January 4, 2008
Jan 04 00:01 Biden, Dodd Leave Race Jan 04 03:05 Stinging Obits Jan 04 10:06 New Blog Alert Jan 04 11:39 Let The Whining Begin Jan 04 21:30 This Isn't a Change Election Jan 04 22:03 Time To Refill Fred's Tank
Biden, Dodd Leave Race
According to this MSNBC article , Chris Dodd and Joe Biden have dropped out of the race following their dismal showing in Iowa's caucuses. I can't say that that's surprising. Here's what MSNBC's reporting:
Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina appeared headed for second place, relegating Clinton, the former first lady, to a close third. Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware dropped out after poor showings.Here's what The Hill is reporting :
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) is withdrawing from the from the presidential race after a lackluster showing in the Iowa caucuses Thursday night. With almost all of the precincts reporting, Biden failed to garner over 1 percent of the overall support in the caucuses.Expect Bill Richardson to be the next casualty. Following their lackluster performance in Iowa, it became impossible for Dodd and Biden to justify their presence in the race. Frankly, I don't know how Richardson is justifying his staying in the race.
Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.), who also failed to break 1 percent, is quitting the race as well.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's campaign announced that he had made it to the "final four" going on to New Hampshire, which holds its primary Jan. 8. Richardson has a little over 2 percent.
Posted Friday, January 4, 2008 12:04 AM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 04-Jan-08 02:33 AM
Dodd and Biden were walking jokes and had no business in the race in the first place. Richardson, on the other hand, is inarguably the most qualified Democrat running. I've said before that I hope this marathon race for the Presidency ends up in a 3-, 4- or even 5-way tie on both sides and that everything comes down to the conventions in September. Perhaps then all of this race to be first and the interminable campaigns will be re-thought.
Stinging Obits
This article says that Mitt Romney is already a walking dead man politically. This article says that Hillary's campaign got stung tonight. I agree with both assessments. Let's start with Reuters' stinging obit of Hillary:
Sen. Hillary Clinton placed third in the Iowa Democratic caucus on Thursday, a big setback for the one-time national front-runner in the first nominating contest of the 2008 U.S. presidential election, CNN reported.Had Hillary lost to John Edwards, it wouldn't have been a stinging defeat. In fact, it might've been little more than a speedbump. Losing to Obama, though, makes her path to victory much more steep and treacherous.
Sen. Barack Obama placed first in the vote and former Sen. John Edwards came in second.
The third-place finish put pressure on Clinton, the former first lady who is seeking to become the country's first woman president, to regain her national front-runner status as she heads into the Jan 8. primary vote in New Hampshire.
Hillary never recovered from her disastrous debate performance where she got caught taking two positions on issuing drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. Her tailspin accelerated when Hillary said that Barack Obama had presidential aspirations...in Kindergarten .
The tailspin reached its zenith this weekend when she said that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf shouldn't be the only candidate on the ballot. Joe Biden scolded her , saying that Musharraf wouldn't be on the ballot.
Next, let's read John Ellis' obit on Mitt Romney:
He's all but doomed now. Senator John McCain will beat him in New Hampshire, probably by a lot, and Romney's media coverage will evaporate and his candidacy will consequently die. On January 9, his managers will walk in and say that the campaign needs $10 million or $15 million to continue and that he, Romney, will have to write the check. Everyone who would contribute has maxed out. Everyone who might won't. Two-time losers don't get new money. It's a basic rule of politics.Simply put, Mitt's strategy was predictable but his path was uphill. He wasn't the right man. It wasn't the right time. He didn't connect with voters because he didn't have the right message.
Romney will make his last stand in Michigan; that'll be the compromise he and his advisors reach. It's another of his "home" states, by virtue of the fact that his father was governor there 40 years ago. And he'll make the "economy" the issue there, with some immigration red meat thrown in to try to cut McCain. But by then, everyone there will see it for what it is: a construct of consultancy, a case study in desperation. Romney's defeat in Michigan will be definitive. And then it'll be over; back to Belmont with Ann and the kids and plenty of time to think about what went wrong.
Where would you start? A large piece of the Romney campaign's failure was its unwillingness to discuss the major issues facing the country in substantive terms. He never said one interesting thing about how to defeat radical Islam in its war against the United States in particular and the developed world in general. In the midst of the greatest financial meltdown in at least two decades, he didn't offer up even the sketchiest proposal for national or international oversight of the global financial system. In the midst of a genomic revolution in biological science, one that impacts everything from energy to health care to national security, he said nothing at all.
A large part of politics is framing the context in which one's candidacy is understood. Romney was never going to be a base candidate. He's a Mormon and the base is not. Romney was never going to be the "conservative" candidate, he was the former governor of Massachusetts, perhaps the most liberal state in the country, and campaigned there for the US Senate (in 1994) and for governor (in 2002) as a moderate.
Frankly, I think that Mitt was ill-served by his advisors. Casting him as the most electable conservative simply wasn't the brightest move. Had he run on his executive ability, he might've been better off. Instead of trying to portray himself as a true conservative, he would've ben able to cast himself as the executive who turned the 2002 Winter Olympics into a big success.
Being labeled inauthentic hurt both candidates. Mitt Romney cast himself as pro life, a hardliner on border enforcement while Hillary cast herself as the most experienced candidate and most able to hit the ground running. Clearly, Mitt didn't convince people that he is pro life. People didn't think that he was sincere about immigration. This weekend, Hillary got exposed as a foreign policy neophyte when she whined about Musharraf being on the ballot even though Pakistan's next elections were for the Parliament.
While there's certainly a mood for change, there's an even bigger appetite for authenticity and credibility. That dynamic worked against Hillary and Romney.
That's why people are right in writing their obits.
Posted Friday, January 4, 2008 3:08 AM
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New Blog Alert
Salena Zito, one of my favorite columnists, has joined the blogosphere. I've checked Primary Colors out and pronounce it a winner. Make sure to bookmark it. I plan on making it part of my daily reading.
Posted Friday, January 4, 2008 10:06 AM
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Let The Whining Begin
Hugh Hewitt has started whining about how Republicans will get blown out next November if we run McCain or Huckabee. For what it's worth, I agree with him on that. What I don't agree with is that his man Mitt would fare much better.
Huckabee was the stalking horse of the anti-Romney, anti-Rudy folks who want the GOP to get blown out in November, running either behind a 72 year old "maverick," or a guitar-playing Baptist preacher, neither of whom has much of a chance. Brooks is not among the gang that wants the Democrats to win the election in the next three weeks, but he is in love with the story, and John McCain.Hearing Hugh whine about a journalist who's "in love with" a politician is pathethic. Hugh didn't attempt to hide his affection for Romney, a fatally flawed candidate. Mitt Romney is an electoral disaster waiting to happen. If Hillary somehow rebounds and wins, she'd put Romney on the defensive from Day One. If Obama wins, then the DNC will run hundreds of ads attacking Romney's flip-flops.
It's worth noting that Hugh is ignoring Fred Thompson. If Fred Thompson won the nomination, still a longshot but at least an improving longshot, his warchest would fill up in a hurry. I subscribe to Rush's theory that most contributors are holding back so they can get behind the nominee.
Fred's strong finish in Iowa will likely mean more people contributing to his campaign, which is already in strong position in South Carolina. If he wins there, the dynamics of the race change.
Mitt and Fred are polar opposites in the respect that Fred is an acquired taste. The more you look at him, the more appealing he becomes. The opposite is true of Mitt. The more he's examined, the less likely people are of trusting him.
Part of the reason why bloggers have turned against Mitt is Hugh himself. This shouldn't be ignored because bloggers bring life to a campaign. Hugh's been such a total Mitt apologist that people have tuned him, and Mitt, out. Hugh's 'Mitt can do no wrong' approach has been a complete turnoff. So is this type of 'analysis':
Romney as a mainstream Republican could have used the slingshot from Iowa to ride the platform forward, but anti-platform candidates have to fight all the way to St. Paul. The hundreds-of-thousands of individual donors to Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson haven't agreed to the media's rules for wresting the party away from them, and the voters of 1994, 2000 and 2004 certainly haven't.Romney isn't a mainstream Republican. The majority of bloggers know that Mitt's a RINO. Hugh knows that that won't sell so he built Romney up as a rock solid conservative. The problem with that is there's a plethora of proof showing him to be a flip-flopping RINO.
Another thing that's contributing to Romney's, and Hugh's demise, is how negative they've become the last three weeks before the Iowa Caucuses. Hugh's saying that "Voters look at Fred and see Bob Dole" firmed up support for Fred. Mitt attacking Huckabee firmed up Huckabee's support.
Hugh predicted that Romney's comparison ads, coupled with Huckabee's foreign policy gaffes, would hand Romney the victory in Iowa. Hugh was wrong. Romney will undoubtedly stay in this until a winner is crowned but he's getting close to being a dead man walking politically.
Posted Friday, January 4, 2008 11:41 AM
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This Isn't a Change Election
I haven't bought into the theory that this is a change election because I think it's really a credibility election. Let's look at this through the lens of last night's Iowa caucuses.
Everyone knows that the big winners were Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. What people are trying to figure out is why they won so handily. I believe that it's got more to do with who lost last night than who won.
Hillary's panderfest failed miserably in the infamous Russert Debate that she'd say anything to collect a few votes. It became apparent then that she'd do anything to avoid getting pinned down on anything. That's when Hillary's tailspin began. Team Hillary is still trying to figure out how to pull out of that tailspin. I'm not certain they'll be able to accomplish that considering her reputation as a bare-knuckled streetfighter.
Hillary's sought to portray herself as a savvy White House veteran who could hit the ground running. She shot that image to smithereens this weekend when she told Wolf Blitzer and George Stephanopolous that it was wrong for Pervez Musharraf to run essentially unopposed in the upcoming Pakistani elections. The bad news for Hillary was that the Pakistani elections are parliamentary elections. Joe Biden noted that Musharraf was just elected Pakistan's president.
On the GOP side, Mitt Romney lost last night because he was cast as inauthentic and a flip-flopper. He outspent Huckabee by a 20:1 margin and got beat by 9 points. He was crushed for flip-flopping on the life issue, immigration and the Bush tax cuts. His credibility has taken a hard hit.
That isn't the only place where credibility applies. Does anyone think that Mike Huckabee or Barack Obama will have credibility on national security issues? Of course not. Credibility also applies to whether people believe you're capable of doing the job. For all their sunny talk, the truth is that neither Obama or Huckabee are seen as serious on certain issues.
The issue that's most likely to get people wondering if a candidate is up to the job is foreign policy. Clearly, Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama don't have the foreign policy credentials that gives them instant credibility. This doesn't hurt Obama nearly as much because Hillary's proven to be much more of a lightweight than expected. The gap between Hillary and Obama is relatively tiny.
Huckabee, though, looks unprepared compared with Fred, Rudy and McCain, each of whom has a strong foreign policy resume. This will get more noticeable now that we've dispensed with Iowa and will soon have New Hampshire in the rearview.
By the time the race hits South Carolina, the GOP candidates will face a different type of scrutiny. Since the Democrats are the party that's ignored foreign policy and the jihadists war against civilization, their day of reckoning won't happen until the general election. By then, it'll be too late for them to adjust.
That's why it's vitally important for us to pick the most serious foreign policy candidate possible. The good news is that we've got 3 candidates who are serious about national security. It doesn't hurt that one of them, Fred Thompson, is rock solid on the other important issues to conservatives.
The Democratic nominee won't get scrutinized that much on foreign policy matters until the general election. Whether that's Obama, which I think is likely, or Hillary, they're in tough shape. Neither of them has much credibility on foreign policy issues.
Another reason why I'm positive this is a credibility election, not a change election, is because every politician talks about reforming this or that, then delivering the same old same old. That used to work but it doesn't anymore. People can determine for themselves whether bills do what they say they'll do.
A good example is Congress promising earmark reform, then passing a bill that didn't change their earmarking habits a bit. People now know whether a person is serious about change or if they're just using that word for political cover. People tune politicians out if they aren't trustworthy. They also vote them out. That's as it should be.
After all, We The People demand credibility politicians.
Originally posted Friday, January 4, 2008, revised 05-Jan 1:52 AM
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Time To Refill Fred's Tank
With Iowa behind us, the campaign moves on. For me, that means making sure that Fred has the resources needed to compete. According to Fred's campaign website , Fred will need $540,000 for advertising in South Carolina. He's also hoping to add 50,000 new Fred Friends before South Carolina's primary.
If you're a Fredhead like me, that's another opportunity for us to show that we don't think that Fred limped out of Iowa. It's the perfect opportunity to show the world that Fred's momentum is real and spreading like wildfire. The red pickup truck appeared on Fred's site this afternoon. When last I checked, contributions were closing in on $100,000.
If you believe in Fred and would like to help, visit the Fred Widget and contribute. That isn't the only way to help spread Fred's message of protecting America, of limiting government and confirming strict constructionist judges. From the comfort of your own home, you can Phone for Fred . Or you can tell a friend about Fred .
You're probably thinking that you can't make a difference. I'd tell you that you're wrong about that. Look what happened when a bunch of ordinary citizens decided that the Senate's amnesty bill needed to be dumped into history's scrap heap. All that happened was that the bill got squashed and the Senate switchboard experienced a meltdown.
That's what a group of ordinary citizens, We The People, made happen. You can have a big say in determining the next leader of the free world. Isn't that worth the effort?
Originally posted Friday, January 4, 2008, revised 05-Jan 12:56 AM
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