TPM Election Central:

John McCain has just won the endorsement of two Rebublican Senators — both of whom oppose the escalation plan that he aggressively advocates. CNN reports that Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both social liberals from Maine, have agreed to back McCain. Collins said in a statement, “I can think of no better person to lead our nation than John McCain.” Snowe, for her part, said: “He understands the issues facing our nation and has a proven track record of addressing the challenges we face.” Despite those statements of confidence in McCain, both of them have come out against McCain’s signature issue of troop increases in Iraq.

I guess the Maine senate delegation doesn’t think McCain is a traitor, contra the National Review.

Technorati Tags: John McCain, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins

Endorsements, John McCain | 3 Comments »

Welcome to Week Two of The Right’s Field’s Power Line rankings of the Republican field. New to the poll this week is Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who finally formed a Presidential Exploratory Committee. FYI – last week’s rankings are in parentheses

1. John McCain (1) - McCain had a rough week. He was trashed in a poll of right wing bloggers and the media is picking up the “McCain has a problem with his temper” meme. On top of this, his unflinching support of escalation of the Iraq war distances him even further from mainstream America and, increasingly, the Republican base. Then again, we don’t call him “Presumptive Nominee John McCain” for nothing and it will take more than one bad week to move McCain out of the top slot.

2. Rudy Giuliani (2) – Giuliani had a great week. He did well in the blogger poll and got good press for his visit to New Hampshire, as well as his slow rolling of his campaign launch.

3. Mitt Romney (3) – A bit of a bland week for Romney. He did well in the blogger poll too, but to paraphrase Erick Erickson, certainly does suck.

4. Sam Brownback (5) – Brownback’s biggest problem is name recognition. I’m getting the impression that he’s one of the most ideologically acceptable candidates for the Republican base, particularly the informed Republican base.

5. Mike Huckabee (NR) – Huckabee’s entrance puts him right in the middle of the second tier of candidates. He, like Brownback, can appeal to religious voters and will make a strong play as a movement candidate. His resume makes him the conservative’s choice if they want a governor as their candidate. He has a long way to go, as his Hope for America PAC’s fundraising numbers are pretty miserable. I’ll be curious to see if Huckabee can actually raise money as a candidate – if he can’t, this will probably be the high water mark for his campaign in this ranking.

6. Tommy Thompson (4) - Last week I said Thompson could be a sleeper candidate. Well, it looks like he’s not sleeping as much – we found out via the National Journal this week that Thompson has ” begun to schedule some fundraisers and another Iowa trip.” Maybe we’ll actually start hearing some news out of the Thompson campaign. For what it’s worth, Thompson’s high placing in last weeks poll was based primarily on two factors: the Saturday announcement of Brownback’s candidacy not really impacting the news cycle and the absence of candidacies from Huckabee, Hagel, and Gingrich.

7. Duncan Hunter (8) - Hunter is no longer just an anti-immigration candidate. He’s now an anti-immigration, anti-abortion candidate! Hunter pledged to reverse Roe v Wade at the March for Life on Monday. Of course, beyond that, Hunter’s week was lousy. He announced for president and no one noticed. His victory in the Maricopa County (AZ) straw poll was rebutted by two real polls. And he makes Sam Brownback look electable.

8. Tom Tancredo (7) - About an equal number of Republican bloggers love and hate Tancredo, which is about the most I can say about someone who, despite another seven days in Congress, remains batshit crazy.

9. Ron Paul (9) – Ron Paul is a libertarian. I don’t have a problem with libertarians, but I think the Republican base will. Paul’s active on MySpace and Facebook, something John McCain’s supporters might be jealous of, but I don’t think anyone is going to get too worried about Paul’s move to corner the social networking vote.

10. John H. Cox (10) – John H. Cox has a posse.

11. James Gilmore (7) – I realized that Jim Gilmore hasn’t done a damned thing since he announced for president. At least Cox and Paul have some support online, though Paul, like Gilmore, has no website.

Newt Gingrich, George Pataki, and Chuck Hagel were not included in this ranking because they have neither announced their candidacy nor formed presidential exploratory committees.

Power Rankings | 6 Comments »

Let’s face it: when you’re the presumptive nominee of the party that’s had control of the White House for two terms and pretty much found a way to turn everything the current occupant touched to shit, it’s not surprising that you’re going to end up with a huge bulls-eye on back. And so it goes with John McCain, who must now deal with the highest level of analysis from people who believe, quite rightly, that America cannot afford to have a man like him as our next president.

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald and political strategist qua blogger Cliff Schecter have joined together to launch The REAL McCain. The REAL McCain is an incredible new site that combines a blog authored by Schecter and short films by Greenwald to be a clearinghouse for those wanting an education on who John McCain is and why he needs to be recognized as the fraud that he is.

McCain has one of the most rosy media images of all American political figures. It will take a lot of work to bust the myths about McCain’s centrism and maverick nature, but if anyone can do it, it’s guys like Greenwald and Schecter. I’m sure that they will make the McCain campaign wish that he’d never flipped nor flopped on Iraq, gay marriage, torture, or extremism in American politics.

Check out the first video from Greenwald: “John McCain vs John McCain”

Technorati Tags: Cliff Schecter, John McCain, The Real McCain, Robert Greenwald

John McCain | No Comments »

Ari Melber has a great post at Personal Democracy Forum rebutting the Washington Post’s fact-free claim that Senator Chuck Hagel is benefitting from an online movement to push his candidacy. I blogged about Shailagh Murray’s WaPo piece on Friday, though I didn’t address the line about Hagel’s alleged internet support.

Melber asks of the supposed “Draft Hagel” movement:

So why was a project with no dedicated website, no supporter lists and no organizing events declared an Internet movement on the front page of the most important political newspaper in the country?

I’d say it’s because having an online support base, or more specifically, a grassroots movement trafficking in the idea of your candidacy online, is now a prerequisite for casting a candidate as a “rebel.” Hagel isn’t liked by the Bush administration and one would expect that his outspoken criticism of the war would have garnered him a committed following online. But the Republican base – particularly Republican bloggers – hate Hagel and still love Bush. Were Hagel a Democrat, he would have a strong following now, but he’s a hardcore conservative Republican and his would-be supporters do not value those who speak ill of the President.

Mostly, though, Hagel’s absence of an internet support is in line with the general paucity of movements supporting Republican presidential candidates. Hagel might have less online support than others, no one in the Republican field is really leveraging online support for their campaigns.

Technorati Tags: Ari Melber, Chuck Hagel, Shailagh Murry

Internet Operations | 3 Comments »

Much has been made this week on liberal blogs about the phenomenon that is the Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack) Facebook Group. This pro-Obama group is adding members at the rate of one every three seconds and currently has over 145,000 members (when Adam Conner wrote this diary on Thursday night, there were 90,000 memberS). This is truly an unprecedented political phenomenon on Facebook that is evidence of serious grassroots support for Obama among young, online voters.

Well, they say imitation is the highest form of flattery, so you know John McCain’s supporters must really dig how committed Barack Obama’s supporters are. The obligatory John McCain for President – One Million for McCain Facebook Group has been created.

Barack and Hillary both have huge groups going for a million, so it’s time to rally together and show them that McCain is really the best!

John McCain is by far the most qualified candidate for this election — he has the experience that this country needs.

The other groups are large already, so we are going to have to work hard to catch up! Invite all of your friends! If each person gets 10 people a day, we will grow to 1,000 in just 3 days! Let’s do that or more!

Unfortunately for the group’s creators, Peter Landau and Justin Holland, inviting people to join a Facebook group doesn’t actually make them members of the group. People have free will and as of yet, that will has not been expressed in an upsurge of support for McCain.

The group was founded on January 26th and has set a series of goals for itself on a rather short timeline.

*************************

Goals:

100 – 1/26 Today!

500 – 1/28

1,000 – January 28th

10,000 – February 10th

**************************

Note that the group “John McCain for President – One Million for McCain” does not include 1,000,000 members as a goal. It doesn’t even include 100,000 as a goal (though it is a planned milestone, see below). So perhaps this group should have been more appropriately named Ten Thousand for McCain. Note that the group aims to hit the goals of 500 and 1,000 members on the same day. Now that’s thinking big!

The pro-McCain Facebook group just isn’t getting the traction its founders had hoped for. Here’s their tally of milestones as of today.

Milestones: I will keep this up to date

100 – Jan. 26th Great job everyone!! Let’s keep this growing fast!!

500 -

1,000 -

2,000 -

10,000 -

100,000 -

The group currently has 407 members.

Just by way of comparison, here’s the list of goals set out and milestones reached by the Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack) Facebook group.

Created January 16th, 2007

100 – Same day (January 16th) Reached

1000 – (Jan 19th) Reached

10000 – (Jan 26th) Reached

100000 – (Feb 1st) Reached

1000000 – (Feb 5th)
…
Its official…

100 in less than 1 hour…

1000 in just over 24 hours

10000 reached 6 days ahead of schedule

100000 – 1 week ahead of schedule

One million seems like nothing now… lets make this happen y’all

So, to recap, there’s a movement afoot in support of Barack Obama on Facebook. McCain supporters try to imitate it and, on their third day of existence have not as of yet found a fraction of the success as Obama. I’ll keep an eye on the McCain group and see where it is in one week – maybe it will start to grow, maybe it will stall. I think it will certainly break into the low-thousands, but I would be shocked if it ever has the scale that Obama’s group has reached.

Via Laurin in SC.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain, Facebook

John McCain | 2 Comments »

Chuck Hagel does his best John Kerry impersonation during an interview with GQ. Bold is GQ, regular text is Hagel.

Do you wish you’d voted differently in October of 2002, when Congress had a chance to authorize or not authorize the invasion?
Have you read that resolution?

I have.
It’s not quite the way it’s been framed by a lot of people, as a resolution to go to war. That’s not quite what the resolution said.

It said, “to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.”
In the event that all other options failed. So it’s not as simple as “I voted for the war.” That wasn’t the resolution.

But there was a decision whether to grant the president that authority or not.
Exactly right. And if you recall, the White House had announced that they didn’t need that authority from Congress.

Later in the interview Hagel says that he regrets his vote in favor of the AUMF:

So to answer your question—Do I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.

Hagel makes clear throughout the interview that he has serious problems with the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war, as well as the pre-war push to fight without approval from Congress and the use of torture by the American military. Hagel’s pissed and he’s finally willing to start telling the world about it.

Leaving aside the snarky similarities between Hagel’s justification of his vote in favor of the AUMF and John Kerry’s repeated pleas for slack on AUMF during the 2004 campaign, Hagel has yet again set himself out as the most principled opponent to the Bush administration within the Republican presidential field. More and more Republican voters will split from Bush as the Iraq war devolves deeper and deeper into failure. Hagel’s principled opposition will likely make it possible that he pick up support from these voters as they flee the Bush wing of the Republican Party.

Other Candidates | No Comments »

Rudy Giuliani seems to be seeking to edge out Tom Tancredo for the Least Classy Republican Presidential Candidate Award (Sponsored by Windex Glass Cleaner). This quote from the New York Times is a real winner.

“When I say to you that we should reduce taxes to stimulate the economy, I’ll say it to you because I did it and I saw it work,” he said. “When I say we have to bring peace and security as sort of the beginning of anything, whether it’s in Baghdad or in other parts of the world or here at home, I’ll say that to you because I saw that happen in New York, and I made it happen. I did it.”

Three points.

First, comparing the city where you cut your teeth as an executive, the city whose successes you will trumpet throughout your presidential campaign, to Baghdad mid-civil war is a poor tactic. It won’t earn you many friends in New York and before long, there will be many profile pieces on Giuliani’s tenure as mayor. Giuliani’s popularity in New York, real or perceived, will have to be one of his selling points to the Republican Party. Undermining that support by making the Big Apple out to be a war torn clusterfuck – when it clearly wasn’t (and isn’t now) – isn’t a wise plan.

Second, New York is not the same as Baghdad. In fact, beside the fact that the two are both cities that people reside in, they have nothing in common. All you have to do is ask someone who lived in New York in the mid-late nineties and tell them that you heard back in the day NYC was a real shit hole, complete with beheaded bodies appearing every morning, until Rudy showed up.

No, Giuliani focused on quality of life issues as mayor, notably moving sex shops out of Times Square (mostly), two or three blocks west onto Seventh and Eighth Avenues. So while it’s less likely that your teenage boy will walk by dozens of female mannequins clad in latex and leather when visiting Times Square these days, it doesn’t have much bearing on whether or not he’s going to be the victim of a car bombing. In New York, no. In Bagdad, very likely. Censoring pornography is not a legit law and order qualification for handling the civil war in Iraq.

Third, basing his qualifications on handling a civil war in Iraq on dealing with smut in New York City suggests that Giuliani thinks the bar for being qualified to handle pulling our country out of a war and pulling Iraq out of civil war is incredibly low. I’d hazard that the time I spent playing Halo on XBox in college doesn’t qualify me for bringing security to Baghdad, though at least I have “experience” blowing lots of things up and killing indiscriminately.

On a different note, Giuliani has some, um, interested thoughts on what it will take for us to achieve victory in Iraq.

“We hope and we root for and we pray for a successful outcome in Iraq,” he said. “But our ultimate victory is not going to be a military victory. Our ultimate victory against terrorism is going to be a victory of ideas.”

So, ideas like Iraqis should stop killing each other? And they shouldn’t kill us either while they’re at it? That’s sheer brilliance Rudy! It’s hard to believe that this man is considered a serious thinking on terrorism and security.

Rudy Giuliani | 2 Comments »

This incident at Davos is a pretty strong cause for worry about John McCain’s problem with his temper. Attempting to eat journalists at press conferences is not good for a presidential campaign and is likely to cost McCain sympathy in the press corps.

Toward the end of the conversation, I raised my hand and asked McCain:

“Given that you’ve said that you are ’scared to death that it’s going to be a very hot spring in Afghanistan,’ and given that you have also said, repeatedly, that only a substantial increase in troops in Iraq would make a real difference, why not send the 21,000 troops headed to Iraq, in what is clearly an act of desperation, to Afghanistan instead?”

During his response, McCain equated those opposing his position with “the far left.”

“Do you consider Sam Brownback part of the far left?” I jumped in.

The Senator flared and told me that if I’d only let him finish his answer instead of interrupting, we could have “a civil discussion.”

He then continued on about why he supports the escalation (see his speech to the AIE if you need a refresher). Along the way, he denied that he had used the phrase “the far left.”

Wow, I thought, the Straight Talk Express has run so far off the rails McCain is now denying things he’d said in front of close to two-dozen note-taking journalists not half-a-minute before.
…
“That’s all very good in theory,” I replied, “but, in practice, where are these additional troops going to come from? And you keep saying that the American people are ‘frustrated’ about Iraq, which totally minimizes the outrage there is at continuing to be mislead by this administration.”

He had clearly had it with me and told me that since what I had just said was a statement and not a question, he didn’t have to respond.
…
Suddenly, with McCain out of the room, the debate in the room shifted away from Iraq and onto McCain’s temper – with the consensus being summed up by Anatol Kaletsky of the London Times: “It appears that his short fuse will become a problem for him during the campaign.”

Arianna Huffington was the journalist McCain snapped at, but Kaletsky’s response shows that the impression McCain left was clear.

I can’t imagine any situation in which a presidential candidate’s temper becomes the focus of conversation among journalists is anything but a crushing media defeat for that candidate. Sorry John.

Hat tip to tparty.

Technorati Tags: John McCain, Arianna Huffington

John McCain | 3 Comments »

Right Wing News has published a poll of fifty top Republican bloggers on who their most and least desired nominees for 2008 is. Bloggers were asked to list their top five choices for the nomination, as well as the five they would least want to get the GOP nomination. The big winners were Newt “The Right’s Al Gore” Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani. The big losers were Chuck Hagel and John McCain.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News explains the scoring:

The bloggers were allowed to make 1-5 ranked selections. Those selections were weighted as follows…

1) Worth 2 points
2 or 3) Worth 1.5 points
4 or 5) Worth 1 point

That scoring is indicated in the parentheses following the candidates’ names listed below.

Most Desired Nominee For 2008

14) John Cox (4)
13) Jeb Bush (5)
12) Jim Gilmore (5.5)
11) Ron Paul (8.5)
10) Condi Rice (11.5)
9) Mike Huckabee (14) Tommy Thompson (15.5)
7) John McCain (19)
6) Sam Brownback (20)
5) Tom Tancredo (31.5)
4) Duncan Hunter (35.5)
3) Mitt Romney (43)
2) Rudy Giuliani (45)
1) Newt Gingrich (52)

Least Desired Nominee For 2008

13) John Cox (4.5)
12) Jim Gilmore (5.5)
11) Tommy Thompson (9)
10) Ron Paul (10.5)
9) Mitt Romney (11.5) Mike Huckabee (12)
7) Newt Gingrich (13.5)
6) Rudy Giuliani (17)
5) Sam Brownback (21)
4) Tom Tancredo (30)
3) George Pataki (49)
2) John McCain (60.5)
1) Chuck Hagel (64)

McCain and Hagel really take big hits in this poll. McCain is only the 7th most desirable candidate and Hagel doesn’t even make the top fifteen as far as Republican bloggers are concerned. They are the two least desirable candidates in the poll.

I was shocked by how much these 50 bloggers liked the socially liberal Rudy Giuliani and the flip-flopper extraordinaire Mitt Romney. If I had to guess, I think that their high polling is strongly influenced on the perception that both Romney and Giuliani as north eastern moderates (kinda) are electable. It certainly isn’t for their long-standing, earned credentials as Republicans.

Tom Tancredo and Sam Brownback occupy comparable points in both polls, with an almost equal number of bloggers finding them both the most desirable and least desirable candidate. I’d be interested in seeing how their positioning changes as their name recognition grow – clearly they have to start shifting in one way or another in terms of their acceptability.

Technorati Tags: Chuck Hagel, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Right Wing News, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo

John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Polling, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo | No Comments »

Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor, is in New Hampshire today and stressed “vision and performance.”

“Leadership is about vision and performance,” Giuliani told state GOP activists. Voters, he said, should hold each candidate to that standard when deciding where to throw their support. “Who has the vision and who can perform? Because you need both.”

“You can ultimately judge whatever I promise you and whatever vision that I have by the things that I’ve done,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani also tried to envoke former President Ronald Reagan at an event in New Hampshire last night.

Giuliani told a crowd in a GOP stronghold in northern New Hampshire that politicians who take polls to dictate what they say are not “leaders. They’re actors.”

“Ronald Reagan didn’t have [his] views because they were popular,” Giuliani said in the state where Republicans tend to lean conservative on social issues.

He added that people will disagree, but it’s important to know where a leader stands. He’ll need to convince conservative voters to embrace that theme to get them to overlook his pro-choice, pro-gay-rights stands.

The New York Post continued:

A major rap on the Democratic front-runner, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been that she’s poll-tested, although Giuliani insisted later he wasn’t talking about anyone specifically.

Then again, he could be referring to Senator John McCain’s “Build My National Agenda Because I Want to Pander to You” survey.

Just a thought.

Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »