I’ve been banging the drum for Ron Paul in New Hampshire for a couple months, saying that he’s perfectly matched for the state and could really shake up the Republican race there. This latest poll shows that he has some momentum:

10/15-10/21, 498 Reps, 4.5 MoE, no trendlines
Romney: 32.4
Giuliani: 21.8
McCain: 15.2
Paul: 7.4
No information on other results

Paul’s in front of Huckabee and Thompson without spending very much money or doing very much campaigning. I remain convinced that he could double this number in New Hampshire, which would have huge implications.

UPDATE: Obviously the Paul camp thinks so too, as they’re starting to spend their passel of cash in the state:

Ron Paul will be taking advantage of his recent fundraising success by launching a renewed push in New Hampshire.

Beginning Monday, the Paul campaign will begin running a new ad campaign in the state, costing about $1.1 million Additionally, he has four trips to the state planned for November, plus an 11-day tour scheduled for December.

Paul’s chances rely on the independent vote in the state, and in particular getting them to vote in the Republican primary as opposed to the Democratic one. If I’m an independent and I want an end to neoconservative imperialist policies, it may make sense to me that I’d have a better chance of stopping them by knocking out the neocons in the New Hampshire primary than voting for one of a set of somewhat similar candidates (emphasis on somewhat) on the Democratic side. This is the calculation Paul’s campaign hopes independents will make. I’m telling you he’s getting to 20%.

Ron Paul | No Comments »

OK, this one is hilarious.

So John McCain’s writers came up with a decent line for last week’s Republican debate, basically calling Hillary Clinton a dirty hippie, and the crowd ate it up. Deciding to press their luck, McCain turned the debate clip into a TV ad, using 19 seconds of footage from the debate (and a really bad 60s knock-off music cue).

One thing though. Fox News would like a word…

Fox News Channel confirms that it has ordered the campaign of Senator John McCain to cancel its new ad featuring a clip of him at last Sunday’s debate, which was sponsored by Fox News. The news network prohibits candidates from using debate clips in their political advertisements [...]

…the spot prominently features the Fox News logo in the corner of the screen. Of course, campaigns use debate clips from time to time to the anger of the networks, and they do not tend to mind the extra publicity these clips bring to their ads. But Fox News officials say they are taking this matter seriously.

Based on what I know about these matters (and I’ve dealt with a fair bit of this), Fox probably has a case that McCain can’t use their logos and footage in a commercial spot promoting his campaign. Their lawyers certainly think so. Normally, the networks don’t mind the free publicity. But most networks aren’t run by Rudy Giuliani’s former media consultant.

It’s entirely possible, of course, that Fox News tried to call the campaign HQ to tell them not to run the ad, but McCain didn’t have the cash to keep the phones running. And he’ll probably need to pass the hat for the $500 needed to pay an editor to blur out the logos.

UPDATE: They’ve now recut the ad.

John McCain, Presidential Debates, Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »

Mitt Romney’s political principles have “evolved” (read: changed out of blind ambition) so much over the course of the last five to fifteen years, that the Romney campaign employs a sweatshop army of rapid response kids.

Seriously, how old are these people slaving away in the dark, gazing into the blue glow? Weren’t we told that was unhealthy as children? A simple Google search brings up mixed results.

(Hat tip: Miss Laura, Daily Kos)

Mitt Romney | No Comments »

In the Boston Globe blog, Political Intelligence, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton, Colo.) wagered his presidential bid against that of former Governor Mitt Romney (R-Massachusetts) in a not-so-friendly World Series bet.

Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo wants to put something important on the line — his candidacy. His campaign called ABC News to issue this challenge: The Colorado congressman will drop out of the race if the Rockies lose the World Series — if rival Mitt Romney agrees to pack it in if the Red Sox lose.

That’s like wagering your Vespa against someone’s Corvette. Plus, Tancredo’s team, the Colorado Rockies, got their heads handed to them last night, 13-1, by the Boston Red Sox in Game 1. Makes you think Tancredo is trying to lose the bet.

Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo | 1 Comment »

The departure of more staffers hasn’t got Fred Thompson down one bit. In fact, from the looks of this article, he didn’t know they were on staff in the first place.

Republican Fred Thompson played down a staff member’s departure and a New Hampshire supporter’s defection Wednesday, saying it’s not up to him to know what’s going on at every level of his presidential campaign.

“This is a campaign with a lot of different moving parts and a lot of things going on simultaneously,” Thompson said in an interview with The Associated Press [...]

“You know, the campaign can address that. I can’t really address who’s doing — and who was doing — exactly what at every level of this campaign,” Thompson said after speaking to about 300 people at a restaurant in South Carolina. “They’re the ones who know what’s going on on a daily basis. … I’ll let the experts speak on that.”

The CAMPAIGN can address that? Aren’t you the campaign? Aren’t you supposed to know what’s going on, at least a little bit? Shouldn’t you be the expert?

Meanwhile, Thompson managed to round up enough experts to write his first policy statement yesterday. Guess what, it’s about those damn illegals. Reports have it that Fred doesn’t know how many illegal immigrants are in the country and it’s not his job to know and anyway he didn’t write the policy so leave him alone while he eats yogurt.

Advisors, Fred Thompson | 5 Comments »

Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, the failed presidential candidate, plans to meet with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

In an interview with The Hill on Wednesday, Brownback said he would consider endorsing Giuliani because he believed the former New York Mayor had changed his position on partial-birth abortion and has pledged to appoint to the courts strict constructionists to the Supreme Court.

“I’m going to meet with him and I’m going to talk to him and hear what he is specifically saying now because he’s changed on a number of the abortion issues,” Brownback told The Hill.

According to the interview, Brownback has asked for the meeting because he had heard indirectly that Giuliani is opposed to allowing women the right to late-term abortions. The Senator hopes to confirm those positions when they meet and hear directly where Giuliani currently stands on these issues.

According to Jan Simmonds, Brownback has reportedly met with Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) since dropping his presidential bid last week.

Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback | 3 Comments »

Rudy Giuliani invoked the Michael Mukasey defense on waterboarding with town hall attendees in Iowa on Wednesday, claiming he wasn’t sure waterboarding was torture.

“I’m not sure it is either, it depends on how it is done,” said Giuliani who is a longtime friend of Mukasey. “It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it.”

The former New York City Mayor and Justice Department official during the Reagan Administration went on to say he thought the “liberal media” might not be describing waterboarding correctly.

“Sometimes they describe it accurately, sometimes the exaggerate it,” said Giuliani. “So I’d have to see what the real… what they really are doing. Not the way some of these liberal newspapers have exaggerated it.”

Wikipedia disagrees:

Waterboarding is a form of torture^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]}…

Included in those footnotes is a letter from over 100 law professors stating unequivocally that waterboarding is, in fact, torture, and fellow presidential candidate and prisoner of war tortured in Vietnam, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), stating that waterboarding is “torture, no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank” and can damage the subject’s psyche “in ways that may never heal.” In 2005, the State Department classified submerging a prisoner’s head in water as torture when examining Tunisia’s poor human rights record.

John McCain, Rudy Giuliani | 28 Comments »

Ramesh Ponnuru, the conservative columnist for the National Review Online, weighs in on former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee:

Huckabee   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

He seems to combine some of Pat Buchanan’s bad ideas with some of George W. Bush’s. He’s the protectionist compassionate conservative. No thanks.

10/23 02:29 PM

Mike Huckabee | No Comments »

All of the Democratic candidates have had something to say about the wildfires raging through Southern California. Gov. Richardson, Sen. Dodd, and Sen. Edwards in particular have offered both statements and resources for those suffering in my state this week.

How are the Republicans handling this, you ask? In case you were wondering:

Rudy Giuliani: Nothing.
John McCain: Nothing.
Mitt Romney: Nothing.
Fred Thompson: Nothing.
Mike Huckabee: Nothing. A 30-minute interview with Glenn Beck on his front page, too, Beck is the guy who claimed that some of the people who lost their homes hate America.
Duncan Hunter: It’s his frickin’ district and it’s hard to find anything outside of this news article.
Tom Tancredo: Nothing.
Ron Paul: Nothing. And he’s doing a “Hollywood fundraiser” tonight.

They just don’t care. Which is really puzzling, considering that California is an early state. Plus, most of the fires are in Republican-leaning areas, like Orange County and the outer communities around San Diego.

But you would have to have the ability to feel compassion to actually offer it.

California, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Tancredo | 10 Comments »

Pastor Don Wilton, the former President of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, withdrew his endorsement of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

The Romney campaign has agreed to withdraw all references to Pastor Don Wilton’s endorsement of Romney, the Baptist Press reported on Tuesday.

Wilton said the endorsement — first announced by the Romney campaign last Friday — was a “mistake.”

“While I did give my consent to the local campaign to use my affirmation of the governor’s stance on family values in my capacity as an individual citizen, I made the mistake of not realizing the extent to which it would be used on a national basis,” Wilton told the news agency. “It was my personal error to agree to support Romney’s campaign. Until this incident I had never endorsed any person running for any elected office, Democrat or Republican.”

Endorsements, Mitt Romney | 1 Comment »