Olympia Snowe and other wayward Republicans will be subject to strong persuasion but no punishment from the caucus, Senate Republican leaders tell Politico.

Mitch McConnell and his deputies in the Senate Republican leadership are responding very cautiously to Olympia Snowe's decision to become the first GOP vote for a Democratic health care reform bill. Photo: AP

Mitch McConnell and his deputies in the Senate Republican leadership are responding very cautiously to Olympia Snowe’s decision to become the first GOP vote for a Democratic health care reform bill.

That’s about all they can do.

“My job as whip is not to twist her arm but to bring all the information that we can bring to bear on the issue and hope that people vote the way we would like to see them vote,” said McConnell’s No. 2, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). Kyl said a heavy-handed approach “doesn’t work.”

And indeed, it could backfire — not just with Snowe but with other Republicans who’ve indicated that they could cross over to help Democrats pass some of President Barack Obama’s top domestic policy initiatives.

In an op-ed in The New York Times over the weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) suggested that he’s open to supporting a Democratic climate change bill. And in an interview published this week in POLITICO, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said he was willing to try to find common ground with Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) on rewriting the rules for Wall Street.

Republican leaders know that if they crack down hard on Snowe, they risk pushing her and other wavering Republicans into the arms of the Democrats. So, instead, they’ll lobby their own intensely in order to keep the GOP united and force the Democrats to find 60 votes by themselves.

Shelby has assured Republicans that he won’t cross over on his own. He told POLITICO on Wednesday that he would “never support something as the lone Republican.”

But the same can’t be said of Snowe or Graham. Snowe was the only Republican on the Senate Finance Committee to vote for the Democrats’ health care bill Tuesday. And over the summer, Graham was the only Republican on the Judiciary Committee to vote in favor of Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

Shelby was twice elected to the Senate as a Democrat, switching parties when the GOP won the majority in 1994.  Still, he and Graham aren’t going anywhere unless pushed very, very hard.  But Northeastern Republicans like Snowe and Susan Collins would likely improve their positions by becoming Democrats, so treading lightly is McConnell’s only sane choice.

Lamar Alexander, who is in charge of the Senate GOP’s message, said that “our conference does not dictate policy to individual senators” and that opinion among Republican senators is “rarely unanimous.”

On Wednesday, Snowe said she’s not worried about being on the receiving end of any backlash within her caucus. And she dismissed reports that supporting a Democratic health care reform bill could cost her a chance at moving up to the top GOP slot on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. “I have no reason to believe that,” she said.

Back when Arlen Specter was a nominal Republican instead of the nominal Democrat he recently became, I opposed having him chair the Judiciary Committee.   That wasn’t as punishment –I ‘d have given him another powerful chairmanship — but rather because confirming judges is one of a small handful of issues where party unity truly matters.   Surely, Science, Transportation, and Commerce shouldn’t be divided along party lines on most issues.

We’re a continental country with extraordinary diversity.  Senators from Maine are not going to see eye-to-eye on most issues with their counterparts in Kentucky.  Insisting otherwise is a surefire recipe for minority status.

Senator Chris Dodd, through whom any bailout proposal from the Treasury must go, has offered an alternative to the Paulson plan:

The legislation requires Treasury to take an equity stake equal to the purchase price of the assets being bought. If the company isn’t publicly traded, the government would take senior debt instead, placing it in the front of the line of debt holders for repayment in the event of a bankruptcy.

Dodd’s proposal also would create a five-member oversight board to supervise the Treasury secretary’s purchase and sale of distressed mortgage debt.

It would consist of the chairmen of the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as two members from the financial industry designated by congressional leaders.

The board would be authorized to set up a so-called credit review company consisting of Treasury employees to study the soundness of the purchases. Under the plan, the government would be required to obtain an equity stake equal to the value of the debt that is purchased from the companies, including those whose shares are not publicly traded. The Treasury secretary would also be required to issue weekly public reports on the amount of assets bought and sold by the U.S.

There are some other provisions, too, but this seems to be the bulk of it. I’m a bit leery of the US government obtaining equity stakes in private industry, but I’m totally on board with making the Federal government “first in line” in the case of bankruptcy for firms that accept a bailout. I am also on board with an oversight board (though not so much with the “two members from the financial industry”) and am 100% in favor of requiring weekly reports showing the valuation of any debts purchased.

My gut check is that this seems like a step in the right direction. I’ll probably post some more commentary later after I’ve had time to digest.

UPDATE (James Joyner):  Blake Houshell observes,

You’d have to think that even President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who sent Congress a bare-bones bill with zero oversight provisions, had to see this coming. In fact, I think they want Democrats to take this legislation and run with it. Why? Because once the Democrats put their stamp on the bill, they’ll no longer be able to hang any failure around Bush’s neck. It’ll be their failure, too.

Could be.  Certainly, it’s a bipartisan mess, reflecting decades-only policy consensus.  Mostly, though, people blame presidents for the economy unless they’re very clever at shifting the blame or, as was the case with Clinton and Newt Gingrich, their foes are particularly inept.

Team Obama is reportedly seriously vetting Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as vice presidential candidates.  It’s hard to imagine that he’d go with Dodd, who I find likeable and serious, given that he’s running on a “youth” and “change” message and Dodd is old and has been in Washington since roughly the Civil War.  Sebelius is a virtual unknown nationally but she’s a woman, which would appease some of the Hillary Clinton dead-enders, and an outsider, which enhances the “change” message.  Plus, OTB’s Alex Knapp, who lives in Kansas, likes her.

Meanwhile, NPR had former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina on and was touting her as a serious prospect to be John McCain’s running mate.  She certainly adds some things to a McCain ticket, notably economic expertise and freshness.  But she bored me to tears and refused to answer even simple questions, relying instead on tired talking points.  I’m not sure whether that’s a plus or a minus, to be honest.

Elizabeth Edwards, who despite no public policy credentials other than having been married to a one-term senator and yet oddly seems to get op-ed space in the major papers whenever she requests it, has a rather strange editorial in today’s NYT whining about how the mainstream media is failing in its duty to inform the public.

The first several paragraphs make the silly argument that the press covers only the drama of the race and ignores the issues, with the effect that “voters who take their responsibility to be informed seriously enough to search out information about the candidates are finding it harder and harder to do so, particularly if they do not have access to the Internet.” This, frankly, is nonsense. There’s so much information out there that it’s virtually impossible for those who can’t devote full time to immersing themselves in it to read it all. And who are these people who are simultaneously starving for information about Joe Biden’s health care proposals and yet lack Internet access? Presumably, there are people who are poor and don’t work in a connected office who are interested in public policy. But there’s always the public library.

Interspersed in this is a more interesting, if not particularly novel, complaint: That the press decides who the legitimate candidates are.

What’s more, the news media cut candidates like Joe Biden out of the process even before they got started. Just to be clear: I’m not talking about my husband. I’m referring to other worthy Democratic contenders. Few people even had the chance to find out about Joe Biden’s health care plan before he was literally forced from the race by the news blackout that depressed his poll numbers, which in turn depressed his fund-raising.

[...]

Who is responsible for the veil of silence over Senator Biden? Or Senator Dodd? Or Gov. Tom Vilsack? Or Senator Sam Brownback on the Republican side?

The decision was probably made by the same people who decided that Fred Thompson was a serious candidate. Articles purporting to be news spent thousands upon thousands of words contemplating whether he would enter the race, to the point that before he even entered, he was running second in the national polls for the Republican nomination. Second place! And he had not done or said anything that would allow anyone to conclude he was a serious candidate. A major weekly news magazine put Mr. Thompson on its cover, asking — honestly! — whether the absence of a serious campaign and commitment to raising money or getting his policies out was itself a strategy.

This is fair enough. Then again, Thompson was a more plausible contender than Dodd or Vilsack or Brownback for the same reason that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack Obama — are relative novices — were. It’s a Catch-22: Candidates with name recognition and decent poll numbers are deemed legitimate enough to warrant press coverage but without press coverage it’s very hard to build name recognition and poll numbers.

Then again, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul managed to do so.

The press, while holding a certain public trust, is ultimately not a collective but rather a myriad of private businesses that together form a web. Do we really expect the Big 3 networks, already losing viewers at a rapid rate, to devote their 8-12 minutes of nightly political coverage equally among all declared candidates? Or to spend it on the eye-glossing details of Joe Biden’s health plan rather than the interesting kerfuffle of the day?

Similarly, newspaper circulation is declining in almost every market. Papers have more space to devote to features than the television networks and, sure enough, they provide more in-depth coverage. But how often are they supposed to print charts comparing the health plans of the various candidates? If they do so once, are they good? Or must they do so repeatedly to reach occasional readers or those who happened not to read that particular edition?

Here’s the thing: If the public displayed an appetite for these things, the businesses would cater to it. Instead, readers demand more comic strips, horoscopes, recipes, movie listings, gardening tips, “human interest stories,” “good news,” and so forth.

At the same time, though, the incredibly tiny minority of us who are interested in public policy have more ability than ever in human history to get that information in as much detail as we want, as often as we want, and at a time that is convenient to us. That’s a pretty good trade-off.

John Edwards, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mitt Romney, and the others lost, not because the press didn’t cover them properly but because the public looked them over and didn’t see them as “presidential.” It’s probably true that most people couldn’t tell you much about the health plans of these guys. But, really, who cares? There was never much chance that these people would be president. Why waste your time reading their white papers?

Steve Bainbridge has a lengthy post responding to some questions that Steven Taylor and I have put to him vis-a-vis why he’s so vehemently against John McCain after having supported his ideological twin, Fred Thompson. He makes some good points about actions McCain has taken that have irritated him but also acknowledges that personality is a part of the equation, in that he finds McCain “arrogant, selfish, unintelligent, and generally smarmy.”

This is reasonable enough, I think, even though we disagree at least somewhat in our assessment. (Certainly, I think McCain’s at least as smart as, say, Thompson.) At some point, style and personality matter just as much as issues. As I’ve noted before, I’d much sooner vote for Barack Obama — or, heck, Chris Dodd or Joe Biden — than Hillary Clinton, despite being closer on the issues to Clinton. We can’t always explain our visceral instincts but we generally trust them.

Regardless, Bainbridge backs off a bit on his threat to sit out the election to teach the Republican Party a lesson:

Having said all that, I must admit that I find McCain the least objectionable of the remaining 4 major candidates. I can’t see myself voting for any of these guys on Feb 5 in the California primary. If we end up with a McCain-Clinton race in November, however, I’ll reconsider my plan to sit out the 2008 general election.

Which doesn’t really surprise me. We’re all disappointed when our favorite candidate loses (I preferred Phil Gramm in 20001996, for example, until his quick exit) but those of us who truly care about politics almost always choose among the available options. I’ve been truly excited to vote twice* — for Reagan in 1984 and Bush in 2000 — but have managed to nonetheless drag myself out to participate in all the other elections in between and since.

_________________

*Electile Dysfunction, indeed.

As widely anticipated, Bill Richardson is ending his quest for the presidency.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico is pulling out of the presidential race, after coming in fourth in both the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Richardson made the decision after returning to New Mexico yesterday and meeting with his top advisers. He is expected to make an announcement Thursday, according to sources with knowledge of the governor’s decision.

Mr. Richardson’s withdrawal removes a candidate who had a hard-edged message of immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq, but tempered it with humorous television advertisements that emphasized his wide-ranging credentials in a clever and effective way.

The Democrats with the most impressive résumés, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and now Richardson are gone. Left standing are two one-term senators and a senator in her second term who is best known for having been married to a two-term president.

Given Richardson’s virtually non-existent support base, it’s doubtful his withdrawal will have much impact. The NYT speculates:

As the lone Hispanic in the race, Mr. Richardson was expected to draw on support from the sizable Latino population in upcoming Nevada and California primaries. His withdrawal could see these voters swing to either Mr. Obama, who had a strong Hispanic following in Iowa, or to Mrs. Clinton, whose campaign is making an equally vigorous outreach effort.

There also had been a report, carried in the NewMexican.Com, which is based in Mr. Richardson’s home town of Santa Fe, that Mr. Richardson had considered remaining in the race at least through Feb. 5, in order to control the New Mexican Democratic delegation and deliver it to the candidate of his choice. While Mr. Richardson had hoped to do well in Western states, polls showed that he remained in the single-digits in that region, except for in New Mexico.

Iowa is 3.8 percent Latino; he got 2.1 percent of the vote. How strong could his support have been?

And, please, California votes on February 5th. A sizable number of people were going to waste their vote on Richardson rather than choosing between Clinton and Obama?

Mr. Richardson has also repeatedly denied that he was in the race to secure a vice-presidential bid or to get a major appointment should Democrats re-take the White House. Under New Mexico’s term-limits, he must leave office in 2010.

He was widely considered a solid choice for veep or Secretary of State before the campaign season started. If he does get such a nod, it will be because of his competence and likability, not political calculation. By running, he showed that he had no national political appeal to speak of.

ABC has drawn a line and three did not make the cut.

ABC News is eliminating Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter and Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel from its prime-time presidential debates Saturday night because they did not meet benchmarks for their support.

The Democratic debate three days before the New Hampshire primary will include Iowa caucus winner Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson. It starts at 7 p.m. EDT. Before the Democrats take the stage in Manchester, N.H., Republicans Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will hold their own forum. ABC anchor Charles Gibson will moderate both debates.

The network set up benchmarks to narrow the field. Candidates had to meet at least one of three criteria: place first through fourth in Iowa, poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major New Hampshire surveys, or poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major national surveys.

ABC said the rules were quite inclusive, and that none of the candidates objected ahead of time. Its decision was made easier by Democrats Joe Biden and Chris Dodd dropping out of the race Thursday night.

It’s hard to argue with any of these cuts; none of the cutees are factors. The inclusion of Ron Paul, who got a respectable 10 percent in Iowa, was also the right move.

There’s an argument to be made, of course, that the television networks shouldn’t be the ones making these choices. Poll-driven benchmarks are problematic, especially when 49 states have yet to allocate any delegates. Still, culling needs to happen in order to allow the voters to focus on the legitimate candidates and it’s not quite clear how else we would achieve this. The political parties have an obvious disinclination to telling their senators and representatives and governors that they’re not ready for prime time and they also want to avoid the appearance of hand-selecting the candidates.

Mike Huckabee won the Republican vote by a much wider margin than expected and Ron Paul came in a distant fifth place — but ahead of ostensible national frontrunner Rudy Giuliani. Barack Obama won on the Democratic side but one could argue that it was essentially a three way tie, since he got only one more delegate than Clinton, who got one more than Edwards.

So, what does it all mean?

Andrew Sullivan sounds the most optimistic note:

Look at their names: Huckabee and Obama. Both came from nowhere – from Arkansas and Hawaii. Both campaigned as human beings, not programmed campaign robots with messages honed in focus groups. Both faced powerful and monied establishments in both parties. And both are running two variants on the same message: change, uniting America again, saying goodbye to the bitterness of the polarized past, representing ordinary voters against the professionals.

[...]

It is about America. America’s ability to move forward, to unite, to get past the bitter red-and-blue past. That’s what the next generation wants. And they now seem motivated enough to get it.

So, it’s Morning in America. But, as his co-blogger Andrew Sullivan noted just minutes earlier, it’s a dark day for the Republican Party.

Tonight was in many ways devastating news for the GOP. Twice as many people turned out for the Democrats than the Republicans. Clearly independents prefer the Dems.

Now look at how the caucus-goers defined themselves in the entrance polls. Among the Dems: Very Liberal: 18 percent; Somewhat Liberal: 36 percent; Moderate: 40 percent; Conservative: 6 percent. Now check out the Republicans: Very Conservative: 45 percent; Somewhat Conservative: 43 percent; Moderate: 11 percent; Liberal: 1 percent.

One is a national party; the other is on its way to being an ideological church. The damage Bush and Rove have done – revealed in 2006 – is now inescapable.

Somewhere in between lies the truth.

The Immediate Fallout: Democrats

Joe Biden and Chris Dodd have dropped out of the race. Mike Gravel should. Presumably, Bill Richardson needs to do well in New Hampshire to justify staying in the race.

John Edwards missed his best chance to catapult himself into contention. He’s unlikely to do well in New Hampshire and it’s not even clear he’ll take South Carolina despite favorite son status.

While Hillary Clinton isn’t seriously wounded by her finish — she played the expectations game well enough — she needs to come back and win in New Hampshire. If Obama beats her there, she’s in trouble. Charles Hurt reads a bit too much into Iowa but he makes a strong point:

More than 70 percent of Iowa Democrats rejected her bid to get back into the White House. And so, after 15 years of domination, the Clinton dynasty has finally lost its grip on the Democratic Party

The Immediate Fallout: Republicans

Mike Huckabee is a legitimate frontrunner now. Despite a serious of stumbles over the last two weeks, he managed to not only hold off Mitt Romney but beat him by a much wider than expected margin. Still, he’s got a long way to go.

John F. Harris and Jonathan Martin of The Politico are a bit over the top in their overall analysis of the race but they nail this:

Huckabee … must now try to turn what has been a mostly personality-based campaign into an effective national organization with appeal beyond the religious conservatives who formed the basis of his victory here.

That’s going to be hard to accomplish in the four days between now and New Hampshire.

Meanwhile, as WSJ’s Susan Davis notes, this could be the Beginning of the End for Romney. If he doesn’t bounce back and take Michigan or New Hampshire — if not both — it’s hard to map out a plausible path to his nomination.

Fred Thompson edged out John McCain in a photo finish for third. That defied expectations. Still, as Matt Yglesias notes, the press seem to be treating McCain as the one with momentum.

Ron Paul finished in fifth place with double digit support. That’s much better than any of us would have predicted a year ago but far short of the ridiculously high expectations set by his enthusiasts. He’s got the money and fiscal restraint to remain in the race so long as he pleases but a third place finish might have brought him out of the realm of curiosity and gotten the media to frame him as a legitimate candidate. New Hampshire is likely his last shot at that; after that, most people will start to vote strategically.

What it Means for the Parties

The Democrats have three candidates that the base could ultimately rally around, two of whom could well attract strong support from moderates. The third, Hillary Clinton, remains the favorite, I should think, to take the nomination. If any sense of “inevitability” still attached to her prior to last night’s vote, however, it’s now gone. Obama is easily the bigger obstacle in her path.

A Huckabee nomination could conceivably destroy the party. Not only would he be lucky to break 40 percent in the general election against any of the plausible Democratic nominees but many fiscal conservatives and Chamber of Commerce Republicans would bolt. When Ronald Reagan and others mobilized rural Christian conservatives in the 1980s, they never expected that they would take such a prominent role in the party. Gradually, though, they took it over at the grass roots level in much of rural America.

Huckabee’s mobilization of fervent evangelicals, many of whom doubtless had never shown up for a caucus prior to last night, scares the hell out of mainstream Republicans. My strong hunch is that they’ll rally around someone else — probably McCain but possibly Romney or Giuliani — in Michigan and New Hampshire.

What it Means for the Country

Ultimately, I side with Optimistic Sullivan on this one. Democracy is a frustrating thing for elites, who have always feared mob rule. Still, it’s a remarkable thing that a big city black man with a Muslim name managed to beat out the Establishment-backed wife of a former president in one of the whitest, rural states in the country. Adam Nagourney:

Mr. Obama’s victory in this overwhelmingly white state was a powerful answer to the question of whether America was prepared to vote for a black person for president. What was remarkable was the extent to which race was not a factor in this contest.

That Obama was able to do this partly on the basis of inspiring young people, traditionally one of the weakest voting blocks, is also a positive sign.

The elite disappointment with Huckabee’s easy win is palpable. Iowa’s format allows a fervent few to dominate; that structure isn’t in place in most of the states that follow. Still, the fact that a guy that was off the radar screen of even most political junkies a few months ago can stand next to much more famous and better financed men, state his case to the voters, and earn their support is the very ideal of our system.

Further, while the press attention on Huckabee, reasonably enough, focuses on his religiosity, there’s more to his appeal than that, as David Brooks explains at great length. An excerpt:

Huckabee understands how middle-class anxiety is really lived. Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.

In that sense, Huckabee’s victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition.

A conservatism that recognizes stable families as the foundation of economic growth is not hard to imagine. A conservatism that loves capitalism but distrusts capitalists is not hard to imagine either. Adam Smith felt this way. A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year is the only conservatism worth defending.

We have a presidential, not a parliamentary, system in this country. Whereas the latter rewards political experience and working one’s way through the ranks, the former gives more weight to personality and an ability to connect with the people. There’s still a long, long way to go, though, before we face the prospect of a President Huckabee or President Obama.

Other Reactions:

• Steven Taylor does quick hits on all the candidates including: “Rudy Giuliani: 4% sucks, even if you are a guy who didn’t campaign in Iowa if you are, in fact, America’s Mayor.”

• Jim Henley: “[Ron Paul] raised a ridiculous amount of money last year and owns the internet; he inspired an army of volunteers in a caucus system where being able to concentrate bodies is almost uniquely useful and he still couldn’t beat ten lousy percent. Hell, Fred Thompson barely showed up and he beat Paul.”

• Mark Kleiman: “[A]fter Obama’s performance, I’d expect Granite State independents to be flocking to his banner, not McCain’s. And if the Republican primary is left almost entirely to Republican voters, I’m not sure McCain can beat Romney.”

• Barbara O’Brien: “[T]he unprecedented turnout of younger and first-time caucus goers tonight ought to be taken very seriously by both parties.”

• Bruce McQuain: “The first theme, at least for Iowans, was their vote wasn’t for sale. The best financed campaigns didn’t take the win.”

• Ed Morrissey: “Hillary has reaped the harvest of two months of self-inflicted wounds . . . she’s no Bill Clinton.”

• Libby Spencer: “[T]he race is still wide open and we may well have to go all the way to Super Tuesday before we see a definitive frontrunner on either side and that would be good.”

• Vox Day: “I’ve long had the impression that WND reached more Republicans than NRO, the fact that the Chuck Norris-endorsed candidate absolutely trounced the National Review-approved one despite being heavily outspent tends to support this notion, at least for one week.”

• Damian Penny: “Huckabee vs. Obama? I’ll take the Senator from Illinois, and I bet many conservatives – even registered Republicans – feel the same way.”

• Ron Chusid: “Edwards’ populism won’t sell in many states outside of Iowa, and having lost her aura of inevitability, support for Clinton is likely to hemorrhage.”

• Betsy Newmark: “[T]his is a rejection of Bill Clinton just as much. He couldn’t cast his aura over his unlikable wife and usher her to her own coronation. And I predict that it won’t be pretty to watch her flailing away at the new golden boy of the Democratic party.”

• Dean Barker: “Check out the total vote percentages – if Iowa is a slice of America, then America just utterly rejected the Republican party.”

• Anonymous Liberal: “After tonight, I really don’t understand how anyone could fail to see Obama’s superior virtues as a general election candidate.”
• Dan Spencer reminds us that “the Wyoming Republicans will caucus Saturday and choose delegates to the national convention.”
]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/iowa_caucus_results_-_signs_and_portents/feed/ 26 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/biden_dodd_drop_out_after_iowa/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/biden_dodd_drop_out_after_iowa/#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:52:17 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2008/01/biden_dodd_drop_out_after_iowa/

While there will be plenty of speculation today about what last night’s result in Iowa portend for the race, the parties, and the fate of the Republic, one thing is for certain: We won’t have Joe Biden and Chris Dodd to kick around anymore.

Delaware Sen Joe Biden and Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd abandoned their bids for the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday night.

“I count the past year of campaigning for the presidency as one of the most rewarding in a career of public service. Unfortunately, I am withdrawing from that campaign tonight,” Dodd said in an e-mail message sent to supporters tonight. “But there is no reason to hang our heads this evening — only the opportunity to look towards a continuation of the work we started last January: ending the Iraq War, restoring the Constitution, and putting a Democrat in the White House. … You’ve been an invaluable ally in the battle, and I’ll need you to stick by my side despite tonight’s caucus results.”

[...]

Biden sounded a similar note. In a speech before his supporters — who at one point chanted — “Joe, Joe,” he said: “I ain’t going away, let me make that clear.” He said he had no regrets, and the reason he embarked on the campaign was because he believed in the nation. “There’s no reason not to be happy,” he said. “The promise of this nation is immense.” He said he plans to return to the Senate as head of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Meanwhile, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson — who will finish a distant fourth in Iowa, with roughly 2 percent of the vote — is staying in the race. “We are on the way to New Hampshire tonight. We plan to make this a referendum on the Iraq war. This is far from over,” Press Secretary Tom Reynolds tells CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux. Richardson Communications Director Pahl Shipley confirms the news, adding that “New Hampshire is a new game. Every vote counts.”

Biden is the liberal Democrat that plenty of Republicans would seriously consider voting for. Both he and Dodd are serious men who might make excellent presidents. Neither managed to get anywhere near the first tier, however, and their defeat was inevitable.

Richardson, by contrast, has an impressive resume but seems less presidential with each public appearance. There’s not much reason for him to drop out before New Hampshire — it’s only another four days, after all — but there’s not much hope for him, either.

]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/biden_dodd_drop_out_after_iowa/feed/ 2 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/ron_paul_excluded_from_fox_debate/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/ron_paul_excluded_from_fox_debate/#comments Tue, 01 Jan 2008 14:46:28 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2008/01/ron_paul_excluded_from_fox_debate/

I know several of our readers are tired of posts on Ron Paul but Fox News’ announcement that it would exclude candidates not polling in the double digits from their pre-New Hampshire primary debates has set off a firestorm, getting a sharp negative reaction from not only the blogosphere but the New Hampshire GOP.

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 Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson received invites, leaving Paul and Duncan Hunter on the sidelines. The network said it had limited space in its studio — a souped-up bus — and that it invited candidates who had received double-digit support in recent polls.

In a nationwide poll conducted Dec. 14-20 by The Associated Press and Yahoo, Thompson had the support of 11 percent of GOP voters and Paul was at 3 percent. Paul was tied with Thompson for fifth in New Hampshire in the most recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, each with the support of 4 percent of likely voters. Among all New Hampshire voters, Paul led Thompson 6 percent to 4 percent, but that was within the poll’s margin of error.

Both of the state party leaders are fuming.

This weekend’s presidential debates and forum will not include some nationally-known candidates, and the chairmen of the state Republican and Democratic parties are not happy. Fergus Cullen and Raymond Buckley say the decisions by ABC News, WMUR and, in Cullen’s case, FOX News, are inconsistent with the New Hampshire primary’s tradition of providing a level playing field for all candidates.

ABC News and WMUR-TV (Channel 9) confirmed today that they have established performance-based criteria for Saturday night’s pair of presidential debates. Those rules could leave several relatively well-known candidates on the outside looking in, including Democrats Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd.

And Cullen confirmed that FOX News has invited only five presidential candidates to a GOP forum scheduled for Sunday night, leaving out Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter. Cullen said the state GOP is in “ongoing discussions with FOX News about having as many candidates as possible participate” and remains a forum co-sponsor, at least for now.

According to WMUR news director Andrew Vrees and a posting on the ABC News web site, in order to participate in the Saturday night back-to-back GOP and Democratic events at Saint Anselm College, candidates must meet at least one of three criteria:

– Place in the top four in the Iowa caucuses, which will be held on Thursday.

– Poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four reputable random sample New Hampshire telephone surveys sponsored by an established news organization and conducted and released by 9 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 4.

– Poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four reputable random sample national telephone surveys sponsored by an established news organization and conducted and released on or before 9 a.m. on Jan. 4.

[...]

In a statement, Cullen was critical of all sponsors of the debates and the forum. “Limiting the number of candidates who are invited to participate in debates is not consistent with the tradition of the first-in-the-nation primary,” he said. “The level playing field requires that all serious candidates be given an equal opportunity to participate — not just a selected few determined by the media prior to any votes being cast.” He said that the state GOP “calls upon all media organizations planning pre-primary debates or forums for both parties to include all recognized major candidates in their events.”

It should be noted that Paul is by no means the only well-known figure being excluded. Still, he’s the one drawing the most fuss. Not surprisingly, Fox is getting accused of anti-Paul bias:

Jesse Benton, Paul’s spokesman, said it was a “big mistake” not to include his candidate, especially given Paul’s recent success in fundraising. He said the campaign has been trying to reach Fox News to explain the decision, but its calls had not been returned.

“There very well might be some bias,” Benton said. “Ron brings up some topics that aren’t very popular with Fox News, as in fiscal responsibility and withdrawing from the war in Iraq … that does leave us scratching our heads a little bit about whether it was deliberate. Based on metrics, I don’t see how you can possibly exclude Dr. Paul.”

Josh Marshall agrees: “Paul’s out because he’s not a Fox News Bush-clone. Say whatever you want about the guy, Fox News shouldn’t be able to silence him because they don’t like his views.” Digby adds, “If this doesn’t prove that Fox is just a mouthpiece for the GOP establishment, nothing will. They are excluding Ron Paul from the New Hampshire debate but including Fred Thompson, who is polling lower.”

It’s true that Paul is leading Thompson by an average of 7.0 to 3.4. In New Hampshire. But Thompson leads Paul by an average of 11.8 to 4.3 nationally.

No one’s whining about the exclusion of Duncan Hunter, whose candidacy is taken seriously by virtually no one. But Paul, who is barely registering in national polls, has a much more dedicated base of support and has been quite successful as a fundraiser. And did I mention that his supporters were unusually dedicated? Here’s an excerpt from a protest site some have put up (via the LAT):

“We need to send a message to Fox’s Rupert Murdoch & his fellow Neocon buddies that he is not Musharraf and the U.S. is not Pakistan, yet! Fox News cannot just stifle public opinion, debate and impact a primary election by excluding Ron Paul just because they don’t like his message of freedom and liberty. Cover them up with e-mails and they will just say it was a mistake or miscommunication. Be respectful as all of the e-mail addresses below are just employees trying to keep their jobs with the world’s largest media monopoly.”

While I don’t think he can win, it’s hard to justify keeping him out of the debates at this early stage of the campaign. At some point, though, the networks are justified in narrowing the field to only the most viable candidates. Whatever value protest candidates might have in bringing light to fringe issues and viewpoints, the point of these “debates” is to help voters chose among the available choices.

]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/ron_paul_excluded_from_fox_debate/feed/ 71 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/clinton_team_obama_will_be_attacked_on_drug_use/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/clinton_team_obama_will_be_attacked_on_drug_use/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:59:58 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/12/clinton_team_obama_will_be_attacked_on_drug_use/

Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire co-chair says that Barack Obama’s past drug use will hurt him if he should win the nomination.

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.

In an interview, Shaheen said, he remains perplexed about why, at this fraught point in history, voters and the media are not giving more attention to experienced Democratic candidates such as Sens. Chris Dodd and Joe Biden and are instead elevating into the first tier alongside Clinton a pair of candidates with less experience in Washington, Barack Obama and John Edwards. Shaheen also expressed his personal misgivings about whether Obama or Edwards would be electable if they became the party’s nominee.

Among his concerns about Obama as the nominee, he said in an interview here today, is that his background is so relatively unknown and that the Republicans would do their best to unearth negative aspects of it, or concoct mistruths about it. Shaheen, a lawyer and influential state power broker, mentioned as an example Obama’s use of cocaine and marijuana as a young man, which Obama has been open about in his memoir and on the trail.

This is rather clever negative campaigning in the guise of professorial musing. Substantively, though, both arguments are silly.

While Clinton can reasonably claim more national political experience than Obama — although solely because of her time as First Lady — it’s rather strange for her campaign to point out that Obama’s deficit vis-a-vis Biden and Dodd. After all, both have leagues more experience than Clinton, too.

On the drug front, the winner of the last four presidential elections (Bill Clinton twice and George W. Bush twice) were admitted drug users. Clinton was coy with his “but I never inhaled” dodge and Bush refused to talk about his history, merely saying he was “young and foolish,” but only the most naive voters failed to get the message. Obama’s been more direct, to be sure, but I can’t imagine anyone otherwise inclined to vote for him will be dissuaded by his candor.

Image via News Hounds

]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/clinton_team_obama_will_be_attacked_on_drug_use/feed/ 9 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/hillary_clinton_earmark_queen/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/hillary_clinton_earmark_queen/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:28:22 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/11/hillary_clinton_earmark_queen/

Hillary Clinton has been amazingly effective in bringing home the pork to New York, Alexander Bolton reports for The Hill.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has won tens of millions of dollars more in federal earmarks this year than her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, even though two of them have significantly more Senate seniority.

A review of the first three appropriations conference reports finished by Senate and House negotiators shows that Clinton has successfully requested at least $530 million worth of projects.

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), Clinton’s chief rival for the nomination, has so far won $40.6 million in earmarked funds for his constituents, despite the fact that his home-state colleague and booster, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), sits on the Appropriations Committee.

Clinton’s greater haul of federal funds may be due partly to her four more years of Senate seniority than Obama. But seniority is only part of it. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who is also running for president and first won election to the Senate in 1972, garnered $67 million worth of projects. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who came to the Senate in 1981, helped place $100 million worth of earmarks in the three spending bills that have emerged from House-Senate negotiations.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the lone Republican presidential candidate in the Senate, did not win a single earmark in the spending bills. He has chosen instead to position himself on the hustings as a leading critic of excessive government spending. “He has never requested an earmark,” said McCain spokeswoman Melissa Shuffield.

Clinton has seized funds at an impressive rate by knowing what she wants and working methodically to reach her goal, which is the way she is reputed to work on almost everything.

[...]

“Her staff is very efficient,” Shakir said. “They’re on top of the legislative process a lot more than even the staffs of more senior members of the committee. “On top of that, they know what they want; they are knowledgeable about the process and get requests in early, and I think that has a lot to do with it.”

While I’m no fan of earmarks and think the process for allocating federal monies is badly broken, this is how the game is played and she’s playing it extraordinarily well. Despite being a relative novice in the Senate, she’s picked her committee assignments well, assembled an efficient staff, and figured out how to work with her colleagues. This while rather obviously spending much of her tenure running for the White House.

]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/hillary_clinton_earmark_queen/feed/ 1 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/mukasey_confirmed_as_attorney_general_53-40/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/mukasey_confirmed_as_attorney_general_53-40/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:50:08 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/11/mukasey_confirmed_as_attorney_general_53-40/

Michael Mukasey was confirmed as Attorney General in a late-night vote despite the vehement opposition of key Democrats over his refusal to state unequivocally that waterboarding is a form of torture. Six Democrats plus Joe Lieberman joined all 46 Republicans in the vote. Notably absent were each and every one of the Democratic senators running for president: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, and Joe Biden.

As Dan Eggen and Paul Kane note in their front page story in today’s WaPo, “The final tally gave Mukasey the lowest number of yes votes for any attorney general since 1952, just weeks after lawmakers of both parties had predicted his easy confirmation.”

Why, though, did he get confirmed? The Democrats have a slim majority in the Senate. The opposition party president is unpopular at historic levels. Several Democratic senators are running for president.
Yet even the liberal Dianne Feinstein voted for him, along with Chuck Schumer, Evan Bayh, Thomas Carper, Mary Landrieu, and Ben Nelson.

Kevin Drum figures, “no Bush nominee would ever have declared waterboarding illegal, so it’s not like we could have done any better. And we really do need someone running the Justice Department, since it’s basically been on autopilot for the past year or so.” True. One Democratic senator (I believe Schumer) said essentially that on NPR this morning.

Still, as Thoreau observes, Democrats could have filibustered.

The lack of a filibuster suggests that there are some serious institutional/leadership issues here. [...] I don’t get Leahy. Yes, I know, he voted against Mukasey, but I recall that in the 1990’s the Republican committee chairs and majority leader discovered all sorts of arcane procedures and rules to pretty much block anything that they wanted. But under Democrats the leadership is unable to block, well, anything.

It’s an interesting question. Certainly, in our “24″ culture, the Democrats have to be careful about being portrayed as weak on terrorism.

Moreover, Mukasey was essentially parsing words on the issue, refusing to label the practice “torture” but stating that it was “reprehensible.” A practice which, we’re led to believe, has been used exactly twice and that was banned a few years ago. That rendered the fight one over semantics rather than policy.

The most interesting thing that I keep coming back to is that not one of the Democratic presidential wannabes, including vanity candidates Biden and Dodd, thought it worth coming back to Washington to cast a vote — let alone lead a filibuster — on this issue. That leads me to think they don’t think this is a good issue for them.

]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/mukasey_confirmed_as_attorney_general_53-40/feed/ 20 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/colbert_files_for_south_carolina_primary_/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/colbert_files_for_south_carolina_primary_/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:59:23 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/11/colbert_files_for_south_carolina_primary_/

Stephen Colbert has filed for the South Carolina Democratic primary.

Stephen Colbert’s fanciful White House bid took a real step Thursday. It’s up to South Carolina Democrats to decide whether to take him seriously.

Colbert, who poses as a conservative talk-show host on the Comedy Central cable network, filed to get on the ballot as a Democratic candidate in his native South Carolina. His campaign paid a $2,500 filing fee just before the noon deadline, said state Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler.

Whether he’ll appear on the ballot will be decided by party officials later Thursday. The host of “The Colbert Report” doesn’t appear to meet the party’s viable candidate qualification. And it’s unclear if he would meet the requirement that candidates actively campaign in the state.

Colbert did appear Sunday at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, telling several hundred fans he would, if elected, “crush the state of Georgia.” He also received a key to the capital city and the mayor declared him South Carolina’s “favorite son.”

Unless the primary ballot will consist only of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards, Colbert would appear as “viable” as anyone. Certainly, he’s got a better shot at attracting support than Dennis Kucinich and he’s polling ahead of Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd, too.

]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/colbert_files_for_south_carolina_primary_/feed/ 1 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/chris_dodd_to_put_hold_on_fisa_reform/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/chris_dodd_to_put_hold_on_fisa_reform/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:55:23 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/10/chris_dodd_to_put_hold_on_fisa_reform/

Greg Sargent reports that, “Senator Chris Dodd plans to put a hold on the Senate FISA renewal bill because it reportedly grants retroactive immunity to telephone companies for any role they played in the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program.”

Doesn’t this just mean the administration will continue what it’s now doing and which provided impetus for the legislation? I’m sure Dick Cheney is cowering in his boots, muttering something about a briar patch.

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