It Is Happening Again

In less than twenty-four hours, I have learned that SarahPAC has raised over $866,000 and spent over $742,000 flying its celebrity politician about the country.  The ability to raise numbers approaching a million dollars a quarter, and less commented on but probably more significant, the massive outreach to conservative grassroots, has lent weight and given a spotlight to what I already through were former Governor Palin's Presidential ambitions.

Almost immediately, as if to counter the possibility that Sarah Palin would become the annointed, inevitable Repubilcan Republican nominee, Newt Gingrich (!) announced that he was more serious than ever about running for President during the upcoming cycle.   This isn't actually all much of a statement when read at face value, seeing as Gingrich has never actually declared his candidacy for President in any cycle.  But the impact is not in the literal truth but rather the fact that he raised the flag at all.  So while not quite tossing his hat in the ring, Gingrich through surrogates offered comparisons of himself to Bill Clinton as a candidate.

And then this morning, I can read that the Obama camp is already preparing their campaign template to run against Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney or pretty much anyone else the GOP nominates -- by running against George W. Bush.  The idea is, I guess, that any GOP candidate is "going backwards" while Obama is "going forwards" and therefore the representative of "change" despite being the incumbent.

When you play chess, if your first or second moves are not what you wanted, you still have time to change your strategy and set up a different kind of play.  That's the import that should be read into these "events," which of course are not really events at all but simply factoids and throwaway comments scooped up by a voracious and hypercompetitive news industry hungry for any kind of a political story at all.  Chances are still favorable that the eventual GOP nominee will be someone who right now has a relatively low profile and some ideas that can catch fire.  (A guy can always hope, right?)

Today's point is -- the 2012 Presidential election is now underway.

A Party Of Antiscience

Rick Moran has been running a great series of posts at Right Wing Nut House about the decline of intellectualism in modern conservatism.  And I can think of no more telling symptom of that problem than this tidbit pointed out by David Hume:  it appears that all of the likely Republican Presidential candidate for 2012 are creationists and deny evolution, and favor the "teach the controversy" position:

Bobby Jindal "...has suggested that teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution may not be out of place in public schools."  He put his money where his mouth was on that issue, too, authorizing public school teachers to teach intelligent design and criticism of evolution.

Tim Pawlenty is on record as defending Sarah Palin thusly:  "Intelligent design is something that, in my view, is plausible and credible and something that I personally believe in but, more importantly, from an educational and scientific standpoint, it should be decided by local school boards at the local school district level."

Former Governor Palin herself has said of the subject:  "Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information.  Healthy debate is so important and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

Mike Huckabee, for his part, tries as hard as he can to not answer direct questions about teaching intelligent design, which is what we lawyers call "tap dancing."  But there's little doubt that he actively disbelieves in evolution.

Of the prominent Republicans out there right now, only Mitt Romney comes closest to actually embracing science -- and with trademark style, he tries to have things both ways:  "I believe God is intelligent and I believe he designed the creation. And I believe he used the process of evolution to create the human body."  Of course, in doing this, he is missing the point of evolution entirely -- if God guided evolution, then evolution isn't natural selection at work, but rather artificial selection, the way a dog breeder creates a daschund out of successive generations of larger hound dogs.

For a guy who is in the middle of reading Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show On Earth, reciting mountains and mountains of evidence -- not just fossils -- for evolution, this is a bitter pill to swallow indeed.  No likely GOP candidate understands science and most of them subscribe to a "teach the controversy" policy platform.

Teaching the controversy sounds like a politically palatable compromise, but there are plenty of "controversies" we shouldn't teach in public schools because the "other side" of the "theory" is simply not worthy of credulous presentation -- some of which at one time were accepted as the unimpeachable scientific truth and the state of the art of human knowledge.  These include:

• Intelligent falling
  
• The geocentric model of the solar system
• Alien construction of the Great Pyramids
• Cryptozoology (that is, Bigfoot, Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, Chupycabra, etc.)
• The "stork theory" of human reproduction
• Human health as the balance of the "four viscous humours" of phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, and blood
• Santa Claus
• Jerusalem-centric tricontinental global cartography

There is no need to teach any of these "opposing theories" or subject the "conventional" theories to which they are opposed, because these "opposing theories" are laughably and demonstrably not science.  We should take into account a candidate's endorsement of teaching mythology in science class when evaluating that candidate's world view and suitability for office.  Treat a candidate for office who insists that both intelligent design and evolution should be taught in science class the same way you would treat a candidate who insists that the "stork theory" be taught in sex education.

Which portends very poorly for the Republican party indeed.

Guess Who's Going To Iowa?

The corpse of the McCain campaign isn’t even cold yet. And all of these Republican politicians already have speaking engagements in Iowa in the very near future, or are in the process of lining them up:

• Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana.
• Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska and recent Vice-Presidential candidate.
• Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas and former Presidential candidate.
• Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts and former Presidential candidate. (Gov. Romney is also sucking up to the right-wing intelligentsia on an exclusive and expensive cruise ship.)
  
• Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida and brother of the incumbent President.

No non-Iowan politician goes to Iowa by accident or by coincidence. I have not yet found leads about Rudy! or Mark Sanford going to Iowa, but I wouldn’t be surprised about them, either.

What A Long Strange Trip It's Been

Six months ago, looking out at the world of politics, I knew a few things for sure:

1. The Republicans had a mess on their hands. No viable leader for the social conservative movement was stepping up to the plate and it looked like the primary was going to be reduced to a five-way slugfest with Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney best-equipped to make it through the long haul. John McCain was out of dough and neither Mike Huckabee nor Fred Thompson were to be taken seriously. It was a wide-open field and no one candidate was going to be able to get the party to unify, for anything.

2. The Democrats had an annointment. This Obama kid, he has promise, but he needs to go be Governor of Illinois for a few terms so he can get ready to run to replace President Clinton in 2016. Because Hillary's got all the money locked up, all the endorsements locked up, all the name recognition and voters will be excited about electing a woman.

3. Iraq was going to be the Republicans' albatross. Ultimately, the Democrats would have a huge advantage in November because the country would still be saddled with an unpopular, bloody, and inconclusive war.

So, how did I do?

1. Huckabee won Iowa and credibility. McCain won pretty much everything after that. Giuliani's strategy turned out to be very poor, and poorly-executed. Romney hung in there and picked up a few wins here and there but people figured out he was a phoney. And Thompson might as well have been James Stockdale, unable to answer the question "Who am I? Why am I here?" With precious little money and in the face of what should have been strong opposition, John McCain effectively sewed things up on February 5. And we haven't heard a word from him since.

2. Obama turned out to have more money than God. Seriously, if Jesus ran for President, he couldn't raise more money from more small donors than Obama. I think you can wire his campaign five bucks a month from your cell phone or something like that. Not only did Obama make it a fight against the Crown Princess, he figured out that a delegate is a delegate and put effort into "red" states to rack up some wins, and never lost hope. Eventually, he overtook her in votes, in delegates, and fundraising. And now it looks like he'll be our next President.

3. Astonishingly, we seem to be winning in Iraq. The Maliki government is standing up and conducting internal military operations with fewer and fewer U.S. advisors; political violence is down although not completely gone; and while they aren't necessarily happy about it, Iraqis are resigned to the idea that their future is now inextricably intertwined with ours. Our "temporary" bases are likely to become permanent. Yes, the country is still politically immature and religious parties and ethnic separatism are significant forces that could tear at its fabric. But it looks like it's finally on its way towards our newly-defined victory conditions. Again, not that you'd know from reading the news.

But the Republicans still have an albatross -- the economy. Distilled to its essence, the GOP is being held to answer for the outrage of paying four dollars a gallon for gasoline. I'm not hearing huge cries for health care reform, tax cuts, or the silly and unwise economic stimulus. People just want to be able to afford to drive to work. Amazingly (in sort of an ominous way), we are starting to reach the point where the allegedly and famously inelastic demand curve for gas is starting to bow, and people are really driving less. Not that the Democrats are going to solve that problem any more than the Republicans have; they haven't a clue. But that's looking like the most likely reason voters will be dissatisfied in November.

Then again, I've been wrong before. Let's revisit this in mid-October, shall we?

GOP Veepstakes

It's time to take a serious look at running mates. The Democrats have effectively sorted out their nomination fight and John McCain knows he'll be up against Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton. As I've written before, there are several strategic considerations when considering a running mate, the overriding one being finding someone who won't diminish the nominee's chances of victory. There is little that a running mate can do to help, but a lot that this person can do to hurt.

You can use a running mate to 1) try and win a key state (or in rare instances, a region), 2) shore up a policy weakness of the candidate; 3) shore up a political weakness of the candidate, 4) "balance" a ticket by appealing to a constituency that the candidate himself is not strong with, or 5) "double down" on a strength of the candidate that the running mate shares. Also, we need to consider the role of the running mate in the campaign -- often, the running mate is given the job of "attack dog," having to say things that are more aggressive and critical of the other ticket than the candidate himself can say, because the candidate should look "statesmanlike" and "above politics." After all, the voters vote for the guy on top of the ticket, not against the running mate. No one who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 did so because they disliked John Edwards -- maybe they disliked John Kerry, but Edwards was not much of a factor in their minds.

So let's think about some of the likelier choices for McCain. McCain's strengths are his maverick image, bipartisan appeal, foreign policy credibility, and strong military appeal. His weaknesses are that the social conservative wing of the GOP distrusts him despite a more-conservative-than-average record on social issues, his age and health are issues, and he has weak economic policy chops. Because McCain has some bipartisan appeal and clearly needs to build bridges to the core of his own party more than reaching across the aisle, I dispense with the odd notion that he would pick anyone but a lifelong Republican, including his good friend Joe Lieberman.

Charlie Crist, the incumbent Governor of Florida. Florida is as key a state as can exist for Republicans. No realistic scenario for McCain winning the White House permits him to lose Florida. Crist is most desirable because he would greatly strengthen McCain's chances in Florida, where he is quite popular and has a strong machine. Additionally, Crist's endorsement of McCain's candidacy was the factor that put McCain over the top in Florida, effectively pushing McCain into the nomination, so a strong case can be mace that McCain owes Crist the VP spot regardless of any other consideration. He's done a pretty good job with Florida and provides moderate, but not strong, support on the economic policy front. On the downside, although Crist is about twenty years younger than McCain, his dramatic white hair makes him look older, so this leaves McCain open on the "old white guy" flank.

Mike Huckabee, the former Governor of Arkansas and McCain's former rival for the GOP nomination. Social conservatives and particularly a large number of evangelicals believe that Huckabee "came in second" in the primaries and proved his mettle as a tough, persuasive campaigner. They have something of a point. Of the candidates on this list, no one would play the "attack dog" better, and no one would sound quite so nice doing it. Huckabee is genuinely likeable and he would be a strong bridge to the social and religious centers of the right wing. Unlike Mitt Romney, he is an evangelical Baptist and therefore there is no significant religious objection.

Bobby Jindal, the incumbent Governor of Louisiana. Jindal's big strength is that he is quite young (not yet 40) and not white. Normally, one would submit that Jindal has simply not acquired enough experience to be ready for the big time -- he's only been Governor of Louisiana for a year, and had only four years' worth of experience in Congress before that. But Senator Obama has only had four years' experience in Congress and has never been Governor or even the top administrator of anything, and he's managed to get the top spot on the Democrats' ticket, so "inexperience" might not be the best rock for the Democrats to throw at Running Mate Jindal. Rather, the problem with Jindal is that the chances of Obama carrying Louisiana no matter what else happens are quite low (although I can predict with confidence that he'll carry Orleans Parish) so Jindal doesn't bring any electoral votes to the table with him. He has some economic policy savvy but his inexperiencehere minimizes the impact of running Louisiana for all of one year.

Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska. No one needs to tell Alaskans to vote Republican for President. They like their guns too much -- and outside of the urban centers of Anchorage and Juneau, they need their guns and a significant portion of the state is employed by the military, by oil companies, or by timber companies. Palin is attractive because of her youth, her gender, her good looks, and the expertise she's brought to the table in Juneau as a very capable governor. Having a woman as a running mate may be a way of McCain drawing some of Hillary Clinton's substantial body of supporters over to his column. But on the other hand, Gov. Palin just gave birth to a child a few months ago, and the logistical challenges of both running Alaska and campaigning, make the choice a difficult one.

Tim Pawlenty, the Governor of Minnesota. Pawlenty is reasonably popular in Minnesota, although his strength there has proven less than was assumed when his name started to be thrown about as a potential running mate for McCain. Pawlenty is young and possesses some economic expertise, and is thought to be "acceptable" to social conservatives. They aren't too excited about him, though, in part because as the Governor of a moderate state, Pawlenty has not been able to pursue red-meat type social policies and in particular is thought to be "weak" on abortion. Chances are reasonably good, though, that Pawlenty could switch Minnesota to the GOP column, depriving the Democrats of votes that they would otherwise rely on in their strategies.

Rob Portman, former U.S. Trade Representative, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bush (the Younger), former U.S. Congressman from Ohio. Portman is in his early fifties and would therefore vitiate the age issue. He also has substantial economic and foreign policy experience on his resume and has proven his electability. He is from a critical swing state (his former district included suburban Cincinnati and tracked eastward from there along the border with Kentucky) and has a strong network of supporters still in place there. His economic credentials, though, are suspect because his executive experiences comes from the Bush Administration, which has proven to be so fiscally irresponsible that a majority of Republicans, or at least a growing group approaching a majority, have grown critical of it. Portman could too easily be portrayed as being a link to that legacy. On the other hand, Ohio is a very important battleground for the general election.

Jodi Rell, Governor of Connecticut. An interesting proposition that could put Connecticut in play. Positives include her gender and her image as a reformer, having taken over government of Connecticut in the wake of a corruption investigation of her predecessor. She also ordered the state's first execution since Fidel Castro took over Cuba, so she's "tough." Some policy reforms have saved the state some money, and she has pushed for a spending cap as a budgetary control measure, but Connecticut remains a high-tax, high-spending state so she could leave McCain weak on the economic front. She is critical of the No Child Left Behind Act, which is popular in some quarters and unpopular in others. She is a survivor of breast cancer, her disease having been in remission since being treated in its early stages four years ago. Social conservatives will likely distrust her for her advocacy of public campaign financing and an extensive civil union law for homosexual couples.

Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts and McCain's former rival for the Republican nomination. Romney obviously can't carry Massachusetts for McCain; Massachusetts will vote Democratic in November, period. Romney's appeal is his economic savvy and the fact that a lot of social conservatives got behind him in the primaries. He would shore up McCain's weak links to the social conservative wing of the party and, being about fifteen years younger than McCain, assauge the age issue a bit also. On the downside, some social conservatives find Romney just as unpalatable as they do McCain, because Romney is a Mormon and not some "regular" kind of Protestant. Romney also brings to the table a lot of fundraising prowess, which is an area of some weakness for McCain, who plans to use public financing for the general election.

If I were advising McCain, my order of preference for consideration of these running mate candidates would be:

1. Romney
2. Crist
3. Jindal
4. Huckabee
5. Palin
6. Rell
7. Portman
8. Pawlenty

I really think Romney is the best choice for McCain although I confess some personal discomfort with the choice.

Romney Addresses Atheists

Now that Governor Mitt the Mormon isn't running for President anymore, and doesn't need to suck up to evangelical Christians, he can afford to be nice to atheists. Like apologizing for his remarks made during the campaign, which disaffected unbelieving Republicans like me. So now, he can enjoy the political latitude to say things like this:

Several commentators, for instance, argued that I had failed to sufficiently acknowledge the contributions that had been made by atheists. At first, I brushed this off — after all this was a speech about faith in America, not non-faith in America. Besides, I had not enumerated the contributions of believers — why should non-believers get special treatment? But upon reflection, I realized that while I could defend their absence from my address, I had missed an opportunity…an opportunity to clearly assert that non-believers have just as great a stake as believers in defending religious liberty. If a society takes it upon itself to prescribe and proscribe certain streams of belief — to prohibit certain less-favored strains of conscience — it may be the non-believer who is among the first to be condemned. A coercive monopoly of belief threatens everyone, whether we are talking about those who search the philosophies of men or follow the words of God. We are all in this together. Religious liberty and liberality of thought flow from the common conviction that it is freedom, not coercion, that exalts the individual just as it raises up the nation.

He goes on to defend his claim from December that freedom requires religion, mainly by conflating religion with "truth" and also with morality. I'll leave contemplating of that bit of intellectual sleight-of-hand to you, my Readers, by asking you to consider that even if you are relgious yourselves, you surely know of the existence of false religions, religions which encourage conduct you find immoral.

But, the overt recognition that atheists, like believers, have contributed to the vitality and spirit of our nation and that we to deserve to enjoy the benefits of the liberties that are fundamental to our society are welcome and worthy of praise. Governor Romney earns my thanks for those concilatory remarks. And while I may not completely agree with the balance of his speech, I will respect his sentiments as a thoughtful, religious, patriotic, and moral man concerned with the ongoing welfare of his country.

Romney Ends GOP Primary

Mitt Romney's endorsement and delegate pledge to John McCain effectively ends the GOP primary. Technically, McCain doesn't have enough pledged delegates yet to clinch the nomination, but the states coming up next -- Wisconsin and caucuses in three territorial caucuses -- do not appear to be winnable by the Huckabee campaign. So it's possible that before the next big primary day (Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont on March 4) McCain would have a lock, or close enough to it that even little Rhody could put him over the top. I'll continue to monitor the delegates, but the Republican primary is functionally over.

The Democratic primary, however, is still an exciting horse race, even if the momentum has shifted decisively to Obama -- indeed, his come-from-behind advancement makes it all the more exciting. Stay tuned for more developments and events.

That's It For Mitt

This one I kind of did see coming. Mitt Romney just announced that he's "suspending" his campaign. This is probably preliminary to his appearance at CPAC this weekend, where he will likely end his campaign and grudgingly endorse John McCain. Putting his campaign in suspense today gives him a couple days to call McCain and his people and wrangle out some sort of benefit to him in exchange for that endorsement -- the price of which may be being named McCain's running mate, a move that makes sense on several levels. McCain didn't need to go over the top to clinch the nomination in order to force this. What's interesting is that it was Romney, instead of Huckabee, who blinked first.

Breaking It Down

I've updated the delegate scorecard as of 10:50 p.m. California time. I've also broken out the delegates awarded to each candidate by pledged and unpledged delegates -- if a candidate has 100 pledged delegates, and 25 other delegates who cannot be bound to vote one way or the other but who have made public or other announcements of how they will vote, those are now broken down. On my chart, that would appear as: "100+25" and should be read as 125 delegates. Sorry to make you do math.

So far, it looks like in terms of elected delegates, Clinton and Obama are running very close to even. Clinton has an advantage with the unpledged delegates, though, which makes sense -- she and Bill have a lot more favors they can call in so of course there is a Clinton advantage for the inside game. But it's less overwhelming an advantage than one might think. Clinton is winning outright in many states, typically by margins of five to ten percent. Thanks to the Democrats' proportional primary rules, this means that Obama will stay competitive after tonight, with a realistic chance of winning, although the odds are longer on him than they would have been had he won more of the big states outright.

Still, for the first time, the "superdelegates" may be the deciding factor in the Democratic race -- unelected delegates whose existence is expressly intended to reflect the preferences of the existing party elites. It would be bad for the Democrats if Clinton were picked despite Obama getting more elected delegates, and I suspect a lot of Democratic leaders are smart enough to figure that out all on their own.

On the Republican side, the numbers at present do not accurately reflect the beating Mitt Romney is taking tonight. He's won in Massachusetts, but not by a very convincing margin. He's won in Mormon-rich states like Utah and Montana, but aside from that he's showing rather poorly. Very few delegates from California are included in the count as of 10:50 tonight, but with about 20% of the votes counted, it doesn't look like there's a single county or other significant geographic area where Romney will be taking a plurality. I wouldn't be surprised if all of California's delegates wind up pledged to McCain.

McCain has fared much more poorly in the South -- but again, so has Romney. That's where Huckabee's votes are coming from, almost exclusively. I think it's more a Southern thing than a religious thing. As I wrote earlier, it looks to me like the evangelical Republicans have figured out that Huckabee shouldn't get their vote automatically just because he was a Baptist preacher; he has to earn their votes like any other politician, and they are willing to look past Romney's Mormon faith to see whether he has the right kinds of policies and personality for them. Many have decided that Romney is their guy. Many have decided not. Either way, that's the result of the candidate earning the votes, or not, which is democracy in action. Gratifying.

Final results will have to wait until morning (I'll update the charts again at that time, as more information will be known) but it looks to me that my prediction from this morning will more or less work out. McCain is dominating the field and Obama is really making a game out of it for Clinton. It was supposed to be the other way around -- just three weeks ago, people were still discussing a four- or five-way brokered Republican convention and the Democrats were going to have things all sewn up after February 5. But it's looking more like it'll be the Democrats who go into convention without the nomination clinched by anyone and the party insiders making deals in smoke-filled rooms, while John McCain will get to begin the process of -- appealing to his own party's base while preserving the appeal to independent and crossover voters that has proven so powerful for him this cycle.

I've been following politics since before I could vote. I've never seen an election this interesting, or this much fun.

Early Returns (Updated)

The Florida polls just closed about fifteen minutes ago, and some early voting and absentee ballots have been reported. McCain has about 34% of the vote and Romney has about 33%, and if the early numbers are any indication, a winner will not be called for several hours. Giuliani and Huckabee are fighting it out for third place, splitting the leftover one-third of the vote nearly equally between themselves. Giuliani looks right now like he'll win that fight, although he had hoped not to be on the undercard and even winning there is far from certain.

Early returns are sometimes a bit skewed from the regular live vote, but it doesn't seem to be that way this time around. The patterns are more or less the same in random samplings of counties across the state -- rural and urban, north and south, alike. So I'd expect that those two will get the lion's share of the delegates, and Giuliani and Huckabee will wind up with a few each.

So -- given the format of the upcoming elections on February 5, Rudy will probably keep on campaigning to pick up some delegates and support. Then he'll probably drop out and wind up endorsing McCain. Which is not the right move if he really wants to be the kingmaker between McCain and Romney -- he needs to drop out and make that endorsement tomorrow because he has proven that his efforts and charisma can and do attract votes -- and this would throw a ton of votes McCain's way, adding nearly half again to his support and giving him a decisive lead against Romney instead of merely a statistical one.

Maybe Rudy could do that tomorrow night, on live TV, during the debate. That would be fun. He'd have to work out a substantial compensation to himself for doing so, of course (Vice President? Secretary of Homeland Security?), and that's something that his people need to negotiate with McCain's people right quick.

Interestingly, my folks reported a lot of negative thought about Hilary Clinton from the people they'd spoken with during their recent trip; they believe that they met with about equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans and no one had anything good to say about Senator Clinton. But she's handily beating Senator Obama and as soon as they could, all the networks called the primary there for her.

UPDATE: McCain did win, and it does look like Giuliani will drop out and endorse McCain. Huckabee, however, says he's in to play "all nine innings." While that sounds nice, he's also quickly going to become not much of a factor; exit polls in Florida show that the evangelical voters in Florida split evenly between Romney, Huckabee, and McCain. Florida is somewhat more evangelical than the rest of the GOP (nearly 4 in 10 exit poll respondents self-identified as evangelical) but even so, if Huckabee's draw leaves that bloc of voters split more or less evenly, his participation or non-participation in the race won't affect the outcome of what has become a two-candidate race.

There are GOP caucuses in Maine on Friday, but that's a non-event since the delegates that will result from the state convention delegates selected at those caucuses are required by Maine law to go to the convention unpledged. No, the big deal is that Giuliani will throw his support behind McCain, and although Hizzonner's numbers are nothing like what they used to be, there is still some force there and between his win tonight and that endorsement, Romney is now at a significant disadvantage.

Barring a substantial resurgence by Mitt Romney this week, the United States will elect its first sitting Senator to the White House since 1960.

SECOND UPDATE: John Edwards is out, too. A trial lawyer acquaintance from Nashville will be very disappointed, but it's hard to see what exactly Edwards would have gained by continuing. It remains to be seen if Edwards will endorse or not, but I'd expect more of his supporters to go to Obama than to Clinton.

Chicken Skin Flip Flop

Mike Huckabee has famously lost a bunch of weight. Good for him; I wish I had the kind of willpower he did to resist larger-than-necessary portions of tasty food. So you think he would praise, not criticize, Mitt Romeny for taking the skin off of his fried chicken. Yes, the chicken skin is the tastiest part of even the most juicy fried chicken. It’s also the fattiest. (Strangely, these two facts are related. Oh, wait, that’s not so strange at all.) And seriously, is this how the Republican party is going to pick its Presidential nominee? Is this the best Huckabee could come up with the day before the Florida primary? At least John McCain could respond to Romney’s swipe about loyalty to the party by criticizing his conservative bona fides. Oh, and I get a twofer here – I get to take a swipe at Huckabee and a swipe at the Fish Wrapper. Its reporter is simply wrong to call Huckabee’s reference to Oklahoma as a “great Southern state” a gaffe. Oklahomans think of themselves as Southerners.

By the way, since I’m thinking about Republicans – here’s all you need to know about the status of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign: for the past two weeks, he’s been trailing McCain in New York. So much for six months of being the “front-runner.” My guess is that you Readers are right, and that McCain will win Florida, and Giuliani will then have to decide what, exactly, he can possibly do after he loses his firewall and becomes less relevant to this race than Ron Paul. But losing in New York -- if Rudy can't make it there, he can't make it an-y-where!

No News From Florida

I spoke with my parents today, who have been travelling around Florida for the past couple of weeks. They have seen no political ads on television or heard any on the radio. TV is not much of a surprise; they’ve been staying with and visiting friends who have DirecTV, so they wouldn’t have been seeing any local commercials anyway. The only signs they’ve seen have been for Romney and Ron Paul and politics has apparently not figured prominently on peoples’ minds, at least as far as the people they’ve been interacting with have gone. This seems amazing to me, since my parents and their peers with whom they would have been interacting are all demographically high-propensity voters who should be directly targeted by any intelligent campaign, and they’ve been in areas with dense enough populations (the Palm Beach area, the I-4 corridor, and now up in the Panhandle) that those areas should all be in saturation coverage only one week before an election.

All the campaigns seem to be broke right now. Haven't the four biggest campaigns raised something like a hundred million dollars each? And media buys in Florida? One week before the primary there? Where did all the money go?

Then again, with retail politics like this, I can't imagine how going wholesale would be an improvement. Willard... dude. You're a sixtysomething white boy from Massachusetts, and you've got no business complimenting an African-American teenager in Daytona Beach about his "bling bling." If you don't know when to use one "bling" or two, you aren't going to be able to keep it real in the first place. You won't know that a Baha Men reference is so eight years ago. Just be yourself instead, people will at least respect you more.

South Carolina and Nevada

A bigger night for Republicans than Democrats. The Democrats' primary in South Carolina is next week.

The early results appear to have John McCain winning South Carolina despite a strong showing among the evangelical voters there for Mike Huckabee. It also looks like, by clear majorities, Mitt Romney won Nevada. Ron Paul seems to have come in second place in Nevada, which adds some credibility to his faltering campaign. Duncan Hunter is dropping out and has not, yet, endorsed anyone. Fred Thompson came in third in South Carolina but I don't think that will be enough to keep him viable. But I also can't think of a good reason why he should drop out of the race until at least February 6.

For the Democrats, it seems odd to me that Hillary Clinton is being called the winner despite Barack Obama getting one more delegate than her out of the state. John Edwards got only single-digit support in Nevada and no delegates. I think Edwards is out of steam, but I can't think of what incentive he would have to drop out at this point -- he does not want to be anyone's running mate and has made that very clear.

I've updated the delegate counter to conform with CNN's projections, which includes pledged superdelegates and similar kinds of delegate support, despite the fact that not all the delegates come directly from elections or caucuses. The overall picture is one of uncertainty -- both parties would like to coalesce around a candidate, but both are unable to really decide whether or not to do that yet.

Romney v. Glenn

Good video here of a Mitt Romney press opportunity in some kind of an office supply store in, I think, South Carolina. Romney makes the claim that there are no lobbyists running his campaign, and a reporter challenges him on it. Romney then parses his answer to explain away the presence of a lobbyist (who he calls a "dear friend") as a campaign advisor, which does not satisfy the reporter. The candidate gets back on message and finishes his remarks, and then while leaving takes the time to confront the reporter, who also earns himself a confrontation from one of Romney's handlers.

Now, most of us probably like the idea that the President won't be beholden to lobbyists but aside from that don't care very much who runs a candidate's campaign. The video is more interesting from a personality point of view. It is clear that Romney does not enjoy being challenged and has had quite enough of this reporter. He doesn't lose his cool, but he does heat up a little bit, and the level of his frustration and anger is manifest in his seeking a second round of confrontation with the reporter.

It shows a distasteful side of Romney's personality. To be fair, I strongly doubt that this distasteful trait is unique to Romney amongst the population of major candidates for the Presidency. I'd bet that all of them, even the seemingly genteel Barack Obama or the seemingly affable Fred Thompson, can be like that. And one thing we don't know is how much pushing this reporter had done with Romney in prior press stops -- the handler afterwards indicates that this was not the first time this reporter had confronted Romney.

There is also the question of whether this reporter was doing his job or not. A good reporter's job is not to simply absorb information placed before him and then regurgitate it; a level of critical thought and willingness to challenge apparently incorrect information is needed for a reporter to really do his job well. So I think it's probably right for the reporter to have challenged the candidate on the claim that "there are no lobbyists running my campaign" when it appears that a lobbyist is helping guide the campaign or providing input into strategic choices. But at the same time, once you have an answer to your challenge to include in your report, is it worth it to ask the same question again and again? One gets the impression that this reporter has been pressing on this point against Romney for a while now. I'm not a reporter so I don't know whether this guy crossed any lines or not.

I do know that the video is worth watching, at least for political junkies, to see what Romney's like when he's mad.

The Pander Bear Strikes In Michigan

A look inside Romney’s Michigan victory: He promised auto workers that their jobs would be coming back because as President, he’d spend twenty billion dollars for them and soften fuel-efficiency standards. My guess is that the auto workers in Tennessee and Alabama, where those jobs wound up going, will be told a different story by Romney when he campaigns there the week after next. As will environmental advocates in California, tax-relief proponents in Connecticut, and balanced budget hawks in Delaware.

Michigan for Mitt

It would appear that Mitt Romney has won his second home state of Michigan. CNN so says that Romney will get 10 delegates, John McCain will get 8, and Mike Huckabee will get none. But that's simply not right. Michigan has 30 delegates under the current regime (the RNC could take back its early-primary penalty and give Michigan another 30) and it looks like Huckabee will have enough votes to get a share of the 15 delegates awarded for proportional statewide performance. The other 15 delegates are allocated, one each, to the plurality winners of each of Michigan's 15 Congressional districts. So I don't know where CNN's math is coming from, but it's not even ten o'clock in Michigan as I write this. The delegate counter will be updated as I learn more tonight and tomorrow.

I Don't Know What They're Talking About, Or, This Sort Of Thing Didn't Win The Fights In The Matrix Either

Hillary Clinton "won" in New Hampshire. By what looks like about 7,700 votes, or 2% of the Democrats and independents voting in the Democratic primary.

Beginning almost immediately thereafter, the media began spinning the results like it was some kind of a Hillary Clinton Renaissance. Me? I just don't see it that way.

As of the time I'm writing this, she's about 2% ahead of a tie. Where I come from, that is not a decisive victory. It borders on qualifying for "squeaker" status. Don't mistake this for some kind of a slapback or a momentum-changer.

Clinton dodged a bullet. Nothing more. Sure, it's gonna keep things interesting, but this is little more than a shot of adrenaline for the Clinton campaign, which is still exposed as badly vulnerable.

As for the delegates, Clinton and Obama did tie, earning 9 each tonight. Counting the superdelegates and their endorsements, Obama actually walks out of New Hampshire with 12 to Clinton's 11 -- which is a win for Obama. She's the one who is supposed to have the edge on the inside game.

For Clinton, it's certainly a far better result than coming in second place once again, which would have driven a stake through her heart. But a 2% margin of victory is not a rebirth of a campaign. This is avoiding clinical death while the paramedics administer CPR.

Clinton needs to do more than win by 2% and split the delegates up for grabs evenly to impress me that she's recovered from the body blow she took in Iowa. Then again, I didn't think her husband taking second place in New Hampshire back in 1992 qualified him as a "Comeback Kid," I thought it meant he lost to Paul Tsongas. But look where he wound up.

(By the way, I always kind of liked Paul Tsongas. Economic moderate-to-conservative, social liberal. Hmm. Doesn't seem like much has changed. Foreign policy wasn't that big a deal in the 1992 election, as I recall.)

On the Republican side, I kind of like a comment made by Mitt Romney tonight: "Well, so far that's two silver medals and one gold. Thank you, Wyoming!" A far more upbeat sort of statement than "Well, shit, that's fifteen million of my own dollars lit on fire for second place twice in a row and winning a caucus no one's ever heard of."

Next stop: Michigan, one week from today, in a contest that only counts for the Republicans because the DNC has stripped Michigan of its delegation due to the early primary date. (Indeed, Michigan Republicans have forfeited half of their delegation because of the early date, too.) This will be followed by South Carolina primary, which will be on Saturday, January 19 for the Republicans and the following Saturday, January 26, for the Democrats.

An interesting question to look at is, McCain won, as expected, in New Hampshire. Can he carry that win into Michigan? One poll in Michigan shows an effective tie there right now between Huckabee and Romney; two very recent polls show what amounts to three-way ties, one with those two and McCain, and the other with those two and Giuliani.

Huckabee is way out in front in South Carolina, which ought to be Fred Thompson's last stand. South Carolina is practically home turf for Thompson, and he failed miserably tonight in New Hampshire, garnering one percent of the vote. (Giuliani came in fourth place, with nine times as many votes as old Fred, and he proved he could outpoll Ron Paul.) The logical choice in terms of policy and political simpatico for Thompson would be to throw his delegates to McCain, but there's no telling whether or when he would do that.

(But when you stop to think about it, what incentive does any candidate have to get out of the race before February 5? So South Carolina ought to be Thompson's last stand, but he'll hang around for another two weeks.)

And if you heard it here first, you haven't been paying attention: Don't count Hizzonner out yet just because he didn't do well tonight. Sure, waiting until there's nothing but big pots to play for may be something of a gadget play, but Kirk Gibson got a come-from-behind home run to win a World Series game that sports fans are still talking about. (How's that for a mixed sports metaphor?) Florida on January 29 will be Rudy Giuliani's Austerlitz, and if he can't win there, Super-Duper Tuesday will be his Waterloo. He needs to, um, start running some advertisements already.

I think Giuliani's got something up his sleeve, though, and here's my prediction -- a Super Bowl ad. So far as I know, no politician has ever bought a Super Bowl ad, because it's so damn expensive, and there has never before been a need to reach a national audience so early in the election cycle. But that's all different now. Last year it was $2.5 million for a 30-second spot, which is a lot of money to blow on a single commercial. But on the other hand, 50% of Americans will see it live and the other 50% will be hearing about it the next day -- and close to 50% of Americans will go to the polls two days after the Super Bowl. Besides, what the hell else has he spent all of that money on? Is he saving it for Texas?

So what does this moderate Republican think of all that? I think I could be reasonably happy with John McCain as the party's nominee. Significantly happier than I would be with Romney or Huckabee. So I consider the results from New Hampshire good news.

But as for the Clinton Comeback? I don't buy it, not a bit.

New Feature and Iowa Results

I'm going to keep track of the estimated delegates gathered by each candidate. It will appear in the right-hand sidebar. Looking at the delegate count, Obama's victory does not seem as decisive as press reports would have you believe. And while I called a narrow Romney victory in Iowa, it turns out that Huckabee had a fairly impressive (9%) margin of victory there. This suggests that in other evangelical-heavy states, like South Carolina, he will also do well.

Note that these delegate projections are just that -- projections. The actual pledging of delegates from Iowa does not happen until several months from now. The Wyoming county conventions which will take place on Friday will produce similar "soft" delegate commitments; binding delegate selection there does not take place for several more days. "Hard" pledged delegates will come out of New Hampshire on Tuesday. (I keep on thinking the NH primary was moved to a day other than Tuesday, for some reason, but that's just not right.)

So the delegate results from Iowa (don't forget, all of this electioneering is aimed at getting delegates to the national conventions to vote for the various candidates) will be more or less like this:

Democrats			Republicans
Obama	16		Huckabee	17
Clinton	15		Romney	12
Edwards	14		McCain	3
			Thompson	3
			Paul	2

But that's not the whole picture at the moment. Other "hard" pledging of delegates or readily-identifiable delegate commitments -- Bill Clinton, for example, is automatically a "superdelegate" to the Democratic National Convention (as are just under a quarter of the voting delegates overall). Gee, who do you think he'll vote for? So too are many of the candidates themselves automatically delegates by virtue of their holding elected office and we have to assume that they'll vote for themselves. This is more of a factor for the Democrats than the Republicans, and it explains why so many delegates are already pledged to Hillary Clinton. But there are some non-Iowa delegates out there who have already committed to some other candidates, so this affects them both.

I note that a few minor players -- Joe Biden and Chris Dodd -- are dropping out after Iowa. They've not yet released their delegates to anyone so far as I know. Everyone, myself included is anticipating Fred Thompson to drop out soon, too. He may hang in there until after New Hampshire, though. I'm still predicting a significant McCain win in the Granite State. Rudy Giuliani will have to wait for Florida before having a chance of showing significant wins -- not that he has a choice.

I'm particularly tickled to see Mitt Romney having spent... what? Seven million dollars in Iowa? To come in second place? I'm kind of sad to think that some of the reason for that is overt religious prejudice, because I don't think anyone's religion should be held against them unless it teaches bizarre moral imperatives. But at the same time, the man is a huge fake and this puts his campaign in some trouble. He needs to win New Hampshire now. And let me check... Ah yes. McCain is leading Romney there by an average of five points.

So stay tuned, junkies, this is going to get real interesting in a week.

And They're Off!

The Iowa Caucuses are today. Hizzonner is currently polling in fifth place in Iowa despite still being the national leader; Huckabee and Romney are in a dead heat for first place. After Friday, though, no one will care at all about Iowa, because the attention will shift suddenly to New Hampshire, with its primary on Tuesday. Oh, and Wyoming will have its convention on Saturday, in defiance of national GOP rules, but that will attract some attention.

My prediction, based on nothing more than my observations from the media, is that Romney will squeak ahead of Huckabee tomorrow in Iowa. McCain comes in third, which is the "momentum" place for everyone who isn't Huckabee or Romney to be. Romney should also win Wyoming. But then McCain will win New Hampshire, and eventually, South Carolina will split nearly evenly between Huckabee and Romney, not at all unlike Iowa should tomorrow night.

So the net winner of all of these early but lower-stake pots will be Mitt Romney. That will be the effective end of the Huckabee campaign, since he lacks the money and machinery to compete in the big states, and his Christian credentials are only going to go so far outside of the Bible Belt.

The real question is, will this create enough "momentum" that voters in Florida and the Super-Duper Tuesday states will start to to care about Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina? Will enough Republicans voting for Romney -- or at least, the appearance of enough voters going for him -- carry the day for the Governor? Or are voters in places like Alaska, Illinois, and California going to simply disregard the early states and make independent decisions? Giuliani is currently leading the polls in all of the big states -- he's "all in" for Super-Duper Tuesday, and he's the only one with the money and machinery to compete with Romney -- and he has that 9/11 thing that I think he's mentioned once or twice.

Giuliani's is a high-risk strategy, but not an insane risk by any means. The way that the delegates are selected suggests to me that Giuliani will wind up with at least a plurality of delegates after Super-Duper Tuesday and therefore be the "leader" moving to the contests in the second half of the primaries.

Then (speaking of candidates going "all in") there's the other wild card. Thompson is still in it but not polling well enough anywhere to be anything more than a spoiler -- but for who? Who is the second choice of Thompson supporters? This is important because it's likely that at some point between now and February 5, Thompson is going to find he doesn't have enough traction, and he'll bow out.

Where do his supporters go? My guess is their second choice is probably John McCain more than any of the other three. It also seems most likely that Thompson, who publicly places a high value on being plain-spoken and direct, would find McCain the most palatable of the remaining four candidates should he withdraw. But if McCain's been effectively squeezed out by then, it looks like a tossup to me.

Maybe he'll be mischievous and release his delegates to "vote their consciences" at the convention, and it will wind up brokered. Oh, what a delightful prospect a brokered GOP convention would be! The whole thing is a big, complicated, delicious mess. There are no good guys, just some bad guys, and the flag drops tonight.

The Democrats look positively boring by comparison. Republicans: cry "havoc" and let slip the dogs of war!

Summary of Candidates

I've looked in depth at four Republican and two Democratic candidates for President, all of whom are polling higher than 10% in national polls and any of whom is poised to potentially take the White House. Here is a short table summarizing my policy ratings for each candidate's platform, and listing some positives, some negatives, and something about each candidate that surprised me.

Candidate	Policy	Favorable	Unfavorable	Surprising
Rudy Giuliani	65	Strong executive and leadership skills; best overall blend of policies	Autocratic governing style and disregard for individual rights; possible corruption	Once considered becoming a priest
John McCain	62	Good grasp of military and foreign policy issues; committed to balanced budget; genuine hero	Arrogant personality and overreaching vision of governmental power; past corruption	Messy personal life stalled privileged and promising military career
Mitt Romney	41	Shrewd and competent; likely will listen carefully to competent advisors	Malleable beliefs; veracity deficiency; moves problems around rather than solving them; possible corruption	Both parents ran for high political office
Mike Huckabee	34	Strong moral compass; surprisingly charismatic	Big-government conservative and possibly corrupt; would continue trend towards theocracy	Environmental preservation a significant policy concern
Hillary Clinton	52	Personal White House and national political experience; strong grasp of military and foreign policy issues	Imperious and calculating personality; advocate of big government solutions to most issues; corruption	Republican party activist through her mid-20's
Barack Obama	47	Youth and charisma; good understanding of Constitution; not an idealogue	Careless and inchoate policy proposals; short resume; possible corruption	Tort reformer

My policy rubric was pretty heavy on foreign policy and military issues, and I do ask the candidates to confront the basic conundrum of both balancing the budget and at least keeping taxes at their current level -- which may be an impossibility.

None of them offers a policy platform with which I am completely happy. None of them presents a personality and background that would lead me to think that this person would be a President worthy of admiration. All have done some interesting things with their lives and most bring talents and experiences to the table which are worthy of consideration. All of them are really smart.

No one has really exciting or promising ideas about either Social Security reform or North Korea. That's because there probably are no really good solutions to those problems -- just hard work and mitigating the damage in the short run, and hoping that smaller, incremental improvements and changes in other economic and geopolitical conditions will produce opportunities in the future before things get out of hand.

And with one exception, all of the provide cold comfort to me in my concern about the consolidation of power in a unitary executive.

For my Democrat and Democratic-leaning friends, I'm surprised at the toughness of the decision with which you are faced. Hillary Clinton has transformed herself into a technocrat and the "safe" choice, but she also seems nearly as likely as any of the Republicans to continue the trend towards consolidating all effective governmental power in the Presidency. Democrats, you've seen for the past seven years how much you would dislike that; while Clinton might be more palatable to you holding those reins of power than Bush, remember that one day she'll have to hand those reins to someone else.

If I were a Democrat, I would like Barack Obama better than Clinton. He presents the promise of innovation, energy, and charisma, but I have to wonder if he's really the promise of something new or just another empty suit. For the time being, I'm thinking no, because even if he makes a few missteps early in his Administration (as seems likely), it seems to me that he would learn from them and eventually we'd get a pretty good Presidency. But I still have doubts and concerns about what form those missteps would take. Obama is about the only one of those six whose policies, personality, and personal history give me confidence that he has the potential to be a good leader while still respecting the Constitution.

Now, one thing I can't say is "Well, we surely can't do any worse than what we've got." But that's not true at all. We can, at minimum, continue doing as well as we have, if we pick Mike Huckabee. With only minor differences, Huckabee promises to basically continue the policies of the incumbent Bush White House. The difference between the Huckster and the incumbent is that Huckabee's grasp of foreign policy is not merely arrogant and misguided, but also naive and unimportant to the candidate.

Mitt Romney, however smart he may be, is simply untrustworthy. He is an empty suit. I'm particularly disappointed to find Romney reversing what had been a promising set of principles on the separation of church and state in his desperation to appeal to Christian Right voters in the GOP primaries. It's hard to find a position he took in his political career in Massachusetts that he hasn't reversed in order to seek the Republican nomination. While he may not be corruptible in the sense that he has way too much personal wealth to need more by way of bribery, he may well be corruptible in the sense that his craven need for political support and absence of any kind of core beliefs or principles would lead him to bargain away anything in his policy agenda that one might otherwise consider attractive. Like the businessman that he fundamentally is, everything is negotiable with Romney, which means that for the right price, anything is for sale in a Romney White House.

I find myself faced with a conundrum -- if one of these guys gets the nomination, would I have to vote for the Democrat? Fortunately, there are other options; I can always vote Libertarian.

But there are other groups within the Republican party than the theocrats. For a while, I had been an energetic advocate of Rudy Giuliani based on his strong foreign and military policy platform and his considerable charisma. But after some careful thought and research, I found some things about him, and looked closer at some other things I already knew about him, and discovered cause for serious misgivings. While there are significant policy differences between him and John McCain, overall I like their platforms about the same and they ultimately are more similar than they are different.

So a policy analysis confirms that the less-theocratic side of the GOP still has the most appeal for me. What I would like to see is that less-theocratic and more economic and military-minded side of the party steering the boat. This may mean that some elements of the Republican coalition have to be reshuffled and some of the more extreme religious types discarded. A pro-choice candidate seems more likely to be able to reach out to voters (particularly women voters) who currently identify as independent and moderate Democrats and bring them into the new party. Lots of those voters are pro-choice enough that they would not consider voting for a Republican, ever -- but a pro-choice Republican would make them have to set that single issue aside and look at the rest of the package. There are political gains to be made there.

So I'm sticking with Rudy Giuliani as my most-favored candidate and hoping that the Supreme Court, at least, will be able to assert itself as the "goalie" against what will likely be attempts by the Giuliani Administration to aggrandize executive power. Congress sure won't do it. But on balance, Giuliani presents the best opportunity to both reform the GOP into a party able to address the challenges of the future, and to respond to the international challenges faced by the country today.