A sampling of recent polls in the '08 race for the White House:
Zogby: (GOP) Giuliani 29%, McCain 20%, Romney 9%, Gingrich 7%
(Dems) Clinton 33%, Obama 25%, Edwards 12%
Rasmussen:(GOP) Giuliani 33%, McCain17%, Gingrich 13%, Romney 10%
(Dems) Clinton 37%, Obama 26%, Edwards 13%
Quinnipiac:(GOP) Giuliani 40%, McCain 18%, Gingrich 10%, Romney 7%
(Dems) Clinton 38%, Obama 26%, Gore 11%, Edwards 6%
Ronald Wilson Reagan
America's 40th President
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Podhoretz: "WHY SO MANY RIGHTIES ARE ROOTING FOR RUDY"
WHY SO MANY RIGHTIES ARE ROOTING FOR RUDY
February 27, 2007 -- IT is nearly impossible for the chattering classes - on all sides of the political divide - to comprehend the heat being generated by Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid.
The fallback explanation is just to say "9/11" and be done with it. After all, how else can you explain a man with Giuliani's supposedly liberal social views possibly rise as high as he has - besting John McCain among Republicans by as many as 22 points in one poll?
Many on the right profess amazement at the lead he's opened up among Republican primary voters, considering his pro-choice views and sloppy personal life.
Meanwhile, writers on the left express disbelief at the notion that a pro-choice Republican candidate might be able to win the GOP nomination. According to the best Leftist analyst of American politics, Michael Tomasky, abortion is simply "too fundamental an issue for most Republican caucus goers and primary voters (even in California, with its likely Feb. 5 primary) to work around."
There's a perfectly simple answer to the Rudy paradox. When Republican voters look at Rudy Giuliani, they know one key fact about him: They know he's no liberal.
They may not exactly know why yet, but they know it.
And they're right.
Rudy may call himself pro-choice. He may have signed legislation mandating benefits to gay couples. He may have been a supporter of gun control. He may even have endorsed Mario Cuomo for governor in 1994. These are all things he's going to have to explain and answer for in Republican debates and the like.
But more than any other candidate in the race, Rudy Giuliani is a liberal-slayer. When he rejects liberal orthodoxy, which he does often, he doesn't just oppose it. He goes to war with it - total, unconditional war.
He spent his political career chewing up liberal orthodoxy and spitting it out - and I think that somehow, in some way, voters in Oklahoma and Kansas get that about him even without knowing the specifics.
His success in turning New York around wasn't merely a matter of changing policies. He had to sustain those policies when they came under deliberate, systematic and unrelenting assault by the city's liberal elite.
In case after case, he refused to accept the veto of liberal public opinion. He drove porn shops out of residential neighborhoods, even though his administration had to fight more than 30 lawsuits on the matter. He crusaded against bilingual education, a disastrous policy that had gone unquestioned in this city for decades.
And most important, he stood up for the police department against any and all attacks - which were incessant and incredibly unjust. The race baiters and their shills at the Not-So-Great Grey Lady talked as though the NYPD was engaging in genocide when the opposite was the case - many thousand of people are alive today who would have died if the NYPD hadn't taken on its newly aggressive posture under Giuliani.
Did Giuliani go too far in defending the police against charges that officers were trigger-happy and brutal? Sure he did, and some of his more aggressive efforts in this regard will also become campaign fodder over the course of the next year or more. But his defensiveness was nothing compared to the shameful and shameless effort to delegitimize his crime-fighting approach by slandering the NYPD as a bunch of goons and killers.
He basically took the view that these 38,000 people were an army fighting an enemy, and that they were liberating the people of New York City from a reign of lawlessness.
And this, more than anything else, ties into the national sentiment about Rudy as the Hero of 9/11. He didn't just represent New York to the nation and the world. He had, in fact, changed New York in a way that made this city's response to 9/11 so astounding.
In September 2001, as his mayoralty was winding down, New York had achieved civic equilibrium. This was a city at peace with itself, no matter what Al Sharpton might have said. The New York of 1991 would not have responded with the calm dignity and sense of common purpose that the New York of 2001 did.
The New York of 1991 was a city governed by the liberal elite. The New York of 2001 had been changed utterly by an anti-liberal mayor.
We're going to hear a lot about how rude, abrasive, arrogant, high-handed, combative, isolated, difficult and aggressive Rudy Giuliani was as mayor. And yet he was the key factor in turning New York into the safe, clean, pleasant, polite, neighborly and genuinely nice place it was when we were attacked on 9/11.
His record is clear: He fought the left mercilessly, and he not only won politically, he won as far as history's proper judgment of his tenure in New York.
Is it any wonder conservative Republicans are so eager to think the very best of him?
jpodhoretz@gmail.com
February 27, 2007 -- IT is nearly impossible for the chattering classes - on all sides of the political divide - to comprehend the heat being generated by Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid.
The fallback explanation is just to say "9/11" and be done with it. After all, how else can you explain a man with Giuliani's supposedly liberal social views possibly rise as high as he has - besting John McCain among Republicans by as many as 22 points in one poll?
Many on the right profess amazement at the lead he's opened up among Republican primary voters, considering his pro-choice views and sloppy personal life.
Meanwhile, writers on the left express disbelief at the notion that a pro-choice Republican candidate might be able to win the GOP nomination. According to the best Leftist analyst of American politics, Michael Tomasky, abortion is simply "too fundamental an issue for most Republican caucus goers and primary voters (even in California, with its likely Feb. 5 primary) to work around."
There's a perfectly simple answer to the Rudy paradox. When Republican voters look at Rudy Giuliani, they know one key fact about him: They know he's no liberal.
They may not exactly know why yet, but they know it.
And they're right.
Rudy may call himself pro-choice. He may have signed legislation mandating benefits to gay couples. He may have been a supporter of gun control. He may even have endorsed Mario Cuomo for governor in 1994. These are all things he's going to have to explain and answer for in Republican debates and the like.
But more than any other candidate in the race, Rudy Giuliani is a liberal-slayer. When he rejects liberal orthodoxy, which he does often, he doesn't just oppose it. He goes to war with it - total, unconditional war.
He spent his political career chewing up liberal orthodoxy and spitting it out - and I think that somehow, in some way, voters in Oklahoma and Kansas get that about him even without knowing the specifics.
His success in turning New York around wasn't merely a matter of changing policies. He had to sustain those policies when they came under deliberate, systematic and unrelenting assault by the city's liberal elite.
In case after case, he refused to accept the veto of liberal public opinion. He drove porn shops out of residential neighborhoods, even though his administration had to fight more than 30 lawsuits on the matter. He crusaded against bilingual education, a disastrous policy that had gone unquestioned in this city for decades.
And most important, he stood up for the police department against any and all attacks - which were incessant and incredibly unjust. The race baiters and their shills at the Not-So-Great Grey Lady talked as though the NYPD was engaging in genocide when the opposite was the case - many thousand of people are alive today who would have died if the NYPD hadn't taken on its newly aggressive posture under Giuliani.
Did Giuliani go too far in defending the police against charges that officers were trigger-happy and brutal? Sure he did, and some of his more aggressive efforts in this regard will also become campaign fodder over the course of the next year or more. But his defensiveness was nothing compared to the shameful and shameless effort to delegitimize his crime-fighting approach by slandering the NYPD as a bunch of goons and killers.
He basically took the view that these 38,000 people were an army fighting an enemy, and that they were liberating the people of New York City from a reign of lawlessness.
And this, more than anything else, ties into the national sentiment about Rudy as the Hero of 9/11. He didn't just represent New York to the nation and the world. He had, in fact, changed New York in a way that made this city's response to 9/11 so astounding.
In September 2001, as his mayoralty was winding down, New York had achieved civic equilibrium. This was a city at peace with itself, no matter what Al Sharpton might have said. The New York of 1991 would not have responded with the calm dignity and sense of common purpose that the New York of 2001 did.
The New York of 1991 was a city governed by the liberal elite. The New York of 2001 had been changed utterly by an anti-liberal mayor.
We're going to hear a lot about how rude, abrasive, arrogant, high-handed, combative, isolated, difficult and aggressive Rudy Giuliani was as mayor. And yet he was the key factor in turning New York into the safe, clean, pleasant, polite, neighborly and genuinely nice place it was when we were attacked on 9/11.
His record is clear: He fought the left mercilessly, and he not only won politically, he won as far as history's proper judgment of his tenure in New York.
Is it any wonder conservative Republicans are so eager to think the very best of him?
jpodhoretz@gmail.com
"`Happy Warrior' McCain Struggles as an Establishment Candidate"
`Happy Warrior' McCain Struggles as an Establishment Candidate
By Edwin Chen
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain, who's spent 20 years in the Senate challenging Republican Party orthodoxy, is having a hard time establishing himself as its champion.
Through fund-raising prowess, endorsements and his standing in polls, McCain, 70, has tried to create an aura of inevitability around his presidential campaign; the free- wheeling ``Straight Talk Express'' bus caravan of his 2000 bid is now a buttoned-down juggernaut that's trying to please the Republicans' many factions.
It may not be working. Conservatives, especially religious activists with whom he clashed in the past, remain suspicious of him; meanwhile, some backers who admired his maverick streak are disillusioned with his appeals to the conservative base. Polls show him losing ground to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and the Arizonan seems visibly uneasy cast as a pillar of the Establishment.
``McCain has to adjust to his new-found role,'' said Scott Reed, a Washington political consultant who managed former Kansas Senator Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign. McCain's effort to reach out to party constituencies is ``a lot different from sitting in the back of a bus throwing out red meat'' to his own supporters, Reed said. ``He's not comfortable with it, and he's not doing well at it.''
McCain, in an interview, said that somber times created by the Iraq war -- he's a strong supporter -- demand a different demeanor from 2000. ``I'm still a happy warrior,'' he said. ``But with the Iraq war, it's a little hard to be happy-go- lucky.''
Leading a Party
Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is one of McCain's closest friends in the Senate, said ``the biggest change is that John now is trying to establish himself as the leader of a party, and not just a movement.''
That effort is complicated by leftover hard feelings from McCain's previous race, and his years in the Senate. Some party activists still haven't forgiven him for criticizing television evangelist Jerry Falwell in 2000, backing stem-cell research, opposing President George W. Bush's tax cuts and pushing a proposal that would give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.
``He has to make the case that he's a true Reaganite and the best Reaganite,'' said Grover Norquist, a Republican activist who heads Americans for Tax Reform, a Washington-based anti-tax lobbying group, and who has expressed doubts about McCain's faith in tax-cutting.
`Odd Lapses'
The senator ``has to explain some odd lapses in his decisions, and why that won't happen again,'' Norquist said. ``This is not impossible, but this is work.''
Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, a Washington-based organization dedicated to fighting what it calls ``moral decay,'' said that ``many social-issues conservatives have said to me that they will not vote for or support John McCain.'' McCain, Weyrich said, has ``made it clear that he hates the Religious Right.''
McCain's top lieutenants say their boss has never deviated from core Republican principles. Mark Salter, his Senate chief of staff and collaborator on several of his books, including the 2000 biography ``Faith of My Fathers,'' said McCain has ``always been pro-life, for a strong defense, against gay marriage.''
Scrutiny on Abortion
McCain has found his opposition to abortion under especially close scrutiny. Though he says he is philosophically opposed to abortion, McCain in his first White House run opposed repealing Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that gave women the right to terminate a pregnancy. He said that ``thousands of young American women would be performing illegal and dangerous operations.''
This year, as McCain has tried to make his peace with evangelical leaders, he has said Roe should be overturned.
McCain has named former Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma, who has close ties to Bush, as his ambassador to religious activists. Keating is trying to reach out to the movement's leaders, such as James Dobson, head of Colorado Springs, Colorado-based Focus on the Family. In a recent interview on a Dallas Christian radio station, Dobson said that he couldn't support McCain ``under any circumstances.''
McCain already has made amends with Falwell, whom he once denounced as an ``agent of intolerance,'' and appeared at the May 2006 commencement ceremonies of Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Costing Him Support
McCain's repositioning may be costing him some support, especially with the independents who once flocked to his side. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted in Feb. 9-11 put Giuliani ahead by 40 percent to 24 percent among Republicans and independents who lean Republican; in January, Giuliani's lead in the same poll was 31 percent to 27 percent.
Merle Black, a political science professor at Atlanta's Emory University, said McCain may have lost many of the independents, and even Democrats, who crossed party lines in states where it's allowed to vote for him during primaries seven years ago.
``In 2000, he ran strong among independents and Democrats,'' Black said. Those voters likely ``will not be voting in the Republican primaries this time, and that may cost him some support, especially if he's perceived as moving to the right.''
A Closer Race
His strategic shift may not be such a big impediment in early primary and caucus states, which have a disproportionate say in selecting party presidential nominees. In New Hampshire, site of the first-in-the-nation primary, a CNN/WMUR poll conducted Feb. 1-5 showed McCain with 28 percent support to Giuliani's 27 percent. A Jan. 29-Feb. 1 American Research Group survey in Iowa, whose caucuses precede New Hampshire, found Giuliani with 27 percent support to McCain's 22 percent.
As he seeks to make peace with party activists, McCain dismisses the notion that he's strayed from his reformist roots. ``I just reject that,'' he said in the interview. ``When you look at my positions on the issues, none of them have changed.''
``Of course I'm reaching out to all parts of my party,'' he said. ``But there's a difference between reaching out and pandering.''
Rick Davis, the campaign's chief executive officer, said the senator is ``exactly the same guy that he was in 2000, but it's hard to have a political rally with balloon drops after giving a serious speech on Iraq on the Senate floor.''
Letting McCain Be McCain
As McCain spends more time campaigning, Davis and Salter say, the antidote for declining poll numbers will be a less- structured style that lets McCain be McCain.
The senator's favorite forum in 2000 was the town-hall meeting, in which he'd trade quips and banter with the audience while providing crisp answers to their questions. Glimmers of the old McCain began surfacing during a recent campaign swing.
At a Feb. 21 Los Angeles appearance with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has taken aggressive action to combat global warming, McCain was asked about Bush's record on the issue.
``Terrible,'' McCain said.
And the Iraq war?
``A train wreck.''
The next day, McCain declared: ``We're back on the happy- warrior route.''
By Edwin Chen
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain, who's spent 20 years in the Senate challenging Republican Party orthodoxy, is having a hard time establishing himself as its champion.
Through fund-raising prowess, endorsements and his standing in polls, McCain, 70, has tried to create an aura of inevitability around his presidential campaign; the free- wheeling ``Straight Talk Express'' bus caravan of his 2000 bid is now a buttoned-down juggernaut that's trying to please the Republicans' many factions.
It may not be working. Conservatives, especially religious activists with whom he clashed in the past, remain suspicious of him; meanwhile, some backers who admired his maverick streak are disillusioned with his appeals to the conservative base. Polls show him losing ground to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and the Arizonan seems visibly uneasy cast as a pillar of the Establishment.
``McCain has to adjust to his new-found role,'' said Scott Reed, a Washington political consultant who managed former Kansas Senator Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign. McCain's effort to reach out to party constituencies is ``a lot different from sitting in the back of a bus throwing out red meat'' to his own supporters, Reed said. ``He's not comfortable with it, and he's not doing well at it.''
McCain, in an interview, said that somber times created by the Iraq war -- he's a strong supporter -- demand a different demeanor from 2000. ``I'm still a happy warrior,'' he said. ``But with the Iraq war, it's a little hard to be happy-go- lucky.''
Leading a Party
Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is one of McCain's closest friends in the Senate, said ``the biggest change is that John now is trying to establish himself as the leader of a party, and not just a movement.''
That effort is complicated by leftover hard feelings from McCain's previous race, and his years in the Senate. Some party activists still haven't forgiven him for criticizing television evangelist Jerry Falwell in 2000, backing stem-cell research, opposing President George W. Bush's tax cuts and pushing a proposal that would give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.
``He has to make the case that he's a true Reaganite and the best Reaganite,'' said Grover Norquist, a Republican activist who heads Americans for Tax Reform, a Washington-based anti-tax lobbying group, and who has expressed doubts about McCain's faith in tax-cutting.
`Odd Lapses'
The senator ``has to explain some odd lapses in his decisions, and why that won't happen again,'' Norquist said. ``This is not impossible, but this is work.''
Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, a Washington-based organization dedicated to fighting what it calls ``moral decay,'' said that ``many social-issues conservatives have said to me that they will not vote for or support John McCain.'' McCain, Weyrich said, has ``made it clear that he hates the Religious Right.''
McCain's top lieutenants say their boss has never deviated from core Republican principles. Mark Salter, his Senate chief of staff and collaborator on several of his books, including the 2000 biography ``Faith of My Fathers,'' said McCain has ``always been pro-life, for a strong defense, against gay marriage.''
Scrutiny on Abortion
McCain has found his opposition to abortion under especially close scrutiny. Though he says he is philosophically opposed to abortion, McCain in his first White House run opposed repealing Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that gave women the right to terminate a pregnancy. He said that ``thousands of young American women would be performing illegal and dangerous operations.''
This year, as McCain has tried to make his peace with evangelical leaders, he has said Roe should be overturned.
McCain has named former Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma, who has close ties to Bush, as his ambassador to religious activists. Keating is trying to reach out to the movement's leaders, such as James Dobson, head of Colorado Springs, Colorado-based Focus on the Family. In a recent interview on a Dallas Christian radio station, Dobson said that he couldn't support McCain ``under any circumstances.''
McCain already has made amends with Falwell, whom he once denounced as an ``agent of intolerance,'' and appeared at the May 2006 commencement ceremonies of Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Costing Him Support
McCain's repositioning may be costing him some support, especially with the independents who once flocked to his side. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted in Feb. 9-11 put Giuliani ahead by 40 percent to 24 percent among Republicans and independents who lean Republican; in January, Giuliani's lead in the same poll was 31 percent to 27 percent.
Merle Black, a political science professor at Atlanta's Emory University, said McCain may have lost many of the independents, and even Democrats, who crossed party lines in states where it's allowed to vote for him during primaries seven years ago.
``In 2000, he ran strong among independents and Democrats,'' Black said. Those voters likely ``will not be voting in the Republican primaries this time, and that may cost him some support, especially if he's perceived as moving to the right.''
A Closer Race
His strategic shift may not be such a big impediment in early primary and caucus states, which have a disproportionate say in selecting party presidential nominees. In New Hampshire, site of the first-in-the-nation primary, a CNN/WMUR poll conducted Feb. 1-5 showed McCain with 28 percent support to Giuliani's 27 percent. A Jan. 29-Feb. 1 American Research Group survey in Iowa, whose caucuses precede New Hampshire, found Giuliani with 27 percent support to McCain's 22 percent.
As he seeks to make peace with party activists, McCain dismisses the notion that he's strayed from his reformist roots. ``I just reject that,'' he said in the interview. ``When you look at my positions on the issues, none of them have changed.''
``Of course I'm reaching out to all parts of my party,'' he said. ``But there's a difference between reaching out and pandering.''
Rick Davis, the campaign's chief executive officer, said the senator is ``exactly the same guy that he was in 2000, but it's hard to have a political rally with balloon drops after giving a serious speech on Iraq on the Senate floor.''
Letting McCain Be McCain
As McCain spends more time campaigning, Davis and Salter say, the antidote for declining poll numbers will be a less- structured style that lets McCain be McCain.
The senator's favorite forum in 2000 was the town-hall meeting, in which he'd trade quips and banter with the audience while providing crisp answers to their questions. Glimmers of the old McCain began surfacing during a recent campaign swing.
At a Feb. 21 Los Angeles appearance with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has taken aggressive action to combat global warming, McCain was asked about Bush's record on the issue.
``Terrible,'' McCain said.
And the Iraq war?
``A train wreck.''
The next day, McCain declared: ``We're back on the happy- warrior route.''
Human Events: "Rudy Causes Confusion in GOP"
Rudy Causes Confusion in GOP
by John Gizzi Posted: 02/27/2007
One of the early -- and quite amazing -- sidelights of the race for the Republican nomination for President in ’08 is how so many prominent conservatives are lining up behind Rudy Giuliani, who has perhaps the slimmest conservative credentials of any of the major GOP hopefuls.
The Republican Party has had a strong pro-life plank in its national platform since 1980, but the former New York mayor still characterizes himself as “pro-choice” and has never reversed his oft-stated 1990s opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortion. When I questioned him during the recent California Republican convention about his support of gun control while mayor and his Bush-like support of a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants, Giuliani again declined to change his past, non-conservative stances. He did, though, refuse to use the term “guest-worker program,” instead describing his position as favoring “immigration, assimilation and Americanization.”
While never actually endorsing gay marriage, Republican Giuliani broke with the President and most GOP members of Congress by opposing a constitutional definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. During his stint as mayor from 1993-2001, Giuliani actively courted the gay community by appointing gays to various city offices and marching in gay-pride parades.
“How could we not be for Rudy?” is how James Vaughn, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, responded when I asked him who his group would support in ’08.
Endorsed Cuomo
Many New York Republicans still bitterly recall how Giuliani, while New York’s first elected Republican mayor in nearly 30 years, endorsed Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo in Cuomo’s losing bid for re-election in 1994.
None of this record seems to bother the conservatives from coast to coast who have enthusiastically boarded the Giuliani bandwagon. William Simon, Jr., the ’02 Republican nominee for governor of California and a pro-life conservative, is heading up the New Yorker’s efforts in the Golden State. Republican Rep. Candice Miller of Michigan and former Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, both of whom sport lifetime American Conservative Union ratings of 86%, are the quarterbacks in their respective states for the Giuliani campaign’s hunt for national convention delegates. Even the New York Conservative Party, which steadfastly refused to consider giving Giuliani its ballot line in 2000 when he was briefly a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton, now finds itself with more members increasingly open to the idea of backing the former mayor for President.
Many of those on the right, in conceding their differences with the 62-year-old Giuliani on cultural issues, say they nonetheless support him for President because they believe the charismatic Giuliani would be the most formidable Republican candidate against likely Democratic nominee Clinton. Others find less to dislike in Giuliani than they do in the other two GOP front-runners: Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Left of McCain
“I am really excited about Rudy Giuliani,” Gary Watson, former chairman of the Mohave County (Ariz.) Republican Central Committee, told the New York Times recently. The paper noted that “the former New York mayor has a more liberal record on abortion rights, gun control and gay rights than Mr. McCain.” Watson admitted that “the social issues are a little bit looser than what I appreciate,” but quickly added that he felt Giuliani “is stronger than McCain on the border issue.” (McCain, who opposed an ’04 Arizona initiative that would have denied state benefits to illegal immigrants, sounds little different from Giuliani or President Bush in his support of a comprehensive guest-worker/amnesty program).
A California GOP legislator who was part of a closed-door meeting of lawmakers with Giuliani during his appearance at the state Republican convention (and who requested anonymity) told me afterwards that “my wife and I are very pro-life” and that when he addressed the issue with Giuliani, “Rudy said, ‘I’m for adoption, not abortion,’ and said that he would like to see children whose parents are going to abandon them adopted. He brought out statistics showing how the number of abortions declined in New York while he was mayor.” In dubbing himself “neutral at this point,” this legislator said, “I’m leaning to Rudy.”
The most frequent reason cited by conservatives for backing Giuliani is what they perceive as his leadership ability during a time when terrorism is a critical issue. Michael Der Manouel, Jr., former California state GOP treasurer and founder of the Lincoln Club for major Republican donors in Fresno, told me, “The most important issue is: Who is going to protect our country? Rudy Giuliani showed what he could do in a crisis after 9/11. If our cities are burning, issues like abortion and gay rights -- on which I do differ with Rudy -- aren’t going to matter that much.” He added that a number of other Central California conservatives would soon be weighing in with him for Giuliani, among them former State Sen. and ’06 attorney general nominee Chuck Poochigian, State Assembly GOP Leader Mike Villines and Republican U.S. Representatives George Randanovich and Devin Nunes.
Agreeing that judicial appointments are a major part of a President’s legacy, Der Manouel said that Giuliani’s stated intent to name judges of the caliber of Bush Supreme Court nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito was “good enough for me.”
Self-described conservative Der Manouel also said that he “is sick and tired of people who, for the last 10 years, call themselves conservatives, talking about things and not putting anything into action. I’ve moved beyond conservatism now, and I just want a doer.”
by John Gizzi Posted: 02/27/2007
One of the early -- and quite amazing -- sidelights of the race for the Republican nomination for President in ’08 is how so many prominent conservatives are lining up behind Rudy Giuliani, who has perhaps the slimmest conservative credentials of any of the major GOP hopefuls.
The Republican Party has had a strong pro-life plank in its national platform since 1980, but the former New York mayor still characterizes himself as “pro-choice” and has never reversed his oft-stated 1990s opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortion. When I questioned him during the recent California Republican convention about his support of gun control while mayor and his Bush-like support of a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants, Giuliani again declined to change his past, non-conservative stances. He did, though, refuse to use the term “guest-worker program,” instead describing his position as favoring “immigration, assimilation and Americanization.”
While never actually endorsing gay marriage, Republican Giuliani broke with the President and most GOP members of Congress by opposing a constitutional definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. During his stint as mayor from 1993-2001, Giuliani actively courted the gay community by appointing gays to various city offices and marching in gay-pride parades.
“How could we not be for Rudy?” is how James Vaughn, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, responded when I asked him who his group would support in ’08.
Endorsed Cuomo
Many New York Republicans still bitterly recall how Giuliani, while New York’s first elected Republican mayor in nearly 30 years, endorsed Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo in Cuomo’s losing bid for re-election in 1994.
None of this record seems to bother the conservatives from coast to coast who have enthusiastically boarded the Giuliani bandwagon. William Simon, Jr., the ’02 Republican nominee for governor of California and a pro-life conservative, is heading up the New Yorker’s efforts in the Golden State. Republican Rep. Candice Miller of Michigan and former Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, both of whom sport lifetime American Conservative Union ratings of 86%, are the quarterbacks in their respective states for the Giuliani campaign’s hunt for national convention delegates. Even the New York Conservative Party, which steadfastly refused to consider giving Giuliani its ballot line in 2000 when he was briefly a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton, now finds itself with more members increasingly open to the idea of backing the former mayor for President.
Many of those on the right, in conceding their differences with the 62-year-old Giuliani on cultural issues, say they nonetheless support him for President because they believe the charismatic Giuliani would be the most formidable Republican candidate against likely Democratic nominee Clinton. Others find less to dislike in Giuliani than they do in the other two GOP front-runners: Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Left of McCain
“I am really excited about Rudy Giuliani,” Gary Watson, former chairman of the Mohave County (Ariz.) Republican Central Committee, told the New York Times recently. The paper noted that “the former New York mayor has a more liberal record on abortion rights, gun control and gay rights than Mr. McCain.” Watson admitted that “the social issues are a little bit looser than what I appreciate,” but quickly added that he felt Giuliani “is stronger than McCain on the border issue.” (McCain, who opposed an ’04 Arizona initiative that would have denied state benefits to illegal immigrants, sounds little different from Giuliani or President Bush in his support of a comprehensive guest-worker/amnesty program).
A California GOP legislator who was part of a closed-door meeting of lawmakers with Giuliani during his appearance at the state Republican convention (and who requested anonymity) told me afterwards that “my wife and I are very pro-life” and that when he addressed the issue with Giuliani, “Rudy said, ‘I’m for adoption, not abortion,’ and said that he would like to see children whose parents are going to abandon them adopted. He brought out statistics showing how the number of abortions declined in New York while he was mayor.” In dubbing himself “neutral at this point,” this legislator said, “I’m leaning to Rudy.”
The most frequent reason cited by conservatives for backing Giuliani is what they perceive as his leadership ability during a time when terrorism is a critical issue. Michael Der Manouel, Jr., former California state GOP treasurer and founder of the Lincoln Club for major Republican donors in Fresno, told me, “The most important issue is: Who is going to protect our country? Rudy Giuliani showed what he could do in a crisis after 9/11. If our cities are burning, issues like abortion and gay rights -- on which I do differ with Rudy -- aren’t going to matter that much.” He added that a number of other Central California conservatives would soon be weighing in with him for Giuliani, among them former State Sen. and ’06 attorney general nominee Chuck Poochigian, State Assembly GOP Leader Mike Villines and Republican U.S. Representatives George Randanovich and Devin Nunes.
Agreeing that judicial appointments are a major part of a President’s legacy, Der Manouel said that Giuliani’s stated intent to name judges of the caliber of Bush Supreme Court nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito was “good enough for me.”
Self-described conservative Der Manouel also said that he “is sick and tired of people who, for the last 10 years, call themselves conservatives, talking about things and not putting anything into action. I’ve moved beyond conservatism now, and I just want a doer.”
Sunday, February 25, 2007
AP: '08 candidates look to governors for support
Candidates lean on governors for support
By ROBERT TANNER,
AP National Writer
Sun Feb 25, 4:59 AM ET
Seven governors already have made endorsements early in the 2008 White House race and pressure is growing for others to choose soon, bringing along their networks of fundraisers and activists.
Their support can prove influential, some analysts say, because the most effective governors have an election-tested base of motivated voters, willing donors and the ability to help sway undecided primary voters.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has the support of three governors and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the backing of two. Two former GOP governors — Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas — each has picked up the endorsement of one governor. And one current governor, Democrat Bill Richardson of New Mexico, is in the race himself.
"They all call," Gov. Deval Patrick, D-Mass., said Saturday as the state leaders attended their annual winter meeting. "I'll get involved in the primary. But not yet."
The competition for the governors' support is good strategy, said Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, D-Kan.
"Governors in their states know where the votes are and know how to produce a winning majority. That's a pretty good ally to have when you head into someone's back yard."
Still, the endorsements are just one piece of a long and expensive race that has attracted a crowded field in both parties and a quick push for campaign money.
"I've talked to a number of governors," Huckabee said. "Many of them are not quite ready to make their move, kind of waiting to see how things shake out."
Huckabee last week announced the endorsement of South Dakota GOP Gov. Mike Rounds.
Among Republicans, McCain has the support of Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Jon Huntsman of Utah and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. Romney was endorsed by Matt Blunt of Missouri.
Among Democrats, Obama has the backing of Rod Blagojevich of Illinois and Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Those are the critical formal announcements, while the private conversations, quiet lobbying and occasional public appearances play out.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., recently took the stage with McCain on an environmental issue and said the lawmaker was a "great senator," "very good friend" and "a great national leader." The governor skirted a question about whether he would endorse McCain.
Last month, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., met with Chet Culver, the new Democratic governor in Iowa, whose caucuses kick off the nominating season on Jan. 14, 2008.
In Alabama, GOP Gov. Bob Riley praised Romney in public. "This guy is the quintessential candidate. He's nice looking. He's articulate. He's eminently successful," Riley said. But he held back an endorsement.
Democrat John Edwards' staff said the 2004 vice presidential nominee will make announcements about endorsements in the coming weeks. Richardson said he is working with several governors and their staff on fundraising but is not yet asking for endorsements.
Several states moved up the date of their contests so their voters have an earlier say in helping select a nominee. As a result, much of the focus has turned to how much money a candidate can raise.
Democratic hopeful Tom Vilsack, Iowa's former governor, quit the White House race this week. The reason? "Money and only money," he said.
But money and endorsements often go hand in hand, a kind of surrogate for early and influential voters, political observers say.
"It's kind of a pre-poll poll, in a way," said Walter Stone, political science professor at University of California, Davis.
Governors can help build money and momentum, particularly in the campaign's crucial early months.
"The financial pressures on the candidates are enormous. Essentially what candidates must do is plug into networks," Stone said. "And a governor is an elected official in a state with a lot of existing contacts."
Some governors are just very popular and that can help influence undecided primary voters. Voters might follow the endorsement by a governor they like and trust, Stone said.
Others are more skeptical.
Culver, the Iowa governor, said he is happy to talk with any Democratic hopeful and offer suggestions. Just don't expect an endorsement.
"The bottom line is endorsements don't matter much — at any level," Culver said. "Just one state legislator endorsed me."
By ROBERT TANNER,
AP National Writer
Sun Feb 25, 4:59 AM ET
Seven governors already have made endorsements early in the 2008 White House race and pressure is growing for others to choose soon, bringing along their networks of fundraisers and activists.
Their support can prove influential, some analysts say, because the most effective governors have an election-tested base of motivated voters, willing donors and the ability to help sway undecided primary voters.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has the support of three governors and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the backing of two. Two former GOP governors — Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas — each has picked up the endorsement of one governor. And one current governor, Democrat Bill Richardson of New Mexico, is in the race himself.
"They all call," Gov. Deval Patrick, D-Mass., said Saturday as the state leaders attended their annual winter meeting. "I'll get involved in the primary. But not yet."
The competition for the governors' support is good strategy, said Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, D-Kan.
"Governors in their states know where the votes are and know how to produce a winning majority. That's a pretty good ally to have when you head into someone's back yard."
Still, the endorsements are just one piece of a long and expensive race that has attracted a crowded field in both parties and a quick push for campaign money.
"I've talked to a number of governors," Huckabee said. "Many of them are not quite ready to make their move, kind of waiting to see how things shake out."
Huckabee last week announced the endorsement of South Dakota GOP Gov. Mike Rounds.
Among Republicans, McCain has the support of Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Jon Huntsman of Utah and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. Romney was endorsed by Matt Blunt of Missouri.
Among Democrats, Obama has the backing of Rod Blagojevich of Illinois and Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Those are the critical formal announcements, while the private conversations, quiet lobbying and occasional public appearances play out.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., recently took the stage with McCain on an environmental issue and said the lawmaker was a "great senator," "very good friend" and "a great national leader." The governor skirted a question about whether he would endorse McCain.
Last month, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., met with Chet Culver, the new Democratic governor in Iowa, whose caucuses kick off the nominating season on Jan. 14, 2008.
In Alabama, GOP Gov. Bob Riley praised Romney in public. "This guy is the quintessential candidate. He's nice looking. He's articulate. He's eminently successful," Riley said. But he held back an endorsement.
Democrat John Edwards' staff said the 2004 vice presidential nominee will make announcements about endorsements in the coming weeks. Richardson said he is working with several governors and their staff on fundraising but is not yet asking for endorsements.
Several states moved up the date of their contests so their voters have an earlier say in helping select a nominee. As a result, much of the focus has turned to how much money a candidate can raise.
Democratic hopeful Tom Vilsack, Iowa's former governor, quit the White House race this week. The reason? "Money and only money," he said.
But money and endorsements often go hand in hand, a kind of surrogate for early and influential voters, political observers say.
"It's kind of a pre-poll poll, in a way," said Walter Stone, political science professor at University of California, Davis.
Governors can help build money and momentum, particularly in the campaign's crucial early months.
"The financial pressures on the candidates are enormous. Essentially what candidates must do is plug into networks," Stone said. "And a governor is an elected official in a state with a lot of existing contacts."
Some governors are just very popular and that can help influence undecided primary voters. Voters might follow the endorsement by a governor they like and trust, Stone said.
Others are more skeptical.
Culver, the Iowa governor, said he is happy to talk with any Democratic hopeful and offer suggestions. Just don't expect an endorsement.
"The bottom line is endorsements don't matter much — at any level," Culver said. "Just one state legislator endorsed me."
AP: "Romney family tree has polygamy branch"
Romney family tree has polygamy branch
By JENNIFER DOBNER and GLEN JOHNSON,
Associated Press Writers
Sat Feb 24, 9:25 PM ET
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.
Romney's great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of polygamists. She wrote vividly in her autobiography about how she "used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow" over her own husband's multiple marriages.
Romney's great-great grandfather, Parley Pratt, an apostle in the church, had 12 wives. In an 1852 sermon, Parley Pratt's brother and fellow apostle, Orson Pratt, became the first church official to publicly proclaim and defend polygamy as a direct revelation from God.
Romney's father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, where Mormons fled in the 1800s to escape religious persecution and U.S. laws forbidding polygamy. He and his family did not return to the United States until 1912, more than two decades after the church issued "The Manifesto" banning polygamy.
"When you read the family's history, you realize how important polygamy was to them," said Todd Compton, a Mormon and independent historian who wrote a book about the polygamous life of the church's founder, Joseph Smith. "They left America and started again as pioneers, after they had done it over and over again previously."
B. Carmon Hardy, a polygamy expert and retired history professor at California State University-Fullerton, said polygamy was "a very important part of Miles Park Romney's family."
Hardy added: "Now, very gradually, as you moved farther away from it, it became less a part of it. But during the time of Miles Park Romney, it was an essential principle of the Romney family life."
Other Mormons have run for the White House, including Romney's father in 1968 and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in 2000. But Mitt Romney's stature as a leading 2008 contender has renewed questions about his faith and its doctrines.
At the same time, polygamy remains a part of current events.
HBO is airing a television series, "Big Love," that features a man in Utah — where the Mormon church is based — with three wives. Self-proclaimed "Mormon fundamentalist" Warren Jeffs, formerly on the FBI's 10 most wanted list, is facing multiple felony charges for sex crimes related to underage marriages among members of his breakaway church's 10,000 members in Utah and Arizona, who openly practice polygamy.
Romney has joked about polygamy, saying in various settings that to him, "marriage is between a man and a woman ... and a woman and a woman." But in serious moments he has called the practice "bizarre" and noted his church excommunicates those who engage in it.
An introductory film played at his fundraisers and campaign appearances features his wife, Ann, talking about their 37-year marriage. Romney himself notes they started as high school sweethearts.
This month, Ann Romney tried a different tack, taking a lighthearted jab at her husband's main Republican competitors, Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, as she introduced Romney at a Missouri GOP dinner.
The biggest difference between her husband and the other candidates, Ann Romney said, is that "he's had only one wife."
McCain has been married twice; Giuliani three times.
The Romney campaign had no comment for this story.
Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon church in 1830, quietly introduced polygamy. He believed it had roots in the Old Testament and was necessary to reach the highest salvation in heaven. Smith is believed to have had 33 wives.
Brigham Young expanded the practice after the church's migration from the Midwest to Utah, which began in 1846. He is said to have had 55 wives. Historical texts show Young also asked Orson Pratt to publicly proclaim the church's belief in polygamy in 1852.
In 1862, while Utah was a territory, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, banning plural marriage. In 1882, Congress also passed the Edmunds Act, an anti-polygamy law. That was followed in 1887 by the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which disincorporated the church and threatened to seize its nonreligious real estate as part of the crackdown on polygamy.
In 1890, Mormon President Wilford Woodruff issued "The Manifesto," in which he declared the church no longer taught or permitted plural marriages.
Nonetheless, the law of polygamy — Smith's revelation that God authorized polygamy — remains in Article 132 of the church's Doctrine and Covenants. In addition, Mormon widowers who remarry today believe they will live in eternity with their multiple wives.
Mormon genealogical records, among the most detailed and complete of any religion, show that two of Mitt Romney's great-great grandfathers, Miles Romney and Parley Pratt, had 12 wives each.
Compton, the polygamy scholar, disputes that. He believes Miles Romney only had one wife because the records do not show the dates for his other 11 marriages or any offspring from them.
Miles Romney and his one clearly documented wife, Elizabeth Gaskell, had 10 children. Among them was Miles Park Romney, one of Mitt Romney's great-grandfathers.
Miles Park Romney had five wives. With his first wife, Hannah Hood Hill, he had 11 children. Among them was Gaskell Romney, Mitt Romney's paternal grandfather.
Hannah Hood Hill's autobiography offers an eyewitness account of the Romney family's polygamous past. Hardy, the Cal-State historian, found it amid research for his upcoming book, "Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy."
Hood Hill wrote of Miles Park Romney: "I felt that was more than I could endure, to have him divide his time and affections from me. I used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow. If anything will make a woman's heart ache, it is for her husband to take another wife. ... But I put my trust in my heavenly father, and prayed and pleaded with him to give me strength to bear this great trial."
Miles Park Romney's final marriage, to Emily Eyring Smith, came in 1897, more than six years after "The Manifesto."
Gaskell Romney, Mitt Romney's grandfather, was not a polygamist. He married Anna Amelia Pratt, the daughter of polygamists and the granddaughter of Parley Pratt, the apostle with 12 wives. Their marriage took place Feb. 20, 1895, in Dublan, Mexico.
Gaskell Romney had moved to Mexico with his parents in 1884 amid the proliferation of U.S. laws prohibiting "unlawful cohabitation." Anna Pratt was born in Utah, but had emigrated to Mexico and lived in one of nine Mormon colonies established over the border.
Gaskell Romney and Anna Pratt had seven children, including George Wilcken Romney, the former Michigan governor. He lived with his parents in Mexico until 1912, when the family returned to the United States.
George Romney married Lenore LaFount, who does not appear to have polygamy in her family tree. The couple, now deceased, had four children, including Mitt Romney.
Associated Press writer Glen Johnson reported from Boston.
By JENNIFER DOBNER and GLEN JOHNSON,
Associated Press Writers
Sat Feb 24, 9:25 PM ET
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.
Romney's great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of polygamists. She wrote vividly in her autobiography about how she "used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow" over her own husband's multiple marriages.
Romney's great-great grandfather, Parley Pratt, an apostle in the church, had 12 wives. In an 1852 sermon, Parley Pratt's brother and fellow apostle, Orson Pratt, became the first church official to publicly proclaim and defend polygamy as a direct revelation from God.
Romney's father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, where Mormons fled in the 1800s to escape religious persecution and U.S. laws forbidding polygamy. He and his family did not return to the United States until 1912, more than two decades after the church issued "The Manifesto" banning polygamy.
"When you read the family's history, you realize how important polygamy was to them," said Todd Compton, a Mormon and independent historian who wrote a book about the polygamous life of the church's founder, Joseph Smith. "They left America and started again as pioneers, after they had done it over and over again previously."
B. Carmon Hardy, a polygamy expert and retired history professor at California State University-Fullerton, said polygamy was "a very important part of Miles Park Romney's family."
Hardy added: "Now, very gradually, as you moved farther away from it, it became less a part of it. But during the time of Miles Park Romney, it was an essential principle of the Romney family life."
Other Mormons have run for the White House, including Romney's father in 1968 and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in 2000. But Mitt Romney's stature as a leading 2008 contender has renewed questions about his faith and its doctrines.
At the same time, polygamy remains a part of current events.
HBO is airing a television series, "Big Love," that features a man in Utah — where the Mormon church is based — with three wives. Self-proclaimed "Mormon fundamentalist" Warren Jeffs, formerly on the FBI's 10 most wanted list, is facing multiple felony charges for sex crimes related to underage marriages among members of his breakaway church's 10,000 members in Utah and Arizona, who openly practice polygamy.
Romney has joked about polygamy, saying in various settings that to him, "marriage is between a man and a woman ... and a woman and a woman." But in serious moments he has called the practice "bizarre" and noted his church excommunicates those who engage in it.
An introductory film played at his fundraisers and campaign appearances features his wife, Ann, talking about their 37-year marriage. Romney himself notes they started as high school sweethearts.
This month, Ann Romney tried a different tack, taking a lighthearted jab at her husband's main Republican competitors, Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, as she introduced Romney at a Missouri GOP dinner.
The biggest difference between her husband and the other candidates, Ann Romney said, is that "he's had only one wife."
McCain has been married twice; Giuliani three times.
The Romney campaign had no comment for this story.
Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon church in 1830, quietly introduced polygamy. He believed it had roots in the Old Testament and was necessary to reach the highest salvation in heaven. Smith is believed to have had 33 wives.
Brigham Young expanded the practice after the church's migration from the Midwest to Utah, which began in 1846. He is said to have had 55 wives. Historical texts show Young also asked Orson Pratt to publicly proclaim the church's belief in polygamy in 1852.
In 1862, while Utah was a territory, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, banning plural marriage. In 1882, Congress also passed the Edmunds Act, an anti-polygamy law. That was followed in 1887 by the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which disincorporated the church and threatened to seize its nonreligious real estate as part of the crackdown on polygamy.
In 1890, Mormon President Wilford Woodruff issued "The Manifesto," in which he declared the church no longer taught or permitted plural marriages.
Nonetheless, the law of polygamy — Smith's revelation that God authorized polygamy — remains in Article 132 of the church's Doctrine and Covenants. In addition, Mormon widowers who remarry today believe they will live in eternity with their multiple wives.
Mormon genealogical records, among the most detailed and complete of any religion, show that two of Mitt Romney's great-great grandfathers, Miles Romney and Parley Pratt, had 12 wives each.
Compton, the polygamy scholar, disputes that. He believes Miles Romney only had one wife because the records do not show the dates for his other 11 marriages or any offspring from them.
Miles Romney and his one clearly documented wife, Elizabeth Gaskell, had 10 children. Among them was Miles Park Romney, one of Mitt Romney's great-grandfathers.
Miles Park Romney had five wives. With his first wife, Hannah Hood Hill, he had 11 children. Among them was Gaskell Romney, Mitt Romney's paternal grandfather.
Hannah Hood Hill's autobiography offers an eyewitness account of the Romney family's polygamous past. Hardy, the Cal-State historian, found it amid research for his upcoming book, "Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy."
Hood Hill wrote of Miles Park Romney: "I felt that was more than I could endure, to have him divide his time and affections from me. I used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow. If anything will make a woman's heart ache, it is for her husband to take another wife. ... But I put my trust in my heavenly father, and prayed and pleaded with him to give me strength to bear this great trial."
Miles Park Romney's final marriage, to Emily Eyring Smith, came in 1897, more than six years after "The Manifesto."
Gaskell Romney, Mitt Romney's grandfather, was not a polygamist. He married Anna Amelia Pratt, the daughter of polygamists and the granddaughter of Parley Pratt, the apostle with 12 wives. Their marriage took place Feb. 20, 1895, in Dublan, Mexico.
Gaskell Romney had moved to Mexico with his parents in 1884 amid the proliferation of U.S. laws prohibiting "unlawful cohabitation." Anna Pratt was born in Utah, but had emigrated to Mexico and lived in one of nine Mormon colonies established over the border.
Gaskell Romney and Anna Pratt had seven children, including George Wilcken Romney, the former Michigan governor. He lived with his parents in Mexico until 1912, when the family returned to the United States.
George Romney married Lenore LaFount, who does not appear to have polygamy in her family tree. The couple, now deceased, had four children, including Mitt Romney.
Associated Press writer Glen Johnson reported from Boston.
Tom Vilsack pulls out of presidential race
In case you haven't seen it, the Democratic presidential field is now minus one former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack. Citing money concerns, he withdrew Friday.
N.H. backer laments loss of Vilsack
By Holly Ramer, Associated Press Writer
February 23, 2007
CONCORD, N.H. --Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack called Gary Hirshberg on Thursday night to tell him he was ending his presidential campaign. Friday morning, the phone rang again: it was Sen. Barack Obama, who waited just two minutes after Vilsack's public announcement to ask for Hirshberg's support.
Hirshberg, the founder and chief executive officer of Stonyfield Farm yogurt, was one of Vilsack's earliest and most prominent New Hampshire supporters.
He said Vilsack's departure from the race was disappointing both personally and in terms of what it says about the political process.
Vilsack told reporters that his inability to raise enough money to compete with his top-tier rivals was the sole reason for his decision to leave the race for the Democratic nomination. According to his most recent financial documents, Vilsack raised more than $1.1 million in the last seven weeks of 2006 but had less than $400,000 in the bank.
"He's governed, he's been absolutely correct on foreign policy, on energy security and on agriculture," Hirshberg said. "So it's tragic that he really has everything except money."
Hirshberg said he also believes Vilsack suffered from an eagerness by the media and to some extent voters to define an early front-runner instead of having a serious conversation about the issues.
"It's not just about money, though that's what did Tom's campaign in," he said. "It's our focus on the process, not the product."
"Everybody I know who has met Tom has come away wowed," he said. "Admittedly, many have come away shaking their heads saying, `Too bad he can't win.' As a guy who started a company with seven cows that's now and for 18 years been the fastest growing yogurt company in the world, I just say, that's unfortunate."
Kathy Sullivan, chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said the rush to hold early primaries forced Vilsack out of the race, and she worries the same will happen to other lesser-known candidates. Several large states, including California, are considering moving up their contests to play more prominent roles in the nominating process. New Hampshire, which traditionally holds the first primary, hasn't set its date yet.
Sullivan praised Vilsack for embracing New Hampshire's tradition of retail politics while criticizing national leaders of both parties for not trying to stop the shift to early primaries and caucuses.
"How many qualified and dynamic leaders do we have to lose in this race before something is done?"
During their conversation Thursday night, Vilsack asked Hirshberg to keep his decision quiet -- a tough request given that Vilsack's national field manager has been living with Hirshberg's family.
"I had to kind of tiptoe around my house," he said.
As for his conversation with Obama, Hirshberg said he told the Illinois senator he isn't ready to commit to another candidate just yet.
"Although we're absolutely undecided, I was very impressed," Hirshberg said.
"Though we can wring our hands now about the role of money in these campaigns, it's still really vindicating to me to see, particularly here in New Hampshire, that grassroots, house-to-house, person-to-person politics is still the order of the day. I think Sen. Obama just proved that."
N.H. backer laments loss of Vilsack
By Holly Ramer, Associated Press Writer
February 23, 2007
CONCORD, N.H. --Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack called Gary Hirshberg on Thursday night to tell him he was ending his presidential campaign. Friday morning, the phone rang again: it was Sen. Barack Obama, who waited just two minutes after Vilsack's public announcement to ask for Hirshberg's support.
Hirshberg, the founder and chief executive officer of Stonyfield Farm yogurt, was one of Vilsack's earliest and most prominent New Hampshire supporters.
He said Vilsack's departure from the race was disappointing both personally and in terms of what it says about the political process.
Vilsack told reporters that his inability to raise enough money to compete with his top-tier rivals was the sole reason for his decision to leave the race for the Democratic nomination. According to his most recent financial documents, Vilsack raised more than $1.1 million in the last seven weeks of 2006 but had less than $400,000 in the bank.
"He's governed, he's been absolutely correct on foreign policy, on energy security and on agriculture," Hirshberg said. "So it's tragic that he really has everything except money."
Hirshberg said he also believes Vilsack suffered from an eagerness by the media and to some extent voters to define an early front-runner instead of having a serious conversation about the issues.
"It's not just about money, though that's what did Tom's campaign in," he said. "It's our focus on the process, not the product."
"Everybody I know who has met Tom has come away wowed," he said. "Admittedly, many have come away shaking their heads saying, `Too bad he can't win.' As a guy who started a company with seven cows that's now and for 18 years been the fastest growing yogurt company in the world, I just say, that's unfortunate."
Kathy Sullivan, chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said the rush to hold early primaries forced Vilsack out of the race, and she worries the same will happen to other lesser-known candidates. Several large states, including California, are considering moving up their contests to play more prominent roles in the nominating process. New Hampshire, which traditionally holds the first primary, hasn't set its date yet.
Sullivan praised Vilsack for embracing New Hampshire's tradition of retail politics while criticizing national leaders of both parties for not trying to stop the shift to early primaries and caucuses.
"How many qualified and dynamic leaders do we have to lose in this race before something is done?"
During their conversation Thursday night, Vilsack asked Hirshberg to keep his decision quiet -- a tough request given that Vilsack's national field manager has been living with Hirshberg's family.
"I had to kind of tiptoe around my house," he said.
As for his conversation with Obama, Hirshberg said he told the Illinois senator he isn't ready to commit to another candidate just yet.
"Although we're absolutely undecided, I was very impressed," Hirshberg said.
"Though we can wring our hands now about the role of money in these campaigns, it's still really vindicating to me to see, particularly here in New Hampshire, that grassroots, house-to-house, person-to-person politics is still the order of the day. I think Sen. Obama just proved that."
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Broder: "No Way to Elect a President"
No Way to Elect a President
By David S. Broder
Thursday, February 22, 2007; A19
When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced plans to hold an unusual Saturday session last week to vote on the House-passed resolution opposing President Bush's plan to send more U.S. troops into Iraq, he disrupted the schedules of at least six of his colleagues who are running for president.
Joe Biden and John McCain were both supposed to spend the day in Iowa; Hillary Clinton, in New Hampshire; Chris Dodd, in South Carolina; Barack Obama, in South Carolina and Virginia; and Sam Brownback, in Florida.
It's only February of 2007, but from the schedules these presidential hopefuls -- and their rivals -- are keeping, you would think the primaries were almost upon us. Plenty of campaign consultants were aggravated that Reid was inconsiderate enough to let a little matter such as the Iraq war intrude on their important work of getting their candidates elected -- next year.
What we have, friends, is a remarkably distinguished field of candidates vying in an election system that has become truly insane.
I think the 16 men and one woman actively pursuing the presidency right now constitute a classy assemblage. The front-runners are people of substantial stature; the long shots include many who, in other years, would have been thought of as formidable challengers.
But the process in which they are engaged is bizarre -- and getting more so, every time you look.
Ever since 1976, the first presidential election year after the Democrats "reformed" their nominating rules, the states have been trying to increase their influence by racing to the head of the line of primaries. The result has been that a selection system that used to begin in March now is over in February -- at the latest.
The Democrats are mostly to blame for this mad rush to judgment, but neither party has tried seriously to apply the brakes. Their indulgence of this breakneck competition among the states means that someone is likely to put a death grip on each party's nomination before most Americans have begun to size up his or her capacity to be president. The second consequence is a numbingly long general election campaign: a nine-month marathon that leaves contenders and voters exhausted.
It also drives the cost of the election right through the ceiling -- and makes the candidates spend untold hours courting those with the wealth to finance their campaigns. Serious students of the process proclaim this to be the first billion-dollar election and predict the old system of partial public financing, with its spending controls, will be shattered to bits by the runaway money chase.
How did all this come to pass? Well, it began innocently enough with both parties giving official sanction to the traditional early kickoff contests -- the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. But as other states began inching forward, Iowa and New Hampshire advanced their dates, bit by bit, into January.
This year, the Democrats triggered a new stampede by deciding -- on grounds of diversity -- to cram the Nevada caucuses into the week between Iowa and New Hampshire and add a South Carolina primary just a week later.
Those four January events may be followed by a Feb. 5 blowout that will very possibly end the race. Four mega-states -- Florida, Illinois, Texas and California -- are all advancing legislation that would move their contests up to that date. Alabama may sneak in three days earlier, and other states are considering jumping in.
This is madness. There is no way that candidates can really communicate their qualifications, their aspirations and their policies to millions of people in widely scattered locales in a week's time or less. The campaign will be reduced to 30-second TV spots, sound-bite debates and airport tarmac rallies.
Long ago, the late Mo Udall, the canny congressman from Arizona who finished second to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 primaries, proposed the best solution I've ever heard.
He urged the parties to adopt a simple rule: Any state could hold a nonbinding contest any day it wants, but delegates to the national conventions would be seated only if elected on the first Tuesday of March, April, May or June. That way you would get spacing between the events to allow for serious examination of the choices and, probably, a mixture of results that would keep the race open until the end.
What we have now is so out of kilter that senatorial candidates can barely tend to their duties a year before the first primary.
davidbroder@washpost.com
By David S. Broder
Thursday, February 22, 2007; A19
When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced plans to hold an unusual Saturday session last week to vote on the House-passed resolution opposing President Bush's plan to send more U.S. troops into Iraq, he disrupted the schedules of at least six of his colleagues who are running for president.
Joe Biden and John McCain were both supposed to spend the day in Iowa; Hillary Clinton, in New Hampshire; Chris Dodd, in South Carolina; Barack Obama, in South Carolina and Virginia; and Sam Brownback, in Florida.
It's only February of 2007, but from the schedules these presidential hopefuls -- and their rivals -- are keeping, you would think the primaries were almost upon us. Plenty of campaign consultants were aggravated that Reid was inconsiderate enough to let a little matter such as the Iraq war intrude on their important work of getting their candidates elected -- next year.
What we have, friends, is a remarkably distinguished field of candidates vying in an election system that has become truly insane.
I think the 16 men and one woman actively pursuing the presidency right now constitute a classy assemblage. The front-runners are people of substantial stature; the long shots include many who, in other years, would have been thought of as formidable challengers.
But the process in which they are engaged is bizarre -- and getting more so, every time you look.
Ever since 1976, the first presidential election year after the Democrats "reformed" their nominating rules, the states have been trying to increase their influence by racing to the head of the line of primaries. The result has been that a selection system that used to begin in March now is over in February -- at the latest.
The Democrats are mostly to blame for this mad rush to judgment, but neither party has tried seriously to apply the brakes. Their indulgence of this breakneck competition among the states means that someone is likely to put a death grip on each party's nomination before most Americans have begun to size up his or her capacity to be president. The second consequence is a numbingly long general election campaign: a nine-month marathon that leaves contenders and voters exhausted.
It also drives the cost of the election right through the ceiling -- and makes the candidates spend untold hours courting those with the wealth to finance their campaigns. Serious students of the process proclaim this to be the first billion-dollar election and predict the old system of partial public financing, with its spending controls, will be shattered to bits by the runaway money chase.
How did all this come to pass? Well, it began innocently enough with both parties giving official sanction to the traditional early kickoff contests -- the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. But as other states began inching forward, Iowa and New Hampshire advanced their dates, bit by bit, into January.
This year, the Democrats triggered a new stampede by deciding -- on grounds of diversity -- to cram the Nevada caucuses into the week between Iowa and New Hampshire and add a South Carolina primary just a week later.
Those four January events may be followed by a Feb. 5 blowout that will very possibly end the race. Four mega-states -- Florida, Illinois, Texas and California -- are all advancing legislation that would move their contests up to that date. Alabama may sneak in three days earlier, and other states are considering jumping in.
This is madness. There is no way that candidates can really communicate their qualifications, their aspirations and their policies to millions of people in widely scattered locales in a week's time or less. The campaign will be reduced to 30-second TV spots, sound-bite debates and airport tarmac rallies.
Long ago, the late Mo Udall, the canny congressman from Arizona who finished second to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 primaries, proposed the best solution I've ever heard.
He urged the parties to adopt a simple rule: Any state could hold a nonbinding contest any day it wants, but delegates to the national conventions would be seated only if elected on the first Tuesday of March, April, May or June. That way you would get spacing between the events to allow for serious examination of the choices and, probably, a mixture of results that would keep the race open until the end.
What we have now is so out of kilter that senatorial candidates can barely tend to their duties a year before the first primary.
davidbroder@washpost.com
Fineman on the Clinton-Obama feud
Fineman: Clinton-Obama Fight Gets Nasty
The two leading Democratic presidential camps have gotten into a nasty row involving Hollywood kingmaker David Geffen. But neither side wins this fight.
By Howard Fineman
Updated: 4:35 p.m. CT Feb 21, 2007
Feb. 21, 2007 - If you were worried that the World Wrestling Federation had lost its edge, there is good news: the first cat fight of the 2008 campaign has erupted—a tag-team Democratic fur-flier pitting the Mighty Clintons against Upstart Sen. Barack Obama and Hollywood Mogul David Geffen. As in the WWF, it is easy to guess who the winners will be. In this match, it is the Republican Party and John Edwards.
As is often the case, the fight promoter was Maureen Dowd, whose many gifts include an ability to lure public figures into saying nasty things about each other.
It probably wasn’t that hard in Geffen’s case. “David would fly half way ‘round the world to pick a fight,” said a Hollywood movie-producer friend of mine, begging for anonymity for obvious reasons. “That’s how he operates. I never wanted to be his friend, and I certainly never wanted to be his enemy.”
Which now means the Clintons. He split with the former president over a number of things: the Monica Lewinsky mess, his failure to obtain last-minute pardons for some friends of his. He also has a well-developed instinct for the next new thing. So he cohosted a $1.3 million fund-raiser for Obama.
That was a dis, but Geffen went further with Dowd. “Everybody in politics lies,” he said, but the Clintons “do it with such ease it’s troubling.” He went on to hint that Bill still had marital fidelity issues and that Hillary was overproduced, overscripted, overambitious, stiff-necked and haughty. And then he said the worst thing a Hollywood guy could say: the Clinton Show was boring. “And I’m tired of hearing James Carville on television,” he said.
Abe Lincoln Pedestal
All of that was entertaining enough, but the Clinton Camp added to the fun by going ballistic the moment they saw the Dowd column on Drudge. I’m obviously not privy to what goes on in their conference calls, but I have it on reasonable authority that they immediately concluded that Geffen had given them an opening to try to do what they’d been itching to do for weeks: knock St. Barack off of the idealistic Abe Lincoln pedestal he has been on for months.
And, for good measure, they wanted to show—forcefully—that they weren’t going to allow Democratic rivals (or allies of their rivals) to do the work of the GOP and raise the “character issue” (remember the 1990s?) without responding. The reason: if they couldn’t defend against Democrats on this point, how could Hillary convince primary voters that she could withstand GOP attacks next year? If it’s all about “electability,” she has to prove that now.
Then there is the general feeling that the race is going to be nasty anyway, so why not get it on—especially since Hillary and her crowd know all too well how to play the game rough, given not only the presidential history but the bloodthirsty feeding habits of New York media, politicians and consultants.
And, in fact, what Geffen said probably was a little harsh.
Clinton spin master Howard Wolfson—one of the best and toughest in the business—climbed onto the high horse, demanding that Obama denounce Geffen’s remarks, dismiss him from the campaign (even though he has no title in it) and—here is the beauty party, as Ross Perot used to say—give back the money.
Lincoln Bedroom Defense
My sense is that the Obama campaign was, at least momentarily, taken aback by this ferocity. But it didn’t take them long to answer, sending their own message of combat-readiness.
Communications director Robert Gibbs (a match for Wolfson in the take-no-prisoners department) noted that Geffen once had been one of the Clintons’ “biggest supporters” and a guest in the Lincoln Bedroom and that Hillary had lavishly praised a supporter who told the world that Obama would “drag down the rest of the Democratic Party because he is black.”
Out in Hollywood, meanwhile, the after-buzz of the Obama event was still loud. “The thing is, young people respond to him, and that is our audience, too,” my producer friend said. “I’m undecided—it’s too early—but I am intrigued.”
Hillary, for her part, was flying into L.A. to quietly lock up major commitments from fund-raisers and donors in discreet meetings—rather that compete just yet with Obamamania. That will come later, and I bet she raises more than $1.3 million.
And the Winner Is ...So who won the cat fight?
Neither Hillary nor Obama. As the day wore on, Hillary got a chance to follow up Wolfson’s gambit and she declined, refusing at a forum in Nevada to demand that Obama repudiate Geffen’s remarks. Does Hillary really want to get in a fight with Geffen? Probably not, nor does she want to rehash the 1990s. As for Obama, why get in it with Hillary more than you absolutely have to?
Two winners: Edwards, who has his own Hollywood following, though not as fervent a one, and the GOP, whose leaders are loving watching the Hollywood gang war. “We love it when Democrats fight over which of them is closer to a billionaire L.A. movie mogul,” a GOP strategist in New York told me. “That’s really where the American mainstream is: on the West Side of L.A.!”
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17265566/site/newsweek/
The two leading Democratic presidential camps have gotten into a nasty row involving Hollywood kingmaker David Geffen. But neither side wins this fight.
By Howard Fineman
Updated: 4:35 p.m. CT Feb 21, 2007
Feb. 21, 2007 - If you were worried that the World Wrestling Federation had lost its edge, there is good news: the first cat fight of the 2008 campaign has erupted—a tag-team Democratic fur-flier pitting the Mighty Clintons against Upstart Sen. Barack Obama and Hollywood Mogul David Geffen. As in the WWF, it is easy to guess who the winners will be. In this match, it is the Republican Party and John Edwards.
As is often the case, the fight promoter was Maureen Dowd, whose many gifts include an ability to lure public figures into saying nasty things about each other.
It probably wasn’t that hard in Geffen’s case. “David would fly half way ‘round the world to pick a fight,” said a Hollywood movie-producer friend of mine, begging for anonymity for obvious reasons. “That’s how he operates. I never wanted to be his friend, and I certainly never wanted to be his enemy.”
Which now means the Clintons. He split with the former president over a number of things: the Monica Lewinsky mess, his failure to obtain last-minute pardons for some friends of his. He also has a well-developed instinct for the next new thing. So he cohosted a $1.3 million fund-raiser for Obama.
That was a dis, but Geffen went further with Dowd. “Everybody in politics lies,” he said, but the Clintons “do it with such ease it’s troubling.” He went on to hint that Bill still had marital fidelity issues and that Hillary was overproduced, overscripted, overambitious, stiff-necked and haughty. And then he said the worst thing a Hollywood guy could say: the Clinton Show was boring. “And I’m tired of hearing James Carville on television,” he said.
Abe Lincoln Pedestal
All of that was entertaining enough, but the Clinton Camp added to the fun by going ballistic the moment they saw the Dowd column on Drudge. I’m obviously not privy to what goes on in their conference calls, but I have it on reasonable authority that they immediately concluded that Geffen had given them an opening to try to do what they’d been itching to do for weeks: knock St. Barack off of the idealistic Abe Lincoln pedestal he has been on for months.
And, for good measure, they wanted to show—forcefully—that they weren’t going to allow Democratic rivals (or allies of their rivals) to do the work of the GOP and raise the “character issue” (remember the 1990s?) without responding. The reason: if they couldn’t defend against Democrats on this point, how could Hillary convince primary voters that she could withstand GOP attacks next year? If it’s all about “electability,” she has to prove that now.
Then there is the general feeling that the race is going to be nasty anyway, so why not get it on—especially since Hillary and her crowd know all too well how to play the game rough, given not only the presidential history but the bloodthirsty feeding habits of New York media, politicians and consultants.
And, in fact, what Geffen said probably was a little harsh.
Clinton spin master Howard Wolfson—one of the best and toughest in the business—climbed onto the high horse, demanding that Obama denounce Geffen’s remarks, dismiss him from the campaign (even though he has no title in it) and—here is the beauty party, as Ross Perot used to say—give back the money.
Lincoln Bedroom Defense
My sense is that the Obama campaign was, at least momentarily, taken aback by this ferocity. But it didn’t take them long to answer, sending their own message of combat-readiness.
Communications director Robert Gibbs (a match for Wolfson in the take-no-prisoners department) noted that Geffen once had been one of the Clintons’ “biggest supporters” and a guest in the Lincoln Bedroom and that Hillary had lavishly praised a supporter who told the world that Obama would “drag down the rest of the Democratic Party because he is black.”
Out in Hollywood, meanwhile, the after-buzz of the Obama event was still loud. “The thing is, young people respond to him, and that is our audience, too,” my producer friend said. “I’m undecided—it’s too early—but I am intrigued.”
Hillary, for her part, was flying into L.A. to quietly lock up major commitments from fund-raisers and donors in discreet meetings—rather that compete just yet with Obamamania. That will come later, and I bet she raises more than $1.3 million.
And the Winner Is ...So who won the cat fight?
Neither Hillary nor Obama. As the day wore on, Hillary got a chance to follow up Wolfson’s gambit and she declined, refusing at a forum in Nevada to demand that Obama repudiate Geffen’s remarks. Does Hillary really want to get in a fight with Geffen? Probably not, nor does she want to rehash the 1990s. As for Obama, why get in it with Hillary more than you absolutely have to?
Two winners: Edwards, who has his own Hollywood following, though not as fervent a one, and the GOP, whose leaders are loving watching the Hollywood gang war. “We love it when Democrats fight over which of them is closer to a billionaire L.A. movie mogul,” a GOP strategist in New York told me. “That’s really where the American mainstream is: on the West Side of L.A.!”
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17265566/site/newsweek/
Super-Duper Tuesday?
February 22, 2007
Super-Duper Tuesday?
By Carl Leubsdorf
Mardi Gras falls next year on Feb. 5. And the bacchanalian holiday called "Fat Tuesday" may produce the fattest delegate haul in presidential political history.
But like other recent reforms in the complicated nominating process, it may not produce the results its sponsors are hoping for.Two decades ago, Texas helped create Super Tuesday, a March primary day designed to increase Southern influence and ensure a moderate Democratic nominee.
But the day's big winner was Gov. Michael Dukakis, a Massachusetts liberal who won the Texas and Florida primaries, captured the Democratic nomination and that fall lost every Southern state.
Now, Texas is on the verge of joining the other megastates in moving their 2008 primaries to Feb. 5. They hope to regain the influence they've lost in recent years because they voted after the nominees were essentially chosen.
Some two dozen states with more than half of each party's delegates have either switched to Feb. 5 or are considering it, including Texas, California, Florida, New York and Illinois. That would create the equivalent of the first ever national presidential primary and likely decide the nominations nine months before the 2008 election.
These states hope to curb the clout of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and have visions of becoming major battlegrounds where candidates spend lots of time and money.
The unprecedented grouping of primaries on one day may produce multimillion-dollar media buys in some states. But so many are involved that none will get the attention accorded Iowa and New Hampshire. More likely, they'll see some hastily arranged rallies and ratify the pecking order set in the earlier states.
That's what happened four years ago, when multiple primaries were held on the first Tuesdays of both February and March. Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic winner in both Iowa and New Hampshire, won all but two of the seven states that voted Feb. 3 and all but one of the 10 that picked delegates on March 2.
This time, circumstances are more complicated. For one thing, both parties have contests, and both have lots of candidates.
Besides, it's still possible -- though not likely -- that the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, already scheduled for their earliest dates in history, could be pushed up to this December.
That's because the Democrats voted to insert caucuses in Nevada into the eight-day period between Iowa and New Hampshire to give a role to voters in a Western state with a large number of Hispanic voters and union members. They also opted to let South Carolina vote a week after New Hampshire to add a Southern state with a big African-American population.
But the proposed new calendar has not gone down well in New Hampshire, which fears its status would be undercut by Nevada caucuses three days before its primary. Secretary of State William Gardner, who has authority to set the Granite state's primary date, has delayed doing so amid speculation he'll move it up at least one week from the projected Jan. 22 date.
That, in turn, would force Iowa to move its caucuses up to Jan. 7. And it could trigger other moves.
Iowa and New Hampshire are still likely to perform the same function as in recent years, narrowing the field to the top two or three finishers. If the historical pattern persists, candidates who win both Iowa and New Hampshire will win their party's nomination. If the two states pick different winners, those two could be the top contenders Feb. 5 -- and attract most of the news coverage.
The heavy front-loading of primaries has already prompted plans for an unprecedented number of televised debates this year -- six for Democrats, seven for Republicans, starting with back-to-back encounters in New Hampshire the first week of April.
Of the 13 debates, all but two are planned in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina.
That doesn't mean candidates won't spend some time in Feb. 5 states like Texas. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama plans a stop in Austin on Friday, and most other top candidates in both parties have either been through or are coming soon.
A principal purpose of most of those trips remains fundraising. And though residents of Iowa and New Hampshire can count on seeing the candidates both early and often, the main place most Texans will see them will be on their television screens, regardless of whether the primary is held in early March or early February.
Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington Bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News. His e-mail address is cleubsdorf@dallasnews.com.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/02/superduper_tuesday.html at February 22, 2007 - 12:19:25 PM CST
Super-Duper Tuesday?
By Carl Leubsdorf
Mardi Gras falls next year on Feb. 5. And the bacchanalian holiday called "Fat Tuesday" may produce the fattest delegate haul in presidential political history.
But like other recent reforms in the complicated nominating process, it may not produce the results its sponsors are hoping for.Two decades ago, Texas helped create Super Tuesday, a March primary day designed to increase Southern influence and ensure a moderate Democratic nominee.
But the day's big winner was Gov. Michael Dukakis, a Massachusetts liberal who won the Texas and Florida primaries, captured the Democratic nomination and that fall lost every Southern state.
Now, Texas is on the verge of joining the other megastates in moving their 2008 primaries to Feb. 5. They hope to regain the influence they've lost in recent years because they voted after the nominees were essentially chosen.
Some two dozen states with more than half of each party's delegates have either switched to Feb. 5 or are considering it, including Texas, California, Florida, New York and Illinois. That would create the equivalent of the first ever national presidential primary and likely decide the nominations nine months before the 2008 election.
These states hope to curb the clout of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and have visions of becoming major battlegrounds where candidates spend lots of time and money.
The unprecedented grouping of primaries on one day may produce multimillion-dollar media buys in some states. But so many are involved that none will get the attention accorded Iowa and New Hampshire. More likely, they'll see some hastily arranged rallies and ratify the pecking order set in the earlier states.
That's what happened four years ago, when multiple primaries were held on the first Tuesdays of both February and March. Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic winner in both Iowa and New Hampshire, won all but two of the seven states that voted Feb. 3 and all but one of the 10 that picked delegates on March 2.
This time, circumstances are more complicated. For one thing, both parties have contests, and both have lots of candidates.
Besides, it's still possible -- though not likely -- that the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, already scheduled for their earliest dates in history, could be pushed up to this December.
That's because the Democrats voted to insert caucuses in Nevada into the eight-day period between Iowa and New Hampshire to give a role to voters in a Western state with a large number of Hispanic voters and union members. They also opted to let South Carolina vote a week after New Hampshire to add a Southern state with a big African-American population.
But the proposed new calendar has not gone down well in New Hampshire, which fears its status would be undercut by Nevada caucuses three days before its primary. Secretary of State William Gardner, who has authority to set the Granite state's primary date, has delayed doing so amid speculation he'll move it up at least one week from the projected Jan. 22 date.
That, in turn, would force Iowa to move its caucuses up to Jan. 7. And it could trigger other moves.
Iowa and New Hampshire are still likely to perform the same function as in recent years, narrowing the field to the top two or three finishers. If the historical pattern persists, candidates who win both Iowa and New Hampshire will win their party's nomination. If the two states pick different winners, those two could be the top contenders Feb. 5 -- and attract most of the news coverage.
The heavy front-loading of primaries has already prompted plans for an unprecedented number of televised debates this year -- six for Democrats, seven for Republicans, starting with back-to-back encounters in New Hampshire the first week of April.
Of the 13 debates, all but two are planned in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina.
That doesn't mean candidates won't spend some time in Feb. 5 states like Texas. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama plans a stop in Austin on Friday, and most other top candidates in both parties have either been through or are coming soon.
A principal purpose of most of those trips remains fundraising. And though residents of Iowa and New Hampshire can count on seeing the candidates both early and often, the main place most Texans will see them will be on their television screens, regardless of whether the primary is held in early March or early February.
Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington Bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News. His e-mail address is cleubsdorf@dallasnews.com.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/02/superduper_tuesday.html at February 22, 2007 - 12:19:25 PM CST
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
For McCain for President: Phil Gramm
Why John McCain
He's a leader for our times.
BY PHIL GRAMM
Tuesday, February 20, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Four years ago I decided to quit while I was ahead and concluded my 24-year political career. When I left the Senate, I also left the public policy debate and talking-head role to those actually in the arena. However, because I believe that the 2008 presidential election will be the most important election since 1980, I have decided to rejoin the national debate and exercise my right as a private citizen to express a strongly held opinion about who should be elected, and why.
When the poet Edwin Markham wrote "Lincoln, the Man of the People," he spoke of the gathering crisis and the man sent to "meet the mortal need." For Markham, the gathering crisis was the great Civil War, and the man sent to meet the mortal need was Abraham Lincoln.
Today's mortal need is for a leader who trusts our people enough to tell them the truth about the festering domestic problems that have been swept under the rug for a quarter-century. We need a president who can face up to these problems even as he leads an increasingly reluctant country in a war against a dangerous enemy that will follow us home from any battlefield on which we are defeated.
Where is such a leader to be found? American history gives us a clue where to look: When the times have required great leaders in the past, they seem to have been there all the while, just waiting to be called. John Adams wrote in his diary in 1774 that "We have not Men, fit for the Times. We are deficient in Genius, in Education, in Travel, in Fortune--in every Thing. I feel unutterable Anxiety."
Yet, at that very moment, the greatest assemblage of leadership the world has ever known was emerging all around him. We seem, for some reason, to be able to see greatness only in the rearview mirror.
I believe the man we need to meet the mortal need today is here. He is experienced, but has not lost his common sense or his ability to be outraged. His conservatism is not the result of a studied philosophy, but of common sense and personal observation. His name is John McCain. He might not be the right president for all times, but he is the right president for these times.
Today we have an unnecessary budget deficit, the result of wanton waste and dishonesty. John McCain has been a lonely but clarion voice on this issue: "Bills that perpetuate wasteful spending should be vetoed," he says. "Not some of them, all of them. The numbers should shock us; indifference to them should shame us."
This is not a concern he discovered when he decided to run for president. I first heard him say these things when we served together in the House many years ago. To ask if he would really take on the spending establishment that runs Congress is to ask if water will wet, if fire will burn. If you want to end the spending spree in Washington, he is your man.
John McCain understands instinctively that just as "in war, there is no substitute for victory, in peace, there is no substitute for growth." He believes that "the strength of our economy promotes freedom not just at home but in every distant corner of our planet. End growth in America and the lights start to go out all over the world."
The success of the Reagan program taught Sen. McCain that growth requires responsible, limited government and ever-expanding freedom. As he has said, "The answer to deficits is not to raise taxes or repeal the [Bush] tax cuts but to restrain our spending habit. If the federal government can not be funded by current revenues then we must reduce its size."
Others tell us that pigs have wings and we can have it all: more spending, more government, lower taxes and more freedom. John McCain's says that "tax cuts work best when accompanied by lower spending." Yes, he understands that cutting taxes creates the incentive to work, save and invest; and that sometimes you have to cut taxes first to get the economy going and then control spending. But in his common-sense view, as in the immutable laws that govern our world, you can't let government spend it and let the taxpayer keep it for very long. Nothing endangers the Bush tax cuts today as much as the spending orgy that the very proponents of those tax cuts allowed to occur.
Sen. McCain stands tall, and often alone, in his support for free trade against special interests and against the politicians who would risk destroying our economy to win an election. His view is straightforward and ratified by all our national experience: "Free trade is the key to economic growth, and a key to U.S. economic success. We need to stand up for free trade with no ifs, ands or buts about it. We let free trade and globalization be politicized at our own peril."
But he is not blind or callous to the real costs imposed on the few as trade and globalization create prosperity for the many. In his view, "We must remain committed to education, retraining and help for displaced workers, all the while reminding ourselves that our ability to change is a great strength of our nation." But, he adds, "We cannot let fear and the appeals of protectionism lead us backwards."
John McCain is one of the few politicians in America who consistently levels with us about the mounting insolvency of Social Security and Medicare. "We have made promises that we cannot keep. Some day the government will be forced to make dramatic cuts in these programs, or crippling increases in taxes on workers or both." For Sen. McCain, salvaging the social safety net and saving the economy means making the hard choices now to right the current system for those already in it, and building a new system for future workers based on real investments, not empty promises.
Being honest about Social Security and Medicare is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fixing a broken system. Think for a moment about all the possible candidates running for president next year, and then ask yourself this question: Who else has shown any ability to reach across the party divide and build a bipartisan consensus? Who else could lead worried Americans and shame a reluctant Congress into action? Who else would stay on course with political flak exploding all around him, and his political life hanging in the balance? The easy answer is--no one but John McCain.
Which candidate is best equipped to lead an America at war, with battle lines raging in far away places and on Main Street, where you live? It is in meeting this mortal need more than any other that John McCain stands head and shoulders above the alternatives. Only he has the life experience to know what is really entailed in sending young men and women into combat. With a son at Annapolis and a son in the Marine Corps, he still has plenty of "skin in the game." His life experience and intimate knowledge of defense and foreign policy give Sen. McCain moral authority.
In a democracy, power is useless unless you can use it; what candidate would have more credibility in using power and rallying public support for a long and difficult struggle? Who would be more effective than John McCain in using American military power in its highest and best use--the deterrence of adversaries? A president--who knows war and has the authority to unite our people to make war when we must--can thwart enemies, unite friends and win peace. John McCain would be that president.
Greatness seems to visit those who know themselves, what they believe in and why. Abraham Lincoln knew those things. The savior of the union was a protectionist and a proponent of big government projects--and in the 1850s or 1870s he might have made an average or poor president. But in 1860, Lincoln was the right man for that moment. He was on a mission to save the union, and he did.
The great leader of my lifetime was Ronald Reagan. He knew what he believed in and what he needed to do in 1980, and he meant to do it. He didn't run for the glory of being president; he ran to change America and the world. He didn't just want to hold the office; he wanted to use it.
Over the years there have been issues where I have differed with Sen. McCain. But as I look at the gathering storm that will challenge the next president and imperil our country, not one of those issues is relevant to the task ahead. The presidency is a terrible thing to waste. I believe that if the American people make him president, John McCain won't waste it.
Mr. Gramm is a former U.S. senator from Texas.
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
He's a leader for our times.
BY PHIL GRAMM
Tuesday, February 20, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Four years ago I decided to quit while I was ahead and concluded my 24-year political career. When I left the Senate, I also left the public policy debate and talking-head role to those actually in the arena. However, because I believe that the 2008 presidential election will be the most important election since 1980, I have decided to rejoin the national debate and exercise my right as a private citizen to express a strongly held opinion about who should be elected, and why.
When the poet Edwin Markham wrote "Lincoln, the Man of the People," he spoke of the gathering crisis and the man sent to "meet the mortal need." For Markham, the gathering crisis was the great Civil War, and the man sent to meet the mortal need was Abraham Lincoln.
Today's mortal need is for a leader who trusts our people enough to tell them the truth about the festering domestic problems that have been swept under the rug for a quarter-century. We need a president who can face up to these problems even as he leads an increasingly reluctant country in a war against a dangerous enemy that will follow us home from any battlefield on which we are defeated.
Where is such a leader to be found? American history gives us a clue where to look: When the times have required great leaders in the past, they seem to have been there all the while, just waiting to be called. John Adams wrote in his diary in 1774 that "We have not Men, fit for the Times. We are deficient in Genius, in Education, in Travel, in Fortune--in every Thing. I feel unutterable Anxiety."
Yet, at that very moment, the greatest assemblage of leadership the world has ever known was emerging all around him. We seem, for some reason, to be able to see greatness only in the rearview mirror.
I believe the man we need to meet the mortal need today is here. He is experienced, but has not lost his common sense or his ability to be outraged. His conservatism is not the result of a studied philosophy, but of common sense and personal observation. His name is John McCain. He might not be the right president for all times, but he is the right president for these times.
Today we have an unnecessary budget deficit, the result of wanton waste and dishonesty. John McCain has been a lonely but clarion voice on this issue: "Bills that perpetuate wasteful spending should be vetoed," he says. "Not some of them, all of them. The numbers should shock us; indifference to them should shame us."
This is not a concern he discovered when he decided to run for president. I first heard him say these things when we served together in the House many years ago. To ask if he would really take on the spending establishment that runs Congress is to ask if water will wet, if fire will burn. If you want to end the spending spree in Washington, he is your man.
John McCain understands instinctively that just as "in war, there is no substitute for victory, in peace, there is no substitute for growth." He believes that "the strength of our economy promotes freedom not just at home but in every distant corner of our planet. End growth in America and the lights start to go out all over the world."
The success of the Reagan program taught Sen. McCain that growth requires responsible, limited government and ever-expanding freedom. As he has said, "The answer to deficits is not to raise taxes or repeal the [Bush] tax cuts but to restrain our spending habit. If the federal government can not be funded by current revenues then we must reduce its size."
Others tell us that pigs have wings and we can have it all: more spending, more government, lower taxes and more freedom. John McCain's says that "tax cuts work best when accompanied by lower spending." Yes, he understands that cutting taxes creates the incentive to work, save and invest; and that sometimes you have to cut taxes first to get the economy going and then control spending. But in his common-sense view, as in the immutable laws that govern our world, you can't let government spend it and let the taxpayer keep it for very long. Nothing endangers the Bush tax cuts today as much as the spending orgy that the very proponents of those tax cuts allowed to occur.
Sen. McCain stands tall, and often alone, in his support for free trade against special interests and against the politicians who would risk destroying our economy to win an election. His view is straightforward and ratified by all our national experience: "Free trade is the key to economic growth, and a key to U.S. economic success. We need to stand up for free trade with no ifs, ands or buts about it. We let free trade and globalization be politicized at our own peril."
But he is not blind or callous to the real costs imposed on the few as trade and globalization create prosperity for the many. In his view, "We must remain committed to education, retraining and help for displaced workers, all the while reminding ourselves that our ability to change is a great strength of our nation." But, he adds, "We cannot let fear and the appeals of protectionism lead us backwards."
John McCain is one of the few politicians in America who consistently levels with us about the mounting insolvency of Social Security and Medicare. "We have made promises that we cannot keep. Some day the government will be forced to make dramatic cuts in these programs, or crippling increases in taxes on workers or both." For Sen. McCain, salvaging the social safety net and saving the economy means making the hard choices now to right the current system for those already in it, and building a new system for future workers based on real investments, not empty promises.
Being honest about Social Security and Medicare is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fixing a broken system. Think for a moment about all the possible candidates running for president next year, and then ask yourself this question: Who else has shown any ability to reach across the party divide and build a bipartisan consensus? Who else could lead worried Americans and shame a reluctant Congress into action? Who else would stay on course with political flak exploding all around him, and his political life hanging in the balance? The easy answer is--no one but John McCain.
Which candidate is best equipped to lead an America at war, with battle lines raging in far away places and on Main Street, where you live? It is in meeting this mortal need more than any other that John McCain stands head and shoulders above the alternatives. Only he has the life experience to know what is really entailed in sending young men and women into combat. With a son at Annapolis and a son in the Marine Corps, he still has plenty of "skin in the game." His life experience and intimate knowledge of defense and foreign policy give Sen. McCain moral authority.
In a democracy, power is useless unless you can use it; what candidate would have more credibility in using power and rallying public support for a long and difficult struggle? Who would be more effective than John McCain in using American military power in its highest and best use--the deterrence of adversaries? A president--who knows war and has the authority to unite our people to make war when we must--can thwart enemies, unite friends and win peace. John McCain would be that president.
Greatness seems to visit those who know themselves, what they believe in and why. Abraham Lincoln knew those things. The savior of the union was a protectionist and a proponent of big government projects--and in the 1850s or 1870s he might have made an average or poor president. But in 1860, Lincoln was the right man for that moment. He was on a mission to save the union, and he did.
The great leader of my lifetime was Ronald Reagan. He knew what he believed in and what he needed to do in 1980, and he meant to do it. He didn't run for the glory of being president; he ran to change America and the world. He didn't just want to hold the office; he wanted to use it.
Over the years there have been issues where I have differed with Sen. McCain. But as I look at the gathering storm that will challenge the next president and imperil our country, not one of those issues is relevant to the task ahead. The presidency is a terrible thing to waste. I believe that if the American people make him president, John McCain won't waste it.
Mr. Gramm is a former U.S. senator from Texas.
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Against McCain for President: "Welcome to McCain's flip-flop express"
Welcome to McCain's flip-flop express
By Dick Polman
Inquirer Political Analyst
Join me for a trip down memory lane, aboard "maverick" John McCain's Straight Talk Express.
This was seven winters ago, long before the Washington press corps finally got hip to the fact that McCain was just another pandering politician. This was during the 2000 Republican primary season, when, at McCain's invitation, a steady procession of besotted journalists rode with him on his bus (right up front, no less) for days and weeks at a time, laughing at his jokes and reveling in the illusion that they were insiders.
I remember one frigid New Hampshire night, somewhere along Interstate 93. McCain held court, and we crowded around. He ruminated a bit about health care (he confessed that the issue bored him), gossiped about some people he didn't like (signaling his distaste by rolling his eyes), reminisced about his days as a carousing Navy flyboy (he said he dated an exotic dancer named "Marie the Flame Thrower of Florida"), and there were rollicking good vibes as we rolled along.
But I never rode again, having no desire to be part of McCain's laugh track. Somehow, a bit of professional distance seemed more appropriate. And it was obvious McCain knew exactly what he was doing. He had very little money at the time - all the big donors were backing his rival, George W. Bush - so he needed free and favorable exposure. And flattering the press was the best way to get it.
He has reaped the benefits ever since. Over the last seven years, he has been constantly depicted in the press as a "straight-talking," "independent" "maverick," despite the fact that, with the exception of a few high-profile issues, he has long voted in the Senate as a conventional conservative Republican. By all accounts, he's still talking with the media about Marie the Flame Thrower. So one might assume McCain will simply gas up the bus for 2008, and conjure the old camaraderie.
But that's not likely to happen, not at a time when the media feel so betrayed.
They fell hard for McCain in 2000, not just because he granted so much access, but because he sold himself as a rebel, an antiestablishment reformer with no patience for political orthodoxy. Reporters bought the McCain persona, because they (like many of their fellow citizens) are frustrated romantics who yearn for authenticity in public life. So when an alleged rebel turns out to be a calculating opportunist, that's an open invitation for the Fourth Estate to lose the love and rediscover its adversarial impulses.
It's impossible to pinpoint when the long media honeymoon finally ended; perhaps it was last April, when the Associated Press sent out a story headlined "McCain's straight-talking image called into question." Suffice it to say that reporters generally don't abide politicians - not even the friendly ones - who say one thing and do another. And at this point, it's impossible to ignore the fact that McCain has been riding the Double Talk Express for the better part of a year, flip-flopping with an alacrity that would humble Hamlet.
Reporters, outsiders by nature, liked the 2000 version of McCain because he was an outsider battling the GOP establishment; but the 2007 version of McCain is an insider who craves acceptance by the establishment. And he cannot join that establishment unless he wins over the Bush moneymen, and the social and religious conservatives, whom he scorned seven years ago. Hence his apparent willingness to throw his old self under the bus.
Space does not permit a full recitation of his flip-flops, so here's a modest sampling:
McCain used to dismiss Jerry Falwell as an "agent of intolerance," but tomorrow he will trek to a Florida religious convention to woo the guy.
McCain, until recently, was pushing for a reform law that would require conservative groups to reveal their financial donors. But, after fielding protests from evangelical Christians and antiabortion activists, McCain decided last month to strip out the provision.
McCain in 2000 assailed Bush's proposed tax cuts as a sop to the rich, and a year later, with Bush in office, he voted against those cuts, declaring that "the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans." But a year ago, he switched sides and voted to extend tax cuts for the wealthy.
McCain in 1999 said that, "even in the long term," he would not support the repeal of Roe v. Wade because "thousands of young American women would be performing illegal and dangerous operations." But last November he said that he now favored repeal because "I don't believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade."
McCain in 2000 was incensed when a pair of Texas businessmen, Sam and Charley Wyly, bankrolled some Bush-friendly TV ads that distorted McCain's record. McCain declared at the time that their "dirty money" did not belong in national politics. But last year, McCain decided that their dirty money belonged in his campaign; he took $20,000 and allowed them to chair a McCain fund-raiser. (McCain later had to give back the money, because, it turns out, his new friends are reportedly under federal investigation.)
McCain, who has long deplored negative politics, defended John Kerry in 2004 when the Democratic candidate's war record was being impugned by the Swift Boaters. But today, one of McCain's top advisers is GOP hardball specialist Terry Nelson, who has worked as a consultant with one of the principal Swift Boaters. Nelson also produced the notorious '06 TV ad that implied, in the Tennessee Senate race, that the black Democratic candidate cavorted with white women.
McCain has voted against a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, but last fall, regarding his own state, he supported an Arizona referendum that would have banned gay marriage.
McCain in 2006 suggested that creationism was not a fit topic for the schoolroom: "I respect those who think the world was created in seven days. Should it be taught as a science class? Probably not." But he suggested the opposite in 2005 ("all points of view should be presented"), and Friday he is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a confab sponsored by the Discovery Institute, a prominent creationism advocacy group.
This is all raw meat for even the most somnolent watchdogs. Few facets of the old McCain appeal - including his military heroism (which wowed the reporters, few of whom have served), and his willingness to admit error (reporters love candidates who cop to flaws) - will shield him from rigorous questioning in the months ahead. A new mainstream media Web site, Politico.com, even referred to McCain the other day as "the onetime maverick," which is probably some kind of milestone.
Nor does McCain need to woo reporters as he once did; he has lots of money and universal name ID, so their usefulness is over. More important, his top priority right now is to assure the media-wary GOP establishment that he's not in bed with his old buds. Indeed, he knows that there can never be another love bus; by opting to pander for the nomination, he understands that, this time, there will be no free ride. It's the price he is willing to pay.
By Dick Polman
Inquirer Political Analyst
Join me for a trip down memory lane, aboard "maverick" John McCain's Straight Talk Express.
This was seven winters ago, long before the Washington press corps finally got hip to the fact that McCain was just another pandering politician. This was during the 2000 Republican primary season, when, at McCain's invitation, a steady procession of besotted journalists rode with him on his bus (right up front, no less) for days and weeks at a time, laughing at his jokes and reveling in the illusion that they were insiders.
I remember one frigid New Hampshire night, somewhere along Interstate 93. McCain held court, and we crowded around. He ruminated a bit about health care (he confessed that the issue bored him), gossiped about some people he didn't like (signaling his distaste by rolling his eyes), reminisced about his days as a carousing Navy flyboy (he said he dated an exotic dancer named "Marie the Flame Thrower of Florida"), and there were rollicking good vibes as we rolled along.
But I never rode again, having no desire to be part of McCain's laugh track. Somehow, a bit of professional distance seemed more appropriate. And it was obvious McCain knew exactly what he was doing. He had very little money at the time - all the big donors were backing his rival, George W. Bush - so he needed free and favorable exposure. And flattering the press was the best way to get it.
He has reaped the benefits ever since. Over the last seven years, he has been constantly depicted in the press as a "straight-talking," "independent" "maverick," despite the fact that, with the exception of a few high-profile issues, he has long voted in the Senate as a conventional conservative Republican. By all accounts, he's still talking with the media about Marie the Flame Thrower. So one might assume McCain will simply gas up the bus for 2008, and conjure the old camaraderie.
But that's not likely to happen, not at a time when the media feel so betrayed.
They fell hard for McCain in 2000, not just because he granted so much access, but because he sold himself as a rebel, an antiestablishment reformer with no patience for political orthodoxy. Reporters bought the McCain persona, because they (like many of their fellow citizens) are frustrated romantics who yearn for authenticity in public life. So when an alleged rebel turns out to be a calculating opportunist, that's an open invitation for the Fourth Estate to lose the love and rediscover its adversarial impulses.
It's impossible to pinpoint when the long media honeymoon finally ended; perhaps it was last April, when the Associated Press sent out a story headlined "McCain's straight-talking image called into question." Suffice it to say that reporters generally don't abide politicians - not even the friendly ones - who say one thing and do another. And at this point, it's impossible to ignore the fact that McCain has been riding the Double Talk Express for the better part of a year, flip-flopping with an alacrity that would humble Hamlet.
Reporters, outsiders by nature, liked the 2000 version of McCain because he was an outsider battling the GOP establishment; but the 2007 version of McCain is an insider who craves acceptance by the establishment. And he cannot join that establishment unless he wins over the Bush moneymen, and the social and religious conservatives, whom he scorned seven years ago. Hence his apparent willingness to throw his old self under the bus.
Space does not permit a full recitation of his flip-flops, so here's a modest sampling:
McCain used to dismiss Jerry Falwell as an "agent of intolerance," but tomorrow he will trek to a Florida religious convention to woo the guy.
McCain, until recently, was pushing for a reform law that would require conservative groups to reveal their financial donors. But, after fielding protests from evangelical Christians and antiabortion activists, McCain decided last month to strip out the provision.
McCain in 2000 assailed Bush's proposed tax cuts as a sop to the rich, and a year later, with Bush in office, he voted against those cuts, declaring that "the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans." But a year ago, he switched sides and voted to extend tax cuts for the wealthy.
McCain in 1999 said that, "even in the long term," he would not support the repeal of Roe v. Wade because "thousands of young American women would be performing illegal and dangerous operations." But last November he said that he now favored repeal because "I don't believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade."
McCain in 2000 was incensed when a pair of Texas businessmen, Sam and Charley Wyly, bankrolled some Bush-friendly TV ads that distorted McCain's record. McCain declared at the time that their "dirty money" did not belong in national politics. But last year, McCain decided that their dirty money belonged in his campaign; he took $20,000 and allowed them to chair a McCain fund-raiser. (McCain later had to give back the money, because, it turns out, his new friends are reportedly under federal investigation.)
McCain, who has long deplored negative politics, defended John Kerry in 2004 when the Democratic candidate's war record was being impugned by the Swift Boaters. But today, one of McCain's top advisers is GOP hardball specialist Terry Nelson, who has worked as a consultant with one of the principal Swift Boaters. Nelson also produced the notorious '06 TV ad that implied, in the Tennessee Senate race, that the black Democratic candidate cavorted with white women.
McCain has voted against a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, but last fall, regarding his own state, he supported an Arizona referendum that would have banned gay marriage.
McCain in 2006 suggested that creationism was not a fit topic for the schoolroom: "I respect those who think the world was created in seven days. Should it be taught as a science class? Probably not." But he suggested the opposite in 2005 ("all points of view should be presented"), and Friday he is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a confab sponsored by the Discovery Institute, a prominent creationism advocacy group.
This is all raw meat for even the most somnolent watchdogs. Few facets of the old McCain appeal - including his military heroism (which wowed the reporters, few of whom have served), and his willingness to admit error (reporters love candidates who cop to flaws) - will shield him from rigorous questioning in the months ahead. A new mainstream media Web site, Politico.com, even referred to McCain the other day as "the onetime maverick," which is probably some kind of milestone.
Nor does McCain need to woo reporters as he once did; he has lots of money and universal name ID, so their usefulness is over. More important, his top priority right now is to assure the media-wary GOP establishment that he's not in bed with his old buds. Indeed, he knows that there can never be another love bus; by opting to pander for the nomination, he understands that, this time, there will be no free ride. It's the price he is willing to pay.
Ed Koch: Will Embarrassing the President Make Us Safer?
February 20, 2007
Will Embarrassing the President Make Us Safer?
By Ed Koch
Over the last few years I have written of my fears that we Americans, as a people, have lost our will to fight for our freedom.
We have come to expect that wars can be fought without casualties, even the relatively modest casualties we have suffered in Iraq. During World War Two, more Americans were killed or wounded on Iwo Jima in one month than have fallen in Iraq in almost four years. Of course, every military death and severe injury is a tragedy. Nevertheless, former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that our army in Iraq is "about broken," which appalled and frightened me.
Added to those two disturbing dangers to our national security is a new and third factor: denial of a military threat to our armed forces. Such a denial allows us to avoid addressing the threat with an appropriate military response.
We are not at war with Iran, but Iran seems to be at war with us. In the last year we have suffered at least 170 American military deaths in Iraq and 640 American soldiers have been injured as a result of Iranian manufactured and supplied explosives supplied to Iraqi insurgents and terrorists. These explosives are planted at the side of the road and are activated when U.S. military vehicles pass by. They are especially dangerous because their high technology design allows them to penetrate armored vehicles and kill and maim the occupants.
All American leaders, including the President, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, agree that these weapons are manufactured in Iran. They are provided to Iraqi insurgents and terrorists by an Iranian military unit known as the Quds Force. What we are not able to state with certainty is whether, according to The New York Times, "senior leaders of Iran's government are directly involved in the attacks."
The Times states, "Based on evidence gathered inside Iraq, American intelligence analysts have concluded that a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force is supplying Shiite groups with Iranian-designed weapons, called explosively formed penetrators."
The Times reported, "Because the Quds Force, which operates outside Iran, has historically fallen under the command of Iran's senior religious leaders, intelligence agencies have concluded that top leaders in Tehran are directing the attacks."
General Peter Pace is quoted in The Times as saying "that American forces had confirmed that some bomb materials found inside Iraq were made in Iran, but 'that does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this.'"
The Times points out the [Iranian revolutionary] "Guard has also been accused of supporting terrorist attacks outside Iran, notably the 1996 truck bomb attack on the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American service members. In December, a federal judge ruled that the government of Iran bore responsibility for the Khobar Towers attack and ordered Tehran to pay survivors of those killed more than $253 million."
So what do we know with certainty? There are those in Iran, on a significant scale, supplying Iraqi insurgents and terrorists with deadly bombs responsible for killing and injuring 820 American soldiers in the last year. Is it reasonable to believe that is possible without the approval of sectors of the Iranian government? I refer to the civil government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the theocratic and supreme government of the religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the dominant government official.
In dictatorships where dissidents seek to engage in activities prohibited by the state, those so engaged usually end up on the gallows. They are enemies of the state. It is beyond the realm of common sense to believe the Iranian government is aware of the supply activity as it is, the U.S. having made it public on several occasions, and is neither actively or passively, and knowledgably engaged in that activity. In fascist, Nazi, communist, theocratic and totalitarian states that extensively control the lives and political conduct of their citizens, there is very little crime, and practically zero crime against the state.
The Times reports why the Iranian government is engaging in this kind of behavior, writing, "Still American intelligence agencies have concluded that over the past year the Iranian government had adopted a new policy of directly confronting the United States inside Iraq. The policy officials assess is aimed partly at raising the cost of American involvement in the Middle East, teaching the Bush administration a lesson about the cost of regime change and putting pressure on American forces to leave.
"But another reason, they say, is to dissuade the Bush administration from taking a more confrontational policy toward Tehran by sending a message that Iran can ratchet up the attacks on American forces in Iraq."
It appears that Iran has succeeded in staring us down and preventing us from taking appropriate military action to protect our troops and punish those seeking to harm them. Iran will not be required to pay a price because our army is "about broken" and is not capable of responding. How awful and unnerving for the U.S., the sole remaining superpower in the world.
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are seeking to humble, embarrass and, if they can, destroy the President and the prestige of his position as the Commander-in-Chief who is responsible for the safety of our military forces and the nation's defenses. By doing so, they are adding to the dangers that face our nation.
And so I ask again them again: do you think that leaving a power vacuum in Iraq will make us safer? If, as a result of the power vacuum, the terrorists are emboldened and God forbid we sustain here in the U.S. civilian casualties comparable to those caused in Iraq by car bombs, will you publicly accept responsibility?
Ed Koch is the former Mayor of New York City.
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Will Embarrassing the President Make Us Safer?
By Ed Koch
Over the last few years I have written of my fears that we Americans, as a people, have lost our will to fight for our freedom.
We have come to expect that wars can be fought without casualties, even the relatively modest casualties we have suffered in Iraq. During World War Two, more Americans were killed or wounded on Iwo Jima in one month than have fallen in Iraq in almost four years. Of course, every military death and severe injury is a tragedy. Nevertheless, former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that our army in Iraq is "about broken," which appalled and frightened me.
Added to those two disturbing dangers to our national security is a new and third factor: denial of a military threat to our armed forces. Such a denial allows us to avoid addressing the threat with an appropriate military response.
We are not at war with Iran, but Iran seems to be at war with us. In the last year we have suffered at least 170 American military deaths in Iraq and 640 American soldiers have been injured as a result of Iranian manufactured and supplied explosives supplied to Iraqi insurgents and terrorists. These explosives are planted at the side of the road and are activated when U.S. military vehicles pass by. They are especially dangerous because their high technology design allows them to penetrate armored vehicles and kill and maim the occupants.
All American leaders, including the President, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, agree that these weapons are manufactured in Iran. They are provided to Iraqi insurgents and terrorists by an Iranian military unit known as the Quds Force. What we are not able to state with certainty is whether, according to The New York Times, "senior leaders of Iran's government are directly involved in the attacks."
The Times states, "Based on evidence gathered inside Iraq, American intelligence analysts have concluded that a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force is supplying Shiite groups with Iranian-designed weapons, called explosively formed penetrators."
The Times reported, "Because the Quds Force, which operates outside Iran, has historically fallen under the command of Iran's senior religious leaders, intelligence agencies have concluded that top leaders in Tehran are directing the attacks."
General Peter Pace is quoted in The Times as saying "that American forces had confirmed that some bomb materials found inside Iraq were made in Iran, but 'that does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this.'"
The Times points out the [Iranian revolutionary] "Guard has also been accused of supporting terrorist attacks outside Iran, notably the 1996 truck bomb attack on the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American service members. In December, a federal judge ruled that the government of Iran bore responsibility for the Khobar Towers attack and ordered Tehran to pay survivors of those killed more than $253 million."
So what do we know with certainty? There are those in Iran, on a significant scale, supplying Iraqi insurgents and terrorists with deadly bombs responsible for killing and injuring 820 American soldiers in the last year. Is it reasonable to believe that is possible without the approval of sectors of the Iranian government? I refer to the civil government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the theocratic and supreme government of the religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the dominant government official.
In dictatorships where dissidents seek to engage in activities prohibited by the state, those so engaged usually end up on the gallows. They are enemies of the state. It is beyond the realm of common sense to believe the Iranian government is aware of the supply activity as it is, the U.S. having made it public on several occasions, and is neither actively or passively, and knowledgably engaged in that activity. In fascist, Nazi, communist, theocratic and totalitarian states that extensively control the lives and political conduct of their citizens, there is very little crime, and practically zero crime against the state.
The Times reports why the Iranian government is engaging in this kind of behavior, writing, "Still American intelligence agencies have concluded that over the past year the Iranian government had adopted a new policy of directly confronting the United States inside Iraq. The policy officials assess is aimed partly at raising the cost of American involvement in the Middle East, teaching the Bush administration a lesson about the cost of regime change and putting pressure on American forces to leave.
"But another reason, they say, is to dissuade the Bush administration from taking a more confrontational policy toward Tehran by sending a message that Iran can ratchet up the attacks on American forces in Iraq."
It appears that Iran has succeeded in staring us down and preventing us from taking appropriate military action to protect our troops and punish those seeking to harm them. Iran will not be required to pay a price because our army is "about broken" and is not capable of responding. How awful and unnerving for the U.S., the sole remaining superpower in the world.
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are seeking to humble, embarrass and, if they can, destroy the President and the prestige of his position as the Commander-in-Chief who is responsible for the safety of our military forces and the nation's defenses. By doing so, they are adding to the dangers that face our nation.
And so I ask again them again: do you think that leaving a power vacuum in Iraq will make us safer? If, as a result of the power vacuum, the terrorists are emboldened and God forbid we sustain here in the U.S. civilian casualties comparable to those caused in Iraq by car bombs, will you publicly accept responsibility?
Ed Koch is the former Mayor of New York City.
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Friday, February 16, 2007
ABC News: Romney explains '92 vote for Tsongas
Romney explains '92 vote for Tsongas
February 16, 2007
Florian Heinhold
ABC News' Jonathan Greenberger Reports: Republican presidential candididate Mitt Romney offered a new explanation today for why he supported a Democrat in 1992.
That year, Romney, then a registered independent, voted for former Sen. Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary. He told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, in an interview that will air Sunday on "This Week," that his vote was meant as a tactical maneuver aimed at finding the weakest opponent for incumbent President George H.W. Bush.
"In Massachusetts, if you register as an independent, you can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary," said Romney, who until he made an unsuccessful run for Senate in 1994 had spent his adult life as a registered independent. "When there was no real contest in the Republican primary, I'd vote in the Democrat primary, vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican."
But 12 years ago, the Boston Globe reported that Romney was giving a different explanation for his vote for Tsongas.
"Romney confirmed he voted for former U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas in the state's 1992 Democratic presidential primary, saying he did so both because Tsongas was from Massachusetts and because he favored his ideas over those of Bill Clinton," the Boston Globe's Scot Lehigh and Frank Phillips wrote on Feb. 3, 1994. "He added he had been sure the G.O.P. would renominate George Bush, for whom he voted in the fall election."
Romney's contention that his vote for Tsongas was a vote for the weakest opponent for Bush - a phenomenon that political scientists refer to as "raiding" - surprised Professor William Mayer of Northeastern University in Boston.
"That would have been a strange election to have done that in, in the sense that Paul Tsongas was obviously going to carry his home state" of Massachusetts, said Mayer. Tsongas won the Massachusetts primary with 66 percent of the vote.
While statistical evidence of "raiding" is hard to come by, Mayer said most political scientists believe it is rare, since typically only 3 to 4 percent of voters in a Republican primary are actually Democrats, and vice versa. It is rarer still, he said, for an independent, as Romney was, to "raid": "If you're so determined to help George Bush in 92 that you’re willing to vote for Paul Tsongas, it probably means you weren’t an independent."
Romney has previously come under fire for donating to a series of Democratic candidates in the 1992 election, including then-Congressmen Dick Swett, D-N.H., and John LaFalce, D-N.Y.
For the full interview with Romney, tune in to "This Week" on Sunday.
February 16, 2007
Florian Heinhold
ABC News' Jonathan Greenberger Reports: Republican presidential candididate Mitt Romney offered a new explanation today for why he supported a Democrat in 1992.
That year, Romney, then a registered independent, voted for former Sen. Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary. He told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, in an interview that will air Sunday on "This Week," that his vote was meant as a tactical maneuver aimed at finding the weakest opponent for incumbent President George H.W. Bush.
"In Massachusetts, if you register as an independent, you can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary," said Romney, who until he made an unsuccessful run for Senate in 1994 had spent his adult life as a registered independent. "When there was no real contest in the Republican primary, I'd vote in the Democrat primary, vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican."
But 12 years ago, the Boston Globe reported that Romney was giving a different explanation for his vote for Tsongas.
"Romney confirmed he voted for former U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas in the state's 1992 Democratic presidential primary, saying he did so both because Tsongas was from Massachusetts and because he favored his ideas over those of Bill Clinton," the Boston Globe's Scot Lehigh and Frank Phillips wrote on Feb. 3, 1994. "He added he had been sure the G.O.P. would renominate George Bush, for whom he voted in the fall election."
Romney's contention that his vote for Tsongas was a vote for the weakest opponent for Bush - a phenomenon that political scientists refer to as "raiding" - surprised Professor William Mayer of Northeastern University in Boston.
"That would have been a strange election to have done that in, in the sense that Paul Tsongas was obviously going to carry his home state" of Massachusetts, said Mayer. Tsongas won the Massachusetts primary with 66 percent of the vote.
While statistical evidence of "raiding" is hard to come by, Mayer said most political scientists believe it is rare, since typically only 3 to 4 percent of voters in a Republican primary are actually Democrats, and vice versa. It is rarer still, he said, for an independent, as Romney was, to "raid": "If you're so determined to help George Bush in 92 that you’re willing to vote for Paul Tsongas, it probably means you weren’t an independent."
Romney has previously come under fire for donating to a series of Democratic candidates in the 1992 election, including then-Congressmen Dick Swett, D-N.H., and John LaFalce, D-N.Y.
For the full interview with Romney, tune in to "This Week" on Sunday.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Saunders: "Giuliani Would Make the Tough Decisions"
February 15, 2007
Giuliani Would Make the Tough Decisions
By Debra Saunders
"What we pay people in Washington for is to make decisions," former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told the audience at the California GOP convention in Sacramento Saturday.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, members of Congress have been acting as if they were sent to Washington to make non-decisions. Witness the nonbinding House resolution being debated this week in which members profess to support U.S. troops in Iraq, but, "Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional U.S. combat troops to Iraq."
The Senate couldn't even manage to pass a meaningless Iraq resolution when it tried earlier this month -- a non-accomplishment for which the senators, over time, may be glad.
What are Americans to think of the House resolution?
Politicians say they support the troops, then they undercut the efforts of Gen. David Petraeus, the new military commander in Iraq, to assemble the soldiers he believes he needs to win. Last year, war critics bashed Bush for not listening to Gen. Eric Shinseki, who wanted the administration to send more troops to Iraq. Now, they are supporting resolutions against more troops.
As Giuliani noted: "What I don't get is the nonbinding resolution. I don't get that. In the business world, two weeks spent on a nonbinding resolution would be considered nonproductive." He also called it "a comment without making a decision."
It felt good to see a politician looking at a run for the White House without first reconfiguring his platform to reflect polls that show Americans souring on the war in Iraq.
The latest USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 60 percent of voters disapprove of the Bush troop surge. Some 56 percent say that going to war was a mistake. But Giuliani didn't run from the war in his remarks, because it is too late to turn back.
Granted, Giuliani was speaking to Republicans, but the pack of journalists in the back of the room guaranteed that his words would be passed on to the general public.
Still, Giuliani had no problem comparing Bush's situation today with that of President Abraham Lincoln during the dark days of the Civil War. Giuliani noted that naysayers dismissed Lincoln as a dimwitted incompetent during the 1863 draft riots in New York and the crushing military defeats that occurred before Lincoln found the right general in Ulysses S. Grant. Because Lincoln did not give in to defeat, the Union prevailed and slavery died.
Giuliani added, "In time of war, you don't talk about pulling out."
Except in time of elections in time of war, when politicians do talk about pulling out. Some Democrats argue that Bush should end the war to show that he has heard the message voters sent in November 2006. Never mind that, now in power, the Democrats remain afraid to cut off war funding lest they be blamed if events in Iraq blow up in their faces. So they stick to nonbinding resolutions.
On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., distanced herself from her vote in favor of the war resolution, when she said, "Knowing what we know now, I would never have voted for it."
Clinton's plan for Iraq seems poll tested and poll approved: She wants to put a cap on the number of U.S. troops in Iraq (the Gallup poll shows 57 percent approve), but she does not want the Senate to cut off funding for the war (58 percent of those polled are with her).
Among other Democratic candidates, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., says he never would have voted for the war; former Sen. John Edwards now says that his vote for the war was a mistake and he wants to bring all American troops home within 18 months.
Who will win in 2008? The Republicans clearly could lose even more in 2008 than they lost in 2006. But if it were certain that supporting the Iraq war is the political kiss of death, Democrats and antiwar Republicans would move to cut off funding, instead of debating nonbinding resolutions.
When Giuliani addressed Republicans, he had a message of hope. Giuliani showed that he was willing to stick to an unpopular position, which suggests there are some things he would not do to win an election.
If either Clinton or Edwards is the Democratic presidential nominee, what are they going to say? That they are really smart Democrats who somehow were gulled by the lightweight Bush? Please.
dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
Giuliani Would Make the Tough Decisions
By Debra Saunders
"What we pay people in Washington for is to make decisions," former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told the audience at the California GOP convention in Sacramento Saturday.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, members of Congress have been acting as if they were sent to Washington to make non-decisions. Witness the nonbinding House resolution being debated this week in which members profess to support U.S. troops in Iraq, but, "Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional U.S. combat troops to Iraq."
The Senate couldn't even manage to pass a meaningless Iraq resolution when it tried earlier this month -- a non-accomplishment for which the senators, over time, may be glad.
What are Americans to think of the House resolution?
Politicians say they support the troops, then they undercut the efforts of Gen. David Petraeus, the new military commander in Iraq, to assemble the soldiers he believes he needs to win. Last year, war critics bashed Bush for not listening to Gen. Eric Shinseki, who wanted the administration to send more troops to Iraq. Now, they are supporting resolutions against more troops.
As Giuliani noted: "What I don't get is the nonbinding resolution. I don't get that. In the business world, two weeks spent on a nonbinding resolution would be considered nonproductive." He also called it "a comment without making a decision."
It felt good to see a politician looking at a run for the White House without first reconfiguring his platform to reflect polls that show Americans souring on the war in Iraq.
The latest USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 60 percent of voters disapprove of the Bush troop surge. Some 56 percent say that going to war was a mistake. But Giuliani didn't run from the war in his remarks, because it is too late to turn back.
Granted, Giuliani was speaking to Republicans, but the pack of journalists in the back of the room guaranteed that his words would be passed on to the general public.
Still, Giuliani had no problem comparing Bush's situation today with that of President Abraham Lincoln during the dark days of the Civil War. Giuliani noted that naysayers dismissed Lincoln as a dimwitted incompetent during the 1863 draft riots in New York and the crushing military defeats that occurred before Lincoln found the right general in Ulysses S. Grant. Because Lincoln did not give in to defeat, the Union prevailed and slavery died.
Giuliani added, "In time of war, you don't talk about pulling out."
Except in time of elections in time of war, when politicians do talk about pulling out. Some Democrats argue that Bush should end the war to show that he has heard the message voters sent in November 2006. Never mind that, now in power, the Democrats remain afraid to cut off war funding lest they be blamed if events in Iraq blow up in their faces. So they stick to nonbinding resolutions.
On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., distanced herself from her vote in favor of the war resolution, when she said, "Knowing what we know now, I would never have voted for it."
Clinton's plan for Iraq seems poll tested and poll approved: She wants to put a cap on the number of U.S. troops in Iraq (the Gallup poll shows 57 percent approve), but she does not want the Senate to cut off funding for the war (58 percent of those polled are with her).
Among other Democratic candidates, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., says he never would have voted for the war; former Sen. John Edwards now says that his vote for the war was a mistake and he wants to bring all American troops home within 18 months.
Who will win in 2008? The Republicans clearly could lose even more in 2008 than they lost in 2006. But if it were certain that supporting the Iraq war is the political kiss of death, Democrats and antiwar Republicans would move to cut off funding, instead of debating nonbinding resolutions.
When Giuliani addressed Republicans, he had a message of hope. Giuliani showed that he was willing to stick to an unpopular position, which suggests there are some things he would not do to win an election.
If either Clinton or Edwards is the Democratic presidential nominee, what are they going to say? That they are really smart Democrats who somehow were gulled by the lightweight Bush? Please.
dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
George Will: On Duncan Hunter's presidential bid
February 15, 2007
Duncan Hunter Aims to be the Conservative in the Race
By George Will
WASHINGTON -- When Bob Hunter, a Riverside, Calif., businessman, would hear of a conservative's campaign that needed volunteers, he would pile his family into the station wagon and drive off to ring doorbells. Hunter's son Duncan grew up believing in retail politics.
When Hunter returned home after serving as an alternate Goldwater delegate at the 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco, he told Duncan about chatting with another alternate, an amiable fellow, some actor, named Reagan. Who two years later was elected governor. Duncan learned early on about rapid upward mobility in politics.
In 1969, he dropped out of college, joined the army and was sent to Vietnam. From there he mailed his pay to a friend who purchased for him an island in Idaho's Snake River, where Duncan farmed after his discharge. Then another friend said a San Diego law school would admit him without a college degree. In 1980 he was a lawyer with a storefront office in San Diego's Hispanic community when his father walked in and told him he could be a congressman. Never mind, his father said, that this district was only 29 percent Republican. Reagan was at the top of the ticket.
Duncan says his Baptist minister, respecting the separation of church and state, told parishioners they should vote for the Reagan of their choice. They distributed 400,000 Duncan brochures. Today Duncan is in his 14th term representing eastern San Diego County. Three weeks ago he formally launched his presidential candidacy.
Why does he think he can become the first House member elected president since James Garfield in 1880? Why does he think he can do better than the two strongest House candidates in recent elections? In 1976, Arizona Rep. Mo Udall finished second to Jimmy Carter in the New Hampshire primary (28.4 percent to 22.7 percent), then narrowly lost Wisconsin (Carter 36.6, Udall 35.6). In 1988, Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt won Iowa, finished second to Michael Dukakis in New Hampshire, then ran out of money.
"For some candidates,'' Hunter says, "the conservative constituency is an inconvenience. For me, it is my hope.'' He hopes to be seen as the most conservative Republican candidate, as he understands conservatism. He is pro-life, an expert on defense issues, a hawk on border security (he authored the legislation that mandates 854 miles of fences across the major southern border routes used by smugglers of narcotics and people) and a skeptic about free trade.
He chaired the Armed Services Committee in the previous two Congresses and believes that the principal issue for the foreseeable future will be national security -- not just Iraq and terrorism, but also the rise of China's military (perhaps nine submarines under construction, with five more to come; the purchase of Russian-built destroyers designed to attack U.S. aircraft carriers with very fast and sophisticated missiles; upward of 800 medium-range ballistic missiles deployed). He believes U.S. forces can pacify Iraq, where his son served two tours as a Marine.
Asked what his wife said when he told her he was running for president, he pauses, then says, smiling: "She's happy now.'' She seems remarkably resilient. Not long after a wildfire consumed his house, he asked her, "Honey, can you do a fundraiser in two weeks?'' She said, "Sure. My son is in Fallujah, my house has burned down, how many people do you want to invite?''
"God bless New Hampshire,'' Hunter says, noting that its population (1.3 million) is less than half that of San Diego County. But he almost certainly overestimates the power of retail politics in a nominating process that is becoming increasingly compressed. California, Illinois, New Jersey and Florida might move their primaries to Feb. 5. If they do, both parties' nominees might be known a year from now.
Hunter won what might have been the first contest of this presidential cycle -- the Maricopa County (Phoenix) straw poll. It's a start. He says he has $300,000 "in pledges,'' a sum that could be a rounding error in the McCain campaign's accounts. But he says, "I kind of know what I stand for'' so "I don't need consultants, and that saves a lot of money.'' He has produced some commercials -- just talking to the camera -- for $200.
One-third of new businesses fail within two years; 50 percent to 70 percent of new products that make it to market fail. Hunter, a burly, rumpled political product seeking a market niche, probably will fail. But as Goldwater said when he entered politics in Phoenix in 1949, "It ain't for life and it may be fun.''
georgewill@washpost.com
(c) 2007, Washington Post Writers Group
Duncan Hunter Aims to be the Conservative in the Race
By George Will
WASHINGTON -- When Bob Hunter, a Riverside, Calif., businessman, would hear of a conservative's campaign that needed volunteers, he would pile his family into the station wagon and drive off to ring doorbells. Hunter's son Duncan grew up believing in retail politics.
When Hunter returned home after serving as an alternate Goldwater delegate at the 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco, he told Duncan about chatting with another alternate, an amiable fellow, some actor, named Reagan. Who two years later was elected governor. Duncan learned early on about rapid upward mobility in politics.
In 1969, he dropped out of college, joined the army and was sent to Vietnam. From there he mailed his pay to a friend who purchased for him an island in Idaho's Snake River, where Duncan farmed after his discharge. Then another friend said a San Diego law school would admit him without a college degree. In 1980 he was a lawyer with a storefront office in San Diego's Hispanic community when his father walked in and told him he could be a congressman. Never mind, his father said, that this district was only 29 percent Republican. Reagan was at the top of the ticket.
Duncan says his Baptist minister, respecting the separation of church and state, told parishioners they should vote for the Reagan of their choice. They distributed 400,000 Duncan brochures. Today Duncan is in his 14th term representing eastern San Diego County. Three weeks ago he formally launched his presidential candidacy.
Why does he think he can become the first House member elected president since James Garfield in 1880? Why does he think he can do better than the two strongest House candidates in recent elections? In 1976, Arizona Rep. Mo Udall finished second to Jimmy Carter in the New Hampshire primary (28.4 percent to 22.7 percent), then narrowly lost Wisconsin (Carter 36.6, Udall 35.6). In 1988, Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt won Iowa, finished second to Michael Dukakis in New Hampshire, then ran out of money.
"For some candidates,'' Hunter says, "the conservative constituency is an inconvenience. For me, it is my hope.'' He hopes to be seen as the most conservative Republican candidate, as he understands conservatism. He is pro-life, an expert on defense issues, a hawk on border security (he authored the legislation that mandates 854 miles of fences across the major southern border routes used by smugglers of narcotics and people) and a skeptic about free trade.
He chaired the Armed Services Committee in the previous two Congresses and believes that the principal issue for the foreseeable future will be national security -- not just Iraq and terrorism, but also the rise of China's military (perhaps nine submarines under construction, with five more to come; the purchase of Russian-built destroyers designed to attack U.S. aircraft carriers with very fast and sophisticated missiles; upward of 800 medium-range ballistic missiles deployed). He believes U.S. forces can pacify Iraq, where his son served two tours as a Marine.
Asked what his wife said when he told her he was running for president, he pauses, then says, smiling: "She's happy now.'' She seems remarkably resilient. Not long after a wildfire consumed his house, he asked her, "Honey, can you do a fundraiser in two weeks?'' She said, "Sure. My son is in Fallujah, my house has burned down, how many people do you want to invite?''
"God bless New Hampshire,'' Hunter says, noting that its population (1.3 million) is less than half that of San Diego County. But he almost certainly overestimates the power of retail politics in a nominating process that is becoming increasingly compressed. California, Illinois, New Jersey and Florida might move their primaries to Feb. 5. If they do, both parties' nominees might be known a year from now.
Hunter won what might have been the first contest of this presidential cycle -- the Maricopa County (Phoenix) straw poll. It's a start. He says he has $300,000 "in pledges,'' a sum that could be a rounding error in the McCain campaign's accounts. But he says, "I kind of know what I stand for'' so "I don't need consultants, and that saves a lot of money.'' He has produced some commercials -- just talking to the camera -- for $200.
One-third of new businesses fail within two years; 50 percent to 70 percent of new products that make it to market fail. Hunter, a burly, rumpled political product seeking a market niche, probably will fail. But as Goldwater said when he entered politics in Phoenix in 1949, "It ain't for life and it may be fun.''
georgewill@washpost.com
(c) 2007, Washington Post Writers Group
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Dick Morris: "Here Comes Newt"
Here comes Newt
To echo the famous Negro League pitcher Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back, Newt Gingrich might be gaining on you.” Newt, consigned by many observers to Elizabeth Dole or Dan Quayle status in this GOP nominating process, appears to be moving up into contention, overtaking former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and battling to be the conservative alternative to either former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or Arizona Sen. John McCain.
To grasp what’s happening, don’t think of states like New Hampshire or Iowa or worry whether it’s too early or too late. The key to following the Republican presidential nominating process this year is to recognize its essential similarity to the tennis’s U.S. Open at Forest Hills. There are quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals.
In the quarter-finals, the center and the right each sort out the nominees to choose their candidate. On center court, Giuliani seems to be gaining a decisive lead over McCain’s impoverished presidential campaign. But on the right-hand court, unnoticed by most pundits, Gingrich seems to be building a lead over Romney and a host of conservative wannabes. The ultimate winner of the Giuliani/McCain quarter-final will face the winner of the Gingrich/Romney match-up in the semi-finals.
As McCain drops in the polls — he’s down to 22 percent while Rudy is up at 34 percent in the latest Fox News poll — some conservatives seem eager for a “real Republican” to challenge for the nomination. Their first choice, former Virginia Sen. George Allen, lies a-moldering in the grave and his runner-up, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, has gone home to Tennessee.
Most observers assumed that Romney would fill the void. But he doesn’t seem to have been able to do so. It may be a racist refusal to vote for a Mormon or, more charitably, Romney’s flip-flop-flip from pro-life to pro-choice to pro-life, or it may have been his inconsistency on gay issues, but Mitt seems to be going the way of his father — out of contention. The Fox News poll, which recorded a surge to up to 8 percent of the GOP vote in its Dec. 5-6 tally, now has Romney dropping back to only 3 percent of the vote.
Enter Newt. Hungry for new ideas and desperate after losing Congress, Republican voters seem to be rallying to the only real genius in the race — the former Speaker. The statute of limitations seems to have expired on his personal scandals and Gingrich is striking a responsive chord among conservatives.
Fox News’s Jan. 30-31 survey had Newt leaving Romney way behind and challenging McCain for second place. The former Speaker’s vote share was 15 percent, giving him third place in the current standings.
Episodically, I just addressed a 450-person Lincoln Day dinner of the Lane County Republican Party in Eugene, Ore. A show of hands brought these results: Giuliani, 50 percent; Gingrich, 30 percent; McCain, 6 percent; Romney, 4 percent. A few days before, a speech to an Orlando investors group produced similar results.
But, as the slogan of the New York State Lottery goes: “You can’t win if you don’t play.” Newt’s current posture of waiting until the fall of 2007 to see how the process sorts itself out won’t work. The process abhors a vacuum. If Gingrich doesn’t move out to respond to the affection of the GOP base, one of the minor-leaguers — Huckabee, Brownback, Gilmore, Thompson, Hunter or Tancredo — will.
The irony of the GOP field at the moment is that while most Republicans are conservatives, the two frontrunners — Rudy and McCain — are moderates. And this isn’t Nelson Rockefeller’s Republican Party anymore! Gingrich is filling a real political need and if he moves out smartly and files his paperwork, takes his announcement bows, and journeys to Iowa and New Hampshire as a candidate, he might well be a contender.
Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race.” To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com.
To echo the famous Negro League pitcher Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back, Newt Gingrich might be gaining on you.” Newt, consigned by many observers to Elizabeth Dole or Dan Quayle status in this GOP nominating process, appears to be moving up into contention, overtaking former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and battling to be the conservative alternative to either former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or Arizona Sen. John McCain.
To grasp what’s happening, don’t think of states like New Hampshire or Iowa or worry whether it’s too early or too late. The key to following the Republican presidential nominating process this year is to recognize its essential similarity to the tennis’s U.S. Open at Forest Hills. There are quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals.
In the quarter-finals, the center and the right each sort out the nominees to choose their candidate. On center court, Giuliani seems to be gaining a decisive lead over McCain’s impoverished presidential campaign. But on the right-hand court, unnoticed by most pundits, Gingrich seems to be building a lead over Romney and a host of conservative wannabes. The ultimate winner of the Giuliani/McCain quarter-final will face the winner of the Gingrich/Romney match-up in the semi-finals.
As McCain drops in the polls — he’s down to 22 percent while Rudy is up at 34 percent in the latest Fox News poll — some conservatives seem eager for a “real Republican” to challenge for the nomination. Their first choice, former Virginia Sen. George Allen, lies a-moldering in the grave and his runner-up, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, has gone home to Tennessee.
Most observers assumed that Romney would fill the void. But he doesn’t seem to have been able to do so. It may be a racist refusal to vote for a Mormon or, more charitably, Romney’s flip-flop-flip from pro-life to pro-choice to pro-life, or it may have been his inconsistency on gay issues, but Mitt seems to be going the way of his father — out of contention. The Fox News poll, which recorded a surge to up to 8 percent of the GOP vote in its Dec. 5-6 tally, now has Romney dropping back to only 3 percent of the vote.
Enter Newt. Hungry for new ideas and desperate after losing Congress, Republican voters seem to be rallying to the only real genius in the race — the former Speaker. The statute of limitations seems to have expired on his personal scandals and Gingrich is striking a responsive chord among conservatives.
Fox News’s Jan. 30-31 survey had Newt leaving Romney way behind and challenging McCain for second place. The former Speaker’s vote share was 15 percent, giving him third place in the current standings.
Episodically, I just addressed a 450-person Lincoln Day dinner of the Lane County Republican Party in Eugene, Ore. A show of hands brought these results: Giuliani, 50 percent; Gingrich, 30 percent; McCain, 6 percent; Romney, 4 percent. A few days before, a speech to an Orlando investors group produced similar results.
But, as the slogan of the New York State Lottery goes: “You can’t win if you don’t play.” Newt’s current posture of waiting until the fall of 2007 to see how the process sorts itself out won’t work. The process abhors a vacuum. If Gingrich doesn’t move out to respond to the affection of the GOP base, one of the minor-leaguers — Huckabee, Brownback, Gilmore, Thompson, Hunter or Tancredo — will.
The irony of the GOP field at the moment is that while most Republicans are conservatives, the two frontrunners — Rudy and McCain — are moderates. And this isn’t Nelson Rockefeller’s Republican Party anymore! Gingrich is filling a real political need and if he moves out smartly and files his paperwork, takes his announcement bows, and journeys to Iowa and New Hampshire as a candidate, he might well be a contender.
Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race.” To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com.
Fineman: "Preacher Primary"
Fineman: GOP Hopefuls Court Evangelical Leaders
Republican presidential hopefuls court evangelical kingpins that could determine the 2008 nomination.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Howard Fineman
Feb. 14, 2007 - The Republicans’ first primary contest is next week, and it’s not in New Hampshire. It is in Orlando, at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters. GOP presidential candidates will be there to try to generate buzz that will translate into evangelical airtime—and support in "the base” in 2008.
Unlike 2000 (and of course 2004) George W. Bush and Karl Rove don’t have the event wired. So it is wide open—just as the Republican nomination race is—and so Orlando is an important pit stop, especially for Sens. John McCain and Sam Brownback and former governors Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. All of them want to win the nomination by building from the base outward, the way it’s been done in the party since the days of Reagan.
One candidate will be conspicuous by his absence: Front runner Rudy Giuliani. I am told that he won’t be there, but in a sense he doesn’t have to be. He’s not trying to win by getting right with the religious conservatives on cultural and faith issues. If he is going to get their votes, it will be through other means, or by default in a general election race against, say, Hillary Clinton.
The Three Kingmakers
Because there is no obvious and overpowering standard bearer for the cause of the religious right, age-old fault lines and feuds are reemerging among the titans who control the Sacred Satellite Dishes. Each of them thinks that he can anoint the One.
The Three Kingmakers have familiar names and big, traditional audiences on radio, television and now, the Internet: the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Dr. Pat Robertson and Dr. James Dobson. A younger generation (or two) is coming along, but these remain big brand names in the burgeoning world of all-Christian commerce.
There are two main fault lines among them: the one in Virginia, which separates Falwell and Robertson; and the one that separates Dobson, in his mountain fastness of Colorado Springs, from those he genially regards as amateurs (everybody else).
Here’s how the dynamics are working right now. Falwell’s anointee-designate is McCain. The reasons are personal but, more important, historical and, in a sense, familial.
McCain, Bush and FalwellThe Founding Father of modern TV preachers in politics, Falwell has been reverend-in-residence in the Bush family for 20 years. Back when Ronald Reagan was president, the late Lee Atwater cultivated Falwell on behalf of Vice President George H.W. Bush. Falwell became Bush’s trusted ally in the 1988 race, and in the losing race for re-election in 1992. In both campaigns, Falwell got to know George H.W. Bush, and Falwell was instrumental in helping to unify the mega-preachers behind Junior in the 2000 race.
McCain and Falwell went at it in 2000—the senator called him an “agent of intolerance”—but things have changed since then. McCain and his advisers decided that the route to the nomination in 2008 lay in loyalty to the Bush legacy, and to Bush personally. It was a natural step, then, for McCain to begin cultivating Falwell, the family political preacher. He has done just that—and Falwell has been only too happy to help “educate” McCain on the issues.
Last May, McCain delivered the commencement address of Falwell’s Liberty University.
But the Falwell-McCain alliance cost the candidate whatever chance he might have had to gain the support of Virginia’s other leading religious broadcaster, Robertson. The Commonwealth is barely big enough to contain the both of them: their differences are deep—theologically, organizationally and personally.
To the Yale-educated Robertson, son of a senator, Falwell is a country upstart. I’ve always thought that one reason Robertson mounted his own campaign for the presidency in 1988 is that he couldn’t abide the original Falwell-Bush alliance.
Romney's edge
So Robertson has to have his own candidate, and there is no way it would be McCain. The good doctor seems to have taken a liking to Romney, whose father was a governor and who had the good sense to get graduate degrees from Harvard. Robertson’s CBN network ran a glowing profile of Romney, a piece that studiously ignored some of the Mormon doctrinal teachings that would seem calculated to make even Robertson’s helmet of TV hair stand on end.
Romney is expected to be the commencement speaker this May at Robertson’s Regent University.
Among the three Kingmakers, it seems that only Dobson is unsure of his nominee. He seems to be working by the process of elimination. He already has declared that he would not personally vote for McCain—take that, Jerry—but in a lesser-noticed interview he also said that he could not vote for Giuliani (no surprise there).
Dobson has said nice things about Romney, but at a private meeting of Christian activists in Washington last week, I am told, he made the case—at least for the sake of argument—for Huckabee, the personable former Arkansas governor who also spent a good bit of his career as a Southern Baptist preacher.
I always thought that Huckabee was the logical candidate for religious conservatives—the next step in the progression. If you want to put God in the public square, why not get a preacher to do it? Eliminate the middle man—or men.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17150516/site/newsweek/page/2/
Republican presidential hopefuls court evangelical kingpins that could determine the 2008 nomination.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Howard Fineman
Feb. 14, 2007 - The Republicans’ first primary contest is next week, and it’s not in New Hampshire. It is in Orlando, at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters. GOP presidential candidates will be there to try to generate buzz that will translate into evangelical airtime—and support in "the base” in 2008.
Unlike 2000 (and of course 2004) George W. Bush and Karl Rove don’t have the event wired. So it is wide open—just as the Republican nomination race is—and so Orlando is an important pit stop, especially for Sens. John McCain and Sam Brownback and former governors Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. All of them want to win the nomination by building from the base outward, the way it’s been done in the party since the days of Reagan.
One candidate will be conspicuous by his absence: Front runner Rudy Giuliani. I am told that he won’t be there, but in a sense he doesn’t have to be. He’s not trying to win by getting right with the religious conservatives on cultural and faith issues. If he is going to get their votes, it will be through other means, or by default in a general election race against, say, Hillary Clinton.
The Three Kingmakers
Because there is no obvious and overpowering standard bearer for the cause of the religious right, age-old fault lines and feuds are reemerging among the titans who control the Sacred Satellite Dishes. Each of them thinks that he can anoint the One.
The Three Kingmakers have familiar names and big, traditional audiences on radio, television and now, the Internet: the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Dr. Pat Robertson and Dr. James Dobson. A younger generation (or two) is coming along, but these remain big brand names in the burgeoning world of all-Christian commerce.
There are two main fault lines among them: the one in Virginia, which separates Falwell and Robertson; and the one that separates Dobson, in his mountain fastness of Colorado Springs, from those he genially regards as amateurs (everybody else).
Here’s how the dynamics are working right now. Falwell’s anointee-designate is McCain. The reasons are personal but, more important, historical and, in a sense, familial.
McCain, Bush and FalwellThe Founding Father of modern TV preachers in politics, Falwell has been reverend-in-residence in the Bush family for 20 years. Back when Ronald Reagan was president, the late Lee Atwater cultivated Falwell on behalf of Vice President George H.W. Bush. Falwell became Bush’s trusted ally in the 1988 race, and in the losing race for re-election in 1992. In both campaigns, Falwell got to know George H.W. Bush, and Falwell was instrumental in helping to unify the mega-preachers behind Junior in the 2000 race.
McCain and Falwell went at it in 2000—the senator called him an “agent of intolerance”—but things have changed since then. McCain and his advisers decided that the route to the nomination in 2008 lay in loyalty to the Bush legacy, and to Bush personally. It was a natural step, then, for McCain to begin cultivating Falwell, the family political preacher. He has done just that—and Falwell has been only too happy to help “educate” McCain on the issues.
Last May, McCain delivered the commencement address of Falwell’s Liberty University.
But the Falwell-McCain alliance cost the candidate whatever chance he might have had to gain the support of Virginia’s other leading religious broadcaster, Robertson. The Commonwealth is barely big enough to contain the both of them: their differences are deep—theologically, organizationally and personally.
To the Yale-educated Robertson, son of a senator, Falwell is a country upstart. I’ve always thought that one reason Robertson mounted his own campaign for the presidency in 1988 is that he couldn’t abide the original Falwell-Bush alliance.
Romney's edge
So Robertson has to have his own candidate, and there is no way it would be McCain. The good doctor seems to have taken a liking to Romney, whose father was a governor and who had the good sense to get graduate degrees from Harvard. Robertson’s CBN network ran a glowing profile of Romney, a piece that studiously ignored some of the Mormon doctrinal teachings that would seem calculated to make even Robertson’s helmet of TV hair stand on end.
Romney is expected to be the commencement speaker this May at Robertson’s Regent University.
Among the three Kingmakers, it seems that only Dobson is unsure of his nominee. He seems to be working by the process of elimination. He already has declared that he would not personally vote for McCain—take that, Jerry—but in a lesser-noticed interview he also said that he could not vote for Giuliani (no surprise there).
Dobson has said nice things about Romney, but at a private meeting of Christian activists in Washington last week, I am told, he made the case—at least for the sake of argument—for Huckabee, the personable former Arkansas governor who also spent a good bit of his career as a Southern Baptist preacher.
I always thought that Huckabee was the logical candidate for religious conservatives—the next step in the progression. If you want to put God in the public square, why not get a preacher to do it? Eliminate the middle man—or men.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17150516/site/newsweek/page/2/
Wash Post's Meyerson: Ghost of Muskie haunts Hillary
A New Hampshire Ghost
Can Hillary Clinton Avoid What Ed Muskie Couldn't?
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, February 14, 2007; A19
A specter was haunting Hillary Clinton as she campaigned in New Hampshire this weekend: the specter of Ed Muskie.
As the ancient or merely studious among us will recall, the Democratic senator from Maine, who'd been Hubert Humphrey's running mate in 1968, entered his party's presidential contest in 1972 as the front-runner. His prospects were dashed in the New Hampshire snows, however. As popular memory has it, an indignant Muskie started crying while refuting a silly attack on him (though whether he was genuinely upset or merely sniffling during a frigid outdoor news conference was never authoritatively resolved). Muskie's more serious problem, however, was the Vietnam War, which he opposed.
His opposition, though, had none of the fervor or long-term consistency of another Democratic senator and presidential aspirant, George McGovern. By 1972, seven years had elapsed since the United States had sent ground forces to Vietnam, and Richard Nixon, through his invasion of Cambodia and stepped-up bombing campaigns, had made clear that the road to de-escalation would entail periodic escalations, at least as long as he was president. The Democratic base was in no mood for temporizing on Vietnam.
Party voters wanted out, and they wanted a nominee who'd been right on the war (almost) from the start: McGovern. Sic transit gloria Muskie.
Today, Hillary Clinton seems almost uncannily positioned to become the Ed Muskie of 2008. She opposes the U.S. military presence in Iraq but not with the specificity, fervor or bona fides of her leading Democratic rivals. As Muskie did with Vietnam, she supported the legislation enabling the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and she has been slower and more inconstant than her party rivals in coming around to opposing the continued U.S. occupation.
Entering the race, Clinton has institutional advantages that Muskie could scarcely have dreamed of -- an unparalleled network of financial and political supporters, a universal level of public recognition. But, like Muskie, she is out of sync with her party's -- to some extent, her country's -- voters on the major issue of the day. In a Gallup Poll released Monday, the public favored, by 63 percent to 35 percent, Congress setting a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of next year. The public's position is thus aligned more closely with those of Barack Obama and John Edwards than with that of Clinton, who has yet to commit to a timetable for withdrawal.
Indeed, so strong is support for a withdrawal that Edwards and Obama would by no means face the general election wipeout that was McGovern's fate.
(Besides, Nixon ran against the antiwar movement and the fomenters of social tumult. Today, while opposition to the war is widespread, there isn't really an antiwar movement -- not one resembling what emerged in the '60s, anyway -- for hawks or Republicans to run against.) And should Americans still be fighting and dying in Iraq when the next election rolls around, the Democrats probably could win with Dennis Kucinich as their nominee.
I can understand some of the political calculations behind Clinton's reticence on the war -- chiefly, that a female candidate must seem as ready to use force as her male counterparts. That leaves the whole Democratic presidential pack, however, freer to lash out at the bloody absurdity of President Bush's war than she. And it leaves Clinton locked into a reckless cautiousness at a time when the electorate is looking for a decisive change.
What Clinton and her strategists would do well to remember is that it was Nixon -- by his escalations of the war even as he was withdrawing U.S. ground forces -- who was chiefly responsible for driving Democrats toward the candidate who most clearly repudiated the war. And that Nixon was a model of dovish flexibility in Vietnam compared to Bush's unyielding determination to keep U.S. soldiers in Iraq long past the point where anyone can articulate their mission. Bush will drive the nation toward the Democrats, and the Democrats toward their most credible champions of ending the U.S. occupation. Hillary Clinton is not high on that list, and that, as Ed Muskie could attest, is the chief obstacle to her winning her party's presidential nod.
Can Hillary Clinton Avoid What Ed Muskie Couldn't?
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, February 14, 2007; A19
A specter was haunting Hillary Clinton as she campaigned in New Hampshire this weekend: the specter of Ed Muskie.
As the ancient or merely studious among us will recall, the Democratic senator from Maine, who'd been Hubert Humphrey's running mate in 1968, entered his party's presidential contest in 1972 as the front-runner. His prospects were dashed in the New Hampshire snows, however. As popular memory has it, an indignant Muskie started crying while refuting a silly attack on him (though whether he was genuinely upset or merely sniffling during a frigid outdoor news conference was never authoritatively resolved). Muskie's more serious problem, however, was the Vietnam War, which he opposed.
His opposition, though, had none of the fervor or long-term consistency of another Democratic senator and presidential aspirant, George McGovern. By 1972, seven years had elapsed since the United States had sent ground forces to Vietnam, and Richard Nixon, through his invasion of Cambodia and stepped-up bombing campaigns, had made clear that the road to de-escalation would entail periodic escalations, at least as long as he was president. The Democratic base was in no mood for temporizing on Vietnam.
Party voters wanted out, and they wanted a nominee who'd been right on the war (almost) from the start: McGovern. Sic transit gloria Muskie.
Today, Hillary Clinton seems almost uncannily positioned to become the Ed Muskie of 2008. She opposes the U.S. military presence in Iraq but not with the specificity, fervor or bona fides of her leading Democratic rivals. As Muskie did with Vietnam, she supported the legislation enabling the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and she has been slower and more inconstant than her party rivals in coming around to opposing the continued U.S. occupation.
Entering the race, Clinton has institutional advantages that Muskie could scarcely have dreamed of -- an unparalleled network of financial and political supporters, a universal level of public recognition. But, like Muskie, she is out of sync with her party's -- to some extent, her country's -- voters on the major issue of the day. In a Gallup Poll released Monday, the public favored, by 63 percent to 35 percent, Congress setting a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of next year. The public's position is thus aligned more closely with those of Barack Obama and John Edwards than with that of Clinton, who has yet to commit to a timetable for withdrawal.
Indeed, so strong is support for a withdrawal that Edwards and Obama would by no means face the general election wipeout that was McGovern's fate.
(Besides, Nixon ran against the antiwar movement and the fomenters of social tumult. Today, while opposition to the war is widespread, there isn't really an antiwar movement -- not one resembling what emerged in the '60s, anyway -- for hawks or Republicans to run against.) And should Americans still be fighting and dying in Iraq when the next election rolls around, the Democrats probably could win with Dennis Kucinich as their nominee.
I can understand some of the political calculations behind Clinton's reticence on the war -- chiefly, that a female candidate must seem as ready to use force as her male counterparts. That leaves the whole Democratic presidential pack, however, freer to lash out at the bloody absurdity of President Bush's war than she. And it leaves Clinton locked into a reckless cautiousness at a time when the electorate is looking for a decisive change.
What Clinton and her strategists would do well to remember is that it was Nixon -- by his escalations of the war even as he was withdrawing U.S. ground forces -- who was chiefly responsible for driving Democrats toward the candidate who most clearly repudiated the war. And that Nixon was a model of dovish flexibility in Vietnam compared to Bush's unyielding determination to keep U.S. soldiers in Iraq long past the point where anyone can articulate their mission. Bush will drive the nation toward the Democrats, and the Democrats toward their most credible champions of ending the U.S. occupation. Hillary Clinton is not high on that list, and that, as Ed Muskie could attest, is the chief obstacle to her winning her party's presidential nod.
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