call that...

Obama Promises A Rerun

Barack Obama sat down with the New York Times to discuss his views on Iran, and how he has the policy that will unlock the stalemate with the mullahs. However, what the Times and Obama fail to realize is that Iran has heard the proposal before from the US and others. They didn't take it when we offered it then, and they don't appear prepared to do so now, either: In an hourlong interview on Wednesday, Mr. Obama made clear that forging a new relationship with Iran would be a major element of what he pledged would be a broad effort to stabilize Iraq as he executed a speedy timetable for the withdrawal of American combat troops. Mr. Obama said that Iran had been “acting irresponsibly” by supporting Shiite militant groups in Iraq. He also emphasized that Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program and its support for “terrorist activities” were serious...

Update On The Heading Right Challenge

On Monday, I issued a challenge to six Democratic presidential candidates to reach across the aisle and appear on Heading Right Radio to broaden their message to Americans across the political spectrum. This challenge came out of a great discussion we had on the Heading Right Radio show that day about the impulse towards echo chambers in American politics. After considering the issue after the end of the show, I wrote: In order to improve the tone, I've decided to invite the Democratic presidential candidates to appear on Heading Right Radio for an interview and a chance to speak to the reasonable, rational people of the center-right and conservativism. Those who have heard my interviews know that I allow guests to speak their minds, do not interrupt, and treat them with respect even when I disagree with them. With that in mind, I have sent e-mail requests for these interviews...

November 3, 2007

Hillary's White House Records To Be Opened In February

Reacting to pressure from public-interest groups as well as criticism from fellow Democrats, the Clintons have decided to open Hillary's White House records to the public by the end of February. The Clinton library will break the seals and begin publishing records in January, and all records will likely be available by the time the primaries have settled the question of the Democratic nomination: The Clinton library is readying a trove of detail about Hillary Rodham Clinton's eight years as first lady in the White House for release in late January, government lawyers said in a court filing. ... Even so, the documents appear likely to become public within a month of their release by the archives, as the general election heats up in February. The New York Democratic senator faces growing questions about her husband's resistance to releasing some documents from the Clinton administration, which ended nearly seven years...

November 4, 2007

Front Page News: 24 Years Ago ....

The Washington Post front-pages a story about a Fred Thompson friend who has a drug dealing conviction from 24 years ago. Apparently looking for a Norman Hsu analog in the Republican primaries, Matthew Mosk tells all about Philip Martin and his private jet service to Thompson, but pushes the age of the conviction down a few paragraphs into the story (via Memeorandum): Republican presidential candidate Fred D. Thompson has been crisscrossing the country since early this summer on a private jet lent to him by a businessman and close adviser who has a criminal record for drug dealing. Thompson selected the businessman, Philip Martin, to raise seed money for his White House bid. Martin is one of four campaign co-chairmen and the head of a group called the "first day founders." Campaign aides jokingly began to refer to Martin, who has been friends with Thompson since the early 1990s, as...

November 6, 2007

Ron Paul's Very Big Day

Say what you will about Ron Paul and his supporters, but they know how to raise money. Using Guy Fawkes and the movie V For Vendetta as a questionable hook for a fundraiser, Paul's campaign took in over $4 million in a single day -- and without spending hardly any money at all, except transaction fees. That surpasses Mitt Romney's impressive launch day, and comes close to Hillary Clinton's record of $6.2 million for a one-day total (via Memeorandum): On Monday, a group of Paul supporters helped raised more than $4.07 million in one day — approaching what the campaign raised in the entire last quarter — through a Web site called ThisNovember5th.com, a reference to the day the British commemorate the thwarted bombing. Many fans of Mr. Paul know of the day primarily through a movie based on the futuristic graphic novel “V for Vendetta,” by Alan Moore and...

November 7, 2007

Hillary: More Secretive Than Bush

While many in the media deride President Bush for his supposed reluctance to face reporters, Ruth Marcus points out that it could be worse -- and if the Democrats win, it likely will be. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have held hardly any press conferences during presidential campaigning, a time when candidates usually throw themselves in front of anyone with a microphone and a camera: It's not as if this president has been Mr. Openness. But by some important measures, George W. Bush is more accessible to the reporters who cover him than are some of the leading candidates to succeed him -- most notably Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The candidates' reluctance to engage in regular give-and-take with reporters on the campaign trail does not bode well for how they would behave if ensconced in the White House, swaddled in protective layers of presidential prerogative. Through the end...

Brownback Endorsement Goes To McCain

Sam Brownback dated Rudy but married McCain: Sam Brownback, a Kansas conservative and favorite of evangelical Christians, will endorse his former Republican presidential rival John McCain, GOP officials said Wednesday. The nod could provide a much-needed boost, particularly in Iowa, for the Arizona senator and one-time presumed GOP front-runner whose bid faltered and who now is looking for a comeback. Republican officials said Brownback will announce his support for McCain later Wednesday in Dubuque, Iowa, and then travel with the candidate to campaign in two other cities in the state. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid publicly pre-empting the announcement. This seems like a much better match for Brownback than Giuliani, whose leanings on social policy made for a lot of eyebrow-raising when the two met last month. John McCain's positions match up more closely with his Senate colleague. The endorsement will not have much direct...

November 8, 2007

Hillary's Hard Ceiling, Part II

USA Today reports on its latest Gallup polling that Hillary Clinton's negatives put her in the most precarious position in a general election than any other Democratic candidate. Eighty-five percent of Republicans, a majority of married men, and over a third of all women say they will never vote for the former First Lady, worse negatives than any other major contender running against her. While her strategist attempts to spin those numbers, Democrats may be getting nervous: More than eight in 10 Republicans and more than half the married men in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll say they definitely wouldn't vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton for president. The poll provides an early snapshot of who's ruling out Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama, the three leading candidates for the Democratic nomination. Clinton, who tops national polls of Democrats, is strongest within her party. Only 10% of Democrats said they'd rule...

November 10, 2007

Is Everyone's Game Fixed Now?

One of my favorite films, John Sayles' Eight Men Out, tells the story of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, who threw the World Series for gambler cash. It shows what happens when people feel an entitlement to something other than integrity. Although the film has ample sympathy for the players, it also shows how people can rationalize selling out that integrity in excuse-making when they can't face the reality of their own actions. Today we have two stories that show the impulse did not die in 1920. First, the Hillary Clinton campaign fixed a question-and-answer session at an appearance at Grinnell University, although no one will admit that Hillary herself knew which questioner to address: According to a report on the Grinnell University Web site, the Clinton campaign arranged for some of the questions for the candidate to be asked by college students: "On Tuesday Nov. 6, the Clinton campaign...

Thompson Goes Bold On Social Security

People have questioned Fred Thompson's campaigning style since his formal entry into the presidential race two months ago, but few will question his courage after his latest policy pronouncement. Thompson continues his campaign of ideas by unveiling a comprehensive Social Security reform plan that relies heavily on private accounts and recalculation of benefits. As the Washington Post notes, Thompson becomes the first candidate to offer a detailed plan to rescue Social Security from oncoming collapse: Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson yesterday proposed slowing the growth of Social Security benefits and creating voluntary, government-matched savings accounts, becoming the first candidate of either party to offer a detailed proposal to fix the nation's retirement system. Thompson's plan draws on ideas favored by conservatives: a reduction in benefits, rather than an increase in payroll taxes; and a shift toward private accounts, rather than government-provided payments. As a result, the proposal drew immediate criticism...

The Secret Plant Life Of Democratic Frontrunners

I know Hillary Clinton sponsored federal funding for the Woodstock Museum, but who knew she took Joni Mitchell's song about the concert so literally? Apparently heeding the lyrical call to "get back to the garden", Hillary's team has plants popping up all over the campaign trail: For the second time in as many days, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has had to deal with accusations of planting questions during public appearances, FOX News has learned. In a telephone interview Saturday, Geoffrey Mitchell, 32, said he was approached by Clinton campaign worker Chris Hayler to ask a question about how she was standing up to President Bush on the question on funding the Iraq war and a troop withdrawal timeline. The encounter happened before an event hosted by Iowa State Sen. Gene Frais on a farm outside Fort Madison, Iowa. Clinton's Iowa campaign confirmed to Fox News that one of its staff...

November 12, 2007

'A Trusted Friend'

Those three words cemented Norman Hsu's standing in the Democratic Party. A lengthy Wall Street Journal report brings readers a comprehensive narrative of the con man's case, including his embrace by the Democratic Party, and especially Hillary Clinton. Her appearance at a combined Hsu birthday bash and fundraiser clinched his status as a prime mover, a status Hsu used to raise funds and defraud investors: He hosted a March 2005 fund-raiser for freshman Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's political-action committee. He threw a party in his SoHo loft for Harold Ford Jr.'s Senate bid. In June 2006, at the St. Regis in San Francisco, he combined a birthday party for himself with a fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton, who was running for re-election to the Senate. She appeared live on closed-circuit TV. "Hello, Norman!" she said, according to attendees. "Happy Birthday!" The audience included former California governor and now state Attorney General...

Another Puzzling Endorsement

The National Right To Life Committee will announce its presidential endorsement in the Republican primaries tomorrow, and according to early reports, Fred Thompson won the brass ring. In its way, the NRLC's selection may be even odder than Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani, especially considering that Thompson spoke of his opposition to a Constitutional amendment banning abortions: Fred Thompson will pick up the support of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) tomorrow, according to two Republicans familar with the decision. For a candidate who came up empty-handed last week when three prominent Christian conservatives endorsed GOP hopefuls and is falling in both national and early state polls, the move comes at a critical time. NRLC is the most prominent anti-abortion group in the country, with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters. A spokesperson for the organization declined to comment on their endorsement decision, but...

November 13, 2007

Have The Wheels Come Off For Hillary?

For a candidate whom everyone expected to march confidently to her party's nomination, Hillary Clinton has begun stumbling and cannot seem to right herself. First came a disaster of an answer at the last presidential debate, and the breathtaking attack on Tim Russert for having the temerity to question her about an immigration issue in her home state. Next came the revelations of question planting at campaign events. Now Drudge reports that the Clinton campaign warned Wolf Blitzer not to get tough in this week's debate, or else: CNN's Wolf Blitzer has been warned not to focus Thursday's Dem debate on Hillary. 'This campaign is about issues, not on who we can bring down and destroy,' top Clinton insider explains. 'Blitzer should not go down to the levels of character attack and pull 'a Russert.'' Blitzer is set to moderate debate from Vegas, with questions also being posed by Suzanne...

November 14, 2007

McCain Blogger Call

John McCain held another of his regular blogger conference calls today, and once again issued his call to "get on the bus" -- and to have bloggers get off of the couches. He also spoke about Pakistan, calling for free elections and strengthening the democratic process. McCain also said that there were "complications", however, and the Pakistani intel services primary among them. He's also concerned about growing influence of Islamists in the middle- and high-ranking positions in the Army. Casualties taken in the fight against Islamists has impacted Musharraf's mandate to continue the war. McCain doesn't think that Bhutto is the answer, either -- and he warns that the last time we abandoned an ally in that region, we wound up with the Iranian mullahcracy. "Democracy is tough," McCain said, but it's still the best policy for the long term in our foreign policy. "Elections don't necessarily mean democracy, but...

It's Wednesday, So We Must Have A New Position

First she sounded sympathetic to the idea during a televised debate, and within moments had refused to endorse it. Afterwards, she changed her mind and endorsed it. Now today, after Governor Eliot Spitzer shelved a plan to issue New York drivers licenses to illegal aliens, Hillary Clinton shifted her position yet again to oppose the idea entirely: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday came out against granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, after weeks of pressure in the presidential race to take a position on a now-failed ID plan from her home state governor. Clinton has faced criticism from candidates in both parties for her noncommittal answers on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's attempt to allow illegal immigrants in his state to receive driver's licenses. Spitzer abandoned the effort Wednesday. "I support Governor Spitzer's decision today to withdraw his proposal," Clinton said in a statement. "As president, I will not...

November 19, 2007

Push Polling: Whodunit?

The scandal of the day in the Republican primary race is a whodunit worthy of Ellery Queen. A survey taken by a firm named Western Wats turned into a strange anti-Mormon and anti-Mitt Romney push poll. No campaign has taken credit for the poll, and no campaign has been spared accusations of conducting it -- including Romney's own campaign. Jim Geraghty appeared on Heading Right Radio to explain the erupting scandal, and he has been covering it at the Campaign Spot all day long. Mark Hemingway wrote at NRO that he suspected Mitt himself was behind it: However, there’s a growing chorus of voices speculating Romney push polled himself. “I smell a dirty trick. I suspect a pro-Romney motive to inoculate against future use of the religious issue and to breed sympathy for Romney … a 20-minute call is the work of an amateur. The long call is designed to...

November 20, 2007

Team Giuliani Conference Call: Live Blog (Update: Youngsters For Rudy?)

This conference call actually involves the Giuliani campaign in Iowa, introducing Rep. Pete King as one member of Rudy's team in the key state. The chair of the House Homeland Security panel wanted to talk about illegal immigration, and especially Mitt Romney's latest attacks. King says that Romney's plans to use state troopers to combat illegal immigration never got implemented. He also noted that Romney's lack of action came after 9/11, apparently a pre-emptive strike on the reciprocal criticism of Giuliani's statements during his term of office. Questions: * Iowa wants to know about the NAFTA superhighway coming through the state -- Giuliani will not support any kind of NAFTA superhighway, anywhere. * Can you contrast the differences between Romney and Giuliani on the illegals already here? -- King mostly just talked about closing the border, both for security and to restore faith in federal government. No legalization without closing...

Should Hillary Start To Sweat?

If the basis for her anxiety comes from the latest WaPo/ABC poll, not really. The poll shows Barack Obama ahead of Hillary Clinton in Iowa with six weeks (or less) to go before the caucuses open the primary season. However, the polling history and a small sample both fail to instill confidence in its conclusions: The top three Democratic presidential contenders remain locked in a close battle in Iowa, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) seeing her advantages diminish on key issues, including the questions of experience and which candidate is best prepared to handle the war in Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll. Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) draws support from 30 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, compared with 26 percent for Clinton and 22 percent for former senator John Edwards (N.C.). New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson received 11 percent. The results are only marginally...

November 21, 2007

Add Another Lectern To The Stage

The next Republican debate in Iowa promises something new, different, and controversial -- Alan Keyes. The Des Moines Register decided that the one thing these debates lacked are fringe candidates with microscopic constituencies and invited Keyes to attend the December 12th afternoon affair: Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes has accepted an invitation to participate in the last scheduled — and in some ways most important — Republican debate before the Jan. 3 first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucus. The Des Moines Register's Republican Presidential Debate is scheduled for 1:00 pm on Dec. 12 at Iowa Public Television's Maytag Auditorium in Johnston, Iowa. At last report, all major Republican candidates except former NY mayor Rudy Giuliani have also accepted the invitation to participate. The Des Moines Register has a reputation for putting on fair and informative events. Their debates have become an Iowa tradition that reporters and editors from across the nation take seriously....

Wife Or Child -- Which One Has The Best Foreign-Policy Experience?

And here I thought that the dumbest statements of this extended political season would come in the quiz shows presidential debates. The latest kerfuffle in the Democratic primary centers on whether living abroad as a child carries more weight on foreign policy than being First Lady. It's akin to watching two guys in a bar debate whether playing Pop Warner football gives more credibility than playing Madden 2007 when criticizing NFL head coaches: Fog may have diverted Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s plane from her campaign stop here on Tuesday, but that did not prevent her from continuing her attacks on Senator Barack Obama’s experience. It was an odd moment. Mrs. Clinton, her voice piped in over a sound system, apologized for missing the event, expressed concern about the safety of food and toys from overseas and, pivoting off the overseas topic, tweaked Mr. Obama for saying on Monday that living...

The New Willie Horton? Not Quite

Mitt Romney has had a tough week. Just days after someone push-polled Iowans in an ugly display of bigotry, a new attack has floated into the blogosphere regarding Romney's judicial nominations as Governor in Massachusetts. One of his appointments, Kathe Tuttman, released a violent offender on his own recognizance on an assault complaint -- and the suspect promptly fled to Washington and killed a young newlywed couple: The father of a Washington woman slaughtered along with her new husband - allegedly at the hands of a convicted Bay State killer - said his daughter’s accused murderer never should have been released from prison here. “It’s because of stupidity in Massachusetts that my daughter is dead,” said Darrel Slater, 55, who is preparing to bury his daughter, Beverly Mauck, 28, and her husband Brian Mauck, 30. The couple was executed in their home in rural Graham, Wash., Saturday after an alleged...

November 22, 2007

New Ethics Woes For Clinton

InfoUSA now faces an SEC probe, one that could indirectly, at least, involve Bill and Hillary Clinton in the middle of an election campaign. The data processing company spent millions on Bill Clinton as a consultant and has flown Hillary around on its corporate jets. Now the SEC wants a look at the company's books, spurred on by stockholders who sense something amiss in the benefits showered on the former First Couple: The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into InfoUSA, a Nebraska company that used corporate funds to fly Hillary Rodham Clinton around the country, and one of only two companies to put Bill Clinton on its payroll after he left the White House. The firm, a major provider of database-processing services, disclosed little about the nature of the probe in a filing to shareholders released yesterday. The two-sentence filing said only that InfoUSA received a letter...

November 23, 2007

Clinton Wins Support From Another Ethics-Challenged Administration

This story challenges the boundaries of satire. Hillary Clinton captured the vital corrupt-foreign-leader constituency with Bernadette Chirac's endorsement yesterday. The wife of the French ex-president said that she thought Hillary had the makings of a president, although her personal experience at that may not play too well on the campaign trail (via Memeorandum): U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won surprise backing from the wife of former French President Jacques Chirac on Thursday, together with a pledge to join her on the campaign trail. The Chiracs' political affiliations are at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Clintons', but the former French first lady said she had always thought Democratic candidate Clinton had the makings of a U.S. president. "She's a woman who is not liked by everybody. But she's strong and she has convictions," Bernadette Chirac, well-known for a forceful character of her own, told the weekly Le Figaro...

November 25, 2007

Democrats Lose Footing On Iraq

The Democrats thought that Iraq would make the 2008 elections a cakewalk -- that voters would throw flowers in their path, joyously celebrating their liberation from a complete American defeat. As it turns out, a funny thing happened on the way to the cakewalk -- the US forgot to lose. As the situation improves in Iraq, the Democrats now face the task of defending their prior rhetoric and retooling the message in order to avoid the defeatist label in 2008: As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy. Advisers to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama say that the candidates have watched security conditions improve after the troop escalation in Iraq...

November 26, 2007

Is Bill Poison In Iowa?

Bill Clinton has finally begun campaigning in Iowa, sixteen years after he began running for President. Iowans appear to welcome him warmly on behalf of his wife, but Hillary's opponents have reminded them that when she takes credit for his successes, she has to take responsibilities for his failures as well. That formula forced Al Gore to keep Bill at arm's length in the 2000 race, and former Clinton official Donna Brazile says she knows why: Bill Clinton's shadow over the 2008 nominating race creates potential pitfalls for his wife and for her opponents. Hillary Clinton risks being seen as something other than her own candidate, while her opponents risk offending Iowa Democrats who revere the former president. "I think it's going to come down to: Do you really want Bill Clinton back in the White House?" said Donna Brazile, who ran Democrat Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. ... The...

The Unbearable Flexibility Of Barack

What happens when a candidate declares that he represents a different kind of campaigning — one based on conviction rather than calculation? Usually calculation wins out, as Fred Hiatt notes in regard to Barack Obama. As the year has progressed, Obama appears a lot more flexible than he advertised. At Heading Right, I look at the beneficiaries of Obama's newfound flexibility -- the NEA, the antiwar activists, and the trade protectionists -- and marvel at the fortune that led his evolution as a candidate towards the complete spectrum of Democratic special interests. So much for a campaign of conviction, eh?...

Gloves Coming Off?

The Republican primary fights have mostly focused on one-way attacks on Hillary Clinton, but that appears to be changing. Increasingly specific criticisms have started between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, both ironically using Hillary as a benchmark. Have the gloves come off for Republicans with six weeks left to go before the Iowa caucuses? In a big strategic shift, Rudy Giuliani hammered Mitt Romney’s record Sunday on three fronts, saying it was time to “take the mask off and take a look at what kind of governor was he.” Using some of the toughest language of his campaign, Giuliani, in an interview with Politico, slammed Romney on health care, crime and taxes. At the same time he portrayed the one-time moderate as a hypocrite on a host of social issues who lives “in a glass house.” It was easily the most sweeping attack Giuliani has delivered against Romney in this...

Clinton Trails All GOP Candidates: Zogby

Part of relying on polls for analysis includes knowing whether the pollster has credibility. Zogby Interactive has a reputation for questionable results, but it usually can at least identify trends. Their latest trend shows the inevitability of Hillary Clinton sinking the Democrats next year: Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton trails five top Republican presidential contenders in general election match-ups, a drop in support from this summer, according to a poll released on Monday. Clinton's top Democratic rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards, still lead Republicans in hypothetical match-ups ahead of the November 4, 2008, presidential election, the survey by Zogby Interactive showed. Clinton, a New York senator who has been at the top of the Democratic pack in national polls in the 2008 race, trails Republican candidates Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Mike Huckabee by three to five percentage points in the direct matches. In July, Clinton...

How To Answer An Asinine Question?

Mansoor Ijaz wants to paint Romney as a bigot for refusing to commit to nominating a Muslim to the Cabinet if elected. He claims, as do others linking to this story, that Romney's answer demonstrates a latent anti-Muslim bias. Instead, Ijaz demonstrates the absurdity of identity politics. Pay close attention to the question and the answer in this exchange: I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration." Romney, whose Mormon faith has become the subject of heated debate in...

November 27, 2007

Journalistic Malpractice At The Christian Science Monitor

Yesterday, Mansoor Ijaz stirred up controversy by claiming that Mitt Romney was an anti-Muslim bigot after supposedly refusing to consider Muslims for Cabinet positions. Romney, while not specifically denying the quote, told CNN that he didn't want to use religious affiliations as credentials for any presidential appointments: Governor Romney: "… But I also think that suggesting that we have to fill spots based on checking off boxes of various ethnic groups is really a very inappropriate way to think about how we staff positions. I'm very pleased that, among my Cabinet members, for instance, I had several African-American individuals. I had people of different backgrounds. But I don't go in every circumstance I'm in and say, OK, how many African-Americans, how many Hispanic-Americans, how many Asian-Americans, and fill boxes that way. I fill responsibilities based upon people's merit and their skill. And, sometimes, it includes many ethnic minorities. And, other...

November 28, 2007

Florida Firewall Holding

Rudy Giuliani will likely have home-field advantage in tonight's CNN/YouTube debate in St. Petersburg, as Florida's Republicans have maintained their support for the GOP national front-runner. Rudy has a commanding lead in the Sunshine State, considered his firewall against a potential domino effect for Mitt Romney if Iowa and New Hampshire go to the former Massachusetts governor: If the Florida Republican primary were held today, the former New York City mayor would finish on top with the support of 38 percent of likely primary voters, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll. That's 21 points ahead of his closest rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who got 17 percent. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee are tied at 11 percent. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is at 9 percent in the survey, followed by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas at 5 percent, Rep. Duncan...

McCain Conference Call

John McCain started off this week's call by talking about his recent trip to Iraq. He told us that he had a "better" meeting with Nouri al-Maliki and his Shi'ite VP. McCain says troop morale remains high, but that General Petraeus expects a small uptick in violence from al-Qaeda; they see their position badly eroding and may try to seize some momentum. He stresses that drawdowns should come as a result of facts on the ground, not political schedules. Questions: * Economic philosophy -- We needed a restraint on spending, and McCain says he's for tax cuts of all kinds. He wants any future cuts more focused on middle-income Americans. He also wants less regulation to decrease the government burden, and we need to end out-of-control spending. Any efforts to expand government will meet with his veto. * Iowa, Romney on Muslims -- McCain acknowledges that the effort hasn't paid...

A Huckabee Surprise?

Mike Huckabee may throw a monkey wrench into the well-laid plans of Mitt Romney. According to the latest Rasmussen polling, Huckabee has opened a lead over Romney in a state that Romney thought he had sewn up weeks ago: The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the Iowa caucus finds former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee with 28% of the vote, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney with 25% support, and everyone else far behind. National frontrunner Rudy Giuliani gets just 12% of the vote in Iowa at this time while former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson is the only other candidate in double digits at 11% (see crosstabs). Given the margin of error, the challenges of determining the relatively small number of people who will participate in a caucus, and other factors, the race is far too close to call at this point in time. However, the fact that Romney is no...

Why We Called It Clintonesque (Update: Bill Would Have Voted For War)

Common wisdom holds that Bill Clinton provides his wife with her biggest political asset on the stump, but yesterday demonstrated that the former President can also supply her with hurdles as well. Campaigning in Iowa, Bill attempted to rewrite history by claiming to "oppose[] Iraq from the beginning" -- leading ABC and bloggers to uncover a treasure trove of statements that expose that assertion as a lie (via Memeorandum): Former President Bill Clinton portrayed himself as having been against the Iraq war "from the beginning" while campaigning Tuesday for his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, in Iowa. "Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning," said Clinton, "I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers." Clinton has long been critical of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and called it a "big mistake" as far back as November of 2005....

CNN/YouTube Live Blog Tonight!

Tonight at Heading Right, the BlogTalkRadio conservative show hosts will live-blog the CNN/YouTube debate, starting at 7 PM CT. Just as we do with every Republican debate, we will provide a blizzard of instant reaction, pointing out the victories and the stumbles of the candidates and the questioners. It's a great fast-paced companion to the debate itself. At 9:30 PM CT, we will hold our traditional debate recap at Debate Central, talking about the winners and losers of the debate. Did CNN do a better job in question selection than the previous YouTube debate? Which candidates rolled with the format, and which got rolled by it? Join us at BlogTalkRadio to find out! UPDATE & BUMP: Tonight we'll have some great bloggers at Heading Right, including a new member, Jazz Shaw from Middle Earth Journal and Midstream Radio. In fact, I think he's already started. Joining us for the Debate...

CNN/YouTube Debate -- CNN Wins (Update: A Major Error Mars Their Night)

So the Republicans finally braved the CNN/YouTube format, and the most apparent result was that CNN and YouTube did their homework. For the most part -- with a few glaring exceptions -- the network eliminated the silliness and stuck to substance. The questions hit hot topics and sparked some fierce debate. With a couple of exceptions, Republican fears of crypto-Democratic hit questions failed to materialize, and the candidates responded substantively to the rest. I expected the debate to descend into silliness and gotcha moments. The only gotchas came from the candidates. Truthfully, this may have been one of the least "gotcha" and most substantive debates we've had this year. Now, who won among the candidates? I'd have to lean towards Mike Huckabee. He steered clear of personal attacks, allowed his natural personality to emerge, and used his sense of humor to great effect. If people wonder why Huckabee has made...

November 29, 2007

Hugh And Mansoor, And A Media Alert

Hugh Hewitt took on Mansoor Ijaz over the supposed Muslim bigotry of Mitt Romney on last night's show, just before the presidential debate. Hugh challenged Ijaz to find independent corroboration on the record for his account of the question and answer, and Ijaz reacted by calling Romney a liar: HH: I’ve been doing this for twenty years, and on the record means your name is on it. Now I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m just saying no one has yet corroborated on the record your account. You’ve had people… MI: I just completely disagree with what you’ve said, but go ahead. What’s the point? HH: Okay, the point is that Romney says he understood you to ask a different thing, and answered a different way. You disagree strongly with that. MI: No, I’m telling you what Romney said is a lie. Why is corroboration important in this case? Ijaz...

ACU Endorses Romney? (Update: Keene, Not ACU)

Another unusual endorsement has appeared in a cycle full of them, and this time, Mitt Romney hits the sweepstakes. Struggling all year to shed his Massachusetts centrism, Romney won an important conservative endorsement from David Keene of the American Conservative Union. Like Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani and the National Right To Life endorsement of Fred Thompson, this one may leave ACU's constituents scratching their heads: Less than 24 hours after former Gov. Mitt Romney (Mass.) jousted with his rivals over his conservative credentials at the CNN/YouTube debate in Florida, he is set to receive the endorsement from American Conservative Union President David Keene. Keene said he became "convinced that Mitt Romney represents our best hope for 2008" and added that in the weeks remaining before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, 2008 he would work to persuade "my fellow conservatives that if we are serious about electing a...

Striking Writers Cancel Democratic Debate

This story goes well with the CNN brouhaha today, even if it makes little sense. The December 10th Democratic debate on CBS from Los Angeles got canceled -- due to the writers strike. Leading Presidential candidates refused to cross a threatened picket line (via Hot Air): A labor dispute which has darkened US light entertainment and chat shows claimed another victim on Wednesday, forcing the cancellation of a CBS News debate among Democratic White House hopefuls. The debate, scheduled for Los Angeles on December 10, was nixed after candidates including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama said they would refuse to cross a picket line that the Writers Guild of America Union had threatened to set up. "CBS News regrets not being able to offer the Democratic presidential debate scheduled for Dec. 10 in Los Angeles," CBS said in a statement. "The possibility of picket lines set up by the Writers...

Dickie Scruggs, Hillary Fundraiser

The buzz around Trent Lott's departure from the Senate had focused on his familial connections to now-indicted Mississippi lawyer Dickie Scruggs, Lott's brother-in-law. However, the political connections go in an entirely different direction. Scruggs has had his latest fundraiser canceled -- by Hillary Clinton (via Memeorandum): A Dec. 15 fund-raising event for Hillary Clinton at the home of prominent Mississippi trial laywer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs is off, now that Scruggs has been indicted for bribery. Bill Clinton was set to be the star attraction at the event at Scruggs’s Oxford, Miss., home. Hillary Clinton wasn’t scheduled to attend. It was the first event that Scruggs, who made a fortune suing the tobacco industry in the 1990s, had offered to host for Clinton, a campaign spokesman said. It was canceled on Wednesday, after the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided his home and the federal indictment was announced. ... Over the years,...

November 30, 2007

The Anti-Endorsement

Over the last two weeks or so, conservatives have offered some unusual endorsements early in the race. Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani despite his pro-choice personal views, which came as a shock to Robertson's Religious Right followers. National Right to Life endorsed Fred Thompson shortly after he rejected their project of a constitutional amendment against abortion on federalist grounds. Yesterday, David Keene of the American Conservative Union endorsed Mitt Romney despite his deep reservations expressed in February over convenient conversions. (Keene will join me on Monday's Heading Right Radio show to talk more about this; he gave a good argument last night on the Hugh Hewitt show.) Most of these endorsements come with explanations about electability and priorities for the war. I have argued that those arguments apply more towards explaining support in the general election. Rush Limbaugh picks up this same thought and presses it forward: It was fascinating...

Hostage Situation At Clinton NH HQ

Unfortunately, this isn't a joke. A man who claims to have a bomb strapped to his torso has taken over the Hillary Clinton campaign headquarters in Rochester, New Hampshire. Police have it surrounded (via Michelle Malkin): Officials with the campaign confirmed that there were two workers taken hostage in the office on 28 North Main St.. A woman and her baby told workers at a neighboring business that she was released by the hostage-taker. "A young woman with a 6-month or 8-month-old infant came rushing into the store just in tears, and she said, 'You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape,'" witness Lettie Tzizik said. There are several police officers positioned across the street from the office, crouched down behind cruisers with guns drawn, according to a reported...

December 1, 2007

Talk About Spin

Everyone expressed gratitude and relief at the end of the hostage crisis yesterday in Rochester, New Hampshire, when police arrested the disturbed man who created it. No one got hurt and a sick man will get the care he needs, and the community will receive protection from him as well. It demonstrated the competence and patience of the Rochester police department in resolving a standoff that only gained national attention because it took place in the campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton. Somehow, later that evening, the Clinton campaign decided this makes Hillary look presidential, at least to Larry Sabato and the AP: And as soon as it ended, Clinton took full advantage of the opportunity she had unexpectedly been handed. In her New Hampshire press conference, she stood before a column of police in green and tan uniforms. She talked of meeting with hostages. She mentioned that she spoke to...

The Giuliani Scandal Expands, Somewhat

Everyone knew that the marital woes of Rudy Giuliani would get some play in the presidential race, but the extent of official expenses involved in the extramarital affair that led to his second divorce and third marriage may come as a surprise. New York newspapers have begun to dig into the expenses of Giuliani's security details to see how much the affair cost the Big Apple -- and so far, the results have not helped Rudy put the affair behind him. First, his explanations for spreading the billings to other offices didn't wash with other NYC officials, as ABC News reports: New questions were raised today about Rudy Giuliani's explanation for submitting police security expenses to obscure city agencies while he was mayor of New York and carried on a secret affair with his mistress, who also was given use of a police driver and city car. Giuliani said Thursday...

December 2, 2007

Iowa Shifts To The Populists

The Des Moines Register poll, the most reliable indicator for likely Iowa caucus-goers, shows major shifts in both parties for the presidential caucuses that will take place in five weeks. Iowa apparently has gone populist in both parties, with Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee surging to new leads in the state. For the national frontrunners, this may actually be good news: Barack Obama has pulled ahead in the race for Iowa's Democratic presidential caucuses, while the party's national frontrunner Hillary Clinton has slipped to second in the leadoff nominating state, according to The Des Moines Register's new Iowa Poll. Despite the movement, the race for 2008's opening nominating contest remains very competitive about a month before the Jan. 3 caucuses, just over half of likely caucusgoers who favor a candidate saying they could change their minds. Obama, an Illinois senator, leads for the first time in the Register's poll as...

The Establishment Vote

In my post below, I postulate that losing Iowa will cause little heartache for Hillary Clinton. She leads in the delegate-rich states of the coast, and Barack Obama will not be able to pick up any momentum from his opening-night win, if in fact he pulls it off. However, there is a much more substantial reason why Hillary will win the nomination -- the party Establishment: The Associated Press contacted 90 percent of the 765 superdelegates, mostly elected officials and other party officers, who are free to support anyone they choose at the convention, regardless of what happens in the primaries. Hillary Rodham Clinton leads Barack Obama by more than a 2-1 margin among those who have endorsed a candidate. But a little more than half of those contacted — 365 — said they haven't settled on a Democratic standard bearer. "The fact that under half have publicly committed shows...

December 3, 2007

Faith In America

Mitt Romney has decided to give "the speech" -- an address he prepared earlier this year to explain his Mormon faith and why it presents no threat to the Republic. He will deliver this oration at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library on Thursday, hoping to dispel the remaining vestiges of doubt over his qualifications for the presidency. Entitled "Faith in America", the speech will bring the Mormon question directly into the mainstream of political commentary. At Heading Right, I question the timing of this speech. It should have come much earlier in the campaign, not at a time where it looks like a defensive maneuver against a surging Mike Huckabee in Iowa. Also, is it a mistake to try to undo bigotry with apologetics, especially when the defender of the faith is running for President? Even if it is a mistake, though, "Faith in America" will be an...

Hillary Will Assail Obama's Character, Laughter Abounds

In what would qualify as satire, the Washington Post reports that Hillary Clinton's new strategy in Iowa will focus on Obama's character rather than his policy positions. Hillary has fallen behind Obama in recent polling in Iowa, and has decided to campaign against him more aggressively. However, given the track record of the Clintons, character hardly appears to be a winning forum for the national frontrunner: With a new poll showing her losing ground in the Iowa caucus race, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) mounted a new, more aggressive attack against Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Sunday, raising direct questions about his character, challenging his integrity and forecasting a sharp debate over those subjects in the days ahead. Clinton has hammered Obama recently over his health-care proposal, arguing that he is misleading voters because it omits millions of people and would not lower costs. But Sunday, in a dramatic shift,...

Is Huckabee The Anti-Rudy And The Anti-Mitt?

With Mike Huckabee rising unexpectedly in Iowa against a huge Mitt Romney organization, can he duplicate that success elsewhere against Rudy Giuliani? Will his squeaky-clean Baptist minister image get a boost from a recent ethics eruption that has Team Rudy struggling to answer? USA Today paints a picture of a candidate finding his footing just as the front-runners seem to have lost theirs: Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, the Republican long shot who in a new Des Moines Register poll has surged to the lead for the Iowa caucuses, could hardly be more different from the candidate who has led the GOP field nationally all year. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani entered politics as a big-city prosecutor; Huckabee as a rural preacher. Giuliani is out of synch with the GOP's social conservative core; Huckabee is its most consistent champion. Giuliani's calling card is his leadership against terrorism after the...

Putting The M Back In OMB

That's the promise Rudy Giuliani makes in his Wall Street Journal column on fiscal conservatism today. Calling pork the "broken windows of the federal budget" and promising to restore accountability and common sense to federal spending, Rudy makes his case that his brand of fiscal conservatism provides the answer for Republican electoral woes, and America's financial health: With economic uncertainty weighing on the minds of many Americans, Congress is preparing to recess after another year of profligate spending, protectionist talk and promises of higher taxes. No wonder some people feel like we're moving in the wrong direction. But I'm optimistic as I look to the future. It's not our country that's moving in the wrong direction -- it's Congress, and Washington's culture of wasteful spending. Over the last decade, nondefense spending has increased by 65% -- the federal government currently spends $24,000 per household -- while the number of earmarked...

When Did Scott Ott Become Hillary Clinton's Campaign Manager?

All right, I know a great satire site when I read it. Scott Ott must have contracted with the Hillary Clinton campaign for this argument, right? Only a true satirist or a complete idiot would go after a campaign opponent for his academic record -- in kindergarten! Claiming that Barack Obama didn't tell the truth when he said that his presidential run wasn't the result of some long-held plan, Hillary dug up the evidence after checking the Crayola signatures (via Best of the Web): In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President.' His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga "asked her class to write an essay titled 'My dream: What I want to be in the future.' Senator Obama wrote 'I want to be a President,' she said." [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07] In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want...

December 4, 2007

Is The Gray Lady Bailing On Hillary?

The New York Times offers an unusually pessimistic appraisal of Hillary Clinton's effect on the 2008 down-ticket races. Carl Hulse reports that Congressional incumbents and candidates have begun to fear that her nomination will energize a dispirited opposition and could cost the Democrats the seats they gained in 2006. It's not exactly a new thought, but usually it gets expressed as Republican optimism (via Memeorandum): Nancy Boyda, a Democrat who ran for Congress in this district last year, owed her upset victory partly to the popularity of the Democratic woman at the top of the ticket: Kathleen Sebelius, who won the governor’s seat. Now, with a tough re-election race at hand in 2008, Ms. Boyda faces the prospect that her electoral fate could be tied to another woman: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton is a long way from winning the Democratic presidential nomination, and over the last few weeks...

Gallup: Hillary Losing Ground (Update: Worse Than First Thought)

Recall the pushback when we linked to the Zogby poll that showed Hillary's support eroding at the end of November? The numbers showed Hillary losing ground against all Republican contenders, and had some correlation with Rasmussen's numbers as well. Nonsense, came the response; Gallup's polling in November -- two weeks earlier -- showed Hillary maintaining her momentum. Oops: Though both candidates maintain their leads, Rudy Giuliani continues to lose support and Hillary Clinton drops nine points in Gallup's latest poll. No text report has been posted by Gallup, but the trend for Hillary looks bad and seems to be accelerating. She had polled at 50% this summer, when she appeared invincible and her competition couldn't quit making mistakes. Now, after a gaffe-filled month capped by her attack on Barack Obama's kindergarten ambitions, Gallup has her at 39%, dropping eight points in a month. The news doesn't look good for Rudy...

Hsustock Hits Federal Court

Another Hsu fell today on the foundering Hillary Clinton campaign as one of her biggest bundlers got indicted for fraud. Norman Hsu will face federal prosecution not just for the "massive Ponzi scheme" alleged in the charges, but also for multiple campaign-finance violations. The news hits the Clinton campaign already facing a significant drop in support over the past four weeks: A federal grand jury on Tuesday indicted Norman Hsu, a top Democratic fundraiser and former fugitive accused of cheating investors of at least $20 million and using some of the money to make illegal donations to political candidates including Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the 15-count indictment returned in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the government accused the 56-year-old clothing-industry entrepreneur of duping investors nationwide with a massive Ponzi scheme. The government said Hsu also violated federal campaign finance laws by making contributions to various political candidates in the names...

December 5, 2007

Sweatshops Of The Democrats

Barack Obama says that America needs serious rethinking of political issues. Apparently he includes child-labor laws as part of that recalculation. Time's Mark Halperin posts a new initiative by Obama on national service, entitled "A Call To Serve", that proposes a work schedule for middle-school children at which unionized Democrat adults would balk. Among the proposals: * Establish a goal of having middle and high-schoolers contribute at least 50 hours a week to community service, and reach that goal through national guidelines for service-learning and additional resources for schools to develop successful programs. * Create a new American Opportunity Tax Credit to ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for Americans willing to complete 100 hours of public service a year. Fifty hours a week -- for community service? That's not a call, it's a sentence. When exactly will they do other tasks ... like...

When Does Hillary Start Her Apologetics Tour?

Hillary Clinton has so many endorsements, she can’t keep them all straight. Her campaign may have to rely on that explanation after the AP looked through her list of ministers at a South Carolina event and found a few misrepresentations. The number of organizations endorsing Hillary appears significantly lower than implied on her web site. As campaign scandals go for Hillary, this is pretty mundane, but it does show considerable sloppiness. At Heading Right, however, I ask why Hillary can surround herself with ministers but Mitt Romney has to provide apologetics for his religion. We have a double standard at work here. Shouldn't Hillary have to explain the theological reasons she sought the endorsements of all these ministers, especially when Romney has done nothing of the sort?...

The Hidden Treasure For Republicans

Many have linked to the latest Gallup poll that corroborates earlier findings by Rasmussen -- that public perception of the surge in Iraq has grown significantly more optimistic. One subtlety has not yet surfaced that may give the Republicans reason to hope for better success in 2008's elections: Four in 10 Americans now say the U.S. troop surge in Iraq that began earlier this year is making the situation there better. This is up from 34% four weeks ago and from 22% when Gallup first measured it in July. Since August, more Americans have tended to say the surge is making the situation in Iraq better rather than worse, but today's ratio -- 40% vs. 20% -- is the most positive yet recorded. Thirty-nine percent of Americans currently say the surge is not making any difference; this is down from 43% in September and 51% in July. This reinforces the...

Blame To Go Around On Wayne Dumond

Mike Huckabee has found out what it feels like to bark with the big dogs. No sooner had he joined the first tier of Republican presidential candidates than the issue of Wayne Dumond's parole arose. Huckabee worked to get Dumond out of prison in Arkansas for a rape conviction -- and Dumond raped and murdered Carol Sue Shields and Sara Andrasek. While Huckabee has to answer for his role in pushing for Dumond's release, he isn't alone -- and some on the Right need to explain themselves as well. Murray Waas notes that Huckabee hasn't exactly modeled openness in his response, either: Huckabee has refused to release his gubernatorial administration's records on the matter, saying that he was concerned for the privacy of Dumond's victims and that the records contain sensitive law enforcement information. The Arkansas Parole Board also refuses to make public any letters or warnings it received from...

December 6, 2007

How Badly Has Hillary Damaged Herself?

Once seen as an inevitability, Hillary Clinton may not win the first two contests in the primaries -- and that may change the entire Democratic race. Having fallen into no better than a tie with Barack Obama in Iowa, Clinton now has lost significant ground in New Hampshire. She now leads by only six points, and her momentum has completely dissipated: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a narrow lead over Sen. Barack Obama among Democratic presidential candidates in New Hampshire, a state whose primary her campaign has viewed as a potential firewall should she stumble in the Iowa caucuses, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Clinton is widely seen as the party's best experienced and most electable presidential candidate, but with most Democratic voters in the state looking for a fresh approach to governing, the first-in-the-nation primary has become fiercely competitive. With New Hampshire voters set to go...

Faith In America -- Live On Captain's Quarters

Mitt Romney will make one of the most anticipated speeches of the presidential campaign today at 10:30 ET, entitled "Faith in America". Thanks to the Romney campaign's agreement with Ustream, the speech can be seen live at blog sites, including here at Captain's Quarters. Romney's team has released excerpts of his speech. In it, he will explicitly reject calls to explain the specific tenets of the Mormon faith, claiming it will set up a religious test: "There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths." That may be true in spirit, but not in actual fact. Article VI did not constrain voters from...

Did Romney Score With The Speech?

People sometimes underestimate Mitt Romney's persuasive speaking style and genuine warmth on the dais, and that made some difference today with his speech, "Faith in America". Before its delivery, it appeared to hold no promise for Romney's standing with voters, but would present many risks for him in legitimizing religion for political debate. Those risks remain and their potential remains to be seen. However, I believe the speech will be a net positive for Romney and his campaign. Adroitly, Romney avoided apologetics except on the nature of Jesus Christ. He then specifically denounced calls for apologetics on any faith being part of a political campaign, whether willingly or compelled. Romney went out of his way to talk about the common nature of America's "symphony of faith," calling on America to focus on our shared values than on less-meaningful differences of practice. He warned that state religions did no good for...

December 7, 2007

Huckabee Moves Right On Immigration

He got to show his sensitive side during the CNN/YouTube debate, and now he gets to show his toughness. Mike Huckabee released his immigration plan last night, and it moves him much more towards the enforcement-first position favored by most Republicans and some Democrats as well: Released Friday, Huckabee's plan takes a tough stance — similar to those of his GOP rivals — though he has been more forgiving of some here illegally: As Arkansas governor, Huckabee attempted to make children of illegal immigrants eligible for scholarships and in-state college tuition. Huckabee defended that Arkansas effort at a debate last month: "In all due respect, we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We're a better country than that." His new immigration plan does not address education, health care or other services provided to illegal immigrants that strain communities in early-voting Iowa and other...

December 8, 2007

Obama Didn't Get Sung The Gore Lullaby

Al Gore joked during the 2000 presidential campaign that his mother sang him to sleep with the union jingle, "Look For The Union Label". Barack Obama could have used a lullaby like that, as he took criticism from organized labor over the choice of venue for his Oprah Winfrey campaign rally. The Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, New Hampshire has no union representation, despite the best efforts of organizers (via Memeorandum): Barack Obama’s presidential campaign deeply concerned organized labor by booking its big rally Sunday with superstar Oprah Winfrey at the non-union Verizon Wireless Arena. But an agreement reached tonight ensures no picket line will be set up at the event, saving Obama from an uncomfortable choice and potential embarrassment. A union representing organized stage hands has been trying unsuccessfully to gain a foothold at the arena since it opened six years ago. State and national labor officials informed the...

The Sean Penn Endorsement, And The Sean Penn Endorsement

Sean Penn endorsed Dennis Kucinich for President, after tipping off news agencies of a major political announcement earlier this week. While his choice of candidate may not suprise many, it should have surprised John Edwards. After all, Penn had already given him twice as many greenback endorsements as Kucinich (via the Political Machine): Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn endorsed Dennis Kucinich for president in San Francisco Friday. Penn made what had been billed as a "major political statement" at San Francisco State University. Andy Juniewicz, National Press Secretary and senior advisor to Kucinich told NBC11 that Penn made the endorsement at an open-to-the-public event sponsored by The San Francisco State College Democrats. The NBC report includes a slideshow entitled "The Many Faces of Sean Penn". Well, perhaps we can at least say two-faced. FEC records show that Penn had donated $4,600 to John Edwards -- two days after donating $2,300...

December 9, 2007

A Huckabee Lead In Michigan?

Rasmussen's polling in Michigan has Mike Huckabee surging to the top of the leaderboard, a significant showing in what could be a critical state. The January 15th primary holds a significant number of delegates and could be seen as a harbinger of the other large states in the Super Tuesday races three weeks later: Mike Huckabee’s surging campaign has created a three-way toss-up in Michigan’s Republican Primary. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds Huckabee earning 21% of the vote. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the son of a former Michigan Governor, attracts 20% support while former New York City Mayor is the top choice for 19% of Likely Republican Primary Voters. Trailing the Michigan frontrunners are Fred Thompson at 9%, John McCain at 8% and Ron Paul at 7%. Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter split 2% while 15% are not sure how they will vote. Michigan’s primary is scheduled...

December 10, 2007

Debate En Espanol: Just As Dull

For a nice change of pace, the Republican presidential candidates met for their 8.476th debate of the 2008 primary race, but this time for Univision, translated into Spanish. Unlike their previous debate, the candidates played nice with each other and even with Hillary Clinton. The debate, therefore, hardly displayed much spice: The Republican presidential field gingerly defended tough immigration policies before a Hispanic audience even as candidates acknowledged that their party has lost support from the fastest growing minority group in the U.S. There were few differences voiced among the candidates and not a single candidate attacked any of his rivals, a sharp contrast to recent Republican debates. Rather, it seemed that the evening was a discourse between the Republican Party and the Hispanic community, as moderators asked about immigration, health care, education and Latin American politics, and Republicans sought to show they shared values with their questioners even as...

The Pork Barrel Presidential Candidate

How has Hillary Clinton prepared herself to become the Democratic nominee for President? She hasn't held an executive office, nor has she entered the diplomatic service. She has only one and a third Senate terms for experience. However, she has nurtured a network of supporters and contributors, and as the Los Angeles Times reports, Hillary has used her Senate power to keep them enriched: Since taking office in 2001, Clinton has delivered $500 million worth of earmarks that have specifically benefited 59 corporations. About 64% of those corporations provided funds to her campaigns through donations made by employees, executives, board members or lobbyists, a review by the Los Angeles Times shows. All told, Clinton has earmarked more than $2.3 billion in federal appropriations for projects in her state since her election to the Senate, much of it for public works projects funded in conjunction with fellow Democratic Sen. Charles E....

December 11, 2007

Time To Go Negative?

With less than four weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, the presidential campaigns have begun pulling out all stops for the first contest of the primary season. Mitt Romney has gone negative first, stunned by a rapid rise by Mike Huckabee and a potential embarrassing loss in a state where he invested heavily. His switch to the negative underscores the importance of Iowa to his overall strategy, and perhaps reveals a hint of desperation. As negative attacks go, this is really fairly mild. Candidates should have the ability to compare records and policies without getting accused of unfair personal attacks, and this lands squarely in the former category. However, Iowans don't care much for negative advertising as a rule, and as I explain at Heading Right, being the first to launch them implies a certain back-against-the-wall quality....

Does Mormonism Matter?

According to a new Gallup poll, the supposed hurdle for Mormons in a presidential campaign has been somewhat overstated. Only one in six Americans, including a fairly equal representation of Democrats and Republicans, would refuse to vote for a well-qualified Mormon: A new Gallup Poll finds about one in six Americans, including similar proportions of Republicans and Democrats, indicating they would not support their party's nominee for president if that person were a Mormon. The poll was conducted in the days immediately following a major speech by Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, in which he attempted to quiet voter concern about his Mormon religion. The speech appeared to be a response to the political situation in Iowa, where former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has made his Christian faith a centerpiece of his Republican presidential campaign, has taken the lead in the Iowa caucus polls. According...

Larry O'Donnell, Cowardly Hypocrite

I haven't commented on the Larry O'Donnell volcanic rant about Mormonism, mostly because I have found O'Donnell repugnant ever since his volcanic rant at John O'Neill in 2004. However, one has to take notice of hypocrisy so bald and cowardice so exposed as his admission to Hugh Hewitt on last night's show. Why does O'Donnell go after Mormons? They don't fight back: HH: Would you say the same things about Mohammed as you just said about Joseph Smith? LO’D: Oh, well, I’m afraid of what the…that’s where I’m really afraid. I would like to criticize Islam much more than I do publicly, but I’m afraid for my life if I do. HH: Well, that’s candid. LO’D: Mormons are the nicest people in the world. They’re not going to ever… HH: So you can be bigoted towards Mormons, because they’ll just send you a strudel. LO’D: They’ll never take a shot...

Heading Right Radio: Free Will With Barbara Oakley

Note: This post will remain on top until show time; newer posts may be found below. Today on Heading Right Radio (2 pm CT), we welcome back Barbara Oakley, author of Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend, to discuss the concept of free will in light of her research on neurological sources for evil. I'll also talk about the latest in the presidential races, including an interesting poll on the effect of Mormonism on voter decisions. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! And don't forget to join our chat room! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...

National Review Picks Romney

The endorsement season seems in full swing now, and this time Santa's dropped a big gift to Mitt Romney -- the National Review endorsement. When William F. Buckley's venerable journal speaks on effective conservatism, people listen, and Mitt's team has reason to cheer: Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest. While he has not talked much about the importance of resisting ethnic balkanization — none of the major candidates has — he supports enforcing the immigration laws and opposes amnesty. Those are important steps in the right direction. Uniting...

December 12, 2007

Republican Special Election Performance A Harbinger For 2008?

Had the Republicans lost their two special election contests to replace deceased GOP House members, one would see the papers filled with analyses of the coming debacle for Republican hopes in 2008. Now that they have won both handily, expect most to either ignore the races altogether or chalk up the wins to local Republican strength. However, pundits cannot easily dismiss the lessons from the race in Ohio: Republicans retained two House seats in special elections Tuesday, including a hotly contested Ohio race that the two parties spent nearly $700,000 trying to win. ... State legislator Bob Latta decisively defeated Democrat Robin Weirauch in Ohio’s 5th District, leading by 56 to 43 percent with 90 percent of the vote in. The special election was held to replace the late Rep. Paul Gillmor (R). In Virginia’s 1st District, GOP state Del. Rob Wittman won a landslide victory over Iraq war veteran...

Hillary's Firewall -- A Political Maginot Line?

Hillary Clinton has begun to shift resources to New Hampshire as part of a firewall strategy after seeing Iowa slip from her grasp. However, it may be too late for the Granite State to contain the collapse of her once-invincible primary campaign. CNN shows a dead heat now in New Hampshire, as Hillary has squandered her lead: Barack Obama has chipped away at Hillary Clinton’s lead in New Hampshire, and the two Democratic presidential hopefuls are now locked in a statistical tie less than one month before the first-in-the-nation primary, a CNN/WMUR Poll released Wednesday shows. Clinton has dropped 5 percentage points since the CNN/WMUR November survey, while Obama has gained 8 percentage points, according to the poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Clinton is now at 31 percent to Obama’s 30 percent. A loss here would prove devastating to Hillary. She has had a consistent...

Will This Debate Have 'Seismic' Impact?

The Des Moines Register can be forgiven for trying to drum up viewership for the 10th Republican presidential primary debate this year, three weeks before the Iowa caususes. The Register will sponsor the debate this afternoon, taking place at the odd and relatively inaccessible time of 1 pm CT, and they can use all the viewers they can muster during the workday. The chances of "seismic" revelations at this point seem very remote: The Des Moines Register's presidential debates, set for today and Thursday, are the last meetings of the candidates before the leadoff Iowa caucuses and most meaningful of the dozens already held this year, campaign strategists agree. Republicans, scheduled to debate today, will meet with the caucus campaign in flux as better-known candidates aim for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the surprise leader in Iowa with three weeks until caucus night. .... "With just over 20 days left...

The Winner Of The Most Dull Debate Is ...

... certainly not the viewer. I'm with Fred Barnes. We got a series of campaign slogans, not a debate. He called Carolyn Washburn "Nurse Ratchet," and Mort Kondracke echoed my depiction of Washburn as a schoolmarm. Nothing much happened in 73 minutes, as I noted in my moment-to-moment commentary at Heading Right. Without much tension on stage, or even interest, the candidates had to push against air most of the debate. Earlier, I wrote about what the top-tier candidates had to do today, but they had very little opportunity to score points for themselves or each other. Nothing said today on the stage had been left unsaid before today. That said, all of them took some positives away from this race. Fred Thompson showed up for the debate, and scored points against Washburn's silliness in the most interesting and spontaneous part of the debate. McCain relaxed and was himself. Rudy...

The Aroma Of Flop Sweat

I've written before that in both politics and romance, desperation does not act as an aphrodisiac. The Hillary Clinton campaign has gone past the stench of desperation to the reek of flop sweat as they see their inevitability collapse into incoherence. Hillary's New Hampshire co-chair warns that surging Barack Obama will get peppered with questions about his admitted high-school drug use: Billy Shaheen, the co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign in New Hampshire, raised the issue of Sen. Barack Obama's past admissions of drug use in discussing the relative electability of the Democrats seeking the presidential nomination today. ... "The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight ... and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use," said Shaheen, the husband of former N.H. governor Jeanne Shaheen, who is planning to run for the Senate next year. Billy Shaheen contrasted Obama's openness...

December 13, 2007

Thursday: Mike Huckabee Live On Heading Right Radio (Bumped)

He's the hottest candidate in the Republican race at the home stretch before the primaries begin. He has the biggest headlines, and the biggest controversies. Now he returns to Heading Right Radio at a special time on Thursday. Governor Mike Huckabee will appear live on the December 13th show, scheduled to begin at 6 pm ET. We'll take calls and keep a close eye on the webchat, too! In the meantime, feel free to post your questions for Governor Huckabee in the comments on this post. Don't miss this late-breaking item, either -- the founder of the Minuteman Project has endorsed Huckabee. Will this build any confidence for Huckabee among illegal-immigration activists? UPDATE & BUMP: I'll push this to the top. Post your question for Huckabee, and make sure you're around today at 6 pm ET for his Heading Right Radio appearance....

The Clinton Method, Exposed

Robert Novak tells readers today that Barack Obama has managed to do what the "vast right-wing conspiracy" could not -- show how the Clintons operate against their political opponents. The rapidly collapsing Hillary Clinton campaign's desperation has forced them to go public with accusations they normally whisper, because their whispering campaign has proven ineffective against Obama: David Axelrod, the seasoned Chicago Democratic operative who is chief strategist for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, was taken by surprise in the last minute of CBS's "Face the Nation" on Dec. 2. Howard Wolfson, Sen. Hillary Clinton's spokesman, accused Obama of running a "slush fund." In fact, the Clinton campaign was spreading that story privately months ago. Last summer, a senior Clinton aide told a famous Democrat believed to favor Obama that the Illinois senator was using his "leadership" political action committee to spread money around the country to grease his presidential prospects....

In Case You Missed It ....

Last night, I appeared on C-SPAN2 (via telephone) to discuss the presidential debate earlier that day in Iowa. The appearance time shifted around that evening as Congress unexpectedly stayed in session into the evening, and rather than conduct a live interview, we taped it instead. Some CapQ readers may have missed it, and so I've created a YouTube of the segment: C-SPAN2 shows a clip from MS-NBC's Hardball in this segment proving that the Left and Right can agree on one thing: Carolyn Washburn. I tried being gentle, but Chris Matthews and his guests don't pull their punches. You may have missed my appearance last night, but don't miss Mike Huckabee's appearance on Heading Right Radio tonight! We're on at 6 pm ET....

Peeking In On The Democrats (Update: Who Won?)

I'll do something today I've mostly avoided this year -- watch the Democratic presidential debate. I consider the party debates to be mostly internal affairs, and have contented myself to dissecting transcripts after the fact. With this being the last major debate before the Iowa caucus, I'm going to take the time to peek in on the Democrats to see whether (a) they do any unusual damage to themselves, and (b) whether the Des Moines Register learned any lessons from yesterday's debate. You can keep up with the debate at Heading Right, where I will live-blog the show. My final analysis will appear in this post after the debate's conclusion. UPDATE: Well, if this debate gives any indication, I haven't missed much. Partly this comes from the Washburn model of debate, which reduces everything to 30-second sound bites. That has some relation to yesterday's debate, but Washburn got weaker and...

Paging Sir Edmund Hillary

Recall the embarrassment Hillary Clinton suffered when she tried to explain she'd been named after Sir Edmund Hillary after he'd climbed Mount Everest -- only to have it pointed out that she had been five years old at that time? Well, she still seems a little confused about her birth date. Here's an interesting passage in today's debate: HC: We've got to enlist the American people the way we did in a previous generation for the Apollo program. As a little girl, I remember being thrilled about that, and feeling there was something I could do. [Shrugs] My fifth-grade teacher said it was to study math and science, but it gave me an idea of actually contributing to my country. Hillary Clinton was born in 1947. Assuming she started the first grade as a six-year-old as most kids do, she would have been in the fifth grade in 1957-1958. The...

What Huckabee Said On Heading Right Radio

If you missed the live broadcast of Heading Right Radio today, featuring a live interview with Governor Mike Huckabee, you missed an interesting look at the sudden frontrunner for the upcoming Iowa caucus. Huckabee has risen so suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, that most people only know him through the headlines. We asked him about those controversies tonight, and Huckabee gave us some thoughtful answers. Here's a sample: On Mormons qualifying for the presidency: "It shouldn't have anything to do with whether people vote for Romney or not." On questions about religion: "Interestingly, I think I have been asked far more in-depth questions about my faith than Mitt Romney or anybody else has." On immigration: "Every person who lives in this country ought to live with his head held up, and not in fear of each other or our own government. ... The laws are broken. Fix the law, fix...

December 14, 2007

Will 'Holly Holy' Become A Campaign Theme Song Next?

For those who long for some of that old-time religion, the presidential primaries have given them a concentrated dose of it. At times, this race has resembled a revival more than a campaign. With even Joe Biden -- Joe Biden! -- quoting lyrics from a spiritual at yesterday's debate, one might wonder who will select Neil Diamond's song about a faith-healer for a campaign theme song, and when. Charles Krauthammer wonders who will have the guts to end the revival: Mitt Romney declares, "Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone." Barack Obama opens his speech at his South Carolina Oprah rally with "Giving all praise and honor to God. Look at the day that the Lord has made." Mike Huckabee explains his surge in the polls thus: "There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with...

Huckabee Surge Spreading

Don't look now, but the Republican presidential race has become extremely interesting. Fueled by apparent discontent with the top-tier candidates, Mike Huckabee has zoomed out of nowhere to become the hottest candidate in the race. He now leads in South Carolina according to CNN's polling, and Rasmussen now shows him leading in Florida, a stronghold for Rudy Giuliani all year: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee surged to the top among Republican presidential candidates in South Carolina, while Sen. Hillary Clinton's lead over Sen. Barack Obama among Democrats narrowed since July in that state, according to a new poll. The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll of South Carolinians was released Friday Huckabee was the choice of 24 percent of South Carolina Republicans in the survey conducted by telephone between Dec. 9 and 12. When the same poll was conducted in July, Huckabee was in the lower tier with just 3 percent of...

Would An Obama Nomination Change The Tone In 2008?

A funny thing happened on the way to the coronation; the queen tripped over herself and lost her crown. That could well be the story in the Democratic primaries if the Obama surge in recent polling holds. Hillary Clinton, once thought invincible, has spent the last five weeks reminding everyone why she has such high negatives, and the inexperienced Illinois Senator has reaped the rewards. In New Hampshire, Obama has now edged ahead of Hillary among likely voters: Barack Obama has come from behind to turn the Democratic presidential race in New Hampshire into a toss-up, according to a new Monitor opinion poll. The results - which show Obama with a one-point edge over Hillary Clinton - mirror other polls released this week, indicating that Clinton's once-imposing lead has evaporated in the run-up to New Hampshire's Jan. 8 primary. The poll suggests that the Democratic race could hinge on the...

Do-Over?

How bad was the last debate in Iowa? So bad that Iowa Republicans want the candidates to use valuable campaign time to add another debate in the week before the Iowa caucus. The Politico reports that we won't see Carolyn Washburn again: Dissatisfied with the debate here Wednesday that drew widespread scorn, Iowa Republicans will discuss on Friday the possibility of holding another forum before the January 3rd caucuses. The debate this week, sponsored by the Des Moines Register and Iowa Public Television, was to have been the final gathering of the GOP contenders, but one well-placed Iowa Republican said tonight that they were interested in getting the candidates back together ... It's uncertain if all of the hopefuls would agree to an additional joint gathering or if there is even time enough to get one scheduled. But that Republicans are even mulling the prospect says much about just how...

December 15, 2007

Romney Gets An Impressive Endorsement

Mitt Romney has picked up his second impressive conservative endorsement in a week. This time, Judge Robert Bork has thrown his support to the former Massachusetts governor, following on the heels of the National Review endorsement. Mike Allen at The Politico, another Cerritos guy kicking around in politics, thinks this carried considerable street cred among conservatives, and he's right. Bork had these comments to accompany his endorsement: Joining Romney for President, Judge Bork said, "Throughout my career, I have had the honor of serving under several Presidents and am proud to make today's endorsement. No other candidate will do more to advance the conservative judicial movement than Governor Mitt Romney. He knows firsthand how the judicial branch can profoundly affect the future course of a state and a nation. I greatly admired his leadership in Massachusetts in the way that he responded to the activist court's ruling legalizing same-sex 'marriage.'...

Playground Diplomacy?

Mike Huckabee is taking shots from conservatives today after his explanation of his foreign policy, especially from Mitt Romney, who calls it "playground diplomacy". The substance of his foreign policy seems less at issue than in the way he introduces it. He castigates the Bush administration for conducting its policy with a high-school arrogance: The United States, as the world's only superpower, is less vulnerable to military defeat. But it is more vulnerable to the animosity of other countries. Much like a top high school student, if it is modest about its abilities and achievements, if it is generous in helping others, it is loved. But if it attempts to dominate others, it is despised. American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United...

December 16, 2007

The Register Endorsements

The Des Moines Register gave its endorsements in the primary races. For the Democrats, the Register unsurprisingly went with the Establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton. For the Republicans, they gave a big surprise to John McCain, a man who ignored Iowa in 2000 and has gained almost no traction in 2008. Why McCain? McCain is most ready to lead America in a complex and dangerous world and to rebuild trust at home and abroad by inspiring confidence in his leadership. In an era of instant celebrity, we sometimes forget the real heroes in our midst. The defining chapter of McCain's life came 40 years ago as a naval aviator, when he was shot down over Vietnam. The crash broke both arms and a leg. When first seeing him, a fellow prisoner recalls thinking he wouldn't live the night. He was beaten and kept in solitary confinement, held 5 years. He could...

December 17, 2007

Does Lieberman Help McCain?

John McCain picked up another endorsement today -- this time from his old friend, Joe Lieberman. The Senator now designated as "independent-Democrat" on roll calls gave his support to his colleague and friend during a joint appearance at a VFW hall in New Hampshire this morning. The unusual act of having a former VP nominee from the opposition party endorsing his run for the Presidency will get McCain some headlines, but will it help Republicans feel more comfortable with McCain? "I know that it is unusual for someone who is not a Republican to endorse a Republican candidate for President. And if this were an ordinary time and an ordinary election, I probably would not be here today. But this is no ordinary time," Lieberman said in prepared remarks released by the McCain campaign. "When others were silent, and it was thought politically unpopular, John had the courage and common...

Clintons About To Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine

A bad autumn looks to turn into a catastrophic winter for Hillary Clinton. After attempting to distract people from her stumbling campaign by launching a series of attacks on Barack Obama -- and having them backfire -- Hillary promised to take the high road in the future. That promise may have come too late for the pundit class, which has begun to question whether the Clintons intended to use racial stereotypes to frighten Democrats away from Obama: Ever since Barack Obama began to pierce the inevitability that we were told surrounded the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, I've wondered how the Clintonistas would react. Now we know: not well. .... But could it be that this story is even worse than many in the national press will say? Isn't it interesting that Shaheen, or whoever is behind this, opted to invoke the image of a drug dealer in referencing the...

A Huckabee Ho Ho Ho

For a while, we thought that the Iowa caucuses might come before Santa Claus and his eight reindeer. Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and the 2008 primaries remained in 2008, but only just. That gave the presidential candidates an opportunity to work Christmas into their ouevre, but none will do it quite as well as Mike Huckabee. The former governor got a jump on the non-political political advertisement rush, and he'll get the credit for improving the tone for the holidays, as Newsweek's Andrew Romano points out: The first step: beating his rivals to the "This Is No Time for Politics" punch; now every on-air attempt they make to topple the frontrunner from his above-the-fray pedestal looks tawdry. The next step: reminding voters which side of the "War on Christmas" he's on. Most campaigns run tame, PC "holiday" fare. Not Huckabee. A Southern Baptist pastor, he's counting on evangelicals to win...

December 18, 2007

Fournier Misses The Mark

Ron Fournier tries to paint Bill Clinton as hypocritical for criticizing Barack Obama's lack of experience. The AP analyst claims that Clinton faced many of the same criticisms when he ran for the presidency in 1992, but discounts the extensive executive experience that Clinton already had at the time of that first run for office: Bill Clinton says Sen. Barack Obama is a callow, highly ambitious political prodigy who is asking voters to "roll the dice" and elect him president. He should know — that's a fair description of Clinton when he sought the presidency in 1992. The fact that the former president is stealing a page from the same Republican playbook used against him 15 years ago underscores the threat Obama poses to the candidacy of Clinton's wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. It also illustrates Clinton's penchant for rewriting history. ... Clinton was 42 in 1988,...

A Beauty Contest? Have You Seen These Beauties?

Could one bad picture derail a presidential campaign? Have political campaigns become the equivalent of beauty contests for both men and women, and if so, can women get a fair shake at an age where candidates have the requisite experience? Rush Limbaugh, surprisingly, believes not, and has some sympathy for the unfairness for women: There is this thing in this country that, as you age -- and this is particularly, you know, women are hardest hit on this, and particularly in Hollywood -- America loses interest in you, and we know this is true because we constantly hear from aging actresses, who lament that they can't get decent roles anymore, other than in supporting roles that will not lead to any direct impact, yay or nay, in the box office. While Hollywood box-office receipts may be stagnant, none of that changes the fact that this is a country obsessed with...

Can McCain Make The Sale?

On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, the only certainty apparent in the Republican race is that no one has a clear path to the nomination. Mike Huckabee has to rely on a surge that will derail Mitt Romney's early-state strategy. Rudy Giuliani has to hope that Huckabee's momentum hasn't killed his Florida firewall strategy. Fred Thompson somehow has to capture the momentum he ceded to Huckabee in Iowa with a surprisingly sluggish campaign. Meanwhile, John McCain continues to work on friendly ground in New Hampshire, hoping he can see daylight to a surprise in the Granite State that will boost his credibility for the later states. The Wall Street Journal wonders whether Republicans will have any inclination to reconsider the one-time maverick: As recently as January, Mr. McCain was the putative Republican favorite, but his support collapsed amid his campaign mismanagement and the GOP's immigration meltdown. Now primary voters...

The Two Words That Strike Fear Into The GOP

They aren't Hillary Clinton, nor are they Ron Paul. The two words that will haunt the early primary states are "brokered convention", and we may be heading towards it. At Heading Right, I review the McClatchy analysis of what looks to be a Rudy Giuliani slide. Jim Geraghty points to a Gallup quote arguing that Mike Huckabee's ascent has plateaued after two weeks of hard pushbacks by a number of campaigns. Meanwhile, John McCain rises in New Hampshire, while Romney has treaded water. Republican primary voters have sent a very clear message: they have not found their candidate. After a remarkable full-year, full-court press, the top five candidates remain bunched together closely enough to have a serious shot at winning at least one of the early states. No one has broken out of the pack on either a national or state-to-state basis, and all of them have serious obstacles to...

The Fred Phenomenon?

Mike Huckabee's surge may not be the final chapter in Iowa, the Des Moines Register's David Yepsen warns, and Barack Obama may still get an unpleasant surprise. The longtime political analyst has detected signs of life from Fred Thompson and John Edwards in the Hawkeye State, and believes that the unsettled nature of both races may provide yet another surprise or two: Both Edwards and Thompson are pouring time and resources into Iowa these days. ... On the GOP side, Romney has slipped, and Huckabee has surged in Iowa and nationally. Other candidates such as Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, who never seemed to figure out just how they want to play Iowa, have effectively bypassed the state in favor of contests elsewhere. That seemed a wise strategy because it would help Huckabee defeat Romney here, thereby derailing his New Hampshire momentum and making that state easier for Giuliani and...

Kicking Up The Ruckus

Newsweek has launched a new feature at its website called The Ruckus, in conjunction with the Media Bloggers Association. The Ruckus will track the postings of nine bloggers on the presidential race from now until Election Day in November -- including Captain's Quarters: Media Bloggers Association (MBA) and Newsweek have launched "The Ruckus," a new group blog about politics for Newsweek.com. The blog will feature posts from nine MBA-member bloggers about the presidential campaign on a single page, giving Newsweek.com readers a convenient sampling of some of the best political blogging from across the country and from key primary states. " 'The Ruckus' places Newsweek on the cutting edge of this campaign season's online political dialogue," said Robert Cox, president of MBA. "MBA bloggers offer Newsweek readers fresh, authentic content with real-time updates from some of the nation's leading political blogs." " 'The Ruckus' will be a key part of...

Let's Be Fair

James Taranto has provided conservative readers with a must-read feature at Opinion Journal for years in the Best of the Web Today. His incisive commentary regularly skewers the ridiculous and gives a lighter look at the day's stories. Taranto rarely misses a target, and rarely selects a target without reason. Unfortunately, today he missed the mark on at least the former count. Taranto criticizes Mike Huckabee's support for the Fair Tax initiative, on which the Wall Street Journal has written extensively in the past. Taranto makes some good points, but misses entirely on one: Fair Tax people respond to this point by saying they would counter the added burden with subsidies, which they call "prebates"--a deviation from the elegant simplicity that is the plan's biggest selling point. Still, no matter how complicated they make the system, there is no escaping simple arithmetic: If some taxpayers pay less, others are going...

December 19, 2007

How Many Degrees Of Separation?

Blogosphere buzz today centers on a Drudge story regarding alleged marital infidelity for a major contender in the Democratic presidential primaries. The story comes from the National Enquirer, so the reliability of the information seems rather debatable. The source may be more of the story than the story itself, as the NE has a passing relationship with the candidate's main competitor. AMI owns National Enquirer, as well as other tabloid gossip rags. AMI has been on the block for a while, and investor Ron Burkle of Yucaipa Cos. has been involved in making a play for AMI. Guess who just recently -- a week ago, in fact -- distanced himself from Burkle? Former president Bill Clinton says he is preparing to reduce or curtail his business relationship with Los Angeles billionaire Ron Burkle's investment firm if his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, wins the Democratic presidential nomination. The move appears to...

Any Floating Crosses?

Some people disliked the Mike Huckabee Christmas ad now getting airplay in Iowa. Complaints included too much emphasis on religion for a religious holiday, a floating cross that turned out to be a bookshelf, and Huckabee's alleged subliminal evangelical messaging. Rudy Giuliani has a new Christmas ad out, too Anything subliminal here? He does have Santa Claus in his ad. Perhaps that's subliminal for people to consider sending "gifts" in the form of campaign donations. Of course, for gifts, Rudy decided to go less subliminal here: I'll leave it to readers to dissect the deeper meaning of Rudy's mention of holiday fruitcake. The second ad intends to be more political, and may get some mixed reviews for mixing the holiday with the campaign. The first ad seems more like the genuine Rudy, and will succeed for the same reason Huckabee's ad worked so well. It allows voters to get past...

McCain Making A Move In New Hampshire -- And Iowa?

It's too bad that Phil Rizzuto passed away earlier this year, because we could have used him for the political play-by-play in the two weeks left before the Iowa caucuses. Mitt Romney has begun to regain his footing in Iowa, but may be slipping in New Hampshire. And as it turns out, John McCain may have begun a comeback in both states, according to Rasmussen: In many places around the country, Mitt Romney is facing a challenge from Mike Huckabee. However, in New Hampshire, Huck-a-mania never took hold. But, following endorsements from the Manchester Union Leader, the Boston Globe, and Senator Joe Lieberman, John McCain is now challenging Romney in the state he won eight years ago. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the state shows Romney with 31% support, McCain at 27% and no one else close. Rudy Giuliani attracts 13% and Huckabee barely reaches double digits at...

Blankley Not Firing Blanks

Tony Blankley has a bone to pick with the conservative punditry covering the Republican primary race. Given the volatility of the campaign, the top-tier candidates have all had their shot at being the flavor of the week, exposing them immediately afterwards to criticism. While Blankley doesn't have a problem with honest debate on the issues, he warns about the internecine nastiness he sees: The Republican Party primary has so far been an exercise in none of the above. In their turns John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney seemed to be or seemed about to be frontrunners — only to fall back as the party's likely voters got a sharper look at each of them. Even my old boss Newt Gingrich, without even announcing, had a handsome surge from 4-5 percent to 18-20 percent in February — before falling back to single digits. Now Mike Huckabee — for...

No Red Sweater On This One

We've taken a look at a couple of Christmas ads from Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani, wearing red sweaters and trying to give Iowa voters access to their character and quality. Mitt Romney's team decided to take a different tack with the ad below. Instead of sending warm or funny Christmas wishes, Romney's team shows him as a man of action -- and of the right priorities: This could play extremely well, or as exploitative. It helps to have the father in the ad; in fact, his presence makes it work. Robert Gay's story hits at all of the emotional points: family, loyalty, action, command, success. Gay understandably tells the story with a great deal of emotion years later, and anyone who's had a teenager not come home on time will relate instantly to the tale. Romney gets some criticism for being scripted and slick. This ad will have some...

December 20, 2007

Rudy Slips In Second National Poll

Rudy Giuliani has to take a little time off the campaign trail due to "flu-like symptoms," but they could be caused by a significant drop in his poll standing. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll confirms what Rasmussen reported earlier this week -- that Giuliani has lost his national lead in the Republican presidential primaries. The momentum shift casts grave doubts on Giuliani's big-state strategy and further confirms the unsettled nature of the GOP base: Two weeks before the Iowa caucus, the race for president, while tightening among Democrats, is wide open on the Republican side, highlighting the unusual fluidity of the first campaign for the White House in over a half-century that doesn't include an incumbent president or vice president. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that Rudy Giuliani has lost his national lead in the Republican field after a flurry of negative publicity about his personal...

The Clintons And Their Donors

The Clintons have long kept hidden the identities of the donors to their foundation, and now we know why. The New York Times finally got a look at the books, and they discovered millions of dollars coming from people with a lot to lose during the Clinton administration. Shockingly, the pace of donations has accelerated as Hillary comes closer to winning the Democratic presidential nomination. At Heading Right, I take a look at some of the connections: * The beer company that needed to protect its advertising * The emirs whose bid for management for American ports created a firestorm * The Hillraiser who managed to avoid perjury charges * The CEO whose illegal tech transfers to China got ignored until the Bush administration If this sounds familiar, just wait until the Clintons return to the White House. UPDATE: I've also cross-posted this at Poligazette, Michael van der Galien's new...

Paul To Keep Supremacist Donation

Usually when a candidate receives a campaign donation from a disreputable donor, the money either gets returned or donated to a charity. Ron Paul wants to be a maverick, however, so he will keep the $500 from Stormfront founder Don Black. Paul claims his own campaign as a charity, in a sense: Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has received a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist, and the Texas congressman doesn't plan to return it, an aide said Wednesday. Don Black, of West Palm Beach, recently made the donation, according to campaign filings. He runs a Web site called Stormfront with the motto, "White Pride World Wide." The site welcomes postings to the "Stormfront White Nationalist Community." "Dr. Paul stands for freedom, peace, prosperity and inalienable rights. If someone with small ideologies happens to contribute money to Ron, thinking he can influence Ron in any way, he's wasted his...

The Hillary We All Know

Hillary Clinton just launched her new site The Hillary I Know, designed to humanize her to draw down her high negatives, amid much fanfare. On the same servers, ABC News discovered a few other websites that Hillary plans to launch. She has set up domains for websites designed to attack Barack Obama and to claim that they attacked her first: ABC News has learned that the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has registered the names of two websites with the express goal of attacking her chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, the first time this election cycle a presidential campaign has launched a website with the express purpose of criticizing a rival. "Votingpresent.com" and "Votingpresent.org" are domains hosted by the same IP address as official Clinton websites, such as TheHillaryIKnow.com website, which was launched with much fanfare this week. The Clinton campaign intends to use these new websites to...

Tancredo Endorses Romney

As widely expected, Tom Tancredo dropped out of the presidential race this afternoon. He had generated almost no significant national support despite being associated with the favored position on one of the biggest issues for Republicans, immigration. However, he surprised everyone with his valedictory endorsement of Mitt Romney: Rep. Tom Tancredo announced Thursday that he is dropping out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination. Tancredo, a five-term congressman from Colorado, said he would endorse rival Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination. Some may dismiss the endorsement as an afterthought. Given his very poor showing in the polls, one could figure that Tancredo will shift very few voters to Romney. If Tancredo's influence only extended to his primary constituency, they would be correct. However, Tancredo's influence on immigration extends far beyond the 1% he attracted as a presidential candidate. Many people who consider him an authority on immigration didn't...

December 21, 2007

McCain Goes On Offense On Rumors

Saying that he learned a lesson from 2000, John McCain eschewed the quiet approach yesterday and blasted rumors that he did favors for a Washington lobbyist. Matt Drudge posted that the New York Times had a story that would show McCain -- a staunch activist for reducing lobbyist influence -- had his own scandal brewing. Both of the principals in the story have hired lawyers, and the Times has clammed up: Sen. John McCain said yesterday that he has "never done any favors for anybody -- lobbyist or special interest group," as his presidential campaign issued a statement denouncing allegations of legislative favoritism as "gutter politics." The Arizona Republican has hired a prominent Washington criminal attorney, Robert Bennett, to deal with the matter. "What is being done to John McCain is an outrage," Bennett said in an interview. Bennett said he sent prepared answers yesterday to written questions submitted by...

A Flibbertigibbet, A Will O' The Wisp, A Clown

How do you solve a problem like Bill Clinton? Eugene Robinson wonders whether it wouldn't be easier to keep a wave upon the sand than to try to shoehorn him into a ceremonial post as First Spouse. Bill already acts as though the campaign exists to provide him a revival of the production most Americans thought had closed for good in January 2001: Sexism might have something to do with the fact that Hillary Clinton has to answer questions about her husband that the other candidates never get asked about their wives. But Bill Clinton has always had a way of making himself the story, and he's at it again. When the Clintons made a campaign stop at an Iowa grocery store Tuesday, Hillary's face said it all. She realized that Bill had departed from the script and wandered off to another part of the store, and cameras caught her...

The Buried, Unquotable Exoneration

The New York Times exonerates Rudy Giuliani from charges that he moved travel expenses around through subsidiary agencies in order to hide his affair with his now-wife, Judith. People looking for that exoneration on their feedreaders will find themselves frustrated. Not only did the Times bury the story on one of its blogs, it put it in a graphic format that doesn't allow for copy-and-paste. In fact, it isn't even shown as an entry on the blog itself: All eight of Mr. Giuliani's trips to the Hamptons in 1999 and 2000, including the period when his relationship was a secret, were charged to his own mayoral expense account, according to the records. In fact, the amount of money transferred through those agencies represent an insignificant percentage of the total cost of those travel expenses. Furthermore, the Times found that Giuliani had started spreading the costs of travel through subsidiary agencies...

Hillary: Have A Wonky Christmas, On You

One curious aspect to Hillary Clinton's new Christmas ad is that she didn't use viral technology at her website to spread it through the blogosphere. It only takes 30 seconds to understand why. Instead of exuding warmth or humor, it's a Very Wonkish Christmas, as Hillary inadvertently shows why statists haven't a clue about either Christmas or public policy. It's up at YouTube, however, and I'll post it here: First, let's talk about the tone-deafness of the ad in terms of the holiday. John Edwards had at least some theological underpinning for using the holiday to remind us of those without at Christmas. It may not make for pleasant viewing, but it follows in the tradition of mercy, charity, and outreach, as did BandAid's "Do They Know It's Christmastime At All?" This, however, just manipulates Christmas into a series of visual billboards for policy slogans, such as "Universal Health Care",...

Bringing A Water Pistol To A Firefight

The title has the most apt analogy, because while going after Rush Limbaugh makes sense for the Democratic presidential candidates, "bringing a knife to a gunfight" doesn't begin to describe the foolishness of a Republican candidate trying the same strategy. Rush, who has tried to remain studiously non-committal in the primaries, let loose a barrage of criticism of Mike Huckabee after an unnamed source harshly criticized the talk-show giant (via Hot Air): RUSH: Yeah, that’s why I haven’t endorsed anybody. I’m waiting. I don’t know how else I can do it. I realize that there are a lot of you out there: You got a candidate, and you think that if I got behind your candidate it would put ‘em over the top, and you might be right. But, at this point, it’s just an age-old belief that I have, and I remain true to my beliefs and principles. Now,...

December 22, 2007

Why Inexperience Matters

The AP takes a look at the political development of Barack Obama, and it's hard not to look at it as an apprenticeship. His position changes don't count as flip-flops in the same sense that a teenager's infatuation with radical politics changes with some maturity. In this case, the significant changes in such a short period of time suggests that Obama hasn't reached his political maturity: If he wanted, the Barack Obama of today could have a pretty good debate with the Barack Obama of yesterday. They could argue about whether the death penalty is ever appropriate. Whether it makes sense to ban handguns. They might explore their differences on the Patriot Act or parental notification of abortion. And they could debate whether Obama has flip-flopped, changed some of his views as he learned more over the years or is simply answering questions with more detail and nuance now that...

What Choice Was There?

The Washington Post reports this morning that Hillary Clinton has reached the earth-shaking conclusion that she has to embrace her husband in her campaign to win the presidency in 2008. Apparently, this strategy created controversy in her campaign despite the rather obvious connection voters would make between the two of them: After months of discussion within her campaign over how heavily she should draw on her husband's legacy, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is closing out her Iowa and New Hampshire campaigns in a tight embrace of Bill Clinton's record, helping fuel a debate about the 1990s with Sen. Barack Obama that she thinks she can win. As part of the Clinton strategy, the former president is playing an increasingly prominent public role as an advocate for his wife. He appears to have overcome concerns within the campaign over how closely she should associate her candidacy with his time in office...

Where's The McCain Beef?

We're here at the Media Watch, Day 2 of The New York Times Held Hostage. Despite the Drudge Report announcement earlier this week that the Gray Lady would release an investigative report that Senator John McCain had traded favors for lobbyist cash, the report still has not hit their website. Managing editor Bill Keller still has issued no comment on the crisis. What could be the problem? Could this be a form of Stockholm Syndrome? Could the door to the bunker be jammed? Could it be that the leak left the Times without a fig leaf on its efforts to kneecap McCain in New Hampshire? Mmmmm ..... could be! We'll continue to monitor this situation. Meanwhile, back to your irregularly scheduled primaries....

The Eggnog Factor

Often, I will describe the success or failure of a candidate in terms of the "beer factor" -- whether voters would want to have a beer and a conversation with a contender or not. This measure transcends partisanship. I'd rather have a beer and a chat with Bill Clinton than with a few Republican politicians, not because I support Bill's politics, but because I think he'd make for fascinating conversation. With the current crop of contenders attempting to get warm and gooey for the holidays, I figure we can test to see how much success they've had. To recognize the festive spirit of Christmas, I've changed eggnog for beer. You can vote for multiple choices in this poll, and we'll see which candidate comes up with highest Eggnog Factor. ADDENDUM: Post a comment about your selection, and what topics you'd cover in the conversation! UPDATE: I found out that Huckabee...

The Christmas Ad That Topped Them All

CapQ readers want to have an eggnog with him, and now we know why. Fred Thompson just released the best Christmas ad in this cycle, one in which no one will find floating crosses, holiday fruitcake, downer lighting, and especially tone-deaf "gifts" of expanded entitlements under the Christmas tree. Instead, Thompson reminds us that we have other Americans than Presidential candidates to keep in our thoughts on this holiday: Thompson knows how to hit the right buttons, and do it with class. Of course, I don't want to brag, but he may have looked at my Christmas greeting from last year: I'll have a new greeting for Christmas morning, but Fred reminded me that most of this is pretty evergreen....

Can't Anyone Play This Here Game?

If any presidential primary ever exemplified None Of The Above, it's the one inflicted on us now. According to Rasmussen, everyone gets a negative favorability rating in this race -- and I mean everyone (via Memeorandum): Among the leading Presidential candidates, New York Senator Hillary Clinton and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney have the highest level of core opposition among voters. Forty-seven percent (47%) say they will vote against each of these candidates no matter who else is on the ballot. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Arizona Senator John McCain. For the second straight month, McCain finds himself with the smallest level of core opposition--just 33% say they will definitely vote against him. That figure is unchanged from a month ago, down from 39% a two months ago and a peak of 42% in June. These results are just one part of the reason that it is...

December 23, 2007

McCain And Obama The Mo Men?

The Boston Globe's new poll puts both New Hampshire primaries in dead heats with sixteen days to go. As other polls have shown, Barack Obama has succeeded in overtaking Hillary Clinton and now has a slight two-point lead. For the Republicans, John McCain has made a run at Romney and now only trails by less than the margin of error (via Memeorandum): Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose bid for the Republican presidential nomination was all but dead this summer, has made a dramatic recovery in the Granite State 2 1/2 weeks before the 2008 vote, pulling within 3 percentage points of front-runner Mitt Romney, a new Boston Globe poll indicates. McCain, the darling of New Hampshire voters in the 2000 primary, has the support of 25 percent of likely Republican voters, compared with 28 percent for Romney. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has slid into third place, with...

December 24, 2007

One Reason To Like Barack

It wouldn't convince me to vote for Barack Obama, but his rise in American politics has had at least one salutary effect. It has marginalized Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, two long-time race-baiters and both former Presidential candidates in their own right. Allison Samuels at Newsweek notes the decline of their influence in an anecdote from Los Angeles: Jesse Jackson can still get a crowd going—when he can find one. He appeared at a Los Angeles restaurant this fall, primed to discuss school dropout rates and home foreclosures. But only eight people showed up, mostly reporters. It's no longer Reverend Jackson's day in the sun, or any other black leader's whose name isn't Barack Obama. So where does that leave the leaders to whom black America has long turned in times of crisis—Jackson, and the Revs. Andrew Young and Al Sharpton? At times they can seem like jealous, cranky old...

Iran Doesn't Have An Army?

Foreign policy is a critical part of selecting a president, but most often, the potential candidates have little practical experience in that arena. Bill Richardson has the most extensive practical experience by far, but has no chance of winning; the rest in both parties have to rely on policy presentation instead, backed by a show of in-depth study. In that sense, how badly should this statement disqualify a candidate on the eve of the primaries? That is like saying “Iran is about to invade Mars.” I mean, they have nothing. They don’t have an army or navy or air force. They don't? In fact, the Iranians have two of each, as the CIA notes in its Factbook. The Artesh represents the regulars, while the Revolutionary Guard has its own forces in each branch. They spend a significant portion of their GDP on maintaining their military, belying the thought that the...

December 26, 2007

McCain's Turn To Surge?

We have seen each front-runner build momentum in the Republican primary, only to get their surge blunted in a hailstorm of criticism. John McCain may have his turn at this particular see-saw this week. Rasmussen now has him claiming at least an electability surge, as his numbers against Hillary Clinton improve to the best they have been all year: With the first primary contests less than two weeks away, Senator John McCain has gained a six-point lead over Senator Hillary Clinton in the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey. A month ago, McCain had a two-point edge over the former First Lady. However, before that, Clinton edged out McCain by at least a point or two in six consecutive surveys of the match-up .... The current survey finds that Clinton fares better in another match-up. She leads former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee 47% to 43%. Clinton has led Huckabee in six...

The Late John Edwards

How can one make a case for running a government effectively when the candidate can't even manage his own schedule? John Edwards has people scratching their heads in Iowa and everywhere else -- because that's all they can do when his campaign events are supposed to start. Running late occasionally on the campaign trail happens, and is more or less expected. When someone does it all the time, it comes across as both undisciplined and rude. At Heading Right, I note that Edwards already has an image of self-absorption without adding this kind of cluelessness to the mix. (via Memeorandum)...

Experience By Osmosis

Hillary Clinton claims executive experience through her work as First Lady in her husband's administration. She tells people about her involvement in foreign relations, especially about her work in the Balkans and her efforts to get Bill Clinton to engage in the fight against Slobodan Milosevic and end the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia. The New York Times looks at her case and concludes that she had little to do with anything in the Clinton administration -- and any lessons she learned came through "osmosis": As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton jaw-boned the authoritarian president of Uzbekistan to leave his car and shake hands with people. She argued with the Czech prime minister about democracy. She cajoled Roman Catholic and Protestant women to talk to one another in Northern Ireland. She traveled to 79 countries in total, little of it leisure; one meeting with mutilated Rwandan refugees so unsettled her that...

Union Leader Channels The Monitor

Mitt Romney has taken some body shots in New Hampshire as the primary gets within a fortnight. First the Concord Monitor, not exactly a conservative bastion, issued an anti-endorsement calling on Granite State voters to keep Romney from winning the nomination. While that hardly carries much weight with Republican voters, the center-right Union Leader has also added to its endorsement of John McCain by explaining why Mitt doesn't fit: Granite Staters want a candidate who will look them in the eye and tell them the truth. John McCain has done that day in and day out, never wavering, never faltering, never pandering. Mitt Romney has not. He has spoken his lines well, but the people can sense that the words are memorized, not heartfelt. Last week Romney was reduced to debating what the meaning of "saw" is. It was only the latest in a string of demonstrably false claims --...

December 27, 2007

The Secret Fantasy Life Of Joe Biden

The Iowa caucuses can provide unpleasant surprises for candidates and their supporters, but even Iowans have a limit. With Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards splitting most of the likely caucus goes in the polling, the second tier has no chance of pulling off an upset. Don't tell that to Joe Biden, however, who apparently needs to maintain his interior fantasy of superiority: Joe Biden is talking. “Barack does a room, Hillary does a room, I do the same room and I win,” he says. “I have absolute confidence in that. The question is: Do I get in enough rooms?” Biden is sitting at a table in a Starbucks, a cup of coffee rapidly growing cold in front of him. We talk for thirty minutes and in that time I manage to fit in exactly two questions. I am not complaining. Biden is charged up and telling me that...

Will Immigration Provide The Key?

Two candidates, two evolving approaches to immigration. Can either catch the imagination of Republican primary voters? Mike Huckabee and John McCain have tried retooling their message on one of the biggest issues for voters in this election, and their success depends on how well they can communicate the changes in their positions: While governor, Huckabee gained favor with Hispanic leaders by denouncing a high-profile federal immigration raid and suggesting some anti-illegal immigration measures were driven by racism. He advocated making children of illegal immigrants eligible for college scholarships. Huckabee's Republican presidential rivals have tried to make an issue of the scholarship plan, portraying him as soft on illegal immigration, an important issue for many GOP voters. Huckabee responded this month by unveiling a plan to seal the Mexican border, hire more agents to patrol it and make illegal immigrants go home before they could apply to return to this country....

Fundless Fred?

The Fred Thompson campaign has stopped television ad buys in Iowa, a state where they absolutely have to generate momentum in order to continue the campaign. Jonathan Martin at The Politico reports that campaign funds have run short, and Fred now has to rely on personal campaigning alone: Fred has gone dark in Iowa. With not enough cash to buy ads, he's doing all the free media he can on his bus tour. But it's a remarkable indicator of just how topsy-turvy the GOP race has been that the man once viewed as the party's savior cannot even afford to buy TV time in the final days before Iowa. To some, he remains the party's savior. Bloggers especially have a fondness for Fred, and have planned a blogburst for today in order to assist in fundraising. Rick Moran has worked hard to organize the blogathon, and he explains why: [I]f...

The Holiday Is Over (Update With Candidate Reactions)

As our efforts in Iraq continue to show improved results, national security slowly slipped off the radar in the presidential primaries. Instead, health care and immigration have taken more of a leading role in both parties as we focused inwardly in the final quarter of 2007. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto changes that calculation, argues John Podhoretz, and demonstrates the folly of that thinking: The horrifying assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan this morning comes only one week before the Iowa caucuses and 12 days before New Hampshire. It is a sobering and frightening reminder of the challenges and threats and dangers posed to the United States by radical Islam, the nature of the struggle being waged against the effort to extend democratic freedoms in the Muslim world, and the awful possibility of a nuclear Pakistan overrun by Islamofascists. This is what the next president will be compelled by circumstance...

Rasmussen: Huckabee On Top, Romney 4th

Rasmussen has a new national poll out that shows the Republican primary remains volatile. Mike Huckabee has maintained a lead he has held for over two weeks of daily polling, while Rudy Giuliani has begun to move back into a virtual tie -- and John McCain has crept into third place: With just a week to go until the Iowa caucuses, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll continues to show five Republican hopefuls in double digits nationally. In the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination, it’s Mike Huckabee at 20%, Rudy Giuliani 18%, John McCain 14%, Mitt Romney 13%, and Fred Thompson at 11% (see recent daily numbers). Ron Paul currently attracts 5% of Likely Republican Primary voters nationwide. An Inside Report by Robert Novak says that McCain is now “viewed by canny Republican professionals as the best bet to win the party's presidential nomination.” McCain has the highest...

The Soft Sell

Everyone waited to see how Rudy Giuliani would fit in a reference to 9/11 in his television advertising. His opponents in the firefighter's union wanted to use it to beat him up, and the other Republicans likely would have followed suit -- but Rudy gave then a little sleight of hand. Instead of talking about what he did, Rudy talks about what he saw others do in his latest ad, "Freedom": The AP notes the head-fake: Now, with the New Hampshire primary less than two weeks away, Giuliani draws attention to that tragedy with a national ad meant to get widespread attention. The ad tells a narrative about unity against outside threats. Giuliani establishes the foundation by referring to Brokaw's book, "The Greatest Generation." When he speaks of 9/11, Giuliani describes what he saw, not what he did. The images illustrate Americans fighting challenges — victory in World War II,...

Richardson: We Must Force Musharraf Out Of Power (Update: Yes, Richardson Said 'Force')

At one point, I considered Bill Richardson the most prepared Democrat for the Presidency, based on his extensive experience in foreign relations, Congress, and the executive branch. That experience doesn't do much good without common sense, and Richardson keeps proving his lack of it. Today, in response to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, he made us all thankful that he doesn't already occupy the White House: Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called on President Bush to force Musharraf to step down. Until then, Richardson said the U.S. must suspend military aid to the Pakistani government. "A leader has died, but democracy must live. The United States government cannot stand by and allow Pakistan's return to democracy to be derailed or delayed by violence," Richardson said. The stupidity of this statement cascades through several levels. First and foremost, how would the US...

December 28, 2007

A Pretty Thin Sample

The Los Angeles Times offers a poll for Iowa that shows some dramatic numbers in the Republican race. Mike Huckabee has a commanding lead over Mitt Romney, according to the Times/Bloomberg numbers, running fourteen points ahead. However, the sample leaves these results with debatable predictive value: 2,312 adults completed the survey in Iowa, including 2,145 registered voters ( margin of sampling error +/-2), 580 Democratic caucus voters (+/-5) 389 likely Democratic caucus voters (+/-5), 310 Republican caucus voters (+/-6) and 174 likely Republican caucus goers (+/-7). Only 174 likely Republican caucus goers got surveyed by the Times/Bloomberg poll. That hardly gives much credence to the results of this survey. They found more than twice as many likely Democratic caucus goers as they did Republicans, and that's still a pretty thin sample, even for a state race. The poll may reflect the opinion of the sample itself, but as a predictor...

A Tale Of Two Television Ads

Mitt Romney and John McCain have released competing ads in New Hampshire today. Both take different approaches, and may show a little about how each candidate views the Granite State. While McCain's ad showcases himself with ebullience in "The Choice Is Clear", Romney also focuses on McCain as the wrong choice in "Future": As so-called attack ads go, this seems rather mild. It focuses on McCain's record, doesn't call him names, and even offers that McCain is an "honorable man". There's nothing objectionable about it in that sense. Campaigns are all about making choices, as both men make clear. However, the decision to go after McCain with ten days left before the New Hampshire primary shows how close that race has become. If Romney still had a double-digit lead there, he never would utter the name McCain in any of his advertisements. He now needs to make the comparative case,...

The Choice Is Clear (In Canada, At Least)

Theo Caldwell takes a step back from the minutiae of the presidential primaries, the internecine spats, and the wildly varying polls -- and indeed, from the American border. In Canada's National Post, Caldwell takes a look at the choices offered by the Democrats and Republicans and determines which party takes the Presidency more seriously: This instinct intensifies as the stakes of the given choice are raised. American voters know no greater responsibility to their country and to the world than to select their president wisely. While we do not yet know who the Democrat and Republican nominees will be, any combination of the leading candidates from either party will make for the most obvious choice put to American voters in a generation. To wit, none of the Democrats has any business being president. This pronouncement has less to do with any apparent perfection among the Republican candidates than with the...

Ask Me No Questions ...

As the Iowa caucuses approach, the time has come for risk-taking for those who trail, and risk avoidance for those who lead. Hillary Clinton has decided to take the latter approach, even though she has dropped into a dead heat in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Peter Nicholas reports that Hillary has stopped taking questions at campaign appearances: As she races through Iowa in the days before next week's caucuses, Hillary Clinton is taking few chances. She tells crowds that it’s their turn to “pick a president,’’ but over the last two days she has not invited them to ask her any questions. Before the brief Christmas break, the New York senator had been setting aside time after campaign speeches to hear from the audience. Now when she’s done speaking, her theme songs blare from loudspeakers, preventing any kind of public Q&A. She was no more inviting when a television...

Blogburst Mission Accomplished?

Well, not quite, but close enough for government work. The Fred Thompson campaign needed to raise about a quarter of a million dollars to get an ad run in Iowa for next week's caucus. They have come close enough to make the deal, but they still need a little help: Any Fredheads out there who want to see the Thompson campaign survive should start digging for loose change now....

December 29, 2007

'Tis The Season For Attack Ads

Oh, let's just call it comparative advertising, shall we? The Iowa caucuses start in less than a week, and at least one Republican candidate has decided to let it all hang out. Mitt Romney released a negative ad against John McCain earlier for New Hampshire, and now he's got one in rotation in Iowa against Mike Huckabee that has the Arkansas governor seeing more red than a Christmas sweater: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney launched a fresh attack Friday on rival Mike Huckabee, raising the stakes in the tense two-person contest in Iowa that could prove critical to both candidates' hopes of winning the GOP nomination. A few months ago, Romney appeared the likely winner of Iowa's leadoff caucuses, having outspent and outhustled former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee. But Romney never anticipated the groundswell of...

Dead Heat In The Iowa Cold

Robert Novak reports on a massive polling effort that surveyed 15,000 pledged attendees of the Iowa caucuses. Unlike the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg, whose partnership could only dig out 174 such subjects, the poll results seem much more predictive -- in their own way (via Memeorandum): While public polls show Mike Huckabee leading Mitt Romney in Iowa, a new survey of an oversized sample shows Huckabee slipping and no longer ahead of Romney. A private corporate interest commissioned a phone bank survey of 15,000 Iowans who say they will attend Republican presidential caucuses Jan. 3. It showed Romney with 30 percent and Huckabee at 26 percent. Sen. John McCain was third with 12 percent and Rudy Giuliani fourth at 9 percent. Fred Thompson had only 1 percent, with slightly fewer votes than Rep. Ron Paul (also at 1 percent). Numbers for both Huckabee and Romney dipped sharply when Iowans...

In Which Chris Dodd Channels CapQ

On Thursday, progressive commenters here at CapQ erupted in outrage when I quoted Bill Richardson demanding that the US "force" Musharraf out of power in favor of a national government. Originally, the Richardson apologists insisted that the word "force" came from the journalist reporting the story; when I produced the quote from Richardson's website, they claimed he didn't mean "force" when he said ... "force". Count Chris Dodd among those who scoff at that explanation (via CapQ commenter NoDonkey): Though Richardson often touts his foreign policy experience — he was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Bill Clinton — Dodd dismissed Richardson’s proposals in strong terms. “I think that is a dangerous idea, and I am sort of surprised Bill Richardson would make that recommendation,” Dodd said. “Can you tell me who is going to then be controlling the keys to the nuclear weapons in Pakistan when Musharraf is...

December 30, 2007

Still Dead Heats In Iowa

A new poll by Reuters, C-SPAN, and Zogby show what most polls have told us about Iowa: it's still a dead heat. For Republicans, only one point separates Mike Huckabee from Mitt Romney, while Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards come within seven points of each other. It makes for a dramatic conclusion to the 2007 phase of the primaries: Democrat Hillary Clinton holds a narrow lead in Iowa four days before the state opens the presidential nominating race, while Republicans Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are virtually tied, according to a Reuters/C-Span/Zogby poll released on Sunday. Clinton, a New York senator, led Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois 31 percent to 27 percent, with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards a close third at 24 percent and no other Democratic contender registering in double-digits. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, held a statistically insignificant one-point edge over former Massachusetts Gov....

Did Reporters Get Born Yesterday?

The dumbest political controversy this week, a prize that one wins with some difficulty, comes unsurprisingly from the Boston Globe. Michael Kranish found it necessary to breathlessly report that John McCain used a proverb that is so well-known that it has probably appeared on tens of thousands of blogs before yesterday. Somehow, however, Kranish and an unnamed reporter on McCain's beat managed to turn it into a nasty personal attack on Mitt Romney: Asked how he intended to respond [to a Mitt Romney attack], the Arizona Republican said: "Never get into a wrestling match with a pig. You both get dirty -- and the pig likes it." The back-of-the-bus compartment in which McCain was holding forth went silent for several seconds. Finally, a reporter asked: was McCain comparing Romney to a pig? McCain laughed and paused as he formulated his response: "That was a general philosophical approach to American politics."...

The Ultimate Poll: The Five-Place Tie

Well, we knew this was coming, didn't we? Rasmussen has a new poll out this morning that shows a dead heat among the five Republican frontrunners, with a new face at the very top of the heap: For the first time all year, Arizona Senator John McCain finds himself on top with support from 17% of Likely Republican Primary Voters. In the muddled GOP race, McCain becomes the third person to top the poll this month and the fourth since October. But his lead is statistically insignificant--Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are just a point behind at 16% and Rudy Giuliani is two points back at 15%. Slightly off the pace, but still within five points of McCain, is Fred Thompson at 12%. Ron Paul retains his base support at 7%. One of the more amazing things about the Republican race this year is that it has grown closer and...

Who Knew Rudy Would Be Mr. Sunshine?

With the races in Iowa and New Hampshire ending up in dead heats with less than a week to go before the start of the 2008 primaries, the tone has descended to at least cranky. Mitt Romney has gone on the attack against John McCain and Mike Huckabee, while both candidates have returned the favor. Rudy Giuliani, with his big-state strategy, has managed to stay above the fray: Largely out of the political debate in Iowa and New Hampshire, Republican Rudy Giuliani tried to turn the bickering among his presidential rivals to his advantage, arguing that voters appreciate candidates who stay positive. "We're not involved in the back and forth about criticism of each other," the former New York mayor said Sunday in Plymouth after speaking at a town hall meeting in this college town. "I kind of like that; I'd rather not do that. I don't think that's the...

December 31, 2007

Same Old Populism

E.J. Dionne surprises me this morning with his sudden discovery that populism sells in Iowa. He sees the rise of Mike Huckabee and John Edwards as an indicator of deep economic revolt, when it is nothing much more than Iowa being Iowa. The rise of both men could easily have been predicted, and their inability to resonate more effectively anywhere else shows that Iowa's populism still hasn't caught fire anywhere else. At Heading Right, I look at the pattern of Iowa populism, and discover a two-decade streak in both parties when it comes to the caucuses. John Edwards even used it four years ago in the same place -- and isn't gaining the same traction he did then. Politicians break out the populism when they come to Iowa for a reason, and it's not because of a sudden interest in the political movement -- a fact that the lack of...

The Bubba Factor, And Other Maladroit Clintonisms

The Politico notes that Bill Clinton has fallen back on Bubbalistic campaigning in Iowa. The homespun wisdom of the former Rhodes scholar comes along with his wife's various regional accents, but as Ben Smith notes, usually much farther away from the press: Before he was a silver-haired elder statesman, ex-president, and globe-trotting do-gooder, Bill Clinton was Bubba. And out in rural Western Iowa, Bubba is back. ... While his speech differed little from the one he gives in upscale audiences, his presence there indicates both the potential his wife’s campaign sees in the West and the fact that the former president retains what many once saw as his basic political gift – his ability to connect to the small-town voters whom his party had lost, and to allow them to identify with him. It also allows the media to lose sight of Bill. Smith noted that only one other reporter...

Fund: Phooey On The Iowa Caucus

John Fund punctures the small-town Americana aspect of the Iowa caucuses and questions their actual worth in determining momentum for Presidential aspirants. Instead of allowing the voice of the people to be heard, the actual effect gives a minutely small sample an oversize impact on the election: The trouble with the Iowa caucuses isn't that there's anything wrong with Iowans. It's the bizarre rules of the process. Caucuses are touted as authentic neighborhood meetings where voters gather in their precincts and make democracy come alive. In truth, they are anything but. Caucuses occur only at a fixed time at night, so that many people working odd hours can't participate. They can easily exceed two hours. There are no absentee ballots, which means the process disfranchises the sick, shut-ins and people who are out of town on the day of the caucus. The Democratic caucuses require participants to stand in a...

Hillary, The Geraldo Of National Politics (Update: Hillary Fibbing?)

For those who remember when Geraldo Rivera did actual investigative journalism, his excellent work would often get marred by his shameless self-promotion. On more than one occasion, he would interject in his reports that his life was actually in danger while investigating mostly mundane controversies. Hillary Clinton seems to have discovered her inner Geraldo in claiming that she handled all of the dangerous diplomatic missions in the Clinton administration: Ever since Barack Obama suggested Hillary Clinton's eight years as first lady were a glorified tea party a few days back, she's looked for an opening to strike back. On Saturday night in Dubuque she pounced, arguing she risked her life on White House missions in the 1990s, including a hair-raising flight into Bosnia that ended in a "corkscrew" landing and a sprint off the tarmac to dodge snipers. ... It turns out that Clinton wasn't quite flying solo into harm's...

January 1, 2008

Final DMR Poll Puts Huckabee And Obama On Top

The one agency with the best record in polling Iowans has published its final survey two days before the Iowa caucuses, and the results show little difference from its last. Mike Huckabee continues to outpoll Mitt Romney among Republicans, and Barack Obama has increased his lead over Hillary Clinton among Democrats. The more interesting results follow afterwards: Obama was the choice of 32 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers, up from 28 percent in the Register's last poll in late November, while Clinton, a New York senator, held steady at 25 percent and Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, was virtually unchanged at 24 percent. ... The size of Huckabee's lead is virtually unchanged from the last Iowa Poll taken in late November, despite Romney's hard-charging effort to regain the top spot that he held earlier in the year. The new poll, taken over four days ending on Sunday, shows a...

Getting Pakistan Wrong, Democrat-Style

Last week, pundits across the spectrum castigated Mike Huckabee for a couple of glaring mistakes in his response to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He offered "apologies" to Pakistanis, later clarifying to "condolences", and inexplicably placed Afghanistan on Pakistan's eastern border, rather than western. If those gaffes qualify for headline treatment, then Hillary Clinton's confusion on Pakistani politics should get top-of-the-wires treatment, at least: Senator Hillary Clinton was praised in the wake of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for demonstrating her command of the players and the issues at stake in Pakistan, even as another candidate, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, was criticized for stumbling over details. But in two confident television appearances, on CNN and ABC, Clinton made an elementary error about Pakistani politics: She described President Pervez Musharraf as a "candidate" who would be "on the ballot." In fact, Musharraf was re-elected to the...

Huckabee Conference Call Live Blog

Governor Mike Huckabee decided to hold a blogger conference call on New Years Day. Normally holding this on a holiday would seem unusual, but with the Iowa caucuses in two days, they have little choice but to keep on the job throughout the last 72 hours. The conference appears to be getting off to a slightly late start, but I will live-blog it once it begins. 5:33 PM CT - Chuck Norris joins us as a surprise guest. Huckabee starts off talking about how Iowa has become the center of the political universe. He's happy with the enthusiasm he's seen. 5:34 - Chuck Norris says he got to know about Huckabee through the bloggers. Friendly guy, nice statement, short, non-specific. 5:35 - Not a lot of room left in the Marriott where they's staying in Des Moines. Q&A for both Norris and Huckabee. 5:35 - First question, from a Huckabee...

January 2, 2008

Rasmussen Sees A Republican Rebound

Surveys in 2006 saw an erosion in Republican Party affiliation that opened the gap between the major parties from 1.6% to over 6%, favoring Democrats, by the end of the year. Twelve months later, the performance of the Democrats while controlling Congress has almost completely reversed the trend. Rolling into 2008, Rasmussen shows that Republicans have their highest share of affiliation since January 2006 and only trail Democrats by two points: The number of Americans who consider themselves to be Republicans jumped nearly two percentage points in December to 34.2%. That’s the largest market share for the Republican brand in nearly two years, since January 2006 (see history from January 2004 to present). At the same time, the number of Democrats fell to 36.3%. That’s down a point compared to a month ago. During 2007, the number of Democrats has ranged from a low of 35.9% in July to a...

Thanks, But No Thanks

Dennis Kucinich has bequeathed his political support in Iowa to Barack Obama, in the case of his political demise in the caucuses. The perennial also-ran told his supporters that they should caucus for Obama if he fails to win enough support to pass the viability test. And while Kucinich may not have numerical support, he still retains influence among the MoveOn crowd. At Heading Right, I look at the dynamics of the Kucinich endorsement. It doesn't take "peace math" to calculate the potential damage to Obama in more moderate states if he gets too closely linked to Kucinich's brand of fringe politics or his vocal supporters among the MoveOn/International ANSWER crowd....

Don't Bash The Mismanager?

Mitt Romney apparently got caught not taking his own advice yesterday. While the New York Times quotes Romney as scolding Mike Huckabee for criticizing George Bush in a December essay for the Council on Foreign Relations, Reuters has Romney doing much the same thing at another venue. First, the Times quotes Romney in central Iowa: Mitt Romney was in central Iowa, where he went after Mr. Huckabee for making critical comments about President Bush’s foreign policy on Monday. “I think we should come together and recognize the great work our president is doing and not take our rhetoric or our plays from Democratic playbook,” Mr. Romney said. “This is the kind of stuff you expect of the Democrats, but it’s certainly not something you expect of a presidential contender on the Republican side.” In Johnstown, however, Romney appeared comfortable with that same approach: Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said on Tuesday...

Huckabee Responds To Critics On Ad Pull

Earlier this morning, I conducted an interview with Governor Mike Huckabee regarding criticism of his ad pull in Iowa and the press conference that followed. The interview got arranged after last night's blogger conference call, when Huckabee's team wanted to allow for a clear answer to the controversy. I'll play the entire 10-minute recorded interview on Heading Right Radio today, but here are a few quotes to whet listener appetites: Regarding ads opposing Huckabee: "The ads were dishonest .... misrepresentations and outright fabrications of my record." A pattern: "The same kind of ads were going against John McCain in New Hampshire. ... not an accident or an isolated incident." Why he pulled the ads: "The television sets (in Iowa) had become a cesspool ... People keep saying that they want a positive campaign, and let's give them an opportunity to prove that that's exactly what they want." On showing the...

Does The Peacock Have A Brown Beak?

The mainstream news media tends to discount bloggers, especially in the electoral process, as biased shills who either deliberately or cluelessly wind up doing promotional work for parties and candidates. I'm sure that NBC viewers noticed the professional treatment Matt Lauer and especially his co-anchor Meredith Viera gave Hillary Clinton in this gushing performance this morning (via The Anchoress). Pay close attention to the chatter between Lauer and Viera afterwards. I'm glad to see a major media outlet demonstrating their objective and impartial distance from political candidates. I wonder how long it will be before both submit this as a video for The Hillary I Know....

A Fred Surge?

Some CapQ readers have pointed to the latest numbers from Zogby in Iowa as a harbinger of a Fred Thompson surprise for tomorrow's caucuses. In their daily tracking poll, conducted by traditional telephone surveys rather than on-line polls, Zogby shows a significant bump in support over the last three days -- enough to tie Fred with John McCain for third place: On the Republican side, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, gained a bit on Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas. Huckabee cumulative three-day tracking total equaled 28% support among likely Republican caucus–goers, while Romney moved up from 25% to 26% support. Arizona Sen. John McCain remained in third place at 12%, tied with former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, who has seen a late-breaking surge. Among Democrats, 5% were yet undecided just three days ahead of the caucuses. Among Republicans, 6% were yet unsure. Huckabee’s support spans all...

January 3, 2008

The Final Polling In Iowa: Clinton Fades

The final polling before the Iowa caucuses has come from a joint Reuters/Zogby/C-SPAN survey, and the news for Hillary looks bad. She now comes in third behind the inexperienced duo of Barack Obama and John Edwards. This continues a slow fade for Hillary that had its start in a botched November debate answer: Democrat Barack Obama surged to a four-point lead over John Edwards in Iowa, with Hillary Clinton fading to third just hours before the first presidential nominating contest, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Thursday. Obama and Edwards gained ground overnight in the tracking poll, and Clinton fell four points to third place -- a finish that, if it held, would deal a dramatic setback to the one-time Democratic front-runner. Obama was at 31 percent among likely Democratic caucus-goers, Edwards at 27 percent and Clinton 24 percent. No other Democrat was in double digits. In the Republican...

Fred Says Relax, He Won't Do It

The Politico predicts that Fred will drop out of the race if he doesn't come up with a strong showing in Iowa this evening. Fred replies that it's just a nasty rumor to discredit him in upcoming states: Several Republican officials close to Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign said they expect the candidate will drop out of the race within days if he finishes poorly in Thursday’s Iowa caucus. Thompson’s campaign, which last spring and summer was generating fevered anticipation in the media and with some Republican activists, has never ignited nationally, and there are no signs of a late spark happening here in Iowa, where even a third-place finish is far from assured. This reality—combined with a fundraising drought—left well-connected friends and advisers of Thompson Wednesday evening predicting that he will pull the plug on hype and hope before the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary. Fred replied: "That is absolutely...

Jumping The Gun?

Ron Paul's supporters are seeing red after Fox News decided to exclude their candidate from the next presidential debate. ABC also plans to whittle down the participants in the next debate but will wait for the Iowa caucus to make clear who should get the invitations. The exclusion comes after Paul raised $19 million in the fourth quarter, the second-best GOP total for the year: ABC and Fox News Channel are narrowing the field of presidential candidates invited to debates this weekend just before the New Hampshire primary, in Fox's case infuriating supporters of Republican Ron Paul. The roster of participants for ABC's back-to-back, prime-time Republican and Democratic debates Saturday in New Hampshire will be determined after results of Thursday's Iowa caucus become clear. Fox, meanwhile, has invited five GOP candidates to a forum with Chris Wallace scheduled for its mobile studio in New Hampshire on Sunday. Rudy Giuliani, Mike...

Richardson: Let's Set Up Some 'Technocrats'

Apparently undeterred by criticism from his own party in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, Bill Richardson continues his quest to demonstrate that a great resume does not make a great Presidential candidate. He pens an essay for the Boston Globe demanding that the US should suspend all aid to Pakistan until Pervez Musharraf steps down -- in favor of "technocrats": PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF of Pakistan must go. Rather than waging the "unstinted" war against Al Qaeda that he promised, he has become a source of instability that terrorists are exploiting. Pakistan urgently needs a new government, and the United States should suspend all nonterrorism-related military aid until Musharraf steps aside. Some in Washington say we should stick with the dictator, because they fear chaos might follow his departure. But the risk of chaos is far greater if Musharraf remains. Only a new government, with broader support than Musharraf has,...

The Hot Seat: Should Paul Get Excluded From The Debates?

Today, Captain's Quarters takes its place in the AOL Hot Seat. I decided to ask about the exclusion of Ron Paul from the next Fox News debate -- a strange decision, given the fact that Paul has attended each debate since the beginning, and no votes have yet been taken: embedSWF(9, 0, 0, "widget", "recent")This content requires the most recent version of the Adobe Flash Player. Get this version below:Get Flash This poll links back to my post from Tuesday, but we certainly can extend that debate to this thread as well. I am no fan of Ron Paul nor of the debate formats used thus far in the campaign. I have written a number of times that all of these debates had too many people on the stage to be effective, and that participation needed to be limited or the debates broken up into smaller events with only two...

No Longer Inevitable Or Invincible

People have long speculated that Bill Richardsons' floundering presidential bid only served the purpose of making him a viable VP option for Hillary Clinton. Last night, however, he may have damaged those prospects -- while potentially improving them for another potential primary winner. Richardson instructed his caucusers to support Barack Obama if he fails the viability test in any precinct, rather than with Hillary (via Memeorandum): Gov. Bill Richardson's campaign is expected to direct their supporters to caucus for Sen. Barack Obama in the second round of voting at Thursday's caucuses in precincts where he is not viable. Two sources familiar with the plan told Iowa Independent that the New Mexico Governor's organizers have been instructed to direct supporters to Obama in the places where they fail to reach the 15% threshold for viability. Richardson, whose poll numbers in Iowa have hovered near 10% since June, may need a solid...

A Few Dirty Tricks More

Only a few hours separates us from the results of the Iowa caucuses, and at least one campaign has decided to put them to good use. Push-polling calls have gone out to Iowans warning of the troubles voters will face from an Edwards or Obama nomination. Now who could have paid for those calls? Iowa Democrats received a new round of anonymous phone calls this week, under the guise of opinion poll research, slamming former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama, in the latest display of the ugly side of this year's presidential campaign. Even before the first vote is cast, 2008 is being called "one of the dirtiest campaigns in American history" by a political science professor who is tracking campaign dirty tricks and opposition research attacks on rival candidates. ... "Some foreign policy experts say that John Edwards' plan to pull out all combat troops in Iraq...

Push Poll Investigation Surfaces

Remember the push poll around Thanksgiving that "asked" voters in New Hampshire if they had awareness of some aspects of the Mormon religion? Both Mitt Romney and John McCain filed complaints with the state Attorney General for violations of New Hampshire's laws against push-polling. At the time, no one would 'fess up to hiring Western Wats to conduct the attack. Now the AG has found the next-level cutout, and it wants witnesses who can show where it leads: Attorney General Kelly A. Ayotte is requesting the public’s assistance in identifying who employed Moore-Information of Portland, Oregon to conduct a poll in New Hampshire, in November 2007, which has been alleged to be a push-poll. New Hampshire’s voters deserve to know whether any candidate in our Presidential Primary violated New Hampshire’s push-poll statute. On Friday, November 16, 2007, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office received complaints from both Mitt Romney for...

Live Coverage Of The Iowa Caucuses

10:28 pm - I forgot to pick the winner of the comments-section portion of the caption contest! I'll let Disqus voters choose -- and they chose JG, with "What's in YOUR wallet?" 9:03 - Looking at the Republicans, it looks like Thompson and McCain will slug it out for third place. If Thompson prevails, he can hope to live through to South Carolina. McCain will have his relatively strong showing that he can use in New Hampshire. And as for Ron Paul, he can take heart with a 10% showing, but his supporters should stop talking about revolutions and media conspiracies to underrepresent his support. 8:54 - I would be remiss if I didn't point out the aspect of the Iowa results that Bill Bennett noted on CNN. Barack Obama won in Iowa despite its rather monochromatic demographics, and he did while leaving race out of the mix. And if...

Iowa Caucus: The Democrats

Hillary Clinton has run into a serious buzz saw on her way to the coronation. Not only did she not win the state, but she lost to the wrong candidate. Barack Obama now threatens to steal away a nomination that the Clintons thought they had in the bank less than three months ago. Clinton would have had a tough time winning Iowa in any case. The populist appeal of John Edwards always figured to take some significant support away from Hillary. However, a second-place finish to Edwards would not have had much impact on her campaign, because Edwards has little appeal outside of the populist Midwest. She could easily have survived that kind of loss, without even considering it a bump in the road. Instead, Barack Obama beat both of them, and that's an ill portent for Hillary's march to the nomination. Obama beat Hillary in a state that has...

Iowa Caucus: The Republicans

This started off sounding like the Super Bowl -- the big-money Immovable Object meeting the grassroots Unstoppable Force. Iowans turned it into the usual kind of Super Bowl, a laugher, as Mike Huckabee stunned Mitt Romney with a nine-point win. Huckabee beat Romney by a much wider margin than anyone predicted, even larger than the five-point gap that I posted earlier this evening. What does this mean for Romney? It's a body blow. He spent somewhere between $8-9 million and came up far short of a victory. That directly reflects on his next race, where John McCain has taken the lead in his backyard. If he can't do any better against McCain than he did against Huckabee, Republican voters will rightly question whether Romney can win anywhere, even with the huge funding advantage he has had. If McCain wins in New Hampshire, Romney has serious problems, but it assists the...

January 4, 2008

At Least They Got The Memo

Two men heard the message from the voters yesterday, and that message was not Please Continue. Chris Dodd and Joe Biden go back to the Senate after becoming afterthoughts in Iowa, winning no delegates and barely registering on anyone's consciousness: Veteran U.S. Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd dropped out of the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday after placing a distant fifth and sixth, respectively, in the Iowa caucuses. Biden of Delaware and Dodd of Connecticut offered perhaps the most experience among the Democratic contenders, having each served in Congress for more than a quarter century. Both chaired powerful committees. But they came up far short in the race for the White House with polls showing Americans demanding change. Dodd, at least, left his mark on the race, especially on its presumptive nominee. In the November debate, it fell to Dodd to criticize Hillary Clinton for...

Hillary Responds To The Loss, Badly

It didn't take Hillary long to re-message the campaign in the wake of her stunning third-place loss to Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa. Instead of insisting on change, a theme more amenable to her opponent, Hillary will instead work on the inexperience of her opponents -- and use a tack that Democrats often claim Republicans use against them. It's all about the risk: A Clinton supporter forwards the talking points the campaign dispatched to surrogates around the country, which focus on process -- that the race is a "marathon" and that she started behind in Iowa -- and include just one line of substance, a clear signal that the card she has left to play is the one she rolled out in recent weeks: Security and risk. "We’re going to continue to make the case that in these serious times when America faces big challenges, it will take...

January 5, 2008

Don't I Recall Something Carville Said?

Bill Clinton wants people to know that Hillary doesn't do divisiveness -- it's thrust upon her. In a truly bizarre statement coming from the Clintons, they claim that the media forces Hillary to go negative against her opponents. She had to attack Barack Obama's kindergarten essays, the former president informs us, because the media wouldn't do it (via Memeorandum): Bill Clinton voiced his abiding anger at the media's coverage of him and his wife in Durham, N.H., today, and suggested that media bias will force Clinton to go negative on Barack Obama. He also expressed his frustration that his wife is perceived by voters as divisive through, he said, no fault of her own. Clinton, like his wife, is traveling New Hampshire taking questions from voters, and he spoke at the University of New Hampshire in Durham in response to a plea from a woman who said she'd like it...

A Significant Win?

Mitt Romney won his first state race in the 2008 primaries, but even most political junkies didn't notice. Wyoming moved up its caucuses to the day after Iowa in order to gain some national attention, but instead lost half its delegates and remained mostly stuck in obscurity: Mitt Romney captured his first win of the Republican presidential race, gaining most of Wyoming's delegates at stake in GOP caucuses on Saturday. The former Massachusetts governor won six of the first eight delegates to be selected. Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and California Rep. Duncan Hunter won one apiece, meaning no other candidate could beat Romney. Caucuses were still being held to decide all 12 delegates at stake. Coming two days after the Iowa caucuses and three days before the New Hampshire primary, the early date of the Wyoming GOP county conventions was intended to draw candidates' attention to the state but...

January 6, 2008

Saturday Night At The Primaries

Put on some hot cocoa, snuggle up to your best girl or guy on the couch and ... watch political debates? Well, for some that may qualify as a romantic Saturday night, but most Americans probably chose to head for the movies or for some late-season holiday parties instead. Some people couldn't quite manage to miss them, however, not even here in the Magic Kingdom, where I saw a portion of the Republican debate. Honestly, from what I saw, it looked like the most interesting and well-structured of the debates. It looked to me like Mitt Romney rather than Mike Huckabee took most of the offensives from the other candidates, most of which he handled well -- until Fred Thompson got Romney to admit he liked the "mandates that you want". It seemed to me that Thompson and McCain won the foreign policy portion of the debate. Everyone got a...

Apparently, John Edwards Just Met The Clintons

John Edwards just found out in 2008 what most of the country learned in the 1990s. After an aide to Hillary Clinton said that a woman whose death Edwards has mentioned repeatedly in his campaign would still be alive if Edwards had been more effective, Edwards said that the Clintons had "no conscience": Edwards: "The Clinton campaign has no conscience" That's Edwards' take on ... a Clinton aide's shot at him this morning, in which she said Nataline Sarkisyan would be alive if the patients bill of rights, which he'd boasted of championing, had passed. Well, this may be a bit of the pot calling the kettle black. Edwards has used the Sarkisyan case to blame the entire health industry for her death. He has also claimed a patient's bill of rights bill as his greatest legislative achievement, but underplays the fact that he couldn't get the bill passed into...

January 7, 2008

New Hampshire Polls: Obama Up Big, McCain Edging Romney

Two polls out in the last 12 hours show similar results for tomorrow's New Hampshire primaries, and both mean big trouble for two candidates seen as front-runners here earlier. Mitt Romney may lose the second state in his early-contest strategy, but he will likely make it close against John McCain. On the other side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton appears ready to lose big again against Barack Obama, further damaging her prospects for the nomination: USA Today: Amid frenetic last-minute campaigning, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds the onetime front-runners in New Hampshire lagging as Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have surged to leads before Tuesday's primary. Obama vaulted to a 13 percentage-point advantage over New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton three weeks after they were tied here. McCain gained a four-point edge over Mitt Romney, a former governor of neighboring Massachusetts who has campaigned almost as a favorite...

Losing On Dull And Unconvincing On Competence

Roger Simon at the Politico attended two Democratic rallies in Nashua last night. The first left him inspired, and the second left him grasping for his No-Doz. Barack Obama had the crowd impressed, while Hillary Clinton had them sleepwalking for the exits: Obama delivered a compelling, almost mesmerizing, speech, did not talk about any issue in detail and took no questions. His event lasted just over half an hour. Clinton talked about issue after issue in almost mind-numbing detail and answered question after question in an event that lasted more than an hour and a half. Both drew large crowds. But Clinton’s crowd was much smaller at the end of her speech than at the beginning. Hundreds of people trickled and then streamed out while Clinton was still talking. But she went on and on as if she did not mind. And maybe she didn’t. Hillary is selling competence, and...

Bill Not Holding Their Interest, Either

Earlier today, I noted that Hillary Clinton has a problem holding the interest of her audiences. Surprisingly, the New York Times reports that her husband has had the same problem of late. Fatigue seems to be the issue, but who's getting tired of whom? Is this what it would have been like had Elvis been reduced to playing Reno? Former President Bill Clinton has been drawing sleepy and sometimes smallish crowds at big venues in the state that revived his presidential campaign in 1992. He entered to polite applause and rows of empty seats at the University of New Hampshire on Friday. Several people filed out midspeech, and the room was largely quiet as he spoke, with few interruptions for laughter or applause. He talked about his administration, his foundation work and some about his wife. “Hillary’s got good plans,” Mr. Clinton kept saying as he worked through a hoarse-voiced...

Should The Republicans Fear Obama?

In any other presidential election cycle, the possible nomination of a candidate with only three years of experience in the Senate on his resume would cause gales of laughter. In 2008, that scenario could transform from a comedy to a reality show, and it has Republicans wondering whether to be grateful or nervous. The Washington Post outlines the trepidation that the GOP feels over the ascendancy of Barack Obama, and the potential of his reach: Exploiting a deep well of voter revulsion over partisan gridlock in Washington, Sen. Barack Obama is promising to do something that has not been done in modern U.S. politics: unite a coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents behind an agenda of sweeping change. But in pitching himself as a "post-partisan" politician, Obama (D-Ill.) is only the latest in a string of presidential candidates promising to remake Washington into a city that sings in unison. George...

Sandbagging Or Adjusting Expectations?

With all of the new polling predicting a narrow win for John McCain in tomorrow's New Hampshire primary, the Mitt Romney campaign has begun framing the potential results for the press. The new message? A close second works for Romney: Mitt Romney, a dominant favorite in New Hampshire just weeks ago, said Sunday that a "close second" to Arizona Sen. John McCain would be a significant feat on Tuesday. The almost frantic downsizing of expectations for the former Massachusetts governor came as the candidate and his staff are publicly and privately preparing to explain away what would be a disheartening loss and shift to a last-ditch strategy predicated on his ability to outlast and outspend his rivals, according to sources inside the campaign. "This is a must-win state for him," Romney said of McCain, in a Politico interview Sunday. "If he doesn't win here, I don't know where he is...

Utter Nonsense

It didn't work with Fred Thompson, and it won't work with Hillary Clinton. Matt Drudge says that Hillary's considering withdrawing from the race if she loses big to Barack Obama in tomorrow's New Hampshire primaries -- a notion that makes even less sense for Hillary than Fred: Facing a double-digit defeat in New Hampshire, a sudden collapse in national polls and an expected fund-raising drought, Senator Hillary Clinton is preparing for a tough decision: Does she get out of the race? And when?! "She can't take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," laments one top campaign insider to the DRUDGE REPORT. "If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn't want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats." Meanwhile, Democrat hopeful John Edwards has confided to senior staff that he is staying in the race because Hillary "could soon be...

Hunter Out?

Michelle Malkin forwards a notice from the Duncan Hunter campaign that they plan a "major announcement" later this afternoon, likely when I'll be in motion and unable to follow it. With almost no traction in any of the national or state polls, Hunter will likely announce his withdrawal from the presidential race: Presidential Candidate and California Congressman Duncan Hunter will be making a major announcement today at 2:00 p.m. (EST), regarding the future of his Presidential bid. All media are encouraged to attend or contact Bob Bevill, National Media Coordinator, to arrange alternate interviews. If this is true, it will be a shame, although not unexpected. Congressmen running for President usually do so for the publicity rather than any real hope of actually winning a nomination. People talk about how difficult it is to get elected President from the Senate, but I'm unaware of anyone who did it directly from...

There's No Crying In Softball!

The Anchoress predicted this moment five days ago, but who could have guessed it would come on such a softball question? Hillary Clinton let go a couple of tears -- possibly -- not out of passion for her position, but out of pity for herself: "My question is very personal, how do you do it?" asked Marianne Pernold Young, a freelance photographer from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. "How do you, how do you keep upbeat and so wonderful?" Clinton began responding, jokingly: "You know, I think, well luckily, on special days I do have help. If you see me every day and if you look on some of the websites and listen to some of the commentators they always find me on the day I didn't have help. It's not easy." Then Clinton began getting emotional: "It's not easy, and I couldn't do it if I didn't passionately believe it was...

January 8, 2008

Obama, McCain Win The Insomniac Vote

Barack Obama and John McCain won the battles of Dixville Notch and Hart's Location early this morning, as New Hampshire started its primaries in the two tiny towns after midnight. Traditionally, the Granite State starts off with Midnight Madness in Dixville Notch, which does nothing much more than give the press something to note: Residents of two tiny towns stayed up late to give Barack Obama and John McCain early victories in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Voters in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location cast the initial ballots just after midnight Tuesday. In Hart's Location, Democrat Obama received nine votes, Hillary Rodham Clinton received three and John Edwards received one. On the Republican side, McCain received six, Mike Huckabee received five, Ron Paul received four and Mitt Romney one. In Dixville Notch, on the Republican side, McCain received four votes, Mitt Romney two and Rudy Giuliani one. On the Democratic...

Bye Bye, Bloomie

The coy dance played by Michael Bloomberg regarding a potential independent bid for the presidency took a stumble yesterday. The New York City mayor conducted a forum yesterday with a panel of moderate politicians from both parties to condemn partisanship, an event expected to raise his profile for a national campaign. Instead, his guests took pains to inform the press that they intended to work within their own parties -- and the rise of Barack Obama made everyone else less enthusiastic for a billionaire outside bid: He arrived here for what seemed like it could be a big moment. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, eyeing a third-party presidential bid, joined Republican and Democratic elders at a forum to denounce the extreme partisanship of Washington and plot how to influence the campaign. But even as the mayor gathered on Monday with the seasoned Washington hands on the campus of the University of...

College Boots Made For Walking, Even On Bill

There once was a time when a college appearance by Bill Clinton would have created a sensation. Now the sensation has turned to boredom and fatigue, even at an Ivy League university preparing to vote in today's primaries. Dartmouth students wandered away from Clinton even as he spoke, trying to convince them to support his wife, and apparently making no headway. At Heading Right, I note that the big story here isn't really that college students like Barack Obama. After all, he won the youth vote in Iowa by a mile, and the turnout of younger voters made the difference for Obama in the caucuses. The big story from Dartmouth is the indifference college students have for the one-time rock star of the Democrats -- and that could be one reason Hillary can't find traction elsewhere....

Steinem: Vote For Hillary Or You're Sexist

How desperate have Hillary Clinton's backers become? One of the more prominent supporters, Gloria Steinem, takes to the pages of the New York Times to complain about the ascendancy of Barack Obama because black men have had an easier time than American women. In doing so, she inadvertently makes the Republican case against the entire slate of choices on the Democratic side: THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity. Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United...

Gallup: Obama Ties Hillary Nationally

With New Hampshire ready to fall into his lap, Barack Obama may have a better shot at the national title than anyone would have believed. According to the latest Gallup polling, he has tied Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination at 33%, erasing an 18-point gap in three weeks. Mike Huckabee leads a tight Republican race, reversing an 11-point gap: On the Democratic side, Iowa winner Obama has moved into a tie with Clinton. Both now have 33% of the vote. This represents a 6-point gain since December 2007 for Obama and a 12-point loss for Clinton. John Edwards has gained 5 points since December, moving from 15% to 20% support among Democrats. Edwards is now closer to the front-runner among Democrats than he has been at any point since Gallup began tracking the Democratic race more than a year ago. This is also the first time since June that...

WaPo, WSJ Agree: Democrats Clueless On Iraq

How often do the editorial boards of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal not only agree, but coincide on foreign policy? Rarely enough so that today's twin broadsides on the Democratic presidential contenders is worthy of special notice. Both editorial boards scold the Democrats for not only getting Iraq wrong, but also for seriously misrepresenting the progress achieved through the surge. The Post's criticisms get tart indeed: A reasonable response to these facts might involve an acknowledgment of the remarkable military progress, coupled with a reminder that the final goal of the surge set out by President Bush -- political accords among Iraq's competing factions -- has not been reached. (That happens to be our reaction to a campaign that we greeted with skepticism a year ago.) It also would involve a willingness by the candidates to reconsider their long-standing plans to carry out a rapid withdrawal of remaining...

Another Tired Anti-Mormon Diatribe

Bloggers had speculated on the actual subject of a series of e-mails from a publicist breathlessly informing us of a "Swift-boating" on a major presidential candidate, complete with documentation and hard evidence. Some thought it might target Hillary Clinton, some John Edwards, but the plurality went with Mitt Romney -- and that turned out to be the correct answer. Revelation Press apparently wants to conduct the Klan's 1928 anti-Catholic campaign against Al Smith, updated for eight decades later, at least according to the e-mail I received: "Should Romney become U.S. President," Moody explained, "his oaths create an inevitable conflict of interest. Just as an Army private is not free to question his General's orders &-- and does so only at the risk of a dishonorable discharge -- Mormons such as Mitt Romney question their Living Prophet's revelations and edicts only at risk of excommunication. This penalty is unthinkable to any...

A Big Turnout In New Hampshire?

Turnout for the first primary election of the season has gotten so large that some precincts have run out of Democratic ballots. That bodes ill for both Hillary Clinton, who may see a rerun of Iowa's caucuses in a large independent turnout. It could also spell trouble for a Republican: New Hampshire Deputy Secretary of State Dave Scanlan told ABC News that turnout is "absolutely huge, and towns are starting to get concerned that they don't have enough ballots." Scanlan voted Tuesday morning, and said the line in his polling location in Concord, the state capital, was "out the door." Turnout was particularly high in Portsmouth and Keene -- both of which are overwhelingly Democratic, as well as Republican-leaning Hudson -- And some towns were running out of Democratic ballots, with independents favoring that contest over the GOP race. At this point is heavier than it was four years ago...

Alert The Media

I'll make a couple of media appearances tonight while watching the returns for the New Hampshire primary. First, I'll speak with Jack Riccardi of San Antonio's KTSA at 7:50 to talk about the initial returns and the dynamics of the race. Later, I'll talk with Rob Breakenridge on Calgary's CHQR on The World Tonight at 9:30. Be sure to listen to both shows on line, and keep checking back here to see if I add any other appearances....

It's A Pity Party, And We're All Invited!

Yesterday it was Hillary's turn to get emotional, and today Bill gave it a try. He got angry with the press for what he called "sanitizing coverage", providing the rest of the nation a window into the frustration setting into the Clinton campaign as it faces a second big loss in as many tries: The former president briefly acknowledged that his wife's senior campaign advisor, Mark Penn, was mistaken to claim that Obama had no bounce out of Iowa after winning the state's caucuses because the poll numbers on the day after were relatively unchanged. Then he abruptly changed the subject — suggesting that Obama's campaign had employed underhanded tactics. "What did you think about the Obama thing calling Hillary the senator from Punjab? Did you like that? Or what about the Obama handout that was covered up, the press never reported on, implying that I was a crook. Scouring...

Implosion Near?

Almost eight months ago, I wrote about the troubling history of Ron Paul's campaign newsletters in the early 1990s, and speculated that it would kill his presidential campaign. Excerpts of newsletters from his campaign, without bylines but at least some written in the first person, contained statements that either bordered on bigotry or crossed over the line completely. The Houston Chronicle had reported on these in 1996 -- but they did not gain nearly the amount of attention some believed they deserved. Today, James Kirchick at The New Republic published a lengthy article reviewing the issue, and this time it appears to have more staying power, despite the recent issues with TNR's credibility: Most voters had never heard of Paul before he launched his quixotic bid for the Republican nomination. But the Texan has been active in politics for decades. And, long before he was the darling of antiwar activists...

Live Coverage Of New Hampshire Primaries

I'll be reverse-order posting my thoughts as the results come in from the New Hampshire primaries tonight. My earlier predictions stand, although I think the heavy break in independent voters towards the Democrats hurts John McCain. We'll soon find out .... 9:48 - CNN just called it for Hillary, and within moments, Barack Obama gave his concession speech. It's a gracious speech, congratulating Hillary for her "hard-fought victory". It turned out to be a three- or four-point gap that Obama just couldn't close. 9:21 - John Edwards is giving his concession speech for the primary. Now, if you missed it, you can simply re-read his Iowa concession speech, because it's almost identical. The only thing missing is the "Why? ... Why?" between talking points. 8:59 - The Republican race has narrowed a little. With 56% of precincts reporting, McCain's lead has contracted from a peak of 9 points to six...

New Hampshire Primaries: The Recap

New Hampshire voters have cast their ballots, and the results seem pretty clear. John McCain completed a months-long comeback, while Hillary Clinton suddenly righted a ship that looked in serious danger of foundering. She eked out a narrow win when polls suggested a big loss, and McCain took a race that looked like a toss-up and almost turned it into a laugher. Republicans McCain gets his chance to bid for national front-runner status. Michigan at this point has Mitt Romney edging ahead, but the impact of the clear McCain victory has a week to sink into the consciousness of Michigan voters. Romney cannot allow McCain to win in Michigan. A second win makes McCain the momentum candidate and allows him to come into South Carolina with a head of steam. What about the rest? Mike Huckabee never expected to do well, but he wound up taking third place with a...

January 9, 2008

On To Michigan (For Half Of Us)

Now that the New Hampshire road show has packed its tents, the presidential primaries now move to Michigan, where the first big-delegate state goes to the polls. What can we expect from the home of American automakers and the bellwether of economic trends? If the polling holds up as shown at Real Clear Politics, it looks like voters will favor the familiar. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton holds commanding leads over Barack Obama and John Edwards. Most of the polls show her in the mid-40s, and Obama scores highest at 26 in the Strategic Vision poll. The problem is that all of this polling is rather old. The most recent in RCP's lineup is the November poll from the Detroit News. In fact, it seems rather odd that no one has done a more recent poll for the Democrats in a state where 128 delegates are up for grabs....

Did The Ronulans Disappear Overnight?

A funny thing happened on my way to the predictable onslaught of Ron Paul supporters in my comments section after yesterday's post about his newsletters. The onslaught never arrived -- and neither did the supposed Revolution from New Hampshire. Could the two be related? Almost like clockwork, any time a blogger posts anything remotely critical about Ron Paul, it attracts hundreds of comments, most of them refusing to deal with the substance of the criticism. Instead, they usually contained cap-locked diatribes about the Federal Reserve, the Constitution, and how anyone who doesn't support Paul is a traitor or a fool. Many start off by saying, "I am a Hispanic/Jewish/black voter who cares about freedom ..." as a means of defusing the awkward inks between Paul and his newsletters and donation from neo-Nazi Don Black, as well as his 40-plus appearances on the radio show of Truther and conspiracy theorist Alex...

Republicans Will Always Have Hillary

The amazing rebound of Hillary Clinton may have a beneficial effect on Republican fortunes. Instead of facing an inexperienced but inspirational opponent in the general election, it now appears that the GOP nominee will have to fight the Clintons and their political machine. And that could make a big difference in party turnout and cohesion in November: Mr. Obama was counting on a New Hampshire victory to serve as a permission slip for Democratic leaders across the country to step forward to support his candidacy. He was hoping to trade the title of insurgent candidate for the perilous crown of front-runner. But the race is now a draw between the two rivals — with John Edwards of North Carolina, who came in a distant third, vowing to continue — and a furious scramble lies ahead. With a confidence buoyed by a series of polls that consistently showed Mr. Obama leading...

John McCain's Non-Triumphant Conference Call

We're about to enter another of the regular blogger conference calls held by John McCain. This will, of course, be the first since his surprisingly strong victory over Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican field. He starts off by noting that he is "obviously very pleased" with the results. McCain credits his straight talk on the stump in New Hampshire. He has nothing much to offer for the Democratic Party result, maybe one of the few who haven't opined on it. McCain tells a story about hardening his resolve in a summer trip to Iraq with Lindsey Graham. The fall's focus on the war also helped motivate him to fight his way to victory in order to ensure that the war gets managed properly. McCain says that Michigan is "one of Governor Romney's home towns," and he's assembling a team to help him win. Tom Ridge vouched for...

The Michigan Firewall?

Mitt Romney needs a win in the primaries soon, despite all of the rhetoric about delegate counts and second-place credibility. The Romney team apparently understands that, and have begun focusing their advertising on the upcoming Michigan primary -- and have put off other ad buys for the moment. The AP reports this as a sign of trouble: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has decided to pull his advertising from South Carolina and Florida, in a sign of trouble for a campaign that badly needs a win. Romney had been hoping to challenge John McCain and Mike Huckabee in South Carolina, and Rudy Giuliani in Florida, where the former New York mayor has been spending time and money. "We feel the best strategy is to focus our paid messaging in Michigan," Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said Wednesday. The decision comes on the heels of back-to-back second-place finishes in Iowa and New...

You Put Your Left Foot In ...

Bill Richardson's campaign appears to be doing the Presidential Hokey Pokey tonight. Two sources in his campaign told the AP that Richardson would withdraw from the race on Thursday. Not long afterwards, a spokesperson denied the claim, saying Richardson had returned to New Mexico for the start of the legislative session: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson ended his campaign for the presidency after twin fourth-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. But a Richardson spokeswoman told NBC News the report was wrong and Richardson was still in the contest for the Democratic nomination. Richardson planned to announce the decision to withdraw Thursday, according to two people close to the governor with knowledge of the decision. They spoke Wednesday on a condition of anonymity in advance of the governor's announcement. But Katie Roberts, deputy communications director for the Richardson campaign. told NBC News that as of...

January 10, 2008

How Did The Polls Miss Hillary's Comeback?

Every poll taken in New Hampshire pointed to the same conclusion: Barack Obama would win, and win big. None of the polls released in the last week before the primary indicated that Hillary Clinton would edge Obama in the end, nor have a big comeback among women. Did she cry her way to the victory, or did every pollster somehow blow the Democratic race -- while nailing the Republican outcome? The Washington Post thinks lachrymose: What if the polls were right, and the dynamics changed dramatically on Election Day?.... One intriguing tidbit in the available data is that comparing exit-poll numbers with those from the last CNN-WMUR-University of New Hampshire poll shows a much bigger movement to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) among women than among men. In the pre-election poll released Sunday, 34 percent of women said they supported Clinton, while the exit poll showed that 46 percent of...

The Michigan Outsider Factor

The Republicans will head into a tough primary fight in Michigan this week, with all of the candidates vying for an important win before the South Carolina vote on the 22nd. The Democrats, however, will focus on Nevada, since the Michigan primary has been disqualified by the DNC for violating the party's rules by moving its primary up before February 5th. Only Hillary Clinton appears on the ballot among the main contenders, leaving Democrats the option of skipping their side of the ticket and focusing in on the Republicans. The Democrats don't want that, and have organized an effort -- primarily supported by advocates for Barack Obama -- to get a big turnout for "Uncommitted": As the nation's eyes turn to Michigan's presidential primary next Tuesday, Democrats were promoting an unusual candidate Wednesday -- Uncommitted. That's the only choice they have on the ballot besides Hillary Clinton (or Dennis Kucinich...

The Kerry Kiss Of Death

Does a John Kerry endorsement help or hurt? I'd say the latter, especially given the surprising decision to endorse Barack Obama. The previous Democratic nominee will give Obama his blessing later today at a South Carolina rally: Barack Obama has won the presidential endorsement of Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 nominee who lost to George W. Bush. Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, plans to announce his support Thursday at a rally at the College of Charleston, said a Democrat familiar with Kerry's decision. The 2004 nominee will argue that Obama can best unite the country and has the potential to create transformational change, the person said. This seems strange on a couple of different levels. Kerry hardly ran as the insurgent candidate in 2004; that was Howard Dean. Kerry represents the Establishment in the Democratic Party, a quasi-Brahmin who has remained in the Senate largely through the offices of...

Missing The Point

MItt Romney has attempted to steel the resolve of his supporters by reminding them that he has the lead in delegates. That's true, as far as it goes. Right now, Romney holds a nine-delegate advantage over Mike Huckabee, with John McCain trailing 20 delegates back: Romney - 30 Huckabee- 21 McCain - 10 Thompson - 6 Paul - 2 Giuliani, Hunter - 1 each That may look impressive -- but not when one considers what it will take to win the nomination. The Republican who wins the nomination will need 1,191 delegates voting for him. Right now, Romney has 2.5% of the number of delegates necessary, while Huckabee has 1.7%. McCain has 0.8%, which only leaves him 1.7% behind Romney. The value of the early primaries doesn't get found in the delegate counts. It gets found in the ability of the campaigns to generate momentum and to score actual victories....

McCain Gets A Bounce In South Carolina

Rasmussen has a new poll out showing a dramatic shift in the Republican race in a crucial state. John McCain has taken a narrow three-point lead over Mike Huckabee. Prior to his win in New Hampshire, McCain had trailed Huckabee by seven (via Memeorandum): Arizona Senator John McCain, fresh from his victory in New Hampshire, has taken a narrow three-point lead over former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in the South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows McCain at 27% and Huckabee at 24%. That’s a significant change since last Sunday. Just before the New Hampshire vote, Huckabee was leading McCain 28% to 21%. In mid-December, Huckabee and Romney were tied for the lead with 23% of the vote while McCain was well off the pace at 12%. The current survey finds Mitt Romney running a distant third at 16%, little changed since the previous survey....

Fred Thompson Blogger Call

Fred Thompson held his first extensive blogger conference this afternoon, and he emphasized his individualism and his authenticity as his greatest assets in the race. He's touring South Carolina and seeing a lot of support -- and also a lot more people who have yet to decide on their candidate than one might think. He's doing well at his stops, which he acknowledges is a bit of a bubble for any candidate, but he's quite optimistic. On the media, he's not as optimistic. He scoffed at their rumor-mongering, especially in regards to his supposed withdrawal from the race. He said that they put out rumors like people put out milk for kittens, and everyone laps it up. On his competition, he agreed with one blogger who called most of his opponents liberals. Fred doesn't think that the media picks candidates as much as rolls with whatever story arises and tries...

Will Fox Ask Paul About The Newsletters In Tonight's Debate? (Bumped:CNN Reports)

UPDATE & BUMP, 4:30 pm: CNN's covering this now. They've also got their copies of the newsletters, and are quoting freely. David Gergen is saying that they should be "totally ventilated", meaning that they should get the widest possible dissemination. Matt Welch looked pretty uncomfortable answering for the candidate. Paul's staff says they won't try to find the authors. Paul then got interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, and Paul says it's coming up now "for political reasons". "Everybody knows ... I'm not a racist." He says that libertarianism doesn't mesh with racism. Now he says that he gets the most black votes in the race, presumably among Republicans. Wolf is allowing Paul to soliloquize here. "67% of blacks are in prison"? I think he's confusing statistics here. Who wrote it? "I have no idea". He says a publisher has no idea what appears in their publications. "Why don't you believe me?"...

South Carolina Debate Live Blog At Heading Right!

The conservative crew at BlogTalkRadio will be live-blogging the debate at Heading Right this evening, probably starting a little before the 8 pm CT beginning of the Fox debate tonight. It gets lively, and you'll want to keep refreshing your screen as we keep throwing fresh posts up on the site. Afterwards, join us at 10:30 pm CT for our traditional round-table wrap-up at Debate Central. Rick Moran and Macranger join me to go over the event and discuss who won, who lost, and whether the debate itself will change any minds....

Myrtle Beach Debate: Who Won?

Don't forget that we'll have our post-debate wrap-up at Debate Central at 10:30 pm CT! Who put the vitamins in Fred Thompson's oatmeal? We have waited for Thompson to show up on the campaign trail, and tonight he finally did. He had energy, focus, a command of detail, and a willingness to finally engage with the other candidates on the stage. He took almost everyone else aback, and seized momentum that he only occasionally relinquished. John McCain did as well as Thompson, if less spectacularly. He looked presidential, he also had a commanding presence, and he rolled with the tough questions that came his way. He didn't flinch when Romney tried stinging him on saying that some jobs will never return in Michigan, and McCain buried him by noting that he won New Hampshire by not just telling people what they want to hear, but the truth. He scolded Fox...

January 11, 2008

Kucinich Wants What?

Maybe Dennis Kucinich just wants to confirm that anyone in New Hampshire would be silly enough to vote for him. The Democratic presidential also-ran has filed a formal request for a recount in the Granite State primary, based on -- I'm not kidding -- "allegations and rumors": Democrat Dennis Kucinich, who won less than 2 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, said Thursday he wants a recount to ensure that all ballots in his party's contest were counted. The Ohio congressman cited "serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors" about the integrity of Tuesday results. Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said Kucinich is entitled to a statewide recount. But, under New Hampshire law, Kucinich will have to pay for it. Scanlan said he had "every confidence" the results are accurate. In a letter dated Thursday, Kucinich said he does not expect significant changes in his vote...

The First Black President About To Lose His Standing?

Bill Clinton has gotten a lot of mileage out of the notion that he was somehow the nation's first black president, but that may be coming to an end. The tone he and Hillary have taken when criticizing Barack Obama has begun to generate a reaction among black politicians, and the New York Times reports that the first salvo in return may come soon. Rep. James Clyburn may reverse himself and endorse Obama before the South Carolina primaries after listening to the Clintons in New Hampshire: Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, said he was rethinking his neutral stance in his state’s presidential primary out of disappointment at comments by Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton that he saw as diminishing the historic role of civil rights activists. Mr. Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights movement and a power in state Democratic politics, put...

In 1996, Paul Wasn't Issuing Denials

Reason Magazine has long associated themselves with the Ron Paul campaign, if not officially endorsing him. Their Hit & Run blog has served as the heart of rational Paul apologetics, and in their skilled hands, that has proven essential to his campaign. Now, as the magazine has Paul on its cover, its new editor has the unpleasant task of looking a little more closely at the candidate, and Matt Welch finds it an unpleasant journey. Has Paul really disassociated himself from, and "taken moral responsibility" for, these "Ron Paul" newsletters "for over a decade"? If he has, that history has not been recorded by the Nexis database, as best as I can reckon. The first indication I could find of Paul either expressing remorse about the statements or claiming that he did not author them came in an October 2001 Texas Monthly article -- less than eight years ago. ......

Edwards Needs A Little More Than One Data Point

John Edwards has used the story of Nataline Sarkisyan on the campaign trail to underscore the heartlessness of the American health-care industry, and specifically its insurers. The teenager died from complications of liver failure and cancer, after applying for and initially being rejected for a liver transplant. Edwards wants to remake the health-care system in order to prevent anyone from being denied a transplant, but as the Wall Street Journal points out, the Sarkisyan case was a good deal more complicated than Edwards lets on -- and the US leads government-run health care systems around the world in transplants: Research provides little support to Mr. Edward's underlying premise that single-payer health-care systems would do better. On balance, data suggests that in the U.S. transplant patients do quite well compared to their European counterparts, with significantly more opportunities to undergo transplant procedures, survive the surgery, and benefit from new organs. Some...

Michigan Shenanigans Nothing New

My friend Jazz Shaw at Middle Earth Journal points out a plan in the works, endorsed by Markos Moulitsas and Duncan Black to have Michigan Democrats play spoiler in the Republican primary. Their idea is to have Democrats vote for Mitt Romney so that he wins the primary and blunts John McCain's momentum. If Huckabee or Thompson win in South Carolina and then Rudy Giuliani wins in Florida, the thinking goes, the GOP Super Tuesday will go all higgledy-piggledy and the Millenium will have truly started. Or something along those lines. Well, it's not illegal, and they could do this in any open-state primary if they wanted. However, it seems exceedingly silly and more than a little risky. Romney could put together a very credible general-election campaign; he's got essentially the same kind of resources that Michael Bloomberg has, and a much larger established constituency. All Mitt really needs is...

O'Donnell's Lunacy Continues

NBC correspondent Lawrence O'Donnell has been losing it for the last four years, but he usually restricts his extreme bombast for Republicans. He wouldn't allow John O'Neill (actually a Democrat) speak in a 2004 television appearance, screaming "Creepy liar" over him whenever O'Neill tried to respond. Just recently he let loose a barrage of anti-Mormon bigotry when discussing Mitt Romney. Now, however. O'Donnell aims his strange ire at John Edwards, whom he accuses of racism for staying in the primaries: John Edwards is a loser. He has won exactly two elections in his life and lost 31. Only one of his wins and all of his losses were in presidential primaries and caucuses. He remains perfectly positioned to continue to lose with a Kucinich-like consistency. Nothing but egomania keeps Edwards in the race now. All presidential candidates are egomaniacs but some of them have party status worth preserving that forces...

McCain Surges

If anyone films a documentary on the John McCain campaign, it ought to be George Romero. While the press had McCain as a dead man walking last summer, the Senator from Arizona has proven them all wrong -- and now looks as though he could sweep his way into Super Tuesday and the nomination. CNN has McCain taking a significant national polling lead, and he's jumped eight points above Rudy Giuliani in a Florida poll: McCain has the support of 34 percent of registered Republicans in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey out Friday. That's a 21-point jump from the last CNN/Opinion Research poll, taken in December, well before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary earlier this month. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa Republican caucuses, is in second place in the new survey, with 21 percent of those registered Republicans polled supporting him for the GOP...

January 12, 2008

A Hillary Loss In New York?, Uh, Sure

Hillary Clinton's team worries about a scenario where a South Carolina win for Barack Obama could trigger a close fight for New York. Despite winning endorsements from most of the black politicians in the state, Hillary could lose the edge in delegates in one of the biggest prizes on Super Tuesday -- or so the meme goes: With Senator Barack Obama vowing to challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on her home turf, the Democratic presidential primary in New York on Feb. 5 is shaping up as the state’s most competitive since 1992, when Bill Clinton took up a rival’s mantra of change to all but cinch the nomination. Mrs. Clinton was re-elected a little more than a year ago by better than two to one. Before the Iowa caucuses, she had so dominated opinion polls and endorsements by elected officials and powerful unions that many considered her home state impregnable...

The Forgotten Caucus?

South Carolina will not go to the precincts alone on January 19th, but it seems that the media has mostly forgotten it. Nevada moved its contest to the same date with the blessings of both parties, but it has received little of the coverage of the other early primary and caucus states. Pollsters and candidates have also mostly skipped the home state of Sin City. As John Edwards would ask, "Why ... why?" Nevada wanted to raise its profile in the nomination process, and the parties seemed eager to expand the focus out West, which gets short shrift in the primaries. The state has 34 Republican delegates at risk, and 25 for the Democrats, which makes it at least as important as New Hampshire in that sense. Yet despite a couple of high-profile visits from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, we here nothing of Nevada. It appears pollsters have something...

Joe Won't Be The Veep Pick For McCain

Unlike in the 2004 campaign, when a still-angry McCain allowed rumors of a second-slot deal with John Kerry to percolate just a little before denying them, the McCain campaign wants to scotch rumors of a similar deal with Senator Joe Lieberman. Robert Novak reports that Team McCain emphatically denies any suggestion that Lieberman would get selected as his running mate if McCain wins the Republican nomination: Close advisers of Sen. John McCain say there is no possibility that Independent Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman would be McCain's vice presidential running mate on the Republican ticket. McCain credits Lieberman's endorsement for president last month as triggering his turnaround in New Hampshire, leading to victory in that state's primary last Tuesday. In addition, McCain and Lieberman are friends who admire each other personally. Nevertheless, Lieberman still votes the straight Democratic line in the Senate on nearly all issues except Iraq, and McCain's advisers...

Oprah Intimidated?

Did Oprah get intimidated by women into backing away from her public support of Barack Obama? Could that have been one of the reasons Hillary Clinton pulled a surprise win out of New Hampshire? Robert Novak says yes: The absence of Oprah Winfrey from the frantic four last days of the New Hampshire primary campaign after her heavy schedule in Iowa backing Sen. Barack Obama may be traced to heavy, unaccustomed post-Iowa abuse of the popular entertainment superstar by women. Winfrey did not publicize it, but her Website was swamped with complaints after she went to Iowa. The principal complaint was that she betrayed women by not supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton. The criticism was described as personal. I'm not certain how much Oprah had to do with Obama's success in Iowa in any case. Hillary had never gained a lot of traction there, and John Edwards beat her to second...

Something's Happening?

That's what Fredheads hope, anyway. Fred Thompson seems to have come alive in South Carolina; his campaign reports that they've had to shut down at least two events because supporters have overcrowded the venues. His joltingly aggressive performance on Thursday has people wondering where this Fred has been -- and hoping he sticks around. Baby, they love his way, even the lines on his face ... and they want more people to feel like they do. Here's a little Photoshop fun for the evening; maybe you'll want to put on the great classic album and think, (I'll Give You) Money. Add your own caption, and rate them, too. Bonus points if you were alive when this album came out, and you know the artist as more than just a Geico commercial celebrity ... UPDATE: My friend Chris Muir sends me a much better photoshop than the one I did....

January 13, 2008

About All Of That Experience

I've mostly taken a day off today to catch up with the family and some rest, but Jazz Shaw has worked all weekend on a well-researched essay about Hillary Clinton and her "experience". At Middle Earth Journal, Jazz looks at Hillary's claims over her legislative record and finds a series of failures instead: Has Hillary been treated unfairly by the press, while her opponent, Senator Obama, has been given a free pass? To the contrary, it seems to me that the press has been more than active in vetting Mr. Obama, going to the ends of the Earth - in some cases literally, while checking out his schooling on the far side of the planet - to dig up whatever tawdry tidbits were available. Meanwhile, debate after debate is held. Hillary Clinton shows up so often on the Sunday morning chat festivals that I once thought she was the new...

January 14, 2008

Why Bother To Publish It?

When looking at polls, readers should always review the sampling to determine their predictive value. After some of the strange polling in the 2004 and 2006 election, most people have become more educated on how to spot poor polling efforts, even when presented by major media outlets like the New York Times and CBS News. One would also think that the survey debacle in New Hampshire would make news organizations like CBS and the Gray Lady a little more circumspect than before. One would be incorrect: Republican voters have sharply altered their views of the party’s presidential candidates following the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, with Senator John McCain, once widely written off, now viewed more favorably than any of his major competitors, according to the latest nationwide New York Times/CBS News Poll. ... On the Democratic side, Senator Barack Obama’s victory in Iowa has improved his standing...

Rasmussen: McCain Beats Hillary Like A Drum

Rasmussen has a somewhat more realistic picture of the Republican primary race than the New York Times/CBS poll that used a whopping 282 likely voters for its sample. McCain leads nationally by five points over Mike Huckabee, 24%-19%, while the rest of the field comes in a statistical tie for third place. However, the real news appears in the head-to-head matchup with Hillary Clinton, where the Democrat can't even muster 40% support: A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds John McCain leading Hillary Clinton nationally by double digits. The survey, conducted on the two nights following New Hampshire’s Primary, shows McCain attracting 49% of the vote nationwide while Clinton earns 38%. Among Republican voters, McCain leads 86% to 6%. However, among Democrats, Clinton’s lead is a slightly less dominant 74% to 18%. McCain leads by twenty-one points among unaffiliated voters. This is the third straight poll showing McCain ahead of...

The Great Race Pile-On

The Democrats have begun to fracture on the very bases of their historic primary race this year: race and gender. The campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have started trading allegations of race-baiting, and now John Edwards has jumped into the fray on Obama's side. The party of identity politics appears about to founder on its very premise: After staying on the sidelines in the first year of the campaign, race and to a lesser extent gender have burst into the forefront of the Democratic presidential contest, thrusting Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton into the middle of a sharp-edged social and political debate that transcends their candidacies. In a tense day of exchanges by the candidates and their supporters, Mrs. Clinton suggested on Sunday that Mr. Obama’s campaign, in an effort to inject race into the contest, distorted remarks she had made about the Rev. Dr. Martin...

Another Little Fib From The Clintons On Iraq

The Clinton campaign has been trying to sell Democrats on the notion that Hillary voted for a more restrictive authorization for the Iraq war, one written by Chuck Hagel that only pertained to WMDs. The New York Times calls shenanigans on Hillary and Bill, pointing out that Hillary supported and voted for the White House version of the AUMF: In interviews and at a recent campaign event, they have said that Mr. Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, helped draft the resolution, which they said was proof that the measure was more about urging Saddam Hussein to comply with weapons inspections, instead of authorizing combat. Mrs. Clinton repeated the claim Sunday during an interview on “Meet the Press,” saying “Chuck Hagel, who helped to draft the resolution, said it was not a vote for war.” “It was a vote to use the threat of force against Saddam Hussein, who never did anything...

Florida A Four-Way Tie: Rasmussen

Rasmussen has the crucial Florida contest a four-way tie for the Republican primary, with Fred Thompson not far back in fifth place. John McCain leads by a single point at the moment, with Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani all within two points of the current holder of Big Mo. That motion has appeared to slow in Florida since McCain's big New Hampshire win, as Survey USA had him up by ten in the immediate aftermath: The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds four candidates essentially tied for the lead in Florida’s Republican Presidential Primary. It’s McCain 19%, Giuliani 18%, Romney 18%, and Huckabee 17%. Fred Thompson is a few points off the pace at 11% while Ron Paul is a distant sixth with support from 5% of Likely Primary Voters. The race in Florida is very fluid. Just 45% of Likely Primary Voters say they are “certain” to...

McCain's Michigan Edge: Democrats

The Michigan primary promises to start a bloody debate among Republicans that in some quarters has already started. A new Zogby poll of likely GOP primary voters in Michigan shows John McCain with a three-point edge over Mitt Romney. The poll's internals, however, show that Romney leads among Republicans while McCain gets a boost from Democrats and independents that will skip the meaningless Democratic primary (via Memeorandum): The survey shows McCain with a 27% to 24% edge over Romney, with Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee trailing with 15% support. McCain, fresh off a 37% to 32% victory in New Hampshire over Romney, is battling the former governor on what is essentially Romney’s home turf, having grown up in the Detroit suburbs while his father, George, was governor of the state in the early 1960s. .... The poll shows that among Republicans, Romney beats McCain, 30% to 20%, but McCain gets...

The Nightmare For Financial Advisers

Which spectre haunts financial advisers the most? Terrorism? Global unrest? Not even close. According to a survey of over 200 financial advisers taken in December, their biggest worry is that Hillary Clinton will win the presidential election in November: Nothing worries financial advisers more than the prospect of a Democrat's being elected president in November, according to a quarterly poll by Brinker Capital Inc. The fourth-quarter edition of the Brinker Barometer, which polled 236 advisers in December, found that 22% indicated that a "Democrat in the White House" worried them more than all other economic or geopolitical concerns. Rounding out the list of concerns was "global unrest" (15%), "U.S. economic growth" (15%), "a terrorist attack" (13%) and "a recession" (13%). They're less concerned about recession than dealing with the economic policies of a new Clinton administration. They fear that a big increase in taxes will erode equity investments, especially given...

Rasmussen: South Carolina Shifts In Both Primaries

Two new Rasmussen polls show movement in both the Republican and Democratic primaries. Fred Thompson has begun to ascend, but mostly at the expense of Mike Huckabee after his takedown of the Arkansas governor in the last debate. Hillary Clinton has eaten up half of Barack Obama's previous lead as well, with only eight days to go before the primary: Over the past several days, the only real movement in South Carolina’s Republican Presidential Primary has been a four-point gain for Fred Thompson and a five-point decline for Mike Huckabee. The big winner from that trade-off is John McCain. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows McCain at 28%, Huckabee at 19%, Mitt Romney at 17%, and Fred Thompson at 16%. Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul are tied with 5% support. Giuliani is betting his entire campaign on a strong showing in Florida, where he is now tied for the...

The Last Time The Polls Were Unanimous ... (Update: McCainia In Nevada, Too?)

Is it just me, or is anyone else getting flashbacks to New Hampshire? USA Today and Gallup announced the results of their latest national survey, and confirm that John McCain has more than doubled his support to jump into first place, while Hillary Clinton has pulled away from Barack Obama again. This flurry of polling data corroborates each other nicely .... just like the polling did in the Granite State: Republicans McCain: 33%, up from 19% a week ago. Mike Huckabee: 19%, down from 25%. Rudy Giuliani: 13%; down from 20%. Mitt Romney: 11%; up from 9%. Fred Thompson: 9%; down from 12%. Rep. Ron Paul: 3%; down from 4%. Rep. Duncan Hunter: 2%; up from 1%. Alan Keyes: 1%; vs. 0. Democrats Clinton: 45%; up from 33%. Obama: 33%, unchanged. John Edwards: 13%; down from 20%. Rep. Dennis Kucinich: 1%; down from 3%. Mike Gravel: 1%; vs. 0. The...

Judge To NBC: You Can't Control Your Own Content

A solution in search of a problem found a judge in search of some understanding of the concept of private property and free speech. Both converged in Las Vegas through the efforts of Dennis Kucinich to force his way into the NBC Democratic debate. A Las Vegas judge ruled in favor of Kucinich: A Las Vegas judge has ruled that democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich must be included in the Tuesday night presidential debate in Las Vegas. Kucinich filed a lawsuit against NBC. He said he was initially invited to be in the nationally televised debate but the offer was later rescinded. Base on the earlier invitation, Judge Charles Thompson ruled in Kucinich's favor saying if he isn't included, he will issue an injunction stopping the debate. This won't hold up, but it may not be worth it for NBC to appeal. It will cost them less in legal fees...

January 15, 2008

Rudy: Don't Blame Us For Terrorism

The New York Times editorial board recently offered a critique of Rudy Giuliani and his views on the causes of terrorism. Following Giuliani's assertion that al-Qaeda's hatred has nothing to do with American foreign policy but springs from a virulent strain of Islam that cannot abide anything outside of its precepts, the Times scolded Giuliani for ignoring the complaints of radical Islamists as a cause for their violence. Thomas Joscelyn rebuts this criticism with some history, and some facts: Raymond Ibrahim explains the difference between our enemies’ propaganda and their real motives in his excellent book, The Al Qaeda Reader. Ibrahim says the theme of our enemies’ propaganda is “always the same.” In its messages to the West, al Qaeda says it “is merely retaliating for all the injustices the West, and the United States in particular, has brought upon Muslims.” However, the rationale al-Qaeda offers in its theological treatises,...

Poor, Poor Pitiful Me

From time to time, I get e-mails from publicists promoting clients and their media appearances. Normally these tend to either be off-topic for me or resolutely uninteresting, although a few PR firms have shown themselves to be very reliable and helpful in getting information to bloggers. Last night, however, I may have received the strangest notice yet. The Tyra Banks Show taped an episode yesterday with Hillary Clinton that will air on Friday, and they sent along a partial transcript to pique interest in the show. It contained a rather odd cri de coeur from someone who wants to convince people to elect her President: TYRA: What about you? Do you ever get lonely? Do you ever sit in you room by yourself sometimes and just feel alone? SENATOR CLINTON: I don't feel lonely but I do feel sometimes isolated. Because when you are in these positions that I have...

Mauricio Celis: Hillary Backer, Drug Dealer?

Last November, I wrote about the case of Hillary Clinton backer Mauricio Celis, whose ownership of a law practice resulted in an indictment containing charges of impersonating a lawyer and fraudulent business practices. Now the state of Texas has a new investigation of Celis which includes money laundering and suspected involvement in Mexican drug cartels: Mauricio Celis is linked to the Mexican drug trade in a search warrant the state used Friday to raid his law offices and gather computer files, according to financial documents and other business records. The warrant includes a sworn statement by a Texas Attorney General's official accusing Celis of money laundering. ... The state searched a U.S. Treasury database and border crossing data to determine that Celis went to Mexico frequently after withdrawing large sums of cash, according to an affidavit accompanying the warrant. "Celis is rumored to be associated with questionable criminal element (sic)...

Guilt By Association

It didn't take long for Hillary Clinton supporters to latch onto Barack Obama's church as a rebuttal to the criticism they've taken for Hillary's remarks about the role of civil-rights activists in fostering real change. Richard Cohen takes up the cudgel by demanding that Obama disavow the minister of Trinity United Church for his endorsement of Louis Farrakhan via an award given in his name: Barack Obama is a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan. Maybe for Wright and some others, Farrakhan "epitomized greatness." For most...

Michigan Primaries Predictions

I'll live blog tonight as the results come in from Michigan's primaries. I haven't had a chance to post my predictions for this evening, so I'll do it now and take my lumps later. For the Democrats, the choice is pretty easy, since Hillary is the only major candidate on the ballot; I predict that she will gain 65% of a very low turnout, while Uncommitted gets 25% and the other 10% goes to the rest of the ballot. I predict that the crossover vote will not be as heavy as predicted, discouraged in part by lousy weather. Three inches of snow wouldn't keep motivated voters from reaching the polls, but I don't think that the Republican slate will motivate non-Republicans to turn out in force while it's dark, snowy, and miserable on the roads. That favors Mitt Romney, and I think he edges out John McCain for his first...

Live Coverage Of The Michigan Primary

I'll live blog my thoughts on the Michigan primary returns as they start coming in at 8 pm CT. I'll also be speaking with the boss, Alan Levy, on his BlogTalkRadio show with The Flylady at 7 pm CT. We'll be talking about the primary race in general, and joining me will be Tom McArdle of Investors Business Daily. Interest seems a bit lower in this primary, probably because of the low relevance of the Democratic primary, but it has significant meaning for the Republican race.. I'll be going in reverse-chronological order, so older comments will be lower in the post. 9:07 - John King and Jeffrey Toobin at CNN are arguing that McCain got "trounced" in Michigan. Er, no. He didn't do as well as he should have, mostly because the crossover vote never materialized. But 30% is not a bad showing, especially given McCain's agenda on global warming,...

Nevada Supreme Court: NBC Can Choose Its Debate Participants

Much to the consternation of the people who flooded my comment thread with vitriol, the Nevada Supreme Court has reversed the lower court that tried to force NBC to include Dennis Kucinich in tonight's debate. As I argued, they not only found that the judge had violated NBC's free speech rights, they also found that the court had no jurisdiction: The Nevada Supreme Court said Tuesday MSNBC can exclude Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich from a candidate debate. Lawyers for NBC Universal Inc., had asked the high court to overturn a lower court order that the cable TV news network include the Ohio congressman or pull the plug on broadcasting the debate Tuesday night with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. An hour before the debate, the state Supreme Court's unanimous order said that blocking the debate unless Kucinich got to participate would be "an unconstitutional prior restraint"...

January 16, 2008

The Night Belongs To Mitt, The Race To No One

Two truths came out of Mitt Romney's big win in Michigan last night. First, Romney can win a hotly-contested state, proving his organizational strength when New Hampshire and Iowa had suggested otherwise. And second, Rudy Giuliani's view that the early states would not matter has largely been vindicated. And Republicans will have a lot more work to do before they settle on a single candidate: Romney's triumph in the state where he was born and where his father served as governor further scrambles a GOP field in which no candidate has been able to win more than one major contest. McCain captured first place in the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8 and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee topped the Iowa field five days earlier. .... The surprisingly easy win in Michigan by a candidate whom many had written off vaults Romney back into contention and reaffirms the sharpened campaign message...

Hillary's Flat Tire In Michigan

So Hillary got a chance to have a primary race where her only competition was a fringe candidate (Dennis Kucinich), one who already quit (Chris Dodd), a joke (Mike Gravel), and None of the Above (Uncommitted). How well did she fare in a state that usually likes Establishment candidates? She only beat None of the Above by fifteen points. The Michigan Democratic Party got its delegates stripped by the DNC for violating its scheduling rules. The RNC penalized state Republicans too, but only by stripping half of the delegates, so the GOP primary had real meaning. Instead, the Democratic candidates had removed their names from the ballot, but somehow Hillary neglected to do the same. That left her with the possibility of having a landslide result in what was more or less a beauty contest. The state party decided to back Uncommitted, helped in large part by the Obama and...

Federalism Gets Around, But Not Understood

Mike Huckabee has apparently learned the value of federalism on the campaign trail. Once a proponent of a federal smoking ban, Huckabee reversed himself in a letter from his campaign to The Hill. While not completely renouncing his previous stance, Huckabee now says that he would not sign a smoking ban under current circumstances (via Hot Air): At an August 2007 forum on cancer hosted by cyclist and activist Lance Armstrong and moderated by MSNBC host Chris Matthews, Huckabee said he supported a federal smoking ban. “If you are president in 2009 and Congress brings you a bill to outlaw smoking nationwide in public places, would you sign it?” Matthews asked. “I would, certainly would. In fact, I would, just like I did as governor of Arkansas, I think there should be no smoking in any indoor area where people have to work,” Huckabee responded, triggering applause from the crowd....

The Crossover Flop In Michigan

Before the Michigan primaries, many of us wondered whether the lack of a meaningful Democratic primary would create a flood of crossover votes into the Republican contest. Such a turnout could have boosted the performance of John McCain, who remains popular with independents and Democrats in that state and elsewhere. However, despite a campaign by Markos Moulitsas and others, the crossover vote turned out to be insignificant: McCain captured 41 percent of Democrats who voted in the Republican primary, 10 points more than Romney. Mike Huckabee meanwhile, only captured 14 percent of Democrats. Though the Democratic primary race was rendered essentially meaningless after party sanctions, few Democrats decided to vote in the Republican primary — according to the exit polling, Democrats only constituted 7 percent of the vote in that contest. Markos urged his readers to vote for Mitt Romney as a way to confuse the Republican primary race. Instead,...

My Turn In The Hot Seat: Is Rudy A Genius?

embedSWF(9, 0, 0, "widget", "recent")This content requires the most recent version of the Adobe Flash Player. Get this version below:Get Flash Today's question refers to my post from earlier today, but I have a second question for CapQ readers and AOL visitors. If Rudy Giuliani saw through the political fog and selected a winning strategy by allowing all of his competitors to waste money in the early states, is that a good reason to support him for the nomination? Has this vindicated not just his strategy, but his generalship as well -- and should that be enough for Republicans to rally around him?...

Barack's The Man, Keeping Hillary Down

One has to marvel at the sheer chutzpah of Bill Clinton. He told a Sparks, Nevada audience that the establishment candidate in the Democratic presidential primary race is the one who has served a grand total of three years in national office, instead of the one who claims her husband's eight years as President as her resume: Bill Clinton, who carried Nevada in two general elections, urged voters Tuesday to buck labor endorsements for Sen. Barack Obama and support his wife in Saturday's hotly contested presidential caucuses as the only Democratic candidate with the experience necessary to change the country. The former president trumpeted New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's accomplishments while painting Obama as the "establishment" candidate who would bring only the "feeling of change." "One candidate says you should vote for me because I've not been involved at all in the struggles of the past and therefore we need...

Rudy At The Memorial

Rudy Giuliani spoke at the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial yesterday, honoring the commitment and sacrifice of the troops who have given their lives in service. He asks if any of the family would like to come to the podium and tell their stories, and as one might imagine, it overshadowed everything else Rudy had to say. However, the words of these parents are quite stirring, even if one Gold Star mother gets interrupted by a protestor. Check out Rudy's reaction:...

January 17, 2008

When Your Constituents Leave You, Are You A Leader?

That question now faces the Congressional Black Caucus, which has split its endorsements in the Democratic presidential primaries. The Politico reports that those who endorsed Hillary Clinton now face the pressure of their constituencies, which have begun to shift towards Barack Obama (via Memeorandum): Even though Barack Obama may become the first African-American ever to represent a major party as the nominee for president, many black lawmakers on Capitol Hill are not supporting him. And that’s creating tensions within the Congressional Black Caucus. More than a third of the black members of Congress are backing Hillary Rodham Clinton or John Edwards in the presidential primary, a stance that puts them at odds with many of their African-American constituents, who, recent polls show, are beginning to shift to Obama’s camp. The Clinton supporters — among them, civil rights pioneer Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B....

Stop The Presses! No Executive Experience?

David Broder has breaking news in the presidential race. He has discovered, through his own investigation that -- brace yourselves -- none of the leading Democratic candidates for President has executive experience. He points out that this leaves the Democrats at a serious disadvantage to their Republican counterparts. At Heading Right, I wonder where Broder has been for the past year. The lack of experience has been a topic of conversation for at least a year, and not just executive experience, either. The time that all of them have in national public office put together doesn’t equal John McCain’s tenure in the Senate. Dan Quayle had more time just in the Senate than any one of the three Democratic front-runners. Broder says that the Democrats have to show they can actually lead. Maybe they should all drop out now, and run for an executive office. Otherwise, they can only talk...

Romney And Electability

The question of viability for Mitt Romney comes on two levels today. First, he appears to have given up on South Carolina just a day after restarting ads in the Palmetto State. Second, a new Rasmussen poll shows Romney coming up considerably short against both of the Democratic front-runners: Just a day after his big win in Michigan, Mitt Romney ceded South Carolina to his rivals. “This is a state I’d expect that Sen. [John] McCain has pretty well wrapped up,” Romney told reporters at the Sun City Hilton Head Retirement Center in Bluffton. “It would be an enormous surprise if he were unable to win here.” .... Polls show Romney standing in solid third place in South Carolina, taking anywhere from 13 percent to 17 percent of the vote. But in Bluffton, Romney put himself in fourth place, noting that “even a strong fourth is better than what some...

How Does The Media Cover The Campaign?

The media maxim, If it bleeds, it leads, does not appear to apply to the level of coverage in the presidential primaries. A study of last week's coverage shows that, despite a much more unsettled Republican primary contest, the Democrats continue to get the lion's share of media attention. And at that, only certain Democrats (via Jazz and TPM): Senator Hillary Clinton’s poll-defying Democratic primary victory in New Hampshire helped make her the leading campaign newsmaker last week, but the resurrection in the Granite State of John McCain’s once-dead campaign did not translate into similar largesse of media attention, according to a new study of media campaign coverage. Meanwhile, the meaning of third place was also fungible last week. Mike Huckabee, a distant third in the GOP race, got sizably more media attention than did John Edwards among the Democrats. And New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is not running,...

No Bias At The AP, Of Course Not

To see an example of bias in the media, look no farther than Glen Johnson of the AP. Mitt Romney had a presser this morning in Columbia, South Carolina, when Johnson decided to hold his own debate over lobbysists in the campaign. CBS News caught the argument Johnson started on video, and its aftermath: There was an ice storm in South Carolina this morning, but it was even colder inside a Staples store where a Mitt Romney press conference suddenly went sour. Romney was in the middle of answering a routine question when he said something that caused Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson to lose his temper. “I don’t have lobbyists running my campaign,” Romney said. “I don’t have lobbyists that are tied to my … ” “That’s not true, governor!” Johnson suddenly interjected. “That is not true. Ron Kaufman is a lobbyist.” The point Romney wanted to make was...

January 18, 2008

South Carolina And The Flag

I guess the New York Times' coverage of the Confederate flag issue in the presidential race means we're back to discussing the issues, right? The Republicans have once again fallen into the trap of talking about the use of the Civil War flag in a presidential campaign, and the national media seems more than eager to highlight it. For this, we can thank Mike Huckabee: The Republican presidential candidates on Thursday moved to appeal to different types of conservative voters before the South Carolina primary, with Mike Huckabee using colorful language to declare the Confederate flag a states’ rights issue and Senator John McCain embracing a supply-side tax cut proposal. “You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,” Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, told supporters in Myrtle Beach, according to The Associated Press. “In fact,” he said,...

Blindsided By National Security?

I receive promotional e-mails from other blogs by the score, most of which I just cannot use, although I do try to read it all. One this morning caught my eye, a message promoting a Tom Edsall essay at the Huffington Post. Both the e-mail and the essay wonder whether Republicans will "blindside" the Democrats on terrorism and national security in the general election: While many Democratic strategists are confident that the deteriorating economy virtually assures the victory of their presidential candidate on November 4, there is a quiet debate over whether the party and prospective nominee are likely to get blindsided by Republicans raising issues of terrorism and national security. According to Edsall, the Democrats have high confidence in succeeding on economics in this cycle. They expect the economy to worsen in 2008 and make it easier for them to sell higher taxes and more entitlements to nervous voters....

The First Look At Hillary Documents (Update & Bump)

Judicial Watch has tried to gain access to the records from Hillary Clinton's task force on revamping the American health-care system, and has been met with considerable resistance. After seeing the first batch released by the Clinton library, one can certainly understand why. In a press release from Judicial Watch earlier this evening, they excerpted some explosive passages within the documents, passages which will create some uncomfortable questions for Hillary on the campaign trail. First, an internal critique of Hillary's plan marveled at the unprecedented scope of government control over a private industry -- at least in peacetime: A June 18, 1993 internal Memorandum entitled, “A Critique of Our Plan,” authored by someone with the initials “P.S.,” makes the startling admission that critics of Hillary’s health care reform plan were correct: “I can think of parallels in wartime, but I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our peacetime...

The Records Of Change

If Hillary Clinton wants to cast herself as the candidate of change, the IBD editorial board notes, she has a perfectly applicable project to highlight, complete with as many as three million pages of documentation. Why not produce the entire record of the Health Care Task Force? Their question came one day before the answer: The last time Sen. Clinton was a genuine agent of change was when she led the secretive Health Care Task Force in 1993-94 that labored mightily to propose a Godzilla-size bureaucracy that would have nationalized one-seventh of the nation's economy. To receive medical care you would have gone to the equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles. That proposal was one of the key factors in the GOP tsunami of 1994. She helped Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. The universal health care she proposes now...

Politicizing The Office?

The Bush administration has taken plenty of heat over their alleged politicization of the White House, especially in the roles Karl Rove has played in the past two terms. The release of the memos from the 1993 Health Care Task Force might put that in some perspective. The HCTF anticipated a tough debate over its proposal to nationalize American health care, and it proposed some specific remedies -- including using the DNC to conduct intelligence operations. A February 1993 memo to Hillary Clinton from Alexis Herman and Mike Lux proposes that the HCTF -- a White House policy group -- enlist the DNC for several purposes, discussed on page 5: C. The DNC Role The DNC clearly has a critically important role to play in the campaign. I would suggest the following roles ... 3. The DNC can be instrumental for us in intelligence gathering and opposition research. Their staff...

Identity Politics Is Chauvinism Under Another Name

Reportedly, Christopher Hitchens has just given up smoking. Apparently, this has had no effect on his curmudgeonly tone, but then again, Hitchens could hardly get more pointed in his criticisms. Today he rightly sets his sights on identity politics and exposes it as a trade for one bigotry over another (via Real Clear Politics): People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of "race" or "gender" alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things. Madeleine Albright has said that there is "a special place in hell for women who don't help...

Two Contests, Two Hundred Directions

Tomorrow, two states go through two different procedures to assign delegates for the Republican Party, while the Democrats only have to focus on one state. Nevadans will caucus for both parties and South Carolina holds its Republican primary, and the results could either clarify the GOP picture or muddy it considerably. First, let's look at South Carolina, where polling shows a very mixed picture. Some show John McCain with a clear lead over Mike Huckabee, some as a dead heat. Depending on whom you trust, Fred Thompson is either surging or stagnating. Romney has mostly stopped campaigning there, choosing to focus on Nevada instead. If McCain wins, he can pick up momentum again, but if he loses, he has to wonder whether he can keep pressure on Rudy Giuliani in Florida. If Huckabee wins, and he might, can he take the momentum to any other state? In Nevada, the only...

January 19, 2008

The Telephone Man

Most of us have played a game called Telephone. The instructive exercise involves passing along a brief message from person to person by whispering it quickly in their ear, and at the end comparing what was originally said to the message at the end. It proves that people filter messages to such an extent that the final product almost always bears no resemblance to the original. Meet Bill Clinton, the one-man telephone game. Saying that his "legs fell out" -- whatever that means -- when he heard Barack Obama's recent reference to Ronald Reagan, he proved that he either hadn't read it for himself or just decided to lie about it (see update below): Bill Clinton joined his wife in targeting Barack Obama's statement about Republican ideas, saying that his "legs fell out" when he read it. "Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the...

Will Glen Johnson Get The Last Laugh?

Earlier this week, AP reporter Glen Johnson acted unprofessionally by essentially heckling Mitt Romney during a press conference when Romney said that he would not be beholden to lobbyists if elected President. Even a bystander called Johnson "rude and ugly", a moment caught on YouTube. However, the Boston Herald -- a paper with a rightward bent -- believes that Johnson may have won on the facts while losing on the visuals (via Joe Gandelman at TMV): Former Bay State Gov. Mitt Romney, who has cast himself as a Washington outsider and blasted his opponents’ ties to lobbyists, has more than a dozen federally registered lobbyists raising money for him and several others advising his campaign, records show. At a Nashua event the day before the New Hampshire primary, Romney said, “I don’t have years and years of favors to repay, lobbyists who have raised all sorts of money for me.”...

The Thompson Surge Arrives?

It may have, where it counts, in South Carolina. Via Campaign Spot, the American Research Group poll taken over the last two days has Fred Thompson powering out of the doldrums and into the 20s, good enough for a clean third-place spot: Mike Huckabee leads among Republicans with 37%, followed by John McCain and Fred Thompson with 22% each. McCain leads among self-described independents with 48%. I picked Huckabee because I figured the last-minute pandering on the Confederate flag might be enough to push him over the edge. McCain's paying for his vacillation and final rejection of the issue in 2000. Thompson's score won't be enough for him to gain many delegates, but it does appear to be enough to prevail over Romney for third place, and that should keep him in the race through February 5th. Interestingly, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama picked up a point each...

Blue On Blue, No Heartache For GOP

There are a few moments where pure schadenfreude can honestly be enjoyed without guilt. Besides Geraldo getting assaulted by neo-Nazis he wanted to exploit for ratings, the second-best example is watching Democrats beat each other up by accusing each other of the voter fraud they insist doesn't exist in general elections. This time, Bill Clinton provides the blue-on-blue action in Nevada: Today when my daughter and I were wandering through the hotel, and all these culinary workers were mobbing us telling us they didn’t care what the union told them to do, they were gonna caucus for Hillary. There was a representative of the organization following along behind us going up to everybody who said that, saying 'if you’re not gonna vote for our guy were gonna give you a schedule tomorrow so you can’t be there.' So, is this the new politics? I haven’t seen anything like that in...

AP Clairvoyant

The AP has called the Nevada caucuses for Mitt Romney. This doesn't surprise anyone, as Romney put far more effort into the contest than any other candidate. What does surprise me is when the AP decided to report this result. According to my feed reader, this article appeared at 4 am CT. So, does the AP like going that far out on a limb? One might expect a little more caution, especially after the New Hampshire polling debacle....

Barack's Nightmare?

The Democrats in Nevada have begun to go to the caucuses, and we have seen little in actual returns. However, if the entrance polling by CNN reflects reality, Barack Obama has some reason for worry. According to the demographics, over 70% of the caucusers are 45 years of age or older, and 59% of them are women. That looks like the caucusers have played directly into the demographic wheelhouse of Hillary Clinton. Based on those numbers, I'd expect Hillary to handily beat Obama in Nevada. If she doesn't, it may mean some recalculation about her strength in two categories that she needs to beat Obama's strength among younger voters. I'll keep an eye on this race and update the post as more returns come in. UPDATE: CNN calls Nevada for Hillary, but she's only got a 6-point lead over Barack, 51%-45%. Given the strong demographics in her favor, this isn't...

South Carolina Live Blog

I just returned home, a few minutes before the polls close in South Carolina, and I'll be posting my thoughts on the primary results today in real time. Entries will be posted in reverse chronological order, and I'm following both CNN and Fox for results. 8:33 - So McCain wins another one, and Huckabee loses a Southern state. This is a bit of a surprise, and not a good one for Huckabee. Thompson will probably stick around through February 5th, but 15% here isn't the kind of momentum he needed to make the sale for the upcoming primaries. Florida will wind up being a three-man race between Romney,.McCain, and Giuliani. 8:21 - Horry County gave George Bush 50,700 votes in 2004. My guess was pretty good. 8:18 - Fox and AP finally call it for McCain. 82% of the precincts in, and McCain leads by 3%. 8:15 - Horry County...

January 20, 2008

Where Now From Here?

The South Carolina primary turned out to be a clarifying event after all. Instead of the potential for five front-runners in the Super Tuesday contest in two weeks, it appears we will have at best three viable candidates for the nomination, and only if Rudy Giuliani proves his strategy correct by winning Florida. What will be left will be the three candidates that the conservative blogosphere has relentlessly criticized for their lack of lifelong fealty to the Ronald Reagan legacy, but whom voters have nevertheless trusted enough to support in the primaries. First, the failure of Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson to win in South Carolina signals the end of their campaigns, whether they recognize it or not, especially for Fred. He made South Carolina his explicit firewall, the place where he had to have a great showing in order to retain credibility as a candidate. A third-place finish among...

The Democratic Replay Of 2000, And Its Uselessness

One reason pollsters avoided Nevada was because of its first-ever attempt at caucusing for the presidential nomination process. Unlike Iowa, which has honed its system for decades and has a certain amount of predictability, Nevada started from scratch in 2007 to stage their caucuses. Pollsters and the media expected strange behavior -- but they didn't expect the Democrats to re-enact their political bete noir, the 2000 election. After Hillary Clinton won a six-point victory over Barack Obama yesterday, the Obama campaign unexpectedly announced that they had actually won more delegates. The complicated formula for distributing delegates turned out to give Obama a one-point advantage. The Clinton campaign immediately denied this, but as NBC reports, the loss of the popular vote has not kept Obama from winning the election: The Nevada Democratic Party just issued this clarification (emphasis is ours): "No national convention delegates were awarded. That said, if the delegate...

Barack Says Hello As Minnesota Suddenly Matters

Earlier today, I received the first of what I presume will be a flurry of phone calls looking for my vote in Minnesota's caucus on February 5th. This call didn't come from the Republicans, however, but from the Barack Obama campaign. They wanted to see if they could count on my vote. How did they get my name on their list? Recall a couple of months ago that I attempted to get leading Democratic presidential contenders to appear on my Heading Right Radio show on BlogTalkRadio. The only response I received was a blizzard of e-mails asking me to contribute to their campaigns, even when I clearly sent my request to their press shops. I eventually got my name off of the John Edwards list, which saved me a half-dozen e-mails a day, but since the Obama campaign didn't bother me much after the first couple of appeals, I never...

January 21, 2008

Obama: Bill Clinton Lies

I guess you know this means war. Fans of Bugs Bunny will recognize that line, but fans of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama may not enjoy it as much as Republicans will over the next few weeks. In an interview that will air on ABC's Good Morning America today, Obama makes it clear that he will not stand silently while Bill makes arguments that could politely be called factually deficient (via Memeorandum): "You know the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling," Obama said. "He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts -- whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas. "This has become a habit, and one of...

Why Do We Have Caucuses?

The Nevada caucus turned into a fiasco, if on-the-ground reports can be believed. Barack Obama's campaign manager has turned up over 200 reported violations of rules by the Hillary Clinton campaign just in the first few hours after the event. Claims of voter suppression from Bill Clinton arose before the caucuses even officially began. So why do we have caucuses? At Heading Right, I look at the process and talk about the winners and the losers -- and why we should demand primaries instead. One final note on this subject: The Democrats want to end secret ballots for union organizing elections. Republicans have objected, saying it will leave workers at risk of intimidation by both sides. The behavior at the Nevada caucuses make an excellent argument against the Democrats -- and we can use their own objections as evidence....

The Big Contest

And so we come to Florida for the ultimate clarification, much as Rudy Giuliani predicted. Can John McCain win a race that includes only Republican voters? Can Mike Huckabee win another state at all? Can Mitt Romney parlay his financial advantage to victory in a state not predisposed to support him? Will Fred Thompson even bother to campaign? Riding the momentum from his weekend victory in South Carolina, John McCain turned his attention Sunday to Florida and the high-stakes primary there that will test whether the Arizona senator can consolidate support among Republican voters and take control of the GOP nomination battle. The Jan. 29 contest in Florida will be the first Republican primary closed to independent voters, who have provided McCain with his margins of victory in both New Hampshire and South Carolina. A victory, strategists agreed, would stamp McCain as the front-runner in what has been a muddied...

The Hillary Papers Get Ignored By The Media

After last week's release by Judicial Watch of internal documents of Hillary Clinton's Health Care Task Force, many of us waited to see the national news media cover their disturbing contents. No surprisingly, none of them did so. Despite the proposals to use smears against critics of the government and to turn the DNC into a domestic espionage unit for the White House against its opponents, the mainstream news media has shown little interest in even noting the fact that this evidence appeared in a microscopic sample of the three million documents that have been blocked from public scrutiny. Let's recall what the media has ignored. The following comes from my earlier posts on the subject. Senator Jay Rockefeller proposed that the federal government conduct smear campaigns against the opponents of the plan: A “Confidential” May 26, 1993 Memorandum from Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to Hillary Clinton entitled, “Health Care...

Rudy Unbound

It appears that Rudy has finally decided to climb into the ring and throw a few punches. After the weekend contests clarified the competition, the Giuliani campaign published its first significant attack on another Republican candidate. The latest Rasmussen polling suggests he may have to punch in two directions. First, the latest poll shows a three-man race in Florida, with all three in the hunt but Mitt Romney surprisingly in the lead: It’s Romney at 25%, McCain at 20%, and Giuliani at 19%. Romney has picked up seven points over the past week while McCain and Giuliani each inched up a point. Last week, before the Michigan and South Carolina Primaries, Rasmussen Reports polling found essentially a four-way tie for the lead in Florida. However, Mike Huckabee has slipped to 13% in the current poll. A week ago, he was the top choice for 17%. Clearly, the close second in...

He Had A Dream, Not A Fairy Tale

Atlanta's mayor, Shirley Franklin, had a bone to pick with Bill Clinton. Rather than do it quietly, she decided to make her point at today's rally honoring Martin Luther King, with Bill Clinton in the front row -- and got a rousing ovation for it: With former President Bill Clinton standing not 20 feet in front of her, Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin took what appeared to be a political shot at the former president's comments about Barack Obama's candidacy. Speaking at the 40th annual MLK commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Franklin said the country is on the "cusp of turning the impossible into reality. Yes this is reality, not fantasy or fairy tales." Clinton, in supporting his wife Hillary's bid for the Democratic nomination, recently took heat for using the term "fairy tale" to describe Obama's depiction of his stance on the war. That statement got the entire audience...

Speaking Of Having A Dream ....

Bill Clinton kept trying to have a dream of his own today -- but the oratory kept him from his nap. Via Bryan at Hot Air, keep an eye on Bill as he tries valiantly to stay awake at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church in Harlem today: It's hard not to be sympathetic in this case. Clinton made the rounds today, apparently flying between Atlanta and New York for Martin Luther King Day appearances, and it tired him out. What did he get for his trouble? Comeuppance from Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and a video that will get played over and over again on comedy shows for the next few years. Bill struggles to stay awake as businessmen do in long, dull presentations. He shakes his head or nods when he jolts awake, attempting to look like he's listening. At one point, he checks his watch, apparently wondering when he...

January 22, 2008

She Lies, He's Irresponsible: A Debate Or A Therapy Session?

The Democratic presidential debate descended into a series of gotcha personal attacks last night between frontrunners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, leaving John Edwards as more of a spectator than a participant in the debate. Sounding more like a therapy session than a debate, Obama accused the Clintons of lying while Hillary accused Obama of being irresponsible, as well as being a bit of a coward. The Washington Post calls the confrontation "angry" and "personal": The Democratic presidential front-runners clashed angrily in a debate Monday night, with Sen. Barack Obama accusing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband of repeatedly distorting his positions and Clinton asserting that Obama is trying to run away from his record. Their sharp exchanges in the nationally televised forum underscored the Democrats' increasingly fierce competition five days before a pivotal primary test in South Carolina. The debate turned personal almost from the outset, as Obama...

Hard Times For Huckabee, Again

The loss in South Carolina has had a big impact on Mike Huckabee -- and the reporters covering his campaign. His team has begun to cut back on spending, and the traveling press corps now has to find its own travel arrangements. They may not need to follow him to Florida, either: Battling to stay competitive after his weekend loss in South Carolina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is taking new steps to save money, including no longer scheduling planes and buses for journalists trying to cover his presidential campaign. Huckabee said he will continue to campaign in Florida on a shoestring budget, but added that he may pull out of the state before its Jan. 29 Republican primary if his prospects look dim. "I don't want to abandon Florida yet," Huckabee told reporters Monday on a late-night flight from Orlando to Atlanta, where he planned to campaign Tuesday. "We...

Can McCain Win A Closed Primary?

John McCain has won two significant primaries in the early contests, New Hampshire and South Carolina. However, both allowed for crossover voting from non-Republicans*, and in both cases, McCain's margin of victory came from those voters. In Michigan, Mitt Romney won despite the crossover votes. Florida, however, only allows registered Republicans to vote in the primary. Can John McCain win a closed primary? E.J. Dionne wonders whether McCain can resist the temptation to transform himself to do so. At Heading Right, I refute the notion that McCain has to do all that much transforming -- or that Rudy can win by running to McCain's left. The main issues for McCain and the base have to do with trust and tone, not with policy except in two specific areas. Can McCain win a closed primary? I believe he can -- but not in Florida. * - I had South Carolina incorrectly...

Robotrolling For Paul

I just received a strange polling call. Without any announcement of who or what prompted the call, a robopoll looking for my presidential preference asked me to select from the slate of Republican candidates. After answering the single question, it disconnected me. No demographic questions were asked, and no explanation of the poll's sponsor was given even at the end. I checked out my caller-ID, which gave the following phone number: 877-766-7285. That takes callers to the Ron Paul for President Campaign call center. I guess we know what Paul does with the donations he received. It's curious, though, that they'd use this kind of polling. How can they determine the reliability of the data? It seems to me the only use this has is to identify people they can hit up for donations later -- a very expensive way to do it, too. I've heard of robopolling, but this...

Fred Out Of The Debate, Out Of The Race? (UPDATE & BUMP: Yes)

UPDATE & BUMP: Fred is officially out. I just received this from his campaign: Senator Fred Thompson today issued the following statement about his campaign for President: "Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people." It seems like an opportunity lost, but perhaps one that may have been overestimated from the beginning. Original post follows .... ============== Jim Geraghty of National Review's Campaign Spot reports that Fred Thompson will not appear in Thursday's debate in Florida -- and may withdraw altogether. He has no interest in a lesser position in a Republican administration and sounds as if he may head back to Hollywood, and sooner rather than later. Most importantly, he won't issue...

Did Talk Radio Lose In South Carolina?

Michael Medved has a provocative column from this weekend arguing that the biggest loser in South Carolina wasn't Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee. Medved, a Salem Radio talk-show host, says that the conservative endorsement of John McCain repudiated talk-show offensives against his campaign and exposed talk radio as a dying influence on the Right: The big loser in South Carolina was, in fact, talk radio: a medium that has unmistakably collapsed in terms of impact, influence and credibility because of its hysterical and one-dimensional involvement in the GOP nomination fight. For more than a month, the leading conservative talkers in the country have broadcast identical messages in an effort to demonize Mike Huckabee and John McCain. If you’ve tuned in at all to Rush, Sean, Savage, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, and two dozen others you’ve heard a consistent drum beat of hostility toward Mac...

January 23, 2008

Could Saturday Be The End Of The Line For Obama?

David Broder calls South Carolina a must-win for Barack Obama, perhaps the 3,471st time a pundit has designated a state as such for a political candidate this year -- and we're only at January 23rd. Broder argues that after supposedly underperforming in New Hampshire and Nevada, Obama has to win the Palmetto State to maintain credibility. He has it exactly backward: South Carolina has become a must-win state for Barack Obama. Whatever the outcome of Saturday's Democratic presidential primary here, the Illinois senator has the money and the organization to compete in the nearly two dozen states voting on Feb. 5. But as his first and only victory, in Iowa on Jan. 3, slips further into history, his strategists concede that Obama badly needs to demonstrate broad enough support to slow Hillary Clinton's progress toward the nomination. Having trailed her in popular votes in both New Hampshire and Nevada, where...

McCain's Daunting Task With Conservatives

Yesterday, I wrote that John McCain has a legitimate claim to conservatism in a significant part of his legislative history, in response to claims of demonization from Michael Medved against a large portion of the conservative punditry. In another essay, I agreed with EJ Dionne that McCain had to find a way to win conservatives in the upcoming closed primaries without looking like a flip-flopper, but I disagreed that he would have to sell his soul to do so. A change in tone would make up most of the lost ground. Today, two fine bloggers take different looks on this issue. Paul Mirengoff at Power Line writes that ejecting less-than-pure conservatives from the movement is damaging, but isn't convinced that's what happened: Huckabee represents a different case. He did well among the very conservative even though many conservative “leaders” don’t consider him very conservative. This occurred because the very conservative...

The Hot Seat Question For Today: A Third Term For Bill?

It's Andrew Sullivan's turn, but I thought this one was provocative enough to start a great thread here at CapQ. Is Hillary's campaign just a front for a third term for Bill? embedSWF(9, 0, 0, "widget", "recent")This content requires the most recent version of the Adobe Flash Player. Get this version below:Get Flash Also, next week, keep an eye on BlogTalkRadio for more interactive features with the AOL Hot Seat! I'll have more on this later ........

What Would You Want On Day One?

An e-mailer tipped me off to an interesting web launch from the UN Foundation. They have a new project called On Day One, which will solicit suggestions from its readers about what the next President should do on his or her first day in office. Their blog has this YouTube presentation on the launch, which -- if you watch the whole video -- has a rather surprising suggestion: OD1 wants people to submit their video suggestions for the Day 1 policy of the US. So far, most of what's posted consists of the standard progressive policy fare -- stop "cowboy diplomacy" (from Joe Wilson, no less!), withdraw from Iraq, invade Darfur, restore peace in the Middle East -- restore? -- and close Gitmo. Maybe a few conservatives could add our policy goals to the mix. Do you want limited government, a strong national defense, and effective forward strategies against terrorists?...

Another Odd Endorsement

This presidential cycle has seen a series of odd endorsements, such as Pat Robertson's support for Rudy Giuliani or Sam Brownback's endorsement of John McCain. Today brought another, this one from conservative stalwart Duncan Hunter, who recently withdrew from the race. Hunter endorsed Mike Huckabee, who has taken considerable criticism from conservatives on immigration and fiscal policy: California Rep. Duncan Hunter, a former presidential candidate, announced Wednesday he is endorsing Mike Huckabee's White House bid. “I got to know Governor Huckabee well on the campaign trail,” Huckabee said in a statement. “Of the remaining candidates I feel that he is strongly committed to strengthening national defense, constructing the border fence and meeting the challenge of China’s emergence as a military superpower that is taking large portions of America’s industrial base. "Along with these issues of national security, border enforcement and protecting the U.S. industrial base, I see another quality of...

January 24, 2008

Hillary Now Having To Defend Bill

The Hillary Clinton campaign has a serious problem, and it now forces her to spend time on the defensive. People expected Bill Clinton's history to be an issue in a general election, but few would have predicted that Bill's campaigning would present so many obstacles for Hillary in a primary. She had to defend her husband after a dumb remark about a supposed "hit job" from Barack Obama went viral in a CNN video yesterday: Hillary Rodham Clinton, defending her husband's increasingly vocal role in her presidential effort, sidestepped questions about whether Bill Clinton's suggestion that Barack Obama had put a "hit job" on him was language befitting a former president. ... The former president also reacted angrily upon being told that Dick Harpootlian, a former South Carolina Democratic chairman and Obama supporter, had called the Clinton campaign "reprehensible" and suggested it had borrowed tactics from Lee Atwater, the late...

Florida -- And Rudy -- Still In Play

Despite recent reports, Strategic Vision still has the Florida race a four-way contest according to its most recent polling. John McCain leads with 25%, but it's Rudy Giuliani coming in second at 22%, followed by Mitt Romney at 20% and Mike Huckabee close at 18%: Strategic Vision, LLC, an Atlanta-based public relations and public affairs agency, announced the results of a three-day poll of 1450 likely voters in Florida on various political issues. In the poll, 42% (605 respondents) identified themselves as Republicans; 40% (577 respondents) identified themselves as Democrats; and 18% (268 respondents) identified themselves as independents or other party affiliation. The poll has a margin of error of ±3 percentage points. ... The poll asked Republican respondents their choices for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008. The results were, Arizona Senator John McCain 25%; former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani 22%; former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney 20%;...

What Rudy Needs Tonight

Rudy Giuliani needs a breakout performance in tonight's debate to reverse what looks like a precipitous slide into oblivion in the state he deemed crucial to his fortunes. Polls have Rudy anywhere from a statistical tie for the lead to far back in fourth place, but most of the trendlines have gone in the wrong direction. CNN takes the more pessimistic view: Two new polls out Thursday show Giuliani competing for third in Florida -- tied with barely-present Mike Huckabee and behind John McCain and Mitt Romney. Giuliani, who has finished in the single digits in every contest so far, largely skipped the early voting states to focus on Florida and the Super Tuesday states voting on February 5. The former New York mayor once led in Florida and most national polls, but his plummeting numbers are causing some to question his strategy. Giuliani's strategy created a problem that no...

Back To The Mothership?

Dennis Kucinich has acknowledged reality and will withdraw from the presidential race. Unfortunately, he spent so much time on a long-shot bid that he now faces a serious challenger for his day job in Congress: Democrat Dennis Kucinich is abandoning his second, long-shot bid for the White House as he faces a tough fight to hold onto his other job — U.S. congressman. In an interview with Cleveland's Plain Dealer, the six-term House member said he was quitting the race and would make a formal announcement on Friday. "I will be announcing that I'm transiting out of the presidential campaign," Kucinich said. "I'm making that announcement tomorrow about a new direction." Kucinich has received little support in his presidential bid; he got 1 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary and was shut out in the Iowa caucuses. He did have a devoted following. A "devoted following"? That's...

Florida Debate: Romney Scores, Rudy Close Behind

Florida voters got their final head-to-head look at the Republican presidential candidates tonight, and the winner of the debate was Mitt Romney. He looked presidential, poised, and factually prepared. In a debate that spent the first two-thirds with everyone doing well, Romney not only broke out on his own in the last stanza, he successfully parried some strange attacks from Tim Russert as well. Rudy Giuliani needed a big win in this debate and didn't get it. However, he did do a fine job, showing a little more personal engagement in this event. He looked very cool and confident and probably gave the most robust answers to the questions asked. He only had one weak moment, when asked to justify his Florida strategy, but recovered quickly. Unfortunately, he had no game-changing moments, and he sorely needs one. John McCain did a good job as well. He showed flashes of humor...

January 25, 2008

The 'Endorsement'

As if John McCain didn't have enough problems appealing to the Republican base. Last night, as the presidential primary debate in Florida started, the New York Times issued a vicious broadside against the McCain campaign, one that will only estrange him further from the voters he needs the most as he head into a series of closed primaries: Still, there is a choice to be made, and it is an easy one. Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe. With a record of working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation, he would offer a choice to a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field. We have shuddered at Mr. McCain’s occasional, tactical pander to the right because he has demonstrated that he has...

Really Running On Empty

Not too many people have bothered to write much about John Edwards, and for good reason. He has approached irrelevancy almost as rapidly as Dennis Kucinich but with none of the entertainment value. After his predicted high-water mark in Iowa, where he edged Hillary Clinton on the basis of his populism, he has descended into spoiler status. Charles Krauthammer, however, decides to analyze the John Edwards failure in today's Washington Post. One reason Edwards fell apart like a cheap suit springs from his decision to attack the record of a candidate - himself (via Memeorandum): Edwards has made much of his renunciation of his Iraq war vote. But he has not stopped there. His entire campaign has been an orgy of regret and renunciation: As senator, he voted in 2001 for a bankruptcy bill that he now denounces. As senator, he voted for storing nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain....

No Fingerprints?

How did race get injected into the Democratic primaries? John Mercurio says that he knows the perpetrators, even if they left no fingerprints on the scene. The Clintons have manipulated the media into turning Barack Obama's ethnicity into a campaign issue -- a tack Obama wanted to avoid -- while claiming innocence: First, a quick show of hands: How many of you honestly thought we'd make it through this Democratic presidential primary without a bruising debate over race? Whether or not the Clintons were involved, this conversation is hardly shocking. And before it's over, it will likely grow more intense. What is surprising, however, is how skillfully, and with how much brilliant calculation, Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband steered the nomination campaign toward these turbulent waters. She's done nothing but win since this debate began and even if she loses on Saturday in South Carolina, she's framed the campaign...

Did Bush Destroy The Republican Party?

Peggy Noonan aims her considerable cannon at George Bush this morning in the Wall Street Journal in the middle of her analysis of the primaries. She fingers him as the main culprit in the destruction of the Republican Party, discounting other and perhaps better causes and engaging in just a little hyperbole: On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!" This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues. Were...

Questions For Mitt?

Mitt Romney, in some ways, still perplexes Republicans. Normally one would expect to welcome a convert to the pro-life movement, someone who has succeeded in business in a spectacular fashion, and someone who has cleaned up a major public enterprise (the Salt Lake City Olympics) and won executive office in a state controlled by the Democratic Party. For some reason, Republicans seem reluctant to embrace Romney, and the media's apparent obsession with his wealth and his religion have not helped him reach across that divide. I have had the pleasure of interviewing Mitt on two occasions, and tomorrow I will interview him again, three days before the Florida primary that could determine who wins the nomination. Although I already have some questions in mind, I'm interested in what questions the CapQ community still need to have answered, after a long year on the stump. What single question or issue would...

January 26, 2008

Rules? The Clintons Don't Need No Stinkin' Rules!

The Democratic National Committee stripped Michigan and Florida of its delegates for violating scheduling rules for their primaries. It took 365 delegates off the table and forced candidates to stop campaigning in the two vital states. Now one of them -- just coincidentally, the one who somehow forgot to have her name removed from the Michigan ballot -- wants the delegates restored: In a bit of political theater, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Florida Democratic Party clamored to restore convention delegates that had been stripped by the national party. At stake: 185 delegates in a state where Clinton leads almost 2-to-1. The presidential candidate said Friday — just four days before Florida's primary — that she wants the convention delegates from Florida and Michigan reinstated. The national party eliminated all the delegates from those states — more than 350 in all — because they broke party rules against holding...

The Weekend Hot Seat: Can Mitt Make The Conservative Sale?

With Fred Thompson out of the race and the Republican base skeptical at best of John McCain, Mitt Romney has an opportunity to seize an opening and help propel himself forward towards the Republican nomination. Can he make the sale and unite the fractious Republican coalition into a cohesive force in time for the November election? AOL's Hot Seat gives you an opportunity to answer: embedSWF(9, 0, 0, "widget", "recent")This content requires the most recent version of the Adobe Flash Player. Get this version below:Get Flash I based my poll question on this post, asking for feedback for my interview with Mitt Romney this morning. It will air twice: once locally in the Twin Cities on AM 1280 The Patriot, and once again on Monday's Heading Right Radio show on BlogTalkRadio. In the interview, Mitt gives a very nuanced and intriguing formula for effectively remaining on a forward strategy on...

It Wasn't Derangement After All (Update: Trailer Trash?)

Earlier this morning, I noted that some Democrats have discovered that the Clintonian Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy meme may actually have been drizzly pap. In the Los Angeles Times today, Jonathan Chait reluctantly comes to that conclusion. He writes that the conservatives who have long railed against the lies and dirty tactics of the Clintons have been somewhat vindicated by the primary campaign tactics of Bill and Hillary: Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not be a good Democratic nominee. But now that loathing seems a lot less irrational. We're not frothing Clinton haters like ... well, name pretty much any conservative. We just really wish they'd go away. The big turning point seems to be this week, when the Clintons slammed Obama for acknowledging...

Obama Trounces Hillary, Slams Her In Speech

If Hillary had hoped to put a South Carolina loss in a racial-politics box, she may have failed. If she set out to lose South Carolina as badly as possible, she certainly succeeded. Barack Obama garnered well over twice as many votes than Hillary and three times as many as John Edwards in easily beating both. He also derided the attacks coming his way from the Clinton campaign in his victory speech: Barack Obama routed Hillary Rodham Clinton in the racially charged South Carolina primary Saturday night, regaining campaign momentum in the prelude to a Feb. 5 coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 Democratic National Convention delegates. "The choice in this election is not about regions or religions or genders," Obama said at a boisterous victory rally. "It's not about rich versus poor, young versus old and it's not about black versus white. It's about the past versus the future."...

January 27, 2008

The Low Blow

For the most part, the Republican primary campaign has seen tough but honest debate over the issues, as opposed to the racially inflammatory hardball being played between the Democrats. The GOP candidates have done their best to keep negativity to a minimum -- or at least they did until now. John McCain told a Florida crowd that Mitt Romney at one point backed withdrawal from Iraq -- and Romney cried foul, for good reason, according to Time's Swampland: McCain wants the Florida primary to be an election about national security, his best issue. But until Saturday, the contest was humming along as an election more about the economy, Mitt Romney's best issue. So McCain went on the attack Saturday, lashing out at Romney by accusing him of having once wanted to set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq. ''Now, one of my opponents wanted to set a date for...

My Vote

Over a year ago and many times since, I wrote that I could give no endorsement, because I had honestly not made up my mind about which candidate to support. I also told the CapQ community that if I did make a decision, I would announce it as soon as I made it so that they knew where I stood. The deadline for that decision rapidly approaches, since Minnesota caucuses on February 5th, and I have decided to caucus for Mitt Romney. This decision did not come easily. Some have complained about the choices available to the Republicans, but I have seen the field as a collection of highly accomplished, experienced candidates, almost all of whom I could support -- enthusiastically -- in a general election. That made the decision as hard as it was, and it forced me to analyze what I want to see in a nominee. First,...

January 28, 2008

How Do We Solve A Problem Like Bill Clinton?

The Hillary Clinton campaign hasn't set that question to song, not while the Sound of Losing still rings in their ears from their disastrous showing in South Carolina. After losing by more than a 2-1 margin in the bellwether state, the campaign now knows that they cannot afford to have Bill Clinton shooting his mouth off on the national stage. The one man they assumed could be their greatest asset has suddenly become an albatross, and no one knows how to cut it from around their necks (via Real Clear Politics): Democrats inside and outside the Clinton campaign on Sunday debated and in some cases bemoaned the degree to which former President Bill Clinton’s criticism of Senator Barack Obama last week had inflicted lasting damage on his wife’s presidential candidacy. “I think his harsh style hurt Senator Clinton — it polarized the campaign and polarized the electorate, and it also...

Not Endorsed

If anyone wondered whether Rudy Giuliani intended to go quietly into the night, their new ad answers those queries succinctly. While John McCain continues to promote the endorsements he has received from newspapers in Florida and around the nation, Rudy wants to transform those endorsements from assets to liabilities. In his new ad, "Not Endorsed", Rudy proves that he understands the primary voters a little better than McCain: I couldn't help laughing when I saw this. The voice-over tone is dead perfect, and it strikes to the heart of conservative mistrust of McCain. It may be too late to do Giuliani much good, but it's a great reminder of why I liked Rudy as a candidate....

Conservatism On The Sleeve And On The Hoof

John Fund takes a look at the problematic relationship between John McCain and conservatives in his party, and focuses on one of the hot-button issues: judicial nominations. He doesn't give activists much hope on this front, quoting McCain as supportive of John Roberts' nomination but rejecting Samuel Alito as a model for future nominations. Why? Alito didn't hide his conservative nature well enough: Nothing would improve Mr. McCain's standing with conservatives more than a forthright restatement of his previously stated view that "one of our greatest problems in America today is justices that legislate from the bench." Mr. McCain bruised his standing with conservatives on the issue when in 2005 he became a key player in the so-called gang of 14, which derailed an effort to end Democratic filibusters of Bush judicial nominees. More recently, Mr. McCain has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief...

January 29, 2008

Down To The Wire

Today, Floridians go to the polls in the last major contest before over 20 states hold their presidential primaries and caucuses -- and the race appears to be a true dead heat. Real Clear Politics displays seven polls taken within the last three days, and all of them say that Mitt Romney and John McCain have deadlocked. Of course, the nation has seen deadlocks in Florida before, notoriously in 2000, when the national election came down to 600 votes in one of the most populous states. Obviously, every vote always counts, but especially so when the race gets this tight. Several factors could affect the outcome, given the small tolerance for failure. Turnout matters, and the nature of turnout will matter there today. Mitt draws more from conservatives, while McCain draws more from moderates. Which will feel more motivated to get to the polls? Which campaign has the better ground...

Doesn't .... Bother ... Me ... At .... All

King Banaian at SCSU Scholars recommended the following clip to me over the weekend, but I didn't get a chance to see it until this morning. Someone at Slate cleverly took a scene from the biting political satire Election and applied it to this year's Democratic primaries, with devastating -- and trenchant -- results: I don't think that either candidate has the experience or the policies required for the Presidency, but the last couple of weeks have shown that the Clintons don't have the temperament for it, either. This comedic video gets more to the heart of that truth than many an opinion piece....

Should Rudy Pull Out If He Loses Florida?

Rudy Giuliani gambled the entire campaign on the idea that he could wait out the early states and focus on the first major winner-take-all primary in Florida. That gamble plays out today, and most of the polling shows that Rudy won't come close to a victory, meaning he will head into Super Tuesday with almost no delegates at all. He remains confident of victory, but ...: Also campaigning in Florida was Giuliani, who led throughout 2007 but rapidly lost ground once voting began this month. Despite the polls, Giuliani insisted he can come from behind: "This is a place where we have to test ourselves," Giuliani told reporters between campaign appearances. "The winner of Florida will win the nomination; we're going to win Florida." Asked if a loss would end his campaign, Giuliani said: "Wednesday morning, we'll make a decision." Giuliani has said a number of times that he believes...

The Ted Kennedy Kiss Of Death, Er, Endorsement

Ted Kennedy and a significant portion of the Kennedy family have endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. The move comes as a slap at the Clintons, with whom Kennedy had publicly become annoyed over their campaigning in the past few weeks. It also confirms for many that Obama represents the old-school Left rather than the embrace of the center, as Obama has attempted to portray himself in the campaign: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy delivered a highly prized endorsement for Sen. Barack Obama yesterday as well as a pointed rebuttal to the main lines of attack used against him by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, Bill Clinton. In a clear reference to the criticism repeated by the Democratic senator from New York and the former president that Obama (D-Ill.) does not have the experience for the White House, Kennedy -- borrowing one of the Clintons'...

Straight Talk, Or Just Business As Usual?

Fact Check has reviewed the last-minute ads from the John McCain campaign in Florida and doesn't much like what it sees. They call the campaign "misleading" and complain that the ads take other points out of context. Mostly, though, they complain that the ads make opinion sound like fact: On the eve of the crucial Florida GOP primary, John McCain is attacking Mitt Romney with some out-of-context or misleading statements on radio and the Internet: A Web ad says Romney's health care program in Massachusetts is "not very good" and "is failing." But official figures indicate that roughly 200,000 previously uninsured residents have gained health coverage, and those persons might disagree. The ad says the Romney plan is costing $400 million more than expected. That's because more people are benefiting than were expected. A radio ad running in Florida accuses Romney of proposing $20 billion to Detroit "to bail out...

Depends On The Meaning Of The Word 'Pledge'

The New Hampshire Union-Leader has a new term for Granite State voters who gave Hillary Clinton her surprise victory over Barack Obama: suckers. In a scalding editorial, the state's most significant newspaper rips Hillary for breaking a pledge she signed in New Hampshire not to campaign in states that broke the scheduling rules or to seek to have their delegates seated. They bluntly call her a liar: COURTING VOTERS in Iowa and New Hampshire, last August Sen. Hillary Clinton signed a pledge not to "campaign or participate" in the Michigan or Florida Democratic primaries. She participated in both primaries and is campaigning in Florida. Which proves, again, that Hillary Clinton is a liar. Clinton kept her name on the Michigan ballot when others removed theirs, she campaigned this past weekend in Florida, and she is pushing to seat Michigan and Florida delegates at the Democratic National Convention. The party stripped...

Florida Live Blog (Update: McCain Wins)

Some of Florida's polls will begin closing in a few minutes, but don't expect any reports until after all the polls have closed at 8 pm ET. Some exit polling has already gotten published, but nothing conclusive; Jim Geraghty has the data, but it won't provide much clarity. One interesting datapoint: Florida officials apparently believe that one-third of the vote will come from absentee ballots. More coming -- keep checking for updates, which will appear in reverse chronological order... 8:57 and Final - McCain wins an impressive victory. Did Democrats help? No. Despite some speculation that voters would re-register to cast spoiler votes in the Republican primary, Democrats cast 1.4 million votes in their own primary with 76% of precincts reporting. That's about the same as the Republicans. 8:21 - Rudy Giuliani sounds like he's giving a valediction, and he's talking about his honorable opponents. He jokes about Ron Paul...

An Impressive Win

With more than two-thirds of the precincts reporting, John McCain has won an impressive victory in Florida's Republican primary. Many people questioned whether Senator McCain could win a closed GOP contest, as up to now he had won in New Hampshire and South Carolina through the assistance of crossover voting from Democrats and independents. Those questions have now been answered, at least in Florida. What does this mean for the Super Tuesday contests coming up in a week? It appears that the race has narrowed down to McCain and Romney. McCain will enter February 5th with more delegates, but only 10% of what he needs to win the nomination. He will have a great deal of momentum and credibility, and Romney will have relinquished some. Almost certainly, McCain becomes the favorite to win the nomination. However, Romney has a better national organization and more resources to run in 21 states...

January 30, 2008

On Closed Primaries

A number of commenters in my threads from Florida's primary seem confused about what a closed primary means, and what its limits are. Michelle Malkin and Flip Pidot also blogged about this overnight, but miss the point of exit polling showing voter inclinations and not actual registration. Having lived most of my life in closed-primary states, I can tell CapQ readers that the exit polling should surprise no one. Florida's rules on primary voting and registration are clear: Florida is a closed primary election state. That means, only voters who are registered members of the two major political parties (Democrats and Republicans) may vote in a primary election for partisan candidates. Registered minor political party voters and voters who register without a party affiliation are not eligible to voter for major party candidates in a primary election. However, if all candidates for an office in an election have the same...

Why Is Obama Popular With 527s?

He says he doesn't like them, and he says he doesn't need them. In fact, Barack Obama regularly criticizes the operations and the influence of 527s, scolding John Edwards and Hillary Clinton for their attraction to the outside political groups. But as the New York Times points out, Obama has become attractive to them as well, and benefits significantly from their assistance: After months of denouncing the influence of special-interest money in politics, Senator Barack Obama is nonetheless entering a critical phase of the presidential campaign benefiting from millions of dollars being spent outside campaign finance rules. Mr. Obama has repudiated a California group, Vote Hope, that is working on his behalf. But it has pressed on and, along with a sister organization called PowerPac.org, is planning to spend up to $4 million promoting him in California and conducting voter registration drives aimed at blacks in 11 Southern states. The...

Obama To Dems: Tear Down This Firewall!

Barack Obama got in some hot water in Nevada for making a mildly positive reference to Ronald Reagan, but he wants to win the nomination in part by emulating one of Reagan's most well-known feats. Rather than publicly demand the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, though, Obama has set himself the task of tearing down Hillary Clinton's last and most significant firewall -- the superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention: Bill Richardson's phone has been ringing off the hook. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called Sunday night, followed by her husband, and then Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Clinton backer. Sen. Barack Obama called twice Monday morning. Monday afternoon, Richardson spent 15 minutes on the phone with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. But the New Mexico governor, who dropped out of the presidential race after a dismal finish in the New Hampshire primary, is torn. "I have a history with the...

Edwards Quits -- One Woman Hardest Hit

Barack Obama may have received his biggest pre-Super Tuesday boost, but it didn't come from an endorsement. John Edwards has decided to quit the presidential race today, ending his second populist bid in as many cycles. The removal of Edwards from the February 5th contests gives Democrats a chance to coalesce any anti-Hillary Clinton sentiment behind a single candidate: Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies, The Associated Press has learned. The two-time White House candidate notified a close circle of senior advisers that he planned to make the announcement at a 1 p.m. EST event in New Orleans that had been billed as a speech on poverty, according to two aides. The decision came after Edwards lost the four states to hold nominating contests...

The End Of 9/11 Political Reporting, Perhaps

The Politico's Ben Smith and David Paul Kuhn attempt the first major media post-mortem of the Rudy Giuliani campaign, and wind up revealing more about the media than the campaign. They claim the loss demonstrates the end of 9/11 politics, but that analysis misses a lot about what went right in the Giuliani campaign. It misses because the media never bothered to report anything beyond the superficial for more than a year: Rudy Giuliani's distant third-place finish in Florida may put an end to his bid for president, and it seems also to mark the beginning of the end of a period in Republican politics that began on Sept. 11, 2001. Giuliani's national celebrity was based on his steady, comforting appearance in Americans' living rooms amid the terrorist attacks, and his campaign for president never found a message beyond that moment. The emotional connection he forged that day, it seems,...

What Romney Has To Do At Tonight's Debate

In the wake of the loss in Florida yesterday, Mitt Romney needs to focus on tonight's debate to break out as the conservative choice for the nomination. John McCain has taken leads in significant Super Tuesday states, and tonight will be the last national audience for all of the remaining candidates before 21 states go to the polls or the caucuses. Romney has to ignite conservatives and make this a binary race across a clear ideological line. Some feel that the moment has already passed. Writers at The Corner and Dick Morris have resigned themselves to a Romney loss before more than 10% of the necessary delegates have been won. Others, like my friend and indefatigable Romney supporter Hugh Hewitt, argue that the numbers show that no one can win next week. The truth lies in between, as Hugh has the numbers correct but avoids acknowledging the role momentum plays....

Rasmussen: McCain Ascendant

In what looks to be a bona fide movement behind the campaign, John McCain has not just become the Republican frontrunner but the national leader in the presidential sweepstakes. In a poll taken before his Florida victory, Rasmussen has McCain leading Hillary Clinton by eight points and Barack Obama by six. It caps an improbable comeback by a man whom the media laughed off as dead in the water six months ago: The latest Rasmussen Reports survey of Election 2008 shows Republican frontrunner Senator John McCain with single-digit leads over Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. McCain now leads Clinton 48% to 40%. He leads Barack Obama 47% to 41%. In a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted mid-January, McCain was two points behind Clinton, five behind Obama. A couple days later McCain won the South Carolina primary. McCain has led Clinton in four of the last five polling match-ups conducted...

Gallup: Democratic Race Tightens

A new Gallup poll shows Hillary Clinton has lost most of her once-dominant national lead over Barack Obama, just as the race turns towards a clarifying Super Tuesday primary date. She has tumbled six points in nine days, while Obama has gained eight in the same period. With John Edwards exiting the race, Obama has momentum and seems poised to pick up more steam (via Memeorandum): Barack Obama has now cut the gap with Hillary Clinton to 6 percentage points among Democrats nationally in the Gallup Poll Daily tracking three-day average, and interviewing conducted Tuesday night shows the gap between the two candidates is within a few points. Obama's position has been strengthening on a day-by-day basis. As recently as Jan. 18-20, Clinton led Obama by 20 points. Today's Gallup Poll Daily tracking is based on interviews conducted Jan. 27-29, all after Obama's overwhelming victory in South Carolina on Saturday....

GOP Debate: Live Blog And Wrap-Up Show (Update: Romney Wins)

UPDATE: I'm not going to put this in a separate post, for a reason I'll explain in a moment. Mitt Romney won this debate. He looked crisp, sharp, had facts at his command, and exuded confidence. McCain not only looked old and tired, constantly leaning on his arms and speaking in a monotone, he made a very poor showing in trying to falsely stretch a Romney quote from April into an endorsement of a withdrawal. That's not only ridiculous, it's blatantly a smear. As I pointed out earlier, John McCain in January 2007 actually did talk about ending the mission if surge milestones didn't get met by the Iraqi government, making this a pretty dumb choice for a line in the sand. And even Anderson Cooper had to talk over John McCain to tell him he got it wrong. I liked the format. Anderson Cooper did better here than he...

January 31, 2008

Patriotism. Not Profit?

One final thought regarding last night's debate keeps reverberating, and that comes from the repeated assertion from John McCain that he led for patriotism, not for profit. No one can doubt that this is true, and no one can doubt John McCain's patriotism and sacrifice for this country. He has also, in the Senate, been a leader on national issues far more than others like John Kerry, for instance; he takes very public stands on issues and drives major legislation. Regardless of what people think of those positions, he has never let an overwhelming desire to safeguard his political career guide his decisions, and Iraq may be the best example for conservatives. However, this line -- and McCain's dismissive attitude towards the business class in last night's debates as a collection of managers -- signals a massively tin ear, especially among Republicans. Leading for patriotism is a wonderful motive. However,...

Will Hillary's Wal-Mart Experience Trip Her Up?

Of all the arguments against Hillary Clinton's nomination, her tenure on the board of Wal-Mart may be the most ironically damaging. Democrats survive on the money that labor unions generate, and they have a passionate hatred for the nation's largest retailer, which has successfully kept unions from organizing their workers. John Edwards and Barack Obama have repeatedly demonized Wal-Mart, even though most analysts agree that its low prices and job opportunities represent a net benefit to lower-income communities. Hillary has attempted to parry criticism of her Wal-Mart connection by claiming that she did what she could to press for positive change while on the board. ABC News has reviewed hours of stockholder meeting videotapes and finds no evidence that she ever pushed Wal-Mart to be more union friendly: In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the...

Novak Corroborates Fund On Alito Comments

Last week, John Fund took some heat over his reporting, based on multiple sources, that John McCain said he might not be inclined to nominate another Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, because he wore his conservatism on his sleeve. That created a stir and a puzzled rebuttal from the McCain camp, which noted that he had supported the actual Alito nomination. They didn't deny that McCain made the remark, but noted that Fund couldn't give a specific time and place for it and doubted it had been said at all. Today, Robert Novak corroborates Fund and places the remark and its timing: I found what McCain could not remember: a private, informal chat with conservative Republican lawyers shortly after he announced his candidacy in April 2007. I talked to two lawyers who were present whom I have known for years and who have never misled me. One is neutral...

NBC Called This One Wrong

In the aftermath of last night's debate, NBC reported that the Mitt Romney campaign would not buy ads in the upcoming Super Tuesday states. Many of us puzzled over that news, and this morning all references to it seemingly disappeared. A report from the AP may explain why: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney plans to run a "significant" level of television ads in California and other states that vote Tuesday in essentially a national primary, aides said Thursday, signaling a willingness to aggressively try to derail Republican front-runner John McCain. Since his defeat in Florida Tuesday, the former Massachusetts governor has been debating over just how much of an effort to make in which of the 21 states that hold primaries and caucuses Tuesday. Romney has tried to cast himself as more conservative than McCain. It made no sense for Romney to pull back now. He has one serious advantage...

The Award For The Most Liberal Senator Goes To ....

National Journal annually ranks Senators and Representatives for their liberal and conservative track records for the previous year. The non-partisan publication's credibility allows these rankings to carry considerable weight. This year, their choice may land them in the middle of a presidential election: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal's 27th annual vote ratings. The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the 16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., the other front-runner in the Democratic presidential race, also shifted to the left last year. She ranked as the 16th-most-liberal senator in the 2007 ratings, a computer-assisted analysis that used 99 key Senate votes, selected by NJ reporters and editors, to place every senator on a liberal-to-conservative scale in each of...

Dumb Attack-McCain Meme. Part 1. Hopefully, Part Last.

Blogging from the road as the First Mate has a regularly-scheduled visit to the doctor today for some orthopedic evaluation. I've been catching up on e-mail while we wait (and wait and wait and wait), and I'm seeing hints of a really dumb and certainly slanderous attack on John McCain. People know that I support Mitt Romney and have policy disagreements with Senator McCain, but that's all they are -- and this is particularly vicious. The rumor mill tells e-mail recipients that McCain lost four or five airplanes as a naval aviator. One incident, though, doesn't even involve McCain except as a victim of someone else's error, and the rest of them don't provide any context at all. Why is this important? Are we electing an Aviator in Chief or a President? I'd like to remind people of a few truths: 1. McCain put his life on the line as...

The Answer On Judges?

Over the last few days, John McCain has taken some hits on remarks he made last year about judicial nominations, specifically that he might not have chosen to nominate Samuel Alito for his overt conservatism. While this got overblown -- McCain supported Alito and said he'd have nominated John Roberts -- conservatives wondered whether McCain would fight for conservative jurists or sacrifice constructionists for comity with the Senate. Now, McCain may have an answer for the question: Ted Olson, fomer U.S. Solicitor General and conservative legal icon, has just informed me that he is endorsing John McCain. The assurance conservatives take from this endorsement will depend on the level of involvement Olson takes with McCain's effort. When Rudy Giuliani needed to convince conservatives that his pro-choice politics would not impact his determination to appoint constructionists to the bench, he turned to his old friend and conservative stalwart Ted Olson to...

A Couple Of Romney Endorsements

Mitt Romney scored a major conservative endorsement from Sean Hannity earlier today, The radio and television commentator, whose shows reach millions, stated that he would vote for Romney as the race settles down to the former Massachusetts governor and Senator John McCain. Listen to the brief audio from his radio broadcast earlier today: Over the next few days, we will see sides get chosen amongst high-profile Republicans as the primary moves through its inevitable binary stage. McCain has Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Romney has Hannity. Which can deliver more Republicans and more conservatives? Arnold will have a big impact on California, but Hannity will have a more national impact. Whether either of them can convince people who are either inclined to vote for the other candidate to switch, or whether they're singing to their repective choirs, remains to be seen. Most of the appeals will come on a more personal basis....

February 1, 2008

Self-Funding In An Age Of BCRA

Late last night, Mitt Romney's campaign released its fourth-quarter funding figures, and as everyone expected, Romney significantly self-funded. He raised $9 million, which stacks up well against the other Republicans, but added twice as much into the kitty from his own pocket. The Politico wonders how much he's self-funding in January: Mitt Romney contributed $18 million of his own money to his campaign in the fourth quarter, more than he had put in the first three quarters combined. Romney also raised $9 million during the quarter and wound up with $2.43 million on hand. ... What is unknown is just how much Romney put in and spent during the month of January. Given the campaign's heavy TV spending, his total personal contribution is likely now at $40 million or above. John McCain raised $6.8 million for the quarter and was left with 2.9 million on hand at the end of...

The McCain Disconnects

Matt Welch of Reason notices a strange phenomenon in primary voting this year, one that seems highly counterintuitive. I had noticed this in New Hampshire as well, and the trend has continued. John McCain, despite his championing of the Iraq war, continues to draw pluralities in self-professed anti-war voters: It's no mystery why independents gravitate toward McCain. He's a country-first, party-second kind of guy who speaks bluntly and delights in poking fellow Republicans in the eye on issues such as campaign finance reform and global warming. But there's a bizarre disconnect in the warm embrace between McCain and the electorate's mavericks. They hate the Iraq war, while he's willing to fight it for another century. The most pro-war presidential candidate in a decade is winning the 2008 GOP nomination thanks to the antiwar vote. A full 66% of independents think that the U.S. should completely withdraw from Iraq no later...

Mitt Romney Conference Call

This morning, Mitt Romney held a New Media conference call to discuss the state of the race and his strategy for the Super Tuesday primaries. This is the first one of these I recall from the Romney campaign, and I hope that it won't be the last. Romney started off by saying that "it's fun to watch the Democratic race," noting that the national media hasn't called it a done deal despite having one candidate who won twice as many as the other. He and McCain have essentially tied for states, and yet the media has tried to call the GOP contest a done deal. He also mentioned the "false claim" that he had supported a troop withdrawal from Iraq. Romney also sees Mike Huckabee as drawing some votes away from Romney. Romney cast the election, in part, as a struggle for the Republican soul. He drew a comparison to...

Has Ann Coulter Finally Jumped The Shark?

She did for me last year at CPAC, of course, when she derided John Edwards as a "faggot". At the time, a number of conservative bloggers wrote that she had embarrassed the movement and owed Edwards an apology, which she refused to offer. This year, the ACU has opted not to have her as a featured speaker, although I understand she will appear at an ancillary event at CPAC. Of course, she can then explain why she will campaign for Hillary Clinton if John McCain wins the Republican nomination: So let's walk through the logic here. John McCain gets castigated by Coulter because he aligns himself too often with the Democrats. Her solution to that is --- to campaign for the Democrats? Maybe someone can explain the thought process to me, but it sounds like a hysterical demand for extortion rather than a considered and thoughtful political position. I'm supporting...

February 2, 2008

The Showdown On The Right

Do not forsake me, oh my darlin' ... February 5th has started looking less like a Super Tuesday and more like High Noon. John McCain continues to roll up endorsements from Republican Party establishment figures such as Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Crist, and newspapers like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has conservative talk radio lining up behind him, including explicit endorsements from Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt, and the benefit of an anti-endorsement of McCain (and Huckabee) from the most influential of them all, Rush Limbaugh. The stage is set for a showdown within the GOP, but could both men be Gary Cooper? The Los Angeles Times endorsement doesn't exactly ring with delight over McCain: At a different moment in American history, we would hesitate to support a candidate for president whose social views so substantially departed from those we hold....

McCain Sits Pretty

In politics, anything can happen, and 72 hours can become an eternity. However, barring a major meltdown, it looks like John McCain has strong leads in most Super Tuesday states. Few offer the prospect of wins for Mitt Romney, and right now he has to hope that McCain fails to gain enough delegates to make the rest of the primary schedule a formality. Real Clear Politics has the latest polling data for each of the contests, and the numbers look bleak for Romney. Mitt leads handily in Massachusetts, for instance, and will take a majority of its 42 delegates. He'll get all of Utah's 36 delegates in that winner-take-all state. He should get a third or so at least of California's delegation, around 60. Missouri is close, according to Rasmussen, and so is Tennessee. If Mitt gets the breaks in both states, he could have around 200 more delegates by...

Do Blogs Matter In Presidential Politics?

Ron Klain wonders what happens when bloggers speak truth without power in his New York Times blogpost. Klain focuses on the Democratic race, where blogger favorites Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, and Chris Dodd (whom he doesn't mention) all sank without much of a fight: The ultimate measure of this shift of influence [towards the blogs] came this summer, when virtually every Democratic candidate for president attended the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, and skipped the annual convention of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in Nashville. But notwithstanding this stunning success, this week’s withdrawal by John Edwards, coming a week after the departure of Dennis Kucinich, means that both of the preferred presidential candidates of the liberal blogosphere are now out of the race. Instead, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the two candidates who have drawn some of the sharpest criticism on progressive blogs, are the only ones who will make it...

The Olson Of Economic Endorsements?

When Rudy Giuliani left the race and threw his support behind John McCain, people wondered whether it would have much effect on the race. After all, the Mayor had faded badly in the Republican primaries after utilizing a strategy that made him largely irrelevant in the national media. However, Rudy brought two other endorsements that could help build bridges with disaffected conservatives if McCain wins the nomination. First came Ted Olson to provide reassurance on judicial nominations, and today Steve Forbes endorsed McCain, perhaps addressing his self-professed weakness on economics: U.S. Senator John McCain's presidential campaign today announced that Steve Forbes has endorsed John McCain for president. "More and more Americans will be impressed by John McCain's efforts to reform our convoluted, growth retarding, anti-opportunity tax code." said Mr. Forbes. "He understands that dollars and decisions are best left to hard-working Americans. John McCain's pro-growth plan to cut taxes, stop...

Ominous Portents In Identity Politics For Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton's campaign has fostered an eruption of identity politics in the primaries. Some question whether the strategy was intentional, but the immediate impact could be seen in Nevada and South Carolina. Black voters lined up overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, while Hillary gained women and Hispanics, and many saw the seeds of a Hillary victory through Obama's marginalization. The ground may have shifted today with an endorsement from the country's most influential Spanish-language newspaper, California's La Opinion. Questioning Hillary's character over her flip-flops on drivers licenses for illegal aliens, the paper backs Barack Obama: [W]e were disappointed with her calculated opposition to driver’s licenses for the undocumented, which contrasts markedly from the forceful argument in support made by Obama. We understand that this is an extremely controversial issue but we believe there is only one right position and it is that of the senator from Illinois. And, while both senators...

Romney Rising?

Amidst all of the stormy polling clouds, a little ray of sunshine has broken over the Romney campaign. Rasmussen shows Romney slowly climbing into a tie nationwide with John McCain in its daily tracking poll. It also shows John McCain gaining strength at the same time: In the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination, it’s John McCain at 30%, Mitt Romney at 30%, and Mike Huckabee at 21%. Ron Paul is supported by 5% of Likely Republican Primary Voters (see recent daily numbers). Romney leads by sixteen percentage points among conservatives while McCain has a two-to-one advantage among moderate Primary Voters. Today is the first day of daily tracking for the general election. McCain leads Clinton 47% to 41%. A week ago McCain had an eight point advantage. New match-ups will be added in the coming days. It seems odd, but for this week we're back to national polling. Too...

Romney Wins The Maine Caucus

Mitt Romney got a good jump on Super Tuesday tonight in Maine, where he won the state Republican caucus by a wide margin over John McCain. With two-thirds of precincts reporting, Romney won over half of the vote in a state known more for its independent streak: Mitt Romney won the presidential preference voting among Maine Republicans on Saturday in the party's municipal caucuses, which were heavily attended across the state. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, had a little over half of the vote with about two-thirds of the towns holding caucuses reporting. John McCain worked to keep his vote above 20 percent, trailed by Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. The nonbinding votes, the first step toward electing 18 Maine delegates to the Republican National Convention, were taking place in public schools, Grange halls, fire stations and town halls across the state. The win comes at a moment when Romney...

February 4, 2008

Super Tuesday Polling: Mittmentum?

Rasmussen and Real Clear Politics have done their best to keep up with the Super Tuesday primaries across over 20 states, and the polling seems to show a slight shift in momentum for Mitt Romney, at least in California. Mitt has pulled into a tie with John McCain, whose support among moderates made this a more likely win for the Arizona Senator: In California, Republican Primary Voters are evenly divided between John McCain and Mitt Romney. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds McCain attracting 38% of the vote and Romney earning an identical 38%. Mike Huckabee is a distant third at 10%, Ron Paul picks up 6%, and 6% say they’ll vote for some other candidate. Earlier in the week, McCain had a small advantage over Romney. Since then, Giuliani dropped out of the race and endorsed McCain. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger also endorsed the GOP frontrunner. While those...

Jeff Jacoby Plays Name That Conservative

With Super Tuesday less than 24 hours away, expect a great deal of hyperbole and alarmism from secondaries and surrogates in both parties and for all four major frontrunners. The press of over 20 states all conducting their contests simultaneously has increased the pressure for people to make their messages heard over the din, and it has already caused more than a few of them to lose all sense of perspective. Jeff Jacoby brings us back to earth with a simple game of Name That Conservative: Conservatives bristle at the thought of a Republican president who might raise income and payroll taxes. Or enlarge the federal government instead of shrinking it. Or appoint Supreme Court justices who are anything but strict constructionists. Or grant a blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. Now, I don't believe that a President McCain would do any of those things. But President Reagan did...

Family Feuds On The Left

Apparently, the pressure of the Democratic primary has begun to fracture families on the Left -- at least the political families. The Kennedys have made headlines with their competing endorsements of Hillary Clinton, but at least they're still speaking to each other. The Sanchez sisters in Congress have turned the primary into a real family feud (via Michelle Malkin and Memeorandum): Take the Sanchez sisters, whose dispute has the contours of a classic big sister-little sister fight. It started with a pact: Though both are California Democrats, neither would endorse a presidential primary candidate. But last month, after listening to her older sister praise Mrs. Clinton to a colleague, Linda T. Sanchez, 39, realized that she fervently disagreed. Swept up in excitement, she endorsed Mr. Obama — without calling her sister, who found out through aides. Hours later, Loretta Sanchez, 48, issued her own opposing endorsement. For weeks afterward the...

Is Obama Heading For A Super Tuesday Triumph?

According to Reuters, the night might belong to Barack Obama tomorrow after polls in several states now show him pulling ahead of Hillary Clinton. All Democratic contests award delegates on a proportional basis, making a decisive victory very unlikely, but a strong showing could shift momentum so significantly that Hillary may not be able to recover: Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama opened narrow leads on Hillary Clinton in California and Missouri one day before crucial "Super Tuesday" nominating contests in 24 states, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Monday. ... Obama and Clinton were deadlocked in New Jersey, and Obama enjoyed a double-digit advantage over Clinton in Georgia in two other Democratic contests on the biggest single day of voting ever in a U.S. presidential nominating campaign. Obama, an Illinois senator, and Clinton, a New York senator, have waged a bitter duel for the Democratic presidential nomination, competing for...

Fox Doublecrosses Hillary, McCain

Yesterday morning, I watched with some disbelief as Fox News Sunday managed to get John McCain and Hillary Clinton together for a brief three-way chat with Chris Wallace. Nothing much occurred, but I wondered what would have made either candidate agree to a cheery bit of Senatorial comity 48 hours before the Super Tuesday primaries. According to Howard Kurtz, they didn't: Advisers to Hillary Clinton and John McCain felt misled yesterday when "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace prodded the candidates into talking to each other after they had agreed to be interviewed separately. While McCain was being interviewed in Washington, Clinton aides grew suspicious when producers asked her to remain in the interview chair in St. Louis for 15 minutes--ostensibly so she could hear his comments--and refused to turn off her mike so she could have a private conversation. That enabled Wallace to tell McCain he was about to...

It Will All Begin In Tears

A make-or-break primary date looms within hours, and once again the focus falls on whether Hillary Clinton can blunt the momentum of the political neophyte Barack Obama. What can she do? She can fall back on the strategy that helped her to a surprise win New Hampshire by getting misty (via The Anchoress): Sen. Hillary Clinton teared up this morning at an event at the Yale Child Study Center, where she worked while in law school in the early 1970s. Penn Rhodeen, who was introducing Clinton, began to choke up, leading Clinton's eyes to fill with tears, which she wiped out of her left eye. At the time, Rhodeen was saying how proud he was that sheepskin-coat, bell-bottom-wearing young woman he met in 1972 was now running for president. "Well, I said I would not tear up; already we're not exactly on the path," Clinton said with emotion after the...

Vigurie: Let's Make A Brokered Deal

Richard Vigurie, of all people, now wants a brokered convention. He spent most of the primary campaign flooding e-mail inboxes with missives supporting Ron Paul and complaining about the supposed media conspiracy that kept him from gaining enough support to win the nomination. Now he admits that Paul never had a prayer of getting nominated, but wants to encourage a brokered convention to find someone other than the current contenders: The discombobulated state of the Republican presidential campaign means that it is still possible for someone to jump into the race. Such a candidate could serve as a kingmaker at the Republican convention in September, or even – yes, it’s possible – could become the party’s nominee. First, let's just address the obvious: it isn't possible. Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson both proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Anyone jumping into the race now would not only have...

February 5, 2008

Dumb Attack-McCain Meme. Part 2, As If We Needed Another

On my Saturday afternoon NARN radio show with Mitch Berg here in the Twin Cities, we discussed the upcoming Super Tuesday contest and took some calls. Most of the callers gave us rational support for their decision to back Mitt Romney or John McCain, but one in particular stood out for its weirdness. As near as Mitch and I could tell, the caller postulated that McCain had been brainwashed and turned by the Communists as a POW and was now a Manchurian Candidate -- which surpassed even the strangest arguments I'd heard about the Clintons at the peak of CDS. Both of us wondered in which paranoid delusional corner that particular notion arose. Lo and behold, we got an answer today. Dr. Jack Wheeler apparently began spreading this particular rumor just after the Florida primary, and it gets nasty: Others relate times when McCain screamed four-letter obscenities right in their...

Three-Term Bill?

Eugene Robinson once again takes a close look at the Clinton Restoration, and again decides that he can't abide it. The Washington Post columnist wonders exactly how Hillary can argue that her experience as First Lady somehow included actual governance, and then in the same breath insist that Bill will have nothing to do with running the country as First Spouse: There's no way that Hillary Clinton would go to the considerable trouble of running for president in order to let her husband make the decisions, as if the Clinton marriage were out of a 1950s sitcom. Hillary has her people -- longtime friends, supporters, aides -- just as Bill has his. If she made it to the White House, her people would be the ones with real power; if his people didn't like it, there wouldn't be much they could do but grumble. But Hillary Clinton opens the door...

The Polls Are Open ...

Around the country, or at least in 24 states, the polls have opened on the largest primary date in American history. Both parties send two viable candidates to the polls, and the GOP arguably three, as almost half the country tries to pick the eventual nominee. And thanks to the structure of the Republican primaries, one candidate could score a knockout punch: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made a raspy appeal for support yesterday in her race against Sen. Barack Obama, even as her aides warned that the Democratic presidential contest will probably drag on for months after today's Super Tuesday voting. Republican Mitt Romney, meanwhile, predicted he would "surprise" those who were expecting Sen. John McCain to be anointed as the GOP nominee in the busiest single day of primaries and caucuses in presidential nominating history. "I am definitely the underdog," Romney declared during a final day of furious campaigning...

My Vote, Reposted

Given the importance of Super Tuesday, I'm reposting a portion of my endorsement of Mitt Romney for CapQ readers. First, I want to have someone who supports conservative values. In this, we have no perfect candidates. Fred Thompson came closest, but he quit, and I'm not going to cast my vote for someone who has already dropped out. Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain all have some claim to a portion of the conservative mandate based on their accomplishments. Of the four, I trust Romney and Giuliani most to continue supporting conservative principles in the face of opposition -- and in fact I'd probably trust Giuliani a little more. Second, and very importantly, the Republican should have demonstrated success in executive management in both private and public sectors. This eliminates everyone except Romney and Rudy. John McCain wants to make the case that his experience as squadron leader...

Playing Hardball In West Virginia

Almost heaven ... West Virginia ... Mike Huckabee took the West Virginia state convention and the state's 18 delegates as John McCain's team threw him their support to defeat Mitt Romney. The state allocates delegates on a winner-take-all basis, and the late action by McCain's delegates keeps Romney from winning any of them. It closes out one of the states in which Romney could use to keep pace, but the move has some Republicans seeing a different kind of red: Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee won 18 delegates here Tuesday as backers of rival John McCain threw him their support to prevent Mitt Romney from capturing the winner-take-all GOP state convention vote. In first contest decided on Super Tuesday, Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, bested Romney on the second ballot with 51.5 percent of the 1,133 delegates attending the state GOP's first-ever presidential nominating convention. Romney was backed by 47.4...

The F7 Pledge

Patrick Ruffini could be the most tireless conservative organizer in the on-line community. He is also one of the nicest people in politics. As such, I'd be remiss not to highlight his latest effort -- to generate donations for the eventual Republican presidential nominee, whether John McCain or Mitt Romney or even Mike Huckabee takes it. Patrick is looking towards the future now. Will he have many ready to follow his lead? Perhaps not until the dust and the hard feelings of the primaries subside a bit, but eventually I think most will. I'm not sure I'm ready to hit the tipjar on February 7th, but I'm going to back the GOP nominee....

The Coming Meltdown For The Democrats

Early in the race, Republicans appeared headed to a brokered convention. GOP primary voters couldn't decide on a front-runner, and it looked like three or even four candidates could make it to the national convention with significant numbers of delegates, touching off a floor fight. It would have been 1976 all over again -- the convention that nominated Gerald Ford and left the Republicans flat. Now, however, it's the Democrats who appear to be headed to a 1976 scenario instead. Chris Bowers at Open Left describes the problem accurately: The polling picture for Super Tuesday is starting to fill out now. With only 34 hours until polls close in California, it appears virtually certain that we will have a split decision in terms of delegates. Currently, by multiplying the average polling margin by the number of delegates in each state, I arrive at an estimate of Clinton 889 delegates, Obama...

Caucus Live Blog

This turned into a more complicated evening than I first thought. The initial clue was when it took me five minutes to find a parking space. The turnout for the Republican caucus is so large, we had to park illegally in order to get into the event. Hundreds of cars had already filled the lot, and it looked like hundreds more were waiting to come into the lot. Our district had the honor of Governor Tim Pawlenty's presence. He gave a good speech to start the event, which was already in progress when we got to the gymnasium at the middle school where the caucus is being held. He cautioned everyone to give the representatives of the various candidates a fair hearing, warning that Minnesota Republicans "can't afford to throw anyone overboard ... It's not exactly a hotbed of Republicanism." You could have fooled me with the turnout. Reverse chronological...

Super Tuesday Live Blog

I've just returned from participating in our state Republican caucus, and now it's time to take a look at the results from the rest of the country. It's a good night thus far for John McCain, but Romney's won his share of delegates, too. Mike Huckabee has swept the South, it appears, and we will start seeing California results in the next few minutes. For the Democrats, it looks as though Hillary and Obama are splitting states, but Obama's winning big where he wins at all. Hillary's wins tend to be smaller. With all of the Democratic states proportionally allocating their delegates, can Obama edge Hillary for the night? Reverse chronological live-blogging below .... 11:40 - Most of the results are in now. McCain had a very good but not great night, as did Mike Huckabee, who beat expectations. Mitt Romney won a number of smaller state contests. McCain will...

February 6, 2008

Super Tuesday Results: Democrats

The Democratic primary race took an interesting twist last night. Hillary Clinton went into the massive Super Tuesday contest with twice as many wins as Barack Obama and a significant lead in pledged delegates, both normal and superdelegates. She came out of Super Tuesday in almost a dead heat among normal delegates, and losing more contests than she won -- but still technically leading the race. The Politico claims that the big-state wins gave Hillary an edge, but it ignores the structure of Democratic primaries: The clarity Democrats so desperately sought escaped them on Super Tuesday, as both candidates found cause to claim victory even as one of them cemented her front-runner status. By winning critical contested strongholds in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and – most important — California, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York showed big-state muscle and remained the putative leader. Decisive red-state victories in Oklahoma and Tennessee...

Super Tuesday Results: Republicans

John McCain dominated the Super Tuesday primaries across the nation, winning in almost every region except the South, where Mike Huckabee showed surprising resilience. Mitt Romney held onto second place in the delegate totals but fell far back, with McCain leading more than 2-1 with half of the country decided. It may not have been a knockout punch, but the combination of McCain and Huckabee gave Romney a body blow last night. McCain won nine states, including all of the major winner-take-all contests: John McCain rolled to victory in big-state primaries across the nation Tuesday, but rivals Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney notched enough wins to keep the race for the Republican nomination alive. McCain won primaries in California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Missouri, Delaware, Illinois, Oklahoma and Arizona, his home state. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who has appealed above all to white evangelicals, beat expectations across a...

Democrats' Identity Politics Getting More Sharply Defined

Exit polling for Super Tuesday contests show a growing trend towards division by ethnicity among Democrats. With the race as tight as it is, the identity politics that the party has fostered over the years has now become one of the points of division. If the primaries continue to deliver mixed results, this could provide some fireworks: Yesterday's primary voting laid bare a profound racial and ethnic divide among Democratic voters, with African Americans overwhelmingly preferring Sen. Barack Obama and Latinos largely favoring Sen. Hillary Clinton. The results of preliminary exit polls in nine key states indicate that Obama attracted the support of two-thirds to nine-tenths of black voters, except in Clinton's home state of New York. That pattern suggests that the first-term Illinois senator's strong appeal among African Americans -- first on display in the South Carolina primary last month -- is more widespread. It also means that Clinton...

CPAC Looms Larger Than Ever

With John McCain rolling up some large delegate totals, his upcoming visit to CPAC tomorrow will be a critical point in his campaign. He has to find a way to work with the conservative activists that could help propel him to victory, and to do that he has to assure them of his own credentials as a conservative. Mark Tapscott has a suggestion for McCain's opening bid in his speech tomorrow: 1. McCain-Coburn: Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma may be the most credible politician in the GOP, thanks to his no-nonsense, bluntly honest approach to earmarks and federal spending. Coburn is already a McCain supporter. Reagan announced Schweicker ahead of the 76 GOP convention. McCain can put Coburn on the ticket and make him the McCain administration's tax and budget czar. 2. Reform McCain-Feingold: McCain should admit the First Amendment says Congress shall make NO law regarding freedom of political...

February 7, 2008

A Harbinger?

Critics of John McCain complain that the Republican frontrunner for the presidential nomination attacks his friends with more vigor than his opponents. It certainly seems that way at times, especially during the debates over immigration and the BCRA. However, McCain has gone after Democrats with only the thinnest veneer of comity in the recent past -- and especially after one in particular, as CapQ reader Stefan Claypool reminds. In fact, two years ago yesterday, McCain wrote an open letter to Barack Obama regarding his participation in McCain's lobbying-reform efforts. Obama had publicly and privately assured McCain of support, but then Obama abruptly withdrew from the discussions. An incensed McCain fired this shot across the freshman's bow: I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached...

Is This What Burkle Bought?

In the beginning, everyone assumed that the Clinton machine would dominate fundraising in the Democratic primary. Although it raised prodigious sums of money, Barack Obama managed to keep pace all through 2007. Now, as Obama has also kept pace with Hillary in delegate counts, the Clinton machine appears to have begun running dry: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced yesterday that she had lent her campaign $5 million, a remarkable twist for a candidate who raised more than $100 million last year that came as she and Sen. Barack Obama continued to spar over which of them was the Democratic winner in coast-to-coast Super Tuesday balloting. ... At her campaign headquarters in Arlington, Clinton defended her maneuver, executed last month but kept under wraps until yesterday, to add money to her campaign coffers. News of the $5 million transfer came as a surprise to Clinton donors who had assumed her campaign,...

Delegate Math Looks Bad For Democrats

The delegate assignments have mostly shaken out from the Super Tuesday contests, and the situation looks even more grim than yesterday for the Democrats. Barack Obama now has a narrow five-delegate lead among non-superdelegates, 635-630, at roughly the halfway point. The remaining state delegates will now have to break markedly in favor of one candidate over the other in order to avoid making the superdelegates select the party nominee: The race for the Democratic presidential nomination between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama of Illinois is becoming a pitched delegate-by-delegate battle, which is likely to drag out for months and may even be unresolved heading into the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August. "It is likely that no side will gain an appreciable or significant advantage in overall delegate counts between now and March 4, past March 4, even past April because of the way our party allocates its delegates,"...

The Challenge For McCain And Conservatives At CPAC Today

John McCain meets some of his fiercest critics today at CPAC, with a 3 pm ET speech that will provide a critical moment for both the candidate and the activists. Most have focused on what McCain has to do to reach out to the conservatives, but fewer understand that the movement has a decision to make as well regarding its future and its relevance. First, let's focus on McCain. The Senator will not win an election by suddenly gainsaying everything he has done over the past eight years since his last presidential campaign. He will have to focus on the future, including the future of the badly-needed immigration reform that everyone wants but no one can define to consensus. McCain will need to commit to nominating judges to the bench that will not legislate from there. He has to end the false dichotomy of "patriotism, not profit" and the little...

CPAC: Romney To Withdraw?

We're waiting for Mitt Romney's speech to start here in a few minutes, and I'll live-blog it once it begins. However, we all have heard the report from Mark Halperin at Time that Romney will use the event to announce his withdrawal from the race. It will, ironically, now overshadow the long-awaited attempt at rapprochement from John McCain this afternoon, but I'd bet McCain would take that trade. Keep checking back. Romney will take the stage in a few minutes .... 1:17 - Mitt made the right decision, and he made the announcement in the right place. He's a good man, and I think this will allow the Republicans a lot more time to find accommodation with John McCain. 1:04 - He wants to "do whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq," and this is his reason to withdraw. He's going to back out to ensure victory. 1:03 -...

John McCain Speech Live Blog

John McCain will give his long-awaited speech to the assembled conservatives at CPAC. George Allen will introduce McCain, marking his first major appearance since his loss in 2006. He opened by talking about the diversity of the conservatives at the conference. That will remain to be seen. Are they diverse enough to generate support McCain? More follows .... 3:52 - That was an excellent speech. McCain genuinely reached out to conservatives in a heartfelt manner. I'll talk more about this on the Heading Right Radio. 3:51 - Just realized I was marking the time in CT. Sorry!! 2:42 - McCain sounds energized and is commanding the room. It's one of his better speeches, and he's hitting all the right notes for the crowd. A lot of them are his supporters, but Mitt's backers easily outnumbered those at CPAC. At the least, his opponents are giving him a chance to convince...

February 8, 2008

The Opening

Yesterday's speech to CPAC gave John McCain an opening to rational consideration of support by conservatives, and it didn't come in the necessary phrases of rapprochement. John McCain made an offer to conservatives for access and influence. Will they take it, or will they walk away and leave McCain to make that offer to other Republicans and centrists? McCain focused the latter part of his speech on the big issues that he says will define the election -- the war, the Democratic insistence on statist policies, and entitlement reform. He concluded that part of the argument with this (emphasis mine): These are but a few of the differences that will define this election. They are very significant differences, and I promise you, I intend to contest these issues on conservative grounds and fight as hard as I can to defend the principles and positions we share, and to keep this...

February 9, 2008

Buyer's Remorse

Today, Democrats in Michigan can spend the day thinking about how they could have been the center of the political universe, had they not gotten greedy for pre-Super Tuesday glory. Their primary was originally scheduled for today, but they wanted to be more relevant and move their date to the front of the line. As it worked out, they could have provided a make-or-break moment by staying put -- and kept their delegates to boot: The clever people in Michigan who decided to get into a game of chicken with New Hampshire last fall over the timing of their Democratic primary should be having second thoughts this weekend. Had Michigan Democrats not engaged in gamesmanship over the shape of the nomination calendar, they would be holding the premier contest on today's slate, by far the biggest and most influential of the events between Super Tuesday and next week's Potomac primaries,...

Bitter Enders

How are the attendees of CPAC handling the ascension of John McCain to the nomination? For the most part, I'd say fairly well. McCain hasn't generated wild enthusiasm from conservative activists, but the general sense is that he's earned an opportunity to partner with conservatives. I chatted briefly with McCain volunteers at their booth, and they say they've signed up over 200 new volunteers. That would be a significant number for any candidate at a conference with this kind of diversity. However, not everyone wants to put the divisions behind them. When I got to Blogger Row this morning, the desks had been papered by Patriot PAC. They have launched a new website, OpenGOPConvention, to urge voters to deny McCain the outright nomination. Headlined "CONTAIN MCCAIN!", they want Republicans to wait for a "real Ronald Reagan conservative" -- as if no one thought of the idea before. They also left...

CPAC Podcast: Speaker Newt Gingrich

Rob Neppell and I interviewed former Speaker Newt Gingrich for a special CPAC Channel podcast. Gingrich talked about his efforts at American Solutions, where he is building grassroots efforts to bypass partisan roadblocks to resolving the issues ordinary Americans face. He also told us that the Republican Party can't win running a contrast campaign, but have to put forth a positive message with a real agenda for progress. I asked him about John McCain and how conservatives should approach his apparent nomination. He responded by saying that conservatives should not wed themselves to the GOP. However, he also reminds us that one can support a candidate while opposing some of their policies, and that John McCain is much better than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Don't miss this interview!...

Huckabee Persists

For some reason, this didn't publish when I wrote it this morning. I'm posting it now instead. Governor Mike Huckabee addressed an enthusiastic crowd at CPAC this morning, despite giving his speech at the sleepy hour of 9 am on Saturday. Huckabee clearly was in fine mettle, keeping the fires going in the campaign. He spoke about the Fair Tax plan, at one point tearing up a 1040 form and throwing the pieces in the air to the delight of the crowd. Huckabee refuses to withdraw from the race. That didn't surprise anyone here, and the lack of anticipation could be seen throughout the exhibition hall. Where business came to a halt with the speeches from Mitt Romney and John McCain, most people outside the hall where Huckabee appeared gave the speech much notice at all. He wants to continue to press for the policy stands he has taken in...

February 10, 2008

Obama Sweeps Saturday, Sets Up Showdown On Superdelegates

Barack Obama swept the trio of contests in the Democratic primaries yesterday, increasing his momentum and narrowing the delegate gap even further. The Clinton campaign tried to shrug off the losses as "expected", but with the Beltway contests of DC, Virginia, and Maryland coming on Tuesday, Hillary may not see another win for a while: Sen. Barack Obama dominated Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in presidential balloting in Nebraska, Louisiana and Washington state last night, besting her by huge margins in those contests and further narrowing her slender advantage in delegates needed to claim the Democratic presidential nomination. ... Among Democrats, Obama (Ill.) won more than two-thirds of the vote in both Nebraska and Washington, and his lopsided victories gave a boost to his state-by-state strategy of methodically picking up delegates, while highlighting Clinton's struggles in caucuses. Clinton (N.Y.) is focusing her campaign on big states with dense population centers, several...

Bolton Endorses McCain

Ambassador John Bolton has long been a favorite of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Yesterday, he threw his support behind John McCain's nomination, an attempt to help unify the GOP base around McCain: "John McCain was very active and supportive during my confirmation hearings to be the U.S. Ambassador to the UN. His belief in me at that time was a testament to his courage to fight the liberals in the Senate and vigorously advance American interests at the UN. "I whole-heartedly endorse John McCain for President because when he takes office in January 2009 he will be prepared immediately to lead us. John will not need on the job training. "American conservatives will have a President they can be proud of in John McCain." Bolton won the admiration of conservatives in his aggressive nature towards internationalists, especially during his tenure at the UN. His full-throated defense of...

Newsweek: McCain Leads Huckabee, Democrats Split

I'm at Reagan National in DC, waiting for the next two hours to fly back to sub-zero temperatures in Minneapolis. Thankfully, the airport has begun to install more electrical outlets at the gates, which allows me to conserve battery life on the laptop while I pass the time. Newsweek also helps by publishing a poll today in the all-but-finished Republican primary race, showing John McCain with a commanding national lead over Mike Huckabee after the Mitt Romney withdrawal: McCain was widely perceived to have practically sealed the Republican presidential nomination Thursday when his chief rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, suspended his presidential campaign. Indeed, the senator from Arizona leads the GOP race with 51 percent of registered Republican voters and those leaning toward the GOP, according to the poll, which is based on telephone interviews with 1,394 registered voters Feb. 6-7. Huckabee draws 32 percent support, followed by Rep....

February 11, 2008

Can't Anyone In Washington Handle An Election?

The Republican caucus in Washington only determines the status of 18 delegates, and they can't even get that much right. The state which saw a number of irregularities in the last presidential election produced another whopper of an error over the weekend, when the Republican Party suddenly stopped counting results and declared John McCain the winner. Mike Huckabee, only two percent behind McCain with 13% of precincts left to report, protested: The results of the state Republican caucuses were called into question today after presidential candidate Mike Huckabee challenged the party's declaration that Arizona Sen. John McCain had won the delegate count. Huckabee's campaign took issue with the fact that Washington state Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser called the race Saturday night with 87 percent of the precincts counted. At that point, McCain was ahead of Huckabee by 242 delegates out of the 13,000 counted, Esser said. The Huckabee campaign...

Should Huckabee Withdraw?

UPDATE II: We're adding the AOL Hot Seat poll to this post and bumping it to the top: [Poll expired.] AOL visitors: Welcome to Captain's Quarters. Take a look around, feel free to participate in the comments section, and bookmark this community for future visits! Also, be sure to tune into our BlogTalkRadio show at 1 pm ET that reviews the response to the poll! UPDATE III: In the post, I note that the rest of the contests are proportional-allocation states. That's not correct; Virginia and DC tomorrow are both winner-take all, with 63 and 19 delegates each. Unfortunately for Huckabee, he's trailing badly in Virginia, and also in Maryland's closed primary. Original post follows .... ========== Mike Huckabee won two of the three contests in the Republican primaries yesterday as he benefitted from the withdrawal of Mitt Romney. He took Louisiana and Kansas and narrowly lost Washington to John...

Ted Olson Grabs His Popcorn

Rarely in life does one get to enjoy irony and karma as much as Ted Olson. Having borne the scars of the Gore v Bush lawsuits arising from the 2000 presidential election, Olson now sees a similar outcome, on similar grounds, in the exact same state. Calling it "splendid theater", the incompetent handling of Florida and Michigan likely will combine with a razor-thin delegate chase for the Democratic presidential nomination to produce litigation that will reduce the party to shreds. Don't count Olson among the mourners: How ironic. For over seven years the Democratic Party has fulminated against the Electoral College system that gave George W. Bush the presidency over popular-vote winner Al Gore in 2000. But they have designed a Rube Goldberg nominating process that could easily produce a result much like the Electoral College result in 2000: a winner of the delegate count, and thus the nominee, over...

Not Ready For Prime Time

Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes last night, and once again he offered change. Unfortunately, the kind of change offered appeared to be the same he accuses his opponents of offering -- waffling on the status of troops in Iraq. After cheerfully misrepresenting John McCain's "100 years" comment, he then left himself the leeway to make exactly the same kind of decision: "Well, I think, on the positive side, we've seen a reduction in violence. And I don't think anybody can deny that," Obama said. "What we haven't seen is the kind of political reconciliation or accommodation between the Sunni and the Shia and the Kurds that are required in order for Iraq to stabilize. But I completely reject the notion, you know, most forcefully presented by John McCain that we should commit ourselves to a 50-year or a 60-year or a 100-year occupation in order to assure stability in...

A Moment Of Cheer From John Podhoretz

John Podhoretz gives a brilliant and depressing analysis of the challenges facing the Republicans in 2008, not just in the presidential race but also in competing for the House and Senate. John sees the problem as being one of an exodus from the GOP of its more independent-minded voters that began in 2005 with Hurricane Katrina, and may only have recently stopped: The swift, steep decline in Republican fortunes over the past few years has induced a state of vertigo in the party’s body politic. Its elected officials, eminences grises, and rank-and-file members are all disoriented by the rapid plunge in the party’s standing with the American people—just at the moment when they have to present the best possible case that their presidential candidate, and everyone who appears with him on the Republican ballot, are the proper stewards of the country’s future. Among Republican politicians, the funk set in after...

Estrich: Who'd Have Thought The Party Of Identity Politics Has Racists?

Susan Estrich either wants to build credibility as a satirist, or her latest column provides a long-overdue look in the mirror for Democrats. Detecting more a whiff of the so-called Bradley Effect in primaries where Barack Obama holds solid polling leads only to mysteriously fall short of Hillary Clinton, Estrich diagnoses a latent racism in her party. No kidding! But, the fact is that there is a long pattern of what we in California call the "Bradley problem" in polling, after the former Los Angeles mayor who was elected governor in every poll, including the exits, except that he lost at the ballot box. Did I mention that he was African-American? That was, according to the pollsters, the problem: about 10 percent of the electorate claimed that they were going to vote for him, and in many cases even told pollsters that they did, but they lied. ... Doug Wilder,...

A Flag Obama Supporters Salute?

Oh, my. Barack Obama may want to call his new Houston office and suggest some decorating ideas. Take a look at the flag flying in the office at the moment: No, that's not a Texas state flag with a picture of Obama on it. It's the flag of the Castro-led Cuba regime, with Che Guevara's face superimposed on the side. A Fox report from Houston captured this image as it showed Obama supporters celebrating his momentum after Super Tuesday. Does Obama know his Houston supporters honor a terrorist in his campaign office? I'm sure he doesn't. However, it would behoove him to ensure that the flag gets taken down and that he renounces any affinity for Che and the Fidel Castro regime. (via Jim Geraghty) UPDATE: John Cole doesn't see anything wrong with a presidential campaign office featuring a Cuban flag with a picture of Che Guevara? Along with the...

February 12, 2008

Even The Gray Lady Notices Attrition Working

The New York Times has a growing reputation as a lagging indicator. Almost six months after the Arizona Republic noticed that a series of tough anti-illegal-immigration state laws had provided an incentive for noticeable attrition by illegal aliens, the Paper of Record has finally reported on the phenomenon. It's like the surge -- only on domestic policy, and it comes at an odd time: The signs of flight among Latino immigrants here are multiple: Families moving out of apartment complexes, schools reporting enrollment drops, business owners complaining about fewer clients. While it is too early to know for certain, a consensus is developing among economists, business people and immigration groups that the weakening economy coupled with recent curbs on illegal immigration are steering Hispanic immigrants out of the state. The Arizona economy, heavily dependent on growth and a Latino work force, has been slowing for months. Meanwhile, the state has...

The Texas-Ohio Firewall?

Has it come down to Texas and Ohio for Hillary Clinton? That's what the New York Times reports today, and apparently what some in her own campaign believe. Without significant wins there, Hillary will have to pull out of the Democratic primary race: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers increasingly believe that, after a series of losses, she has been boxed into a must-win position in the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4, and she has begun reassuring anxious donors and superdelegates that the nomination is not slipping away from her, aides said on Monday. Mrs. Clinton held a buck-up-the-troops conference call on Monday with donors, superdelegates and other supporters; several said afterward that she had sounded tired and a little down, but determined about Ohio and Texas. They also said that they had not been especially soothed, and that they believed she might be on a losing...

Gore Won't Endorse This Time

For better or worse, Al Gore will not endorse anyone in the Democratic primary race. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hoped to cash in on Gore's cachet, but the former Vice President and erstwhile presidential candidate has decided to stay above the fray: He's the most prominent Democrat yet to take a side in the presidential election, but two sources close to Al Gore tell us not to expect the former vice president to endorse either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama any time during the primary season. The sources say Gore talks with both Clinton and Obama, and is on good terms with both. But with Sen. John Kerry and Bill Clinton both aligned to a candidate, Gore has a role to serve as the neutral elder statesman in the party. This makes sense. As a party leader, he has to stay neutral if he wants to facilitate the...

Potomac Primary Predictions

The key Potomac primaries in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC have all begun, and right now all of them appear to favor the momentum candidates. For the Republicans, John McCain has an opportunity to provide more lift for his all-but-certain nomination. Barack Obama needs a couple of big wins in the contests to make a momentum argument into Texas and Ohio: The demographics in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia primaries suggest the senator from Illinois could pull off a political hat trick Tuesday over rival Sen. Hillary Clinton. However, the senator from New York said Obama's recent success doesn't faze her because future primaries will swing her way. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee is coming off big wins in Kansas and Louisiana, but Sen. John McCain of Arizona scoffed at the notion that the former Arkansas governor could close the roughly 500-delegate gap that separates the two...

A Walk Down Terrorist Memory Lane

Debra Burlingame invites Wall Street Journal readers to take a stroll down Memory Lane, to a time when murderous terrorists gained presidential pardons instead of relentless pursuit. This didn't happen a long, long time ago in an administration far, far away, but actually less than ten years ago. In 1999, with Hillary Clinton pursuing a seat in the Senate, Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of 16 Puerto Rican separatists whose organization had committed a whopping 146 bombings and more armed robberies: On Aug. 7, 1999, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. African embassy bombings that killed 257 people and injured 5,000, President Bill Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to the victims of terrorism, vowing that he "will not rest until justice is done." Four days later, while Congress was on summer recess, the White House quietly issued a press release announcing that the president was granting clemency to 16 imprisoned members...

Ed Rendell Sees Democratic Bigots, Too

Governor Ed Rendell follows the lead of Susan Estrich in diagnosing the issues associated with Barack Obama's underperformance in some states, including his own. In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Rendell tells the editors that some Democrats in their state just can't pull the lever for an African-American (emphasis in the original): Gov. Ed "Don't Call Me 'Fast Eddie' " Rendell met with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week to talk about his latest budget. But before turning the meeting over to his number-crunchers, our voluble governor weighed in on the primary fight between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and what the Illinois senator could expect from the good people of Pennsylvania at the polls: "You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," he said bluntly. Our eyes only met...

More Identity Politics Fun

Who knew that Patty Solis Doyle was a Hispanic before getting the boot from the Hillary Clinton campaign? I'd wager that most people couldn't have identified "Solis" as Mexican before Hispanics complained about her termination. Now, however, her ethnic identity has overshadowed the fact that her client has good reason to be unhappy with the performance of the campaign: Two New York Hispanic leaders said they would be upset if Hillary Rodham Clinton's Hispanic campaign manager was replaced because of primary losses they believe should be blamed on former President Bill Clinton and others. Patti Solis Doyle, whose parents were Mexican immigrants, stepped down as Clinton's campaign manager this weekend as Clinton was losing five Democratic contests to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Clinton has said Doyle's decision was a personal response to a grueling campaign, not about job performance. She added that Solis Doyle would remain a senior adviser and...

A Little Beyond A Normal Endorsement

Conservative firebrand Oliver North has a message for his peers in the movement -- don't to do John McCain what moderates did to me. In a column up this afternoon at Real Clear Politics, North doesn't just endorse McCain, he defends him from the same impulse at division that doomed his own Senatorial campaign: After I won the 1994 Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia, I naively assumed that all in the GOP would pull together behind my conservative candidacy. I clearly don't know much about politics. If I did, I'd be writing this from my U.S. Senate office instead of my home in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. But at the trade school John McCain and I attended in Annapolis, Md., they did teach me how to count. I lost by a narrow margin in a three-way race. Some of those who were with me then are...

Potomac Primary Live Blog

Polls close in Virginia at 6 pm CT, and an hour later in Maryland and DC. Will Barack Obama complete his expected tsunami through the trio of states? Can John McCain hold off Mike Huckabee? We shall soon find out. I'll live-blog the results as they materialize, in reverse-chronological order. Keep checking back .... 8:59 - I'll wrap this up now. Obviously the night went to Obama and McCain, and the latter can start working on consolidating his support in the party. Huckabee may continue for his own reasons, but he'd have to win 90% of the vote in every single state the rest of the way to barely keep McCain from winning the nomination. Obama may have more of an argument for the superdelegates, but if anyone thinks the Clintons will just quit, they're very much mistaken. 8:53 - Obama's speech tonight shows that he's thinking about November and...

February 13, 2008

McCain Solidifies Lock On Nomination

In the end, the Mike Huckabee surge in Virginia fell far short of victory. John McCain swept the Potomac Primaries last night, winning by nine in Virginia and winning among conservatives in Maryland. The delegate count now makes his nomination inevitable: Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) swept Republican primaries in Virginia, Maryland and the District last night, defeating former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and adding to his vast delegate lead in the race to become his party's presidential nominee. But even as he dominated the Potomac Primary, McCain lost conservatives in Virginia, as he has across the South and parts of the Midwest -- trailing Huckabee among that group and evangelicals as he attempts to unite a fractured Republican Party behind his candidacy. Speaking to a few hundred supporters at a victory rally in Old Town Alexandria, McCain echoed Democrat Barack Obama, saying he was "fired up and ready to go."...

Clinton Ignores Losses, Gets Booed

After Barack Obama swept the Potomac Primaries last night, one might have expected Hillary Clinton to say a few words to her supporters to explain the losses. If so, the crowds that turned out for her in Texas had to manage their disappointment. They managed to let her know when they disagreed with her, however: As news of her triple defeat in the Potomac Primary sank in, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did what has become a specialty in recent weeks: She headed someplace else. After flying from Virginia to Texas for a rally on Tuesday night, Clinton did not publicly acknowledge, even in passing, that three significant primaries had taken place that day and her campaign had not issued a statement hours after results were announced. ... When Clinton mentioned having differences with Obama over health care and the mortgage crisis, she was booed. Her comments continued past 9:30 p.m....

RNC Unveils The Spendometer As They Focus On Obama

The Republican National Committee has developed a cute but effective graphic showing the expansion of federal spending that will result in the adoption of Barack Obama's agenda. Called the Spendometer, it highlights what the Republicans hope will provide an effective argument for John McCain and his call for more discipline in federal spending. It also shows that the GOP has started focusing on Obama as a likely competitor in the general election: If Obama Could Enact All Of His Campaign Proposals, Taxpayers Would Be Faced With Financing Over $850 Billion In New Spending Over One White House Term: Obama’s Health Care Plan Will Cost Up To $65 Billion A Year; Equal To $260 Billion Over Four Years. “[Obama] campaign officials estimated that the net cost of the plan to the federal government would be $50 billion to $65 billion a year, when fully phased in, and said the revenues from...

McCain Conference Call

Now that the primary campaign has just about wrapped up, John McCain's team has begun to look towards the convention and November. I received an invitation to his blogger conference call this morning, after a particularly successful night on the Potomac. He started by talking about how pleased he was about the primaries, especially in Maryland. He said a nine-point win in Virginia is "very good", but also says that Mike Huckabee has indicated to him personally that he will continue. McCain met with the Republican caucus in the House, who endorsed him. He pledged to them that he would contest all 50 states in November. He will continue his efforts to unite the party, and that it takes some time to get over the bumps and bruises of a primary campaign. McCain wants to run on taxes, regulation, and health care as the primary domestic themes. He also hailed...

The Hill Is Alive In The State Of Wisconsin

Last week, the Hillary Clinton campaign argued that the month of February would belong to Barack Obama, and that they would focus on Texas and Ohio. After making a change in leadership in the campaign and watching the lopsided delegate split in Virginia and Maryland, Team Hillary has changed direction. Now they will fight for delegates in Wisconsin instead of ceding the state to Obama: Sen. Barack Obama has been lavishing attention on the historically independent voters of Wisconsin. Rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is moving belatedly to make a contest of next Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary. The senator from neighboring Illinois has spent more time in the state than the former first lady. Obama drew 4,000 people at a rally last October and beat Clinton back to Wisconsin this year. But Clinton hasn't conceded the 74 delegates at stake even though she has already begun campaigning for the larger...

February 14, 2008

Ban On Waterboarding Wins Approval

The Senate narrowly passed a ban on waterboarding as part of their intelligence bill, setting up a showdown between Congress and the White House on limitations for interrogation techniques. The bill clearly states approved and disapproved procedures, ending the ambiguity that has created much of the controversy over whether anyone has ever broken the law in interrogating terrorist suspects. And surprisingly, one of the figures at the head of the controversy opposed the bill: The Senate voted yesterday to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics used by the CIA, matching a previous House vote and putting Congress on a collision course with the White House over a pivotal national security issue. In a 51 to 45 vote, the Senate approved an intelligence bill that limits the CIA to using 19 less-aggressive interrogation tactics outlined in a U.S. Army Field Manual. The measure would effectively ban the use of simulated...

Obama, Clinton Porkfest Bill: Almost A Half-Billion Dollars

In one corner, we have John McCain, who has not requested an earmark for years and who has vowed to veto any bill as President which contains them. In the other corner, still fighting between themselves, we have Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who have combined for over $430 million in earmarks just in the last session. Who says there isn't a distinction to be made in November?: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure more than $340 million worth of home-state projects in last year's spending bills, placing her among the top 10 Senate recipients of what are commonly known as earmarks, according to a new study by a nonpartisan budget watchdog group. Working with her New York colleagues in nearly every case, Clinton supported almost four times as much spending on earmarked projects as her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), whose $91 million total...

Can Obama Close In For The Kill?

With all of the drama on the Democratic side of the primaries, Barack Obama wants to put it to an end. He hopes to win enough of a lead in delegates so that even without a clinch by the end of the process, he has made enough of a case for his nomination that the superdelegates wouldn't dare swing to Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Hillary has had to hustle to get organizations running in the states she claims she'll win to blunt Obama's momentum: Senator Barack Obama emerged from Tuesday’s primaries leading Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by more than 100 delegates, a small but significant advantage that Democrats said would be difficult for Mrs. Clinton to make up in the remaining contests in the presidential nomination battle. Neither candidate is expected to win the 2,025 pledged delegates needed to claim the nomination by the time the voting ends in June. But...

Breaking: Romney To Endorse McCain

Mitt Romney will endorse John McCain in a press conference at Romney's Boston headquarters, according to an ABC report. He will release his delegates and ask them to support McCain at the convention. That would put McCain within reach of the nomination now, and almost certainly clinch it for him in March: Former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., is planning on endorsing his former Republican rival Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. A source familiar with the decision said the endorsement will take place this afternoon at Romney for President Headquarters in Boston at 3:30pmET. Romney will ask his delegates to support Senator McCain. The former governor made his decision to endorse today in the interest of helping McCain gain the 1,191 delegates he needs to secure the party nomination and unite the party for the general election against the Democrats in November. Yesterday, I asked Senator McCain when he and Romney would...

Going Negative At Team Hillary

Speculation had begun this week that Hillary Clinton's campaign might start going negative on Barack Obama. She didn't have much to lose after the debacle of the Potomac Primaries, and she desperately needs to slow down his momentum. Apparently, the speculation was correct, as Hillary has begun slamming Obama's economic proposals on the stump in Ohio: Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, criticized for taking corporate special interest contributions, proposed restrictions on a wide array of industries Thursday and stepped up her assault on rival Barack Obama, casting him as the candidate more beholden to corporations. In a speech to General Motors workers and executives, Clinton trumped Obama's own economic plan from a day before and appeared to be channeling former rival John Edwards' populist anti-corporate message. ... She said she would rein in oil, insurance, credit card, student loan and Wall Street investment companies and generate $55 billion a year that...

A Second Look At McCain's Fiscal Conservatism

John McCain took a lot of heat over the last months for his supposed apostasies on tax policy. He voted against the initial Bush tax cuts, we were reminded, although he has often defended the decision as a fiscally responsible act at the time. Kevin Stach takes a close look at his record in today's Wall Street Journal, and likes what he sees: After sweeping the Potomac primary, John McCain is now the de facto Republican nominee for president. But while Mr. McCain's fight for the nomination is all but over, Mike Huckabee's strong showing in Virginia suggests that Mr. McCain's battle to unify the Republican Party is just beginning. One major task is to secure the GOP's right flank, which remains cool to Mr. McCain over issues including taxes and economics. The support of supply-siders Jack Kemp and Phil Gramm has not been enough to reassure some economic conservatives...

February 15, 2008

The Traditional Class-Warfare Valentine

The First Mate and I exchanged Valentine's Day gifts over the last couple of days, and I have to say I got the better deal in the trade. I sent her a dozen roses, which surprised her because they came on the 13th (doh!), and she gave me the second volume of Pinky and the Brain, Vol. 2. Originally a part of the Animaniacs show, Steven Spielberg's production company spun off P&TB into its own weird and wonderful show for four seasons. Even if its clever anthem gives me song poison for a week every time I hear it, I loved watching Brain's Rube Goldberg-like attempts to take over the world get tripped up by his own ego. It also has some terrifically snarky pop-culture references that kept both of us laughing last night as we watched three of the episodes. Speaking of cartoons, Bookworm has found an honest-to-goodness New...

About That Experience...

Hillary Clinton has tried to sell herself as the candidate ready on Day One to assume the responsibilities of the Presidency, at least among Democrats. She has claimed the Bill Clinton administration as her own experience, and yet she has no record of running anything during that time except the disastrous Health Care Task Force -- the records of which the Clintons have kept under wraps. Now she wants to distance herself from her supposed experience by claiming that she opposed NAFTA, one of the key pieces of legislation pushed by the Clinton administration (via Memeorandum): As the 2008 campaign shifts to economically hard-hit states like Ohio, so too do the topics of political debate. This week, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has attacked Sen. Hillary Clinton on trade, arguing that she was once a supporter of the North American Free Trade Agreement that contributed to the loss hundreds of thousands...

The Opacity Of Obama

Barack Obama may find that overpromising and underdelivering will leave openings for political opponents to score real points, especially when the opponent has a clear record from which to punch. Obama has tried to argue that he has the most transparency between Hillary and himself on earmarking, but compared to John McCain, that sounds like damnation through faint praise: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is on track to become the Democratic presidential nominee, and he's getting the attention his accomplishment deserves. Thursday, Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, and the Republican National Committee treated Obama like the front-runner he is and attacked him -- for not being transparent when it comes to disclosing his earmark requests. ... In the year Obama has been running for president, he has made government transparency a central campaign pledge. That was his strategic decision. But there are consequences when you campaign saying you would...

John Lewis Begins March To Obama (Update: About Face?)

One of the most influential superdelegates in the Democratic Party has indicated he will likely vote for Barack Obama -- even though he endorsed Hillary Clinton four months ago. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia began his career marching for civil rights in Georgia, and now he says that he has to represent his Georgia constituents rather than his personal feelings at the convention. Note, however, some of the rationalizations he offers for his change of heart: Representative John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention. “In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endorsed Mrs. Clinton last...

Chris Matthews' Next Apology Coming In 5, 4, 3, 2 .... (Update & Bump For Video)

UPDATE: I posted about this earlier, but Eyeblast has the video clip. Eyeblast is a new contender in the viral-video sweepstakes and is definitely worth a close look for right-of-center videobloggers. Here's the clip: And so with that final "Screw you!" from Matthews, the original post follows .... ========== Chris Matthews has spent the primary cycle alternately opining and apologizing for his remarks about Hillary Clinton. It looks like he may have either tired of the cycle, or wants another round of YouTubed capitulation to make the blogospheric rounds. Sam Stein at the Huffington Post notes that Matthews erupted on Joe Scarborough's morning show at MS-NBC, calling Hillary's media-response team "knee-cappers": Chris Matthews fired a salvo at the Clinton campaign this morning after both he and his MSNBC colleague were privately rebuked for recent comments deemed misogynistic or inappropriate. Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe, the Hardball host went off on...

February 16, 2008

The Coming Obama 'Theocracy'

People mocked Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney for their religious backgrounds often during the presidential campaigns, but at least they never claimed to be on a mission to save the souls of Americans through government action. Oh, people accused them of wanting to do so -- to impose Southern Baptist or Mormon theology on an America that wants relentless secularism, but in point of fact both men gave stirring speeches on how their faith informs them personally but not their governance. One campaign really has explicitly claimed to be on such a mission, however. Michelle Obama gave a speech at UCLA earlier this month in which she told supporters that her husband was the only man who could fix American souls -- if we elect him President first. Here's the transcript: In 2008, we are still a nation that is too divided. We live in isolation, and because of that...

February 17, 2008

Barack Obama, Leftist?

Two foreign newspapers introduce the notion of Barack Obama as a Leftist. The Times of London reports that Republicans intend on painting him as such in the general election, based on his voting record in the Senate and in the Illinios state legislature. La Jornada of Mexico celebrates Obama as potentially the first Leftist President in American history, and a harbinger of what awaits the hemisphere (via Memeorandum and TMV): LEADING Republicans believe they can trounce Barack Obama in the presidential election by tarring him as a shady Chicago socialist. They are increasingly confident that his campaign could collapse by the time their attack machine has finished with him. ... “It will be easy to portray him as even harder-left than Hillary,” said Norquist. “Hillary could lose the election, but Obama could collapse. People already know Hillary and she is not popular, but the disadvantage for Obama is that Republicans...

Pawlenty As Veep?

For over a year, Tim Pawlenty has supported John McCain through thick and a whole lot of thin. The two-term Minnesota governor became one of John McCain's first major endorsers in January 2007, and even at the time speculation began that Pawlenty could make a good running mate for McCain. Jonathan Martin at Politico has heard louder rumblings of consideration among the GOP base for Pawlenty, who could make a good presidential candidate anytime in the next twenty years: Even through the McCain campaign’s darkest days in 2007, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty remained a steadfast ally to the Arizona senator in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. As a result, with John McCain as the clear GOP frontrunner and insider talk turning to speculation about his possible running mate, party insiders are now buzzing about the 47-year-old, second-term governor’s vice-presidential prospects. Vin Weber, a Minnesota congressman-turned-Washington-lobbyist who is one...

Clinton Wants A Wisconsin Debate As Obama Adds The Beef

Hillary Clinton desperately wants to get Barack Obama in a one-on-one debate before the Wisconsin primary in order to pin her challenger to policy specifics. Obama, meanwhile, has dodged the debate but gotten the message, according to the New York Times: Hillary Rodham Clinton renewed her call Saturday to debate Democratic rival Barack Obama in Wisconsin before Tuesday's primary, even as she acknowledged she would cease campaigning in the state a full day before voters go to the polls. "This is what happens when you've got the kind of schedules that we're all trying to keep up with," she said. "I care deeply about what happens here in this election." ... "The best way we could have met the people is through a debate that is televised and everyone could have watched and drawn their own conclusions," Clinton said when asked why she had limited her campaign appearances in Wisconsin....

February 18, 2008

How Evangelical Leaders Blew It

Dan Gilgoff does a post-mortem on how the evangelical movement managed to allow John McCain to win the Republican Party nomination over two candidates more amenable to their cause. Gilgoff focuses on their failure to back Romney, and makes it plain that religious bigotry played no small role in their inability to understand which political agenda suited them the best: As [James] Dobson warmed to Romney — the two had a getting-to-know-you session at Focus' Colorado Springs headquarters last year — he could have opened a dialogue with his millions of radio listeners about why evangelicals should feel comfortable voting for a Mormon, even if they rejected his theology. Instead, he took public swipes at Republican candidates Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain, leaving his evangelical fans to deduce his support for Romney and Huckabee by process of elimination. An online voter guide issued by Focus on the Family...

Obama's Corner On Public Financing

Barack Obama has made a historic presidential run this cycle primarily on the basis of changing the political culture in Washington. His unbelievable success has ironically set a trap for a potential general-election run. Obama has to choose now between keeping his word, or conveniently breaking it and exposing himself as just another self-serving politician: A year ago, at the beginning of his bid to secure the clean-up-Washington mantle, Barack Obama made a pact with John McCain that, if the two were to be their party's nominees, each would accept public financing for the general election. That agreement sounded far-fetched: At the time, McCain was in the middle of his high-profile free-fall in the polls, while Obama trailed Hillary Clinton by wide margins in virtually every poll. Now, McCain is virtually the nominee-in-waiting. By his campaign's count, he has already surpassed the necessary threshold of delegates needed to win the...

41 Endorses McCain

George H. W. Bush endorsed John McCain for president today, which gives an added push for Mike Huckabee to withdraw. Saying that McCain has the "right values and experience," the 41st President attempted to strike a chord with conservatives and generate unity behind McCain: Former President George H.W. Bush endorsed John McCain today as the man best prepared to succeed his son, saying the Arizona senator has the ``right values and experience to guide our nation forward.'' ``No one is better prepared to lead our nation at these trying times than Senator John McCain,'' the 41st president said at a news conference in Houston as McCain stood at his side. The former president and McCain said Republicans need to draw on a broad base of voters to keep the White House. ``We as a party must unite and move forward and attract not only members of our own party but...

Is This Really Plagiarism? No

The New York Times makes a big deal about some similarities between elements in Barack Obama's speech and similar constructs in speeches given earlier by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick in 2006. While the wording appears too close for coincidence, one has to wonder how much anyone could vary the constructs in similar themes (via Memeorandum): Senator Barack Obama adapted one of his signature arguments — that his oratory amounts to more than inspiring words — from speeches given by Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts during his 2006 campaign. At a Democratic Party dinner Saturday in Wisconsin, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, responded to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who has criticized him for delivering smooth speeches but says they do not amount to solutions to the nation’s problems, by ticking through a string of historic references. “Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” Mr. Obama said, to applause. “ ‘I...

February 19, 2008

Feels Like The First Time

Does a hostility about one's own country provide a good basis for a campaign? John Podhoretz notes the very strange assertion from Michelle Obama as she campaigned for her husband in Wisconsin. It comes as a piece with her exhortation at UCLA two weeks ago that she sees Barack Obama as the only person who can see that the souls of Americans are broken and that only his presidency can fix them (via Memeorandum): Michelle Obama today said that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction.” Really proud of her country for the first time? Michelle Obama is 44 years old. She has been an adult since 1982. Can it really be there...

It Depends On How One Views Death

E.J. Dionne wonders whether John McCain may have his priorities askew in the upcoming election. By focusing on terrorism as the "transcendent challenge", McCain may misunderstand the concerns of ordinary Americans in 2008 and make himself irrelevant, Dionne argues: Whether McCain is right or wrong matters to everything the United States will do in the coming years. It is incumbent upon McCain to explain what he really means by "transcendent challenge." Presumably, he's saying that Islamic extremism is more important than everything else -- the rise of China and India as global powers, growing resistance to American influence in Europe, the weakening of America's global economic position, the disorder and poverty in large parts of Africa, the alienation of significant parts of Latin America from the United States. Is it in our national interest for all these issues to take a back seat to terrorism? McCain makes his claim even...

Shame On The LA Times

The Los Angeles Times puts itself in the unusual position of scolding John McCain over his opposition to torture, claiming that he betrayed his principles in voting against the legislation sponsored by Dianne Feinstein in the Senate last week. The editorial says McCain should be ashamed for his vote and accuses him of abetting torture, when McCain has good reason to believe that the Feinstein bill does more damage than benefit: One of John McCain's most admirable traits has been his eloquent opposition to the use of torture against suspected terrorists. During a Republican presidential debate last year in which other candidates tried to out-tough each other by endorsing "enhanced" interrogation methods, McCain recalled: "When I was in Vietnam, one of the things that sustained us as we went -- underwent torture ourselves -- is the knowledge that if we had our positions reversed and we were the captors, we...

The Silence Of The Saps

The voters in the Democratic primaries, as opposed to the caucuses, have labored under the delusion that their delegates have a commitment to follow the popular vote in their state. A little-known rule in the DNC removed the first-ballot requirement of pledged delegates to remain faithful to their state's vote. The Hillary Clinton campaign has begun strategizing to get enough of Barack Obamas' pledged delegates to flip -- and Obama himself appears ready to flip if she tries it: Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination. This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides. .... Clinton...

Which Populist Can Win Wisconsin?

Today. my neighbors in Wisconsin go to the polls in what may be a pointless exercise in delegate selection. Over the last couple of weeks, the campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have flooded the state with populist rhetoric, trying to out-sell government solutions to Wisconsin voters. Who can promise enough to win the state? Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama intensified their populist appeals on Monday, responding to widespread economic anxiety and pushing the Democratic Party further from the business-friendly posture once championed by Bill Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, speaking on the eve of the Wisconsin primary but looking forward to primaries in Ohio and Texas on March 4, issued a 12-page compendium of her economic policies that emphasizes programs aiding families stressed by high oil prices, home foreclosures, costly student loans and soaring health care premiums. In public appearances here and in her economic booklet, she...

Early Exit Polling In Wisconsin

The AP has released its early exit polling demographics in Wisconsin, and the results offer hope to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They confirm that populist rhetoric has large appeal among Democrats, where 70% of their primary voters oppose globalization, and a majority felt the economy was performing poorly. Both candidates spent the last week hammering those themes and have to be encouraged that they resonated with the party base. The other numbers favor Hillary. More women than men voted on Democratic ballots, and nine in ten were white. Only about 40% were college graduates, where Obama usually holds an advantage. Obama can take heart that the AP describes the typical Democratic primary voter as "slightly younger" than the Republican counterpart. I will live-blog the results later this evening in a fresh post. The Republican race will be more or less a footnote, but that may produce a large...

Wisconsin Primary Live Blog

Will Hillary Clinton surprise everyone and win in Wisconsin? Can Barack Obama beat back Hillary's late challenge? Since my evening meeting got canceled, I'll be live blogging the Wisconsin poll results. Of course we're also looking at Washington and Hawaii, but Washington's Democratic delegates have already gone to Obama. There won't be much drama in the Republican races in Wisconsin and Washington, but we'll keep an eye on them as well. Updates will come in reverse chronological order, as normal (CST) ... 9:37 - Calling it a night. Looks like a solid win for Obama, one that will help him in two weeks in Texas and Ohio. Hillary can just about hit the panic button now. If she can't win both Texas and Ohio on March 4th, the Democratic Party will start calling for her withdrawal to avoid the convention meltdown. I'll have more tomorrow. 9:22 - The splits look...

February 20, 2008

Hillary On Her Last Legs

Hillary Clinton took an unexpected beating in Wisconsin, losing the state by a whopping seventeen points after a hard but late blitz by her campaign in the state. While it only resulted in an eleven-delegate gain by Obama, the impact of the loss goes far beyond delegate counts. She lost a state whose demographics should have favored her -- and which look very familiar to those of Ohio: Sen. Barack Obama won the Wisconsin Democratic primary decisively last night, extending his winning streak to nine consecutive contests and dealing another significant blow to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose imperiled presidential candidacy now hangs on the outcome of showdowns in Ohio and Texas in two weeks. After a week of sparring that included the first negative ads of the campaign, Obama emerged victorious in a critical general-election battleground state. For the second week in a row, the senator from Illinois made...

Not Buying It

Michelle Obama's comments about her pride in America have apparently put her husband on the defensive. Barack Obama tried to spin the comments made by Mrs. Obama in Milwaukee on Monday as relating only to politics, but the quote speaks for itself: Barack Obama, interviewed on WOAI radio in San Antonio, Texas, expressed frustration that his wife's comments became political fodder. "Statements like this are made and people try to take it out of context and make a great big deal out of it, and that isn't at all what she meant," Obama said. "What she meant was, this is the first time that she's been proud of the politics of America," he said. "Because she's pretty cynical about the political process, and with good reason, and she's not alone. But she has seen large numbers of people get involved in the process, and she's encouraged." In Milwaukee on Monday,...

Name That Accomplishment! (Update: Video Added)

This exchange will race through the conservative blogosphere, and probably on the pro-Hillary sites as well. Last night, Chris Matthews interviewed Texas state senator and Barack Obama supporter Kirk Watson as Obama sailed to a crushing victory in Wisconsin. Matthews asked Watson to name any significant legislative accomplishment by Obama, and the campaign surrogate got stumped: MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "You are a big Barack supporter, right, Senator?" State Sen. Watson: "I am. Yes, I am." Matthews: "Well, name some of his legislative accomplishments. No, Senator, I want you to name some of Barack Obama's legislative accomplishments tonight if you can." State Sen. Watson: "Well, you know, what I will talk about is more about what he is offering the American people right now." Matthews: "No. No. What has he accomplished, sir? You say you support him. Sir, you have to give me his accomplishments. You've supported him for president. You...

Hope-A-Dope?

Barack Obama has made an incredible run for the presidency against long odds of success. He has almost dismantled the formidable Clinton machine and exposed Hillary Clinton as a surprisingly mediocre politician, doing his party at least two very large favors. Obama has succeeded by promising hope and change, but as Robert Samuelson and Dana Milbank report, that mostly exists as rhetoric: Whatever one thinks of these ideas, they're standard goody-bag politics: something for everyone. They're so similar to many Clinton proposals that her campaign put out a news release accusing Obama of plagiarizing. With existing budget deficits and the costs of Obama's "universal health plan," the odds of enacting his full package are slim. A favorite Obama line is that he will tell "the American people not just what they want to hear but what we need to know." Well, he hasn't so far. Consider the retiring baby boomers....

Did McCain's Win Doom Their November Strategy?

The Washington Post reports that John McCain's unexpected rise from the politically dead has created a big problem for the Democrats. They saw an opportunity to win the presidency by turning the interior West into a blue zone, using the Hispanic vote to overwhelm the GOP in one of its traditional strongholds. McCain has thrown a wrench into those plans, and Barack Obama may also present a problem: For Democrats, 2008 was supposed to be the year of the Mountain West, when three years of relentless Republican attacks on undocumented immigrants would fuel a backlash among Hispanics that would change the playing field in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, and perhaps alter the landscape of presidential politics for a generation. But the emergence of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) as the likely standard-bearer for the GOP may have scrambled the equation, cooling a potential political revolt among Hispanics and sending...

The Establishment Reaction To Obama

It didn't take long for the Democratic Party establishment to react to Hillary Clinton's stunning loss in Wisconsin yesterday. A new 527 will raise money for a messaging onslaught in Texas and Ohio, funded by political strategists and deep-pocket donors who have ridden to Hillary's rescue: Looking to boost Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's sagging fortunes, a group of Democratic political strategists has assembled an organization that will raise money from wealthy donors and run ads promoting her views in Texas and Ohio. Called the American Leadership Project, the organization has been formed as a so-called 527 committee, which can raise unlimited amounts of money from some of Clinton's most deep-pocketed benefactors. The group is targeting Texas and Ohio, the battleground states that hold primaries on March 4 and are considered Clinton's last best chance to keep her campaign alive against a surging Barack Obama. By law, the group cannot coordinate...

February 21, 2008

Slimes At The Times

The New York Times launches its long-awaited smear of John McCain today, and the most impressive aspect of the smear is just how baseless it is. They basically emulate Page Six at the Post, but add in a rehash of a well-known scandal from twenty years ago to pad it out and make it look more impressive. In the end, they present absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing -- only innuendo denied by all of the principals: Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers. A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately...

It's Not Messaging

The Hillary Clinton campaign has cracks that have begun widening as the pressure increases for her to win a state. The Los Angeles Times reports on cracks at the very top as Hillary's top aides battled over messaging. In the end, Mark Penn won -- and Hillary kept losing: Before the Iowa caucuses, senior aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton fell into a heated argument during a 7:30 a.m. conference call about the basic message their candidate was delivering to voters. Mark Penn, chief strategist and pollster, liked Clinton's emphasis on her "strength and experience," and he defended the idea of her running as a quasi-incumbent best suited for the presidency. Harold Ickes and other advisors said that message was not working. A more promising strategy, they argued, would be to focus on the historic prospect of electing the first woman president. Today, as Clinton tries to revive her campaign...

The Times Already Into Stonewall Mode? (Update: A Few Points Left Out)

When a newspaper breaks a major story, the editors and the reporters usually make a media blitz to promote it. The New York Times has apparently decided to go into the bunker instead. Patrick Hynes hosts a weekly radio show called Meet the New Press (and also works for the McCain campaign), and he invited Jim Rutenberg to appear to debate their slimy attack on John McCain. Rutenberg said no, and don't bother to ask anyone else either: At 6:51 AM this morning, I e-mailed Jim Rutenberg– whom I know and have interacted with in the past–to invite him onto my radio program “Meet the New Press” on Saturday morning to discuss the sourcing of his New York Times hit piece on my client John McCain. At 7:24 AM Rutenberg declined my invitation in an e-mail and indicated—without my even asking—that no one else at the Times was likely to...

'What Is There To Debate?'

Every time we suggested dropping Ron Paul from the national debates, his supporters would go nuts. They claimed in the one instance where he did get dropped, the January 3rd debate just before Iowa, that a grand conspiracy existed to keep his message from the people and to stop the 4% revolution. They demanded boycotts of Fox and of the Iowa GOP. Paul himself complained bitterly about his exclusion, and not without some justification. Now that Paul's focus has returned to his own Congressional race, he seems much less enthusiastic about debates. After declining to hold a debate with his primary challenger, Chris Peden, Paul got asked yesterday about this seeming hypocrisy at a town-hall meeting in his district. Check out Paul's predictably hysterical response: Peden needs to debate himself first? Maybe Paul has a habit of arguing with himself, but that doesn't mean Peden needs to follow suit. It's...

McCain: No Romance, No Influence, No Meetings (Update: Gray Lady Ignored Edwards Rumors)

John McCain wasted no time getting in front of the media to deny the paper-thin allegations leveled by the New York Times. He appeared at a press conference with his wife Cindy at his side, from his latest campaign stop in Toledo. He denied that anyone ever "confronted" him about his relationship with Vicki Isemen at least twice: Q. Senator, did you ever have any meeting with any of your staffers in which they would have intervened to ask you not to see Vicki Iseman or to be concerned about appearances of being too close to a lobbyist? A. No. Q. No meeting ever occurred? A., No. Q., No staffer was ever concerned about a possible romantic relationship? A. If they were, they didn't communicate that to me. Q. Did you ever have such a relationship? A. No. One can't get any plainer than this. If the Times' central support...

John Weaver Calls BS (Update: Lobbyists The Sources?)

John Weaver has issued a statement that exposes the New York Times story on John McCain as a hack job. Part of their supposed corroboration of the gossip about an allegedly budding romance between McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman was his alleged intervention to stop it. Weaver, who no longer works for the campaign, says he told the Times that his intervention had nothing to do with an affair: "The New York Times asked for a formal interview and I said no and asked for written questions. The Times knew of my meeting with Ms. Iseman, from sources they didn't identify to me, and asked me about that meeting. I did not inform Senator McCain that I asked for a meeting with Ms. Iseman. Her comments, which had gotten back to some of us, that she had strong ties to the Commerce Committee and his staff were wrong and harmful...

First We Smear You, Then Any Response Is War

The story of the New York Times hit piece on John McCain keeps getting stranger and stranger. First the paper puts out a story that uses two disgruntled former "associates" of McCain to allege that they wondered whether he had an inappropriate relationship with a female lobbyist. Not that he actually had an inappropriate relationship, but merely that they wondered about it. They also allege that they staged an intervention with McCain about it, one that somehow bypassed the top staffers on his campaign, and for this the newspaper offers no proof and no corroboration whatsoever. John McCain then holds a very polite and rather subdued press conference to deny all of the Times' unsubstantiated gossip. How does the New York Times report this? With unbelievable hysteria: Later in the day, one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers leveled harsh criticism at The New York Times in what appeared to be...

The Xerox Candidate

I'm not watching the Democratic debate, but I've followed the commentary at The Corner and at The Fix with Chris Cillizza. I hadn't anticipated putting up any commentary until after the transcript got published by CNN, but one point at The Fix made me laugh out loud. Hillary Clinton came prepared with an attack line, but apparently not a sense of irony: Asked about his lifting of lines from Gov. Deval Patrick (Mass.), Obama sought to dismiss the charges of plagiarism as the sort of politics the American public is sick of. "The notion I had plagiarized from someone who is one of my national co-chairs who gave me the line and suggested I use it I think is silly," Obama said. "This is where we get into silly season in politics and people start getting discouraged about it." Clinton, however, clearly believes this is a political weak spot for...

February 22, 2008

The Irrelevancy Of Mrs. Obama's College Thesis

I have received a lot of e-mail regarding Princeton's apparent decision to embargo Michelle Obama's college thesis. A few purported quotes have begun floating through the ether, which seems surprising if the Obamas have conspired to keep the paper buried at Princeton. The messages all seem to believe that the thesis contains something explosive, especially in terms of racial politics. Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn't. Why would anyone be surprised if it did? To paraphrase one of the great lines from South Park, there's a time and a place for radical thought, and it's called college. Mrs. Obama wrote the paper 20 years ago, while living in the cocoon of academia. I doubt that it reflects her current state of mind. It's not quite as bad as going back to Barack's kindergarten essays, but it's just about as irrelevant. Most importantly, Michelle Obama isn't the candidate. Her speeches...

How The Times Helped McCain

UPDATE: Today's AOL Hot Seat poll question comes from this post: embedSWF(9, 0, 0, "widget", "recent")This content requires the most recent version of the Adobe Flash Player. Get this version below:Get Flash I have more links at the bottom from my posts yesterday on this topic. Original post follows ... ======== The New York Times may have done the impossible for the John McCain campaign and for Republicans in general. As predicted yesterday when their strange and threadbare allegations hit print, the attack united conservatives behind McCain. It also may have been an act of seppuku for the Times, as its claim objectivity and credibility have been discredited. The Los Angeles Times surveys the damage: Conservative commentators, including some who previously chastised McCain for not hewing closely to their principles, leaped to the candidate's defense. Radio personality Laura Ingraham, like other critics, noted that the newspaper had been researching the...

Times Doesn't Pass The Smell Test: Seattle P-I (Update: Location, Location, Location)

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will never get mistaken as a conservative publication. It routinely editorializes in support of liberal causes and candidates, and it has come in for plenty of criticism for its decisions on publication decisions. They also routinely publish stories from their subscription to the New York Times syndication product. Today, however, David McCumber explains why he took a pass on the Times' hit piece on John McCain: Obviously, the reporters, Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson, David D. Kirkpatrick and Stephen Labaton, are not working for me. I have no way, other than their excellent reputations, of specifically evaluating their sourcing. That job fell to Bill Keller, the editor of The New York Times, who had held the story, citing concerns about whether the reporters had "nailed it," long enough to fatally fracture the newspaper's relationship with Thompson. She left today to go back to work for The Washington...

Another Refusenik, Closer To Home

Earlier today, I linked to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and its editor's essay about the journalistic defects in the New York Times hit piece on John McCain. David McCumber chose not to run the Times' article in the Seattle P-I despite having the rights to it on syndication. Andrew Malcom at the Los Angeles Times reports that another paper also killed the story -- despite being owned by the New York Times: But one interesting aspect of this combined political and professional controversy went widely unnoticed. The Boston Globe, which is wholly owned by the New York Times, chose not to publish the article produced by its parent company's reporters. Instead, the Globe published a version of the same story written by the competing Washington Post staff. That version focused almost exclusively on the pervasive presence of lobbyists in McCain's campaign and did not mention the sexual relationship that the Times...

Shaking Hands With Terrorists (Bump: The Hand Of Hillary?)

The Left has a big blind spot when it comes to the history of violence among its radicals in the 1960s. Rather than seeing it for what it was -- political terrorism -- and rejecting it completely, they continue to romanticize its use and rationalize its effects. Most of the bomb-throwers repented of their actions, but not all -- and two that remain proud of their terrorism may impact the presidential election, according to Politico's Ben Smith: In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious – and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s...

Bring Your No-Doz

Earlier today, I noted the irrelevance of Michelle Obama's 1985 Princeton thesis to the 2008 presidential campaign of her husband Barack. To the extent that Mrs. Obama participates in the campaign, her speeches now are certainly relevant, but her state of mind 23 years ago isn't. Dissenters said that the fact that Princeton had embargoed the paper showed that it likely held some embarrassing assertions or strident rhetoric on race. Well, I have good news for everyone. The Politico got a copy of Mrs. Obama's work from the Obama campaign and has it available to anyone who wants to read it: Michelle Obama's senior year thesis at Princeton University, obtained exclusively from the campaign by Politico, shows a document written by a young woman grappling with a society in which a black Princeton alumnus might only be allowed to remain "on the periphery." Read the full thesis here: Part 1,...

February 23, 2008

Obama, Taking It For Granted?

Last year, John McCain took a lot of criticism for skipping CPAC, the annual convention of the conservative base he now needs to woo. This year, Barack Obama may make the same kind of misstep, regretfully declining to attend the State of the Black Union forum in New Orleans, explaining that campaigning in Ohio and Texas will take priority. Hillary Clinton managed to carve out some room in her schedule to attend, however: The annual State of the Black Union forum boasts a number of famous names as it gets under way in New Orleans, but this year's event is getting much more attention for who won't be there. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, was the only major presidential candidate to accept an invitation to attend. Her rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, declined, as did Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain of Arizona. But it's Obama's absence that's prompted both...

Where Is The Love?

A day after insinuating that John McCain had an affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, all of the romance appears to have disappeared from the New York Times. Faster than one can say Roberta Flack, the flak taken by the Gray Lady has apparently resulted in a Soviet-style purge of the sexual allegations from their story. Recall this in paragraph 2 of the original article: A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity. Tom Maguire notes that now, Eastasia has never been at war with Oceania -- er, the story...

Don't Add Rice To The Republican Presidential Recipe

For the last few years, Condoleezza Rice's name has come up in conjunction with the Vice Presidency in a number of strange ways. First, in 2004, rumors had George Bush dumping Dick Cheney to invite Rice onto his re-election ticket. When that didn't happen, the rumors persisted as late as last year that Cheney would retire for health reasons and allow Rice to be selected as the replacement VP -- and put her in position to run for President in 2008. That didn't happen, either, but it hasn't stopped the Rice advocates from pressing to make her VP. At CPAC, one could see "Condi" buttons and stickers pushing for her selection to the ticket. Yesterday, however, she threw cold water -- again -- on the effort (via Memeorandum): The secretary of State told reporters Friday she will not be a vice presidential candidate in the upcoming election. "I have always...

Sometimes A Handshake Is Just A Handshake

How crazy has the primary campaign become? Hillary Clinton now feels the need to explain shaking hands with Barack Obama at their Thursday evening debate in Austin. Despite the analysis of some pundits, she has not yet surrendered to Obama and expects to win in Texas and Ohio: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton insisted Friday that she had not meant to signal surrender when she shook hands with Sen. Barack Obama during their Democratic presidential debate in Austin the night before. It was a measure of the dire circumstances her campaign now faces that she had to explain the gesture at all. Clinton said she still expects to win the Ohio and Texas primaries, but her increasingly pessimistic advisers did nothing to rebut a remark by former president Bill Clinton that his wife must win both states to continue her candidacy. ... And on CBS's "Early Show," Clinton was asked outright...

February 24, 2008

Hillary Gets Better Treatment From Dems: Obama

Barack Obama issued a rather strange cri de coeur in Ohio yesterday. The Democratic front-runner claimed that Hillary Clinton has gotten preferential treatment from the Democratic Party, and that he would have been pressured to leave the race after losing 10 straight states: Hillary Clinton's campaign says it remains upbeat about the New York senator's White House chances, but rival Barack Obama said Saturday he would likely be treated differently if his campaign had suffered a similar string of losses as her's. Asked in Ohio by a reporter if he would be treated differently had he lost as many contests as Clinton, Obama said, "Yes." But Obama said he understands why the treatment is different, saying it would require a knockout blow for Clinton to quit because she's "part of the Democratic network in Washington." "Look, I'm the challenger, I'm the upstart," he said. "I'm the insurgent — she's, she's...

Clark Hoyt, Conscientious Objector

On Thursday, New York Times editor-in-chief Bill Keller hysterically accused the John McCain campaign of "wag[ing] a war" on the Gray Lady simply by issuing a clear and calm denial of Keller's smear. If that's true, then give Times public editor Clark Hoyt conscientious objector status. Hoyt wants no part of defending Keller or his journalists, which he makes clear in a stinging rebuke: The article was notable for what it did not say: It did not say what convinced the advisers that there was a romance. It did not make clear what McCain was admitting when he acknowledged behaving inappropriately — an affair or just an association with a lobbyist that could look bad. And it did not say whether Weaver, the only on-the-record source, believed there was a romance. The Times did not offer independent proof, like the text messages between Detroit’s mayor and a female aide that...

Nader An Oh-Eighter

Barack Obama can now point to someone running to his left as evidence of his moderateness. Ralph Nader has announced that he will run for President in 2008, giving Democrats another potential headache in the fall, albeit a small one: Ralph Nader has announced plans to run again for the US presidency. The anti-establishment consumer advocate made the announcement in a televised interview on Sunday. .... "I'm running for president," Mr Nader said as he announced the move on NBC's Meet the Press. He said most Americans were disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties - who were not discussing the urgent issues facing American voters Democrats, he said, were "complicit" and if they did not win by a "landslide" this year, "they should just close down". Nader managed to make the 2000 race a lot more interesting than anyone predicted. Although he only captured 3 million votes nationwide, he...

Why Presidents Matter

The ascent of John McCain to the apparent Republican nomination has discouraged some conservatives, who have expressed a willingness to sit out 2008 and let a Democrat win the White House. They claim, hyperbolically, that no real policy differences exist between McCain and either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, and that having a Democrat take the blame for the coming debacle will make it easier to elect Republicans later. An interesting analysis of the direction of the Supreme Court in the Washington Post should serve as a reminder of one area that will turn out very differently: The increasingly conservative court has said often of late that it is getting out of the business of finding a right to sue that is not explicitly stated in the law -- what lawyers call an "implied cause of action." Two discrimination cases that the court heard last week, both concerning retaliation, made...

Can Obama Carry The Red?

Barack Obama has raised hopes for a Democratic victory in November by winning primarily in states that normally vote Republican. He argues that this shows he can redraw the Electoral College map in the general election and force Republicans onto the defensive in normally safe areas of the country. However, Hillary Clinton has an argument by reflexion that she can safeguard the Democratic strongholds better -- and that Obama's red-state strength could be overrated: In winning Tuesday's primary in the key swing state of Wisconsin, Sen. Barack Obama drew support from tens of thousands of Republicans and independents. He pulled off the same feat in his landslide victory in the Virginia primary the week before, suggesting he could win the state in November. In South Carolina, he had more votes than the top two Republican contenders put together; in Kansas, his total topped the overall GOP turnout. All along, Obama...

February 25, 2008

Now Louis Farrakhan Gets Messiah Fever

The messianic rhetoric surrounding Barack Obama's presidential run just got a little stranger, although in one sense somewhat fitting. Speaking at the Nation of Islam's annual Saviour's Day event, Louis Farrakhan claimed that Obama could be the only person who could "lift America from its fall," and compared him to NoI founder Fard Mohammed (via Memeorandum): In his first major public address since a cancer crisis, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the "hope of the entire world" that the U.S. will change for the better. The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of 20,000 people at the annual Saviours' Day celebration, never outrightly endorsed Obama but spent most of the nearly two-hour speech praising the Illinois senator. "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is...

Two Potential Veeps To The Right

Byron York interviewed two of the men mentioned most often as potential running mates for John McCain, governors Tim Pawlenty and Mark Sanford. Both men enthusiastically supported McCain in the primaries, but both men have significant policy differences with McCain on the nominee's signature issues -- immigration and campaign-finance reform. How they reconcile themselves to McCain may prove instructive to the rest of the field, and may give conservatives reason for hope in both men: On Sunday, I spoke with two leading contenders for the McCain ticket, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, both in Washington for the annual meeting of the National Governors’ Association. While each expressed strong support for McCain, neither would deny differences with the candidate on two of the issues that have caused McCain the greatest trouble with the conservative base: immigration and campaign-finance reform. .... Both men praised McCain’s desire to...

Can The Dolphin Be Far Behind?

They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning, No-one you see, is smarter than he.... When Mitt Romney first appeared at CPAC in 2007 as a presidential candidate, a man in a dolphin costume began following him to highlight his "flip-flops" on policy. Flipper made an appearance at this year's CPAC as well, but found himself out of a job on the first day when Romney withdrew from the presidential race. If he reads today's Washington Post, he might find new material to extend his gig by making appearances at Barack Obama rallies instead: Top Obama Flip-Flops 1. Special interests In January, the Obama campaign described union contributions to the campaigns of Clinton and John Edwards as "special interest" money. Obama changed his tune as he began gathering his own union endorsements. He now refers respectfully to unions as the representatives of "working people" and says he is "thrilled" by...

Is This Helpful?

The ascent of Barack Obama to front-runner status has also given rise to some highly irresponsible talk in the media, mostly sotto voce, about the potential for assassination. The New York Times breaks this into the open, giving Obama more uncomfortable associations with Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy than those his soaring rhetoric had already generated: There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe? In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for Mr. Obama, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries that a message of hope and change, in addition to his race, made him more vulnerable...

Where's The Diplomatic Beef?

Benny Avni at the New York Sun looks at Barack Obama's promise to meet with America's enemies, and wonders what could come from this policy. Given that Obama doesn't discuss the goals or the potential trading points would be, Avni sees the potential for humiliation as far greater than that of progress. It also demonstrates Obama's moral relativism: For Mr. Obama, however, dangling high-end diplomatic meetings as an incentive for a change in behavior is bad policy rooted in American hubris. "If we think that meeting with the president is a privilege that has to be earned, I think that reinforces the sense that we stand above the rest of the world at this point in time," he said during the CNN/Univision debate with Senator Clinton on Thursday. His aversion to American exceptionalism aside, Mr. Obama's position evolved out of a primary debate last July, when he casually said he...

Not An Aphrodisiac

The Hillary Clinton campaign has tried just about everything that it can to derail Barack Obama's improbable rise to front-runner status in the Democratic primaries. Now it has begun circulating a photo of the young politician pandering to Muslims abroad by adopting a native costume, calling into question his commitment to Christianity and opposition to Islamist terror: Oh, hey! Wrong picture. I meant this one: Damn! Wrong one again! Let's try one more time: Dating and campaigning have something in common. The reek of desperation does not act as an aphrodisiac on potential suitors....

USA Today: Who Pays The Bill?

So far, the lack of daylight between the agendas of the two Democratic contenders for the party's presidential nomination has kept the focus mostly on experience and campaign tactics. USA Today took a look at the actual economic policies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and especially at the bottom line. They wonder who will pay the bill for the latest Democratic Party giveaway: In 2009, when the next president takes office, the government is expected to spend $400 billion more than it takes in, adding to a national debt that tops $9 trillion. Yet Clinton and Obama both offer a long list of new spending proposals that suggests a lack of seriousness in confronting the nation's fiscal condition. Obama has received more criticism, perhaps deservedly so, because his list is somewhat longer. But Clinton also appears to be overpromising on what she would do and underdelivering on how she...

Obama's Negatives Going Up

While Hillary Clinton has not found a way to break the consecutive primaries losing streak against Barack Obama, now at 10 or 11 depending on whether one counts the expatriate poll, she has managed to force Obama to talk a little more specifically about policy. That apparently has cost Obama some ground, according to Rasmussen, although not so much against Hillary. His negatives have risen seven points in the last month, and now are ten points higher than those of John McCain: Thirty-four percent (34%) of all voters say they will definitely vote for John McCain if he is on the ballot this November. Thirty-three percent (33%) will definitely vote against him while 29% say their support hinges on who his opponent is. Barack Obama has the same number who will definitely vote for him--34%. But, more people are committed to voting against him than McCain. Forty-three percent (43%) say...

February 26, 2008

Did Saddam Figure's Millions Influence Obama?

The Times of London follows the money in the journalistic tradition of Watergate and finds a strange connection between Tony Rezko, Barack Obama, and Nadhmi Auchi. The latter, one of Britain's richest men, has a long history of shady financial dealings as well as numerous connections to Saddam Hussein, who he helped to power. According to the Times, Auchi sent a lot of money to Rezko just before his wife bought property adjacent to the Obamas in a land deal that has already raised a lot of eyebrows: A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama's fundraiser just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses. The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain’s wealthiest men, helped Mr Obama buy his mock Georgian mansion in Chicago. A company related...

CBS Polling Still As Good As Ever

CBS and the New York Times have a new poll out that looks at the Democratic primary race and at the general election. In the former, it uses a rather small sample, but in the latter the sample gets weighted -- as usual -- in favor of Democratic voters. Barack Obama has taken a lead in the national numbers for the primary, not exactly breaking news: A new CBS News/New York Times poll finds Barack Obama with a 16-point lead over rival Hillary Clinton among Democratic primary voters nationwide. Obama, coming off 11 straight primary and caucus victories, had the support of 54 percent of Democratic primary voters nationally. Clinton had 38 percent support. In a CBS News poll taken three weeks ago, shortly before Super Tuesday, Obama and Clinton were tied at 41 percent. Clinton led by 15 points nationally in January. The former first lady has lost her...

It's Kitchen Sink Time

The Hillary Clinton campaign has begun to throw everything they have left in the cupboard against Barack Obama as the window of opportunity begins to close on their candidate. Mike Allen and John F. Harris at Politico report that the campaign has also begun to turn on itself in its last throes on the national stage, and as polling numbers continue to drop nationwide: With a week to go before climactic tests in Texas and Ohio, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign team has slipped into full recriminations mode. Looking backward, interviews with a cross-section of campaign aides and sympathetic outsiders suggest a team consumed with frustration and finger-pointing about the apparent failure of several recent tactical moves against Barack Obama. Looking forward, it is clear Clinton’s team has only a faint and highly improvisational strategy about what to do over the next seven days. Simply put, there is no secret weapon....

Palin's In

As speculation increases on the VP choice for John McCain, we have begun to hear the traditional denials from the leading candidates. They want to focus on their current job, or they don't want to presume that they will be one of McCain's final options. One candidate has offered some refreshing enthusiasm: Palin would make an interesting choice. She would be the first woman on a major party ticket since Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, assuming Hillary Clinton fails to win the Democratic nomination. Palin could be the first Alaskan on a major-party ticket as well. She's young and popular in the party, and her pro-life credentials are beyond dispute. She also has a history of demanding better ethics in politics, resigning a position on a state board because of ethical lapses by fellow Republicans. However, Palin has a few drawbacks as well. She's younger than Barack Obama and has held...

McCain's Sister Souljah Moment?

Apparently, John McCain doesn't like the asinine emphasis on Barack Obama's middle name any more than Obama himself. After talk-radio host Bill Cunningham introduced McCain at a Cincinnati rally, the presumptive Republican nominee apologized for the disrespectful tone taken by his emcee: McCain wasn't on stage nor in the building when Cunningham made the comments, but he quickly distanced himself from them and the talk show host after finishing his speech. McCain spoke to a couple hundred people at Memorial Hall in downtown Cincinnati. "I apologize for it," McCain told reporters, addressing the issue before they had a chance to ask the Arizona senator about Cunningham's comments. "I did not know about these remarks but I take responsibility for them. I repudiate them," he said. "My entire campaign I have treated Senator Obama and Senator (Hillary Rodham) Clinton with respect. I will continue to do that throughout this campaign. McCain...

Gray Lady Issues Correction On McCain Smear

Well, it's not what one might think. They have a correction on an irrelevant point in a completely discredited article -- but at least it's right at the top: A front-page article on Feb. 21 about Senator John McCain’s record on lobbying and ethics, including his role in the Keating Five case, described incorrectly the reprimand delivered to three other members of the Senate in 1991 for intervening with government regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr. The Senate Ethics Committee rebuked the three senators for improper behavior, but under a parliamentary agreement the full Senate did not censure them or take any other vote on the matter. Wow. That really builds the ol' credibility, doesn't it? Here we have a story that got held for months while the editors tried to build a case for their accusations. We've been told by no less an authority than Dan Rather...

February 27, 2008

The New York Times Seems To Have Missed This

Both Democratic presidential candidates keep harping on two topics in the campaign. They want to end lobbyist influence in Washington, and they want to keep foreigners from unfair competition in American markets. The latter message has generated considerable enthusiasm, and blaming lobbyists has always been a winning political message. However, both need to explain how they managed to break those same promises as Senators (via Instapundit): Both Democratic presidential candidates, who promise to curb the influence of corporate lobbyists in Washington, helped enact narrowly tailored tax breaks sought by major campaign contributors. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign has accepted $54,350 from members of a law firm that in 2006 lobbied him to introduce a tax provision for a Japanese drug company with operations in Illinois, according to public records and interviews. The government estimates the provision, which became law in December 2006, will cost the treasury $800,000. In 2002, Sen....

McCain In Front: LA Times Poll

The Los Angeles Times has conducted a national poll for the presidency, and the results show John McCain leading both Democratic presidential contenders despite all of the attention on their primaries. Experience and wartime judgment carry McCain to leads over both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, although within the margin of error for the latter: As he emerges from a sometimes- bitter primary campaign, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain poses a stiff challenge to either of his potential Democratic opponents in the general election, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found. The findings underscore the difficulties ahead for Democrats as they hope to retake the White House during a time of war, with voters giving McCain far higher marks when it comes to experience, fighting terrorism and dealing with the situation in Iraq. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have made ending America's involvement in the war...

Hillary, Reduced To Satire

I guess the Hillary Clinton campaign spent a lot of time the last few days in debate prep looking for a response with the power of her "change you can Xerox" line that flopped so badly in the last event. Duane Patterson finds this gem at the 16th minute of last night's debate, which neatly coincides with Hillary's long-overdue 16th minute of her 15 minutes of fame. In this clip, she paints herself as the victim of the entire debate process ... and uses Saturday Night Live as proof. No, I'm not kidding (via Memeorandum): Hillary Clinton said she was curious about the media in the last few debates always going to her first, citing Saturday Night Live and offering to give an extra pillow to Obama to make him more comfortable. Groans and boos immediately erupted from the crowd. Want to know another signal that a campaign has come...

Superdelegates: Because The Establishment Is Smarter Than The Voters

The Democrats have discovered just how badly they have constructed their college of delegates in this cycle. They have used the superdelegate structure since the mid-1980s, but no one foresaw how that could appear when two candidates split the vote almost equally. Now one the architects of the Democratic delegate structure defends the concept in today's Washington Post by saying what no one else will -- the Establishment is smarter than the electorate: In presidential election years, Americans see the face of a political party most clearly in the personality, views and character of its presidential candidates. But a national political party is about more than just the president. Its senators and House members pass the nation's laws and budgets. Its governors lead the states. All must work together for progress in America. I chaired the 1982 Democratic Party Commission on Presidential Nominations that created certain automatic delegates to the...

Jesse, O'Reilly's Not On The Stump ....

Not much to add to this video from our friends at Eyeblast. Jesse Jackson gets asked to comment on Michelle Obama's assertion that she is proud of her country for the first time, and can't quite grasp the question: Mostly, the clip is fun for watching Jackson splutter. He actually makes it worse by getting it wrong twice, and then trying to avoid the real meaning by shifting to Bill O'Reilly's idiotic use of the term "lynch". Chris Matthews seems amused as well....

February 28, 2008

Obama's Sotto Voce To Canadians: I'm Demagoguing On NAFTA

Barack Obama has joined Hillary Clinton in trashing one of her husband's major economic and diplomatic achievements on the stump. He has told Americans that he rejects NAFTA, the program that created a free-trade zone out of North America, hoping to ride protectionist fever to the White House. However, the man who runs as a different kind of politician has a different kind of message to Canadians about NAFTA: Barack Obama has ratcheted up his attacks on NAFTA, but a senior member of his campaign team told a Canadian official not to take his criticisms seriously, CTV News has learned. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton have been critical of the long-standing North American Free Trade Agreement over the course of the Democratic primaries, saying that the deal has cost U.S. workers' jobs. Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama's campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the...

Bloomberg Shifts From King To Kingmaker

Michael Bloomberg has decided not to run for president, but he will likely decide on an endorsement in the next few weeks. The mayor of New York City opts out in today's New York Times, but he makes clear that he will remain engaged as an independent voice -- and that he's looking to see which candidate displays that kind of party-independent leadership: I believe that an independent approach to these issues is essential to governing our nation — and that an independent can win the presidency. I listened carefully to those who encouraged me to run, but I am not — and will not be — a candidate for president. I have watched this campaign unfold, and I am hopeful that the current campaigns can rise to the challenge by offering truly independent leadership. The most productive role that I can serve is to push them forward, by using...

Novak: Pawlenty Not Popular Among GOP Governors

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has a high profile when it comes to potential running-mate options for John McCain. Pawlenty endorsed McCain early and stuck with him during hard times midway through 2007, and his center-right governance of blue-state Minnesota shows some real political talent. However, even Minnesotans question his conservative mien, and Robert Novak today reports that the unease extends to some of Pawlenty's colleagues: Minnesota's Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, carefully prepared his plan for controlling greenhouse gas emissions to present it at the annual winter meeting of governors in Washington. That effort coincided with Pawlenty's fast-rising prospects to become Sen. John McCain's choice for vice president. But behind closed doors, governors from energy-producing states complained so vigorously that Pawlenty's proposal was buried. Pawlenty's position as chairman of the National Governors Association may prove to be his undoing. While party insiders sing his praises as ideal to be McCain's running...

The Times Raises Another McCain Non-Issue

The staff at the New York Times has burned the midnight oil trying to find ways to derail John McCain's campaign. After endorsing him in the primary, the paper then ran an unsubstantiated smear against him as a philanderer. Now they ask whether he is eligible for the office, given his birth in the Panama Canal zone while his father served the country: The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming. Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment...

Obama Getting Bad Military Advice

Jack Jacobs at MS-NBC wonders who Barack Obama has as his military advisers. Based on his answers at the debate, Jacobs suggests replacing them at the first opportunity. No one expects a presidential candidate to be an expert on ground combat, but at the very least candidates can hire a few: But last week, during his debate with Clinton, Obama tried speaking about substance when he mentioned the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he displayed an astounding ignorance of the military instrument. He said that an anonymous U.S. Army captain told him that his infantry platoon was split and sent to different areas of operations; that they were lacking vehicles; and that they had insufficient ammunition to fight. Although problems do occur in combat situations to be sure, none of what Obama related makes any sense and is, according to people with whom I spoke, untrue. Units the size...

February 29, 2008

Black Superdelegates Get Harassed By .... Obama Supporters?

Black superdelegates report harassment, intimidation, and namecalling in attempts to get them to change their votes. Has this come from the vaunted Clinton machine, desperately attempting to pull out a miracle win? No -- it comes from affiliates of the Barack Obama campaign, which hardly needs the hard sell (via Memeorandum): African-American superdelegates said Thursday that they’ll stand up against threats, intimidation and “Uncle Tom” smears rather than switch their support from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama. “African-American superdelegates are being targeted, harassed and threatened,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), a superdelegate who has supported Clinton since August. Cleaver said black superdelegates are receiving “nasty letters, phone calls, threats they’ll get an opponent, being called an Uncle Tom. “This is the politics of the 1950s,” he complained. “A lot of members are experiencing a lot of ugly stuff. They’re not going to talk about it, but...

The Economics Of Fear

The Economist takes a look at Obamanomics, and it sees William Jennings Bryan and class warfare. Instead of offering hope, Barack Obama offers the same fear- and envy-based tactics on which populism has always thrived. While Democrats have often used these tactics in primaries, the Economist worries that Obama might try to govern based on these promises: FOR a man who has placed “hope” at the centre of his campaign, Barack Obama can sound pretty darned depressing. As the battle for the Democratic nomination reaches a climax in Texas and Ohio, the front-runner's speeches have begun to paint a world in which laid-off parents compete with their children for minimum-wage jobs while corporate fat-cats mis-sell dodgy mortgages and ship jobs off to Mexico. The man who claims to be a “post-partisan” centrist seems to be channelling the spirit of William Jennings Bryan, the original American populist, who thunderously demanded to...

Obama Double-Talk On NAFTA Confirmed: CTV

After reporting on Barack Obama's dance with the Canadians on NAFTA yesterday, Canadian broadcaster CTV got accused of perpetrating a smear against the Democratic front-runner. They insisted that Obama meant every word he said about overturning the free-trade treaty, and that no one had contacted the Canadian diplomatic corps to reassure them that it was mere demagoguery. CTV responded today by naming names -- and suddenly the Obama campaign has grown quiet: The Obama campaign told CTV late Thursday night that no message was passed to the Canadian government that suggests that Obama does not mean what he says about opting out of NAFTA if it is not renegotiated. However, the Obama camp did not respond to repeated questions from CTV on reports that a conversation on this matter was held between Obama's senior economic adviser -- Austan Goolsbee -- and the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago. Earlier Thursday, the...

Fear And Loathing In The Hillary Clinton Campaign

"Knows the military"? I'd call this the last act of a desperate woman. Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton present themselves as the person most people would want answering the phone at the White House in the middle of the night. In fact, the Democrats have done their best to minimize the threats to the US, especially since it became clear that John McCain -- with his decades of work on military policy -- would be the Republican nominee. Does anyone remember the line that the "war on terror" was just a bumper sticker? John McCain could simply clip off the last ten seconds of this ad and run it for the general election -- no matter which Democrat won the nomination. I can't wait for the pushback against Hillary for this ad....