Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
Quin Hillyer makes an interesting — and judging by the polls, entirely academic — argument for why South Carolinians should vote for Fred Thompson, even if they prefer Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. [H]e gives South Carolinians a chance to set out a marker and decapitate the presidential electoral primacy of Iowa and New Hampshire. [...]
The good news continues for John McCain, while Mitt Romney’s road to the White House is filled with ever more potholes. The next stop on the primary trail is Michigan. Not only was Romney born and raised there, his dad, George, was the state’s governor from 1963-1969. Yet, the two most recent polls show him [...]
What if they held a caucus and nobody came? Mitt Romney would win! 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 [...]
Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen of The Politico have a story entitled, “Fred Thompson may drop out, back McCain.” 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 [...]
Yesterday, James wrote about the buzz over a possible brokered GOP convention. Not only is this is meme that floats every four years, it is bolstered this year by the fact that the GOP field is especially crowded this year. However, while it is true that at the moment there appears to be no frontrunner, [...]
John Zogby asks, “Can the Iowa caucuses be polled accurately?” and then more-or-less answers the question. The premise is straightforward enough: The Iowa caucuses require voters to go to a local school, church basement, private home or similar meeting place to spend between 90 minutes and two hours to register their preference. The process is [...]
The bizarre drama that is the Iowa caucuses has taken another interesting turn, with Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama suddenly leading the polls, displacing long time front runners Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton, respectively. Des Moines Register staff writer Jonathan Roos discusses the Republican half of the paper’s latest survey: Mike Huckabee has leaped ahead [...]
Time for the Thursday OTB Caption ContestTM From last week when suitable pictures were few and far between (three contests used the mychopsticks bra picture) to this week where I’ve found at least 5 promising pictures. Oh Well, Ron Paul probably has a short shelf life so he gets the nod. (AP Photo/CBS Face the [...]
Joel Surnow, the executive producer of Fox’s popular series “24,” is endorsing Rudy Giuliani’s bid for the presidency and is horrified by the idea of Hillary Clinton taking the reigns, Stacy McCain reports. (Adam Sandler is apparently aboard the Giuliani bandwagon, too.) While I’m dubious of the power of endorsements to sway voters, especially in [...]
Virginia has long been considered a Republican hotbed — the last Democrat to win the state’s Electoral College vote was Lyndon Johnson in 1964 — it has now elected two Democratic governors in a row, has a Democratic Senator and may be about to have two. Last night, Democrats gained four seats to take control [...]
Several highly touted ballot initiatives were defeated in yesterday’s off-off-year elections. Cost-conscious voters rejected school vouchers for Utah students, state-sponsored stem cell research in New Jersey and higher cigarette taxes in Oregon to fund health care for uninsured children. Texans, meanwhile, authorized up to $3 billion in bonds over 10 years to create a cancer [...]
The Republican National Committee has taken the first step toward stripping delegates from states who hold primaries before February 5. Republican Party leaders on Monday recommended punishing five states for shifting their nomination contests earlier, moving to strip New Hampshire, Florida, South Carolina, Michigan and Wyoming of half their delegates. At least one state, South [...]
Media Matters has again successfully embroiled the blogosphere in a controversy with a press release. The latest, entitled “Limbaugh: Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are ‘phony soldiers,’” has gained wide circulation on the left. The lede: During the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh called service members who advocate [...]
Despite clear and longstanding rules by both major parties requiring that all other states wait until after Iowa and New Hampshire hold their contests, Florida is bucking the trend and the major candidates are defying their parties and campaigning in that critical swing state. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune‘s Jeramy Wallace reports that the Democratic Party edict [...]
The RNC is joining its Democratic counterpart in punishing states who hold primaries earlier than allowed. The Republican National Committee plans to penalize at least four states holding early primaries, including New Hampshire and Florida, by refusing to seat at least half their delegates at the party’s national convention in 2008, a party official said [...]
The DNC has stripped Florida of its delegates to the party convention unless it quickly moves its primary at least a week after New Hampshire’s as required by party mandate. The Democratic National Committee sought to seize control of its unraveling nominating process yesterday, rejecting pleas from state party leaders and cracking down on Florida [...]
A liberal blogger charges that Fred Thompson is breaking the law by raising so much money and still not formally declaring himself a candidate. Lane Hudson, a left-wing blogger, filed a complaint against former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) on Monday, accusing the likely presidential candidate of breaking the law by violating the Federal Election Commission’s [...]
Weekend Caption Jam Linkfest. . . and also a Saturday Traffic Jam for those who wish to link. It’s good to see a fuller complement of ongong contests again Rodney’s looking at a huge pair of melons. Wizbang is ridin’ the rail Willisms is on a magical mystery tour. Right Pundits wants to check your [...]
Bruce Bartlett and Bruce McQuain argue that the American people prefer gridlock and that, paradoxically, divided government (one party controlling the White House and another the Congress) is more likely to achieve conservative aims than having Republicans control both policy-making branches. I’m skeptical of both claims. It’s true that gridlock has been the norm in [...]
Ron Gunzburger reports on an effort to federalize the presidential primaries starting with the 2012 cycle: Three US Senators are out with an innovative plan to change the Presidential primary process in future years. The bipartisan trio want to end the frontloaded primary calendar. US Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Lamar Alexander [...]
Fred Thompson has moved to the front of the GOP field, according to the latest Rasmussen poll. Thompson, preparing to formally announce his candidacy, leads the pack in the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey with 27% support. That gives him a four-point advantage over former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani who is currently [...]
Via the AP: Alaska, Georgia move up primary contests Georgia and Alaska joined the growing list of states pushing up their presidential primary voting to Feb. 5, a date clearly shaping up as a national primary day for Republicans and Democrats. In Alaska, caucuses will be held Feb. 5, 2008. And the concentration continues…
Andrew J. Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran and international relations scholar who has publicly opposed the Iraq War for years recently lost his son to that war. In addition to the horrible grief that a father has to deal with the death a son, he has been accused of contributing to that outcome because his public [...]
Mike Allen begins a story with a rather stunning aside: “Even many Republicans will tell you that the presidency this cycle is Sen. Hillary Clinton’s to lose . . . .” Given how polarizing she is, can that really be the case? Maybe. Months of head-to-head polls showing that every plausible Republican nominee would be [...]
Dave Schuler, who occasionally contributes here and at Dean’s World in addition to maintaining his own site, laments a trend he’s seeing among his favorite blogs: Brilliant bloggers who posted once a day, maybe two or three times a week, are linking arms as associate bloggers on blogs with larger readerships. They’re still posting once [...]
Weekend Caption Jam Linkfest. . . and now also Saturday Traffic Jam for those who wish to link. Rodney will no longer eat Green Eggs and Ham. Wizbang has the face that launched a thousand contests (you’ll see). Actually Willisms started it all. Bullwinklette is running in circles. Right Pundits is trying to look presidential. [...]
This video by [in support of] the Barack Obama campaign,* a parody of the “1984″ ad by Macintosh, has been all over the ‘net: Someone supporting the Clinton campaign has finally posted this as a rebuttal: The latter is funny, although I don’t see how it negatively impacts Obama. Then again, I don’t really “get” [...]
YahooNews is running an evergreen piece by AP’s Liz Sidoti examining Rudy Giuliani’s strengths and weaknesses in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. It’s a solid assessment. Before Sept. 11, Giuliani was known as the hard-charging prosecutor-turned-politician who cleaned up Times Square, led the city out of fiscal despair and brought Republican rule back [...]
Colorado Senator Wayne Allard, a Republican, announced yesterday that he will not run for re-election in 2008, citing his pledge to serve no more than twelve years. “I just didn’t think I could back away from the (term limits) commitment. It is a matter of integrity and keeping your commitments. I have never wavered on [...]
Some analysts think Mitt Romney could back into the Republican nomination, reports CSM’s Linda Feldmann. The latest polling out of states with the earliest nominating contests, which begin in a year, shows Mr. Romney in single digits. Even in neighboring New Hampshire, he comes in fourth, behind Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who won the [...]
Charlie Cook notes the incredible volatility in the polls in a lot of Senate contests, with several races still too close to call: In Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum is gone. While the margin in Ohio is not nearly as wide, it’s very hard to see how Mike DeWine makes it back either. The strange ones are [...]
Democratic strategist Mark Mellman points out that, for all the talk about how important efforts to turn the base out in elections is, the results matter only at the margins: How much difference can turnout really make? Consider the punishing arithmetic. Take a House race that this year would otherwise be 52-48 Democratic. What would [...]
The 2006 midterm elections are one week from today and the latest CNN/Opinion Research polls show the GOP closing the gap or pulling away in some key contests. MISSOURI Sen. Jim Talent (R) 49% Aud. Claire McCaskill (D) 49 NEW JERSEY Sen. Bob Menendez (D) 51% State Sen. Tom Kean (R) 44 OHIO Rep. Sherrod [...]
Karl Rove told NPR’s Robert Siegel Tuesday that Republicans will retain both Houses of Congress two weeks hence. When Siegel said this was extraordinarily optimistic, Rove retorted, “I’m allowed to see the polls on the individual races. And after all, this does come down to individual contests between individual candidates.” The ensuing discussion tangentially focused [...]
A surge of negative advertising has put the Republicans back in the lead in the Virginia and Tennessee Senate races and with a fighting chance in several other key contests. In Virginia, incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen stopped losing ground after he was accused of racial insensitivity and went on the attack against his Democratic [...]