Unca Fred Thompson not only has no interest in being President, he has no interest in politics or the economy.

Republican White House hopeful Fred Thompson made light of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s call for a quick economic stimulus Thursday and said it might be best to leave the economy alone for now.

Thompson was answering questions in a restaurant where Bernanke could be seen on a TV urging short-term relief to avert a recession. Thompson was asked what he would do.

“You could probably get a ‘Law & Order’ rerun on TNT there if you wanted to switch that around a little bit,” quipped Thompson, who acted on the series. When the host reminded him Bernanke is a South Carolina native, Thompson joked: “That looks a little boring to me. I don’t care.”

That’s your clear conservative choice in action.

By the way, Freddie’s come out against the global AIDS initiative.

At a campaign stop attended by a CBS reporter in Lady’s Island, S.C., Thompson was asked if he, “as a Christian, as a conservative,” supported President Bush’s global AIDS initiative. “Christ didn’t tell us to go to the government and pass a bill to get some of these social problems dealt with. He told us to do it,” Thompson responded. “The government has its role, but we need to keep firmly in mind the role of the government, and the role of us as individuals and as Christians on the other.”

Thompson went on: “I’m not going to go around the state and the country with regards to a serious problem and say that I’m going to prioritize that. With people dying of cancer, and heart disease, and children dying of leukemia still, I got to tell you — we’ve got a lot of problems here. . . . “

I think the only war Thompson’s going to be fighting is the war on narcolepsy.

Fred Thompson | 2 Comments »

It’s unquestionably true that the same South Carolina dirty tricksters who stopped John McCain’s Presidential bid in 2000 are out this year. The latest revelation is that Mike Huckabee’s army of robo-callers and push-pollers are spreading that McCain supports experiments on unborn children. Actually, Huckabee’s outfit is push-polling all his Republican rivals in the state. There is one charge specific to McCain, however: a mailer from a group called “Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain. It’s pretty weak stuff, accusing McCain of collaborating with his captors. Only thing is, the mailer wasn’t mailed anywhere.

Recently, the group sent a mailer to approximately 80 newspaper editors in South Carolina accusing McCain of selling out his fellow POWs in Vietnam. On Tuesday, the McCain campaign (which is working hard to appeal to vet voters) made one of McCain’s former fellow POWs available to the media to respond to the smear. The story, picked up by the AP and Wall Street Journal among others, got national play — undoubtedly more play than the group would have been able to get on its own.

I spoke to the founder of Vietnam Veterans against John McCain, Jerry Kiley, yesterday. He told me that the group hasn’t “actively sought donations at this point,” and that the next step for the group will be mailings “going out to our network,” with the intention that the mailing would then be forwarded on to local media there. The group just doesn’t have the funds to send mailings directly to voters — nor, as they declared they would in their statement of purpose, to run radio and TV ads. Things “could change,” he told me, “if we received a sizable donation,” but he wasn’t holding out much hope.

Instead, they’re planning “an email campaign.” Groups of like-minded vets throughout the country will get the email chain started, he said, “so it will spread very quickly throughout the country.”

So, this is an unfunded group trying to get some media attention. The McCain campaign went nuclear on it, to “prove” that groups are out to get him in South Carolina. I have to say that this is NOTHING compared to what Rove and the boys did to McCain in South Carolina last time. That was an establishment attack. These are a few guys with a flyer and some time on their hands. The question is, does McCain run the risk of over-publicizing this smear to the extent of it actually rebounding back on him?

John McCain, Mike Huckabee | No Comments »

You can see the poll on the left. There’s this idea in the media that Rudy Giuliani is somehow outfoxing his opponents, by consistently losing badly until Florida, when he’ll suddenly become a hero and king again. Yesterday we had several pundits claim that the Michigan results were “great news for Rudy Giuliani.”

OK, Rudy received 3% of the vote. In four primaries so far, he’s finished 6th, out of the money (hard to give a place number in that wacky Wyoming primary), 4th, and 6th. And he’s headed for another sixth-place finish in South Carolina. He’s lost to Ron Paul at least twice. He’s lost to Fred Thompson, who doesn’t even know he’s still running for President, THREE TIMES. Yesterday he almost lost to “Uncommitted”. In Michigan he scored only 3,000 more votes than Dennis Kucinich.

Floridians are not a different species of American than other people. Giuliani spent the second-most money in New Hampshire and had a fairly robust under-the-radar campaign in Iowa and he got nowhere. The more he campaigns, the less he seems to be liked. His initial strategy was based on leading the national numbers and that is no longer the case. His Florida numbers are pretty much the same as everyone else’s despite the fact that he’s been alone there for two weeks, dumping money into the state. After South Carolina and Nevada Rudy will have company for ten days until the primary.

It’s worth asking whether Rudy meets the criteria for future debates, not asking whether his super-secret strategy is working. 

UPDATE: In addition, Romney is clearly in the lead, with two firsts and two seconds, as well as a convincing win in the largest state. That’s all subject to change, of course, and I suspect he’ll ignore South Carolina to an extent to focus on the bigger delegate prize in Nevada (because of RNC delegate-stripping; SC is a bigger state) so he can notch another victory.

Rudy Giuliani | 5 Comments »

Democrats for Mitt may have pulled this one out of the fire. Leaked exit polls show a 6-point lead for Romney in Michigan, and the crosstabs of the exit polls released on MSNBC seemed to confirm that (the Republican turnout was very high and the overall turnout very low, and evangelicals made up less of the total electorate than in Iowa). McCain’s people are already trying to lower expectations in the state.

If Romney does win, the race is thrown into even more turmoil. South Carolina would be a three-way toss-up, with Fred Thompson taking a piece of everyone else’s total. Romney probably has a leg up in Nevada because he’s the only one with organization out there, but it’s the same day as South Carolina so it won’t get as much interest from the media. Florida comes next, and it’s Giuliani’s last stand, but the latest polls show as much as a four-way tie. And nobody has the resources at this point to compete in all the February 5 states, which means they’ll all just be crossing their fingers.

Here’s to the clusterfuck!

John McCain, Michigan, Mitt Romney | 1 Comment »

Sometimes Mike Huckabee will come out and say something that just scares the fuck out of you.

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards,” Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

This is a guy who’s telling you that the Bible will be his Constitution. People tell you who they are. And this is why young evangelicals are flocking to him, as opposed to the evangelical leadership which is really more concerned with keeping power than anything the living God has to say. Huckabee represents a movement to quite literally take back the nation for Christ. I wonder, however, if he missed the memo on the commandment that says “Thou shalt not bear false witness”:

I got a call from Huck’s “independent” push pollers [Friday night]. It was a robo-call with a script that was micro-targeted for my Democratic union household. The robo-voice, which asked “poll” questions and left me time to answer, was an African-American male voice. Wanted to know if I was aware that “there is no real choice in the Michigan Democratic primary this year” and encouraged me to vote in the Repub primary instead.

Also asked if I was aware that the Machinists Union had endorsed Huckabee “for the first time in history…” (I assume by tonite they will add the Painters, too.) And if I knew that Huckabee was a fighter for working families, etc.

At the end, the robo-voice said the poll “was not affiliated with or authorized by any candidate or committee,” but all the “questions” were designed to communicate positive information about the Huckster.

It’s a classic ploy for these types of calls to play on ethnic and racial stereotypes — though in this instance, the pollsters seem to have chosen their voice with the idea that a typically African-American male voice would appeal to Democrats. (When I asked Common Sense Issues’ executive director Rick Davis whether it was accurate to characterize the voice in these calls as “an African-American male voice,” he said “it could be.”) Former dirty trickster Allen Raymond writes in his book How to Rig An Election that he had an array of actors available to portray a range of stereotypes, including “angry black man,” which was deployed to frighten middle-class whites.

Huck’s boys even called Republican Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, which was probably a bad idea.

I’m sure the Christian leader can reconcile dishonest push polling and robocalling in some way. Maybe Jesus worked phone banks!

Mike Huckabee | 1 Comment »

Giuliani Time is now on your own dime.

About a dozen senior campaign staffers for Rudy Giuliani are foregoing their January paychecks, aides said Friday, a sign of possible money trouble for the Republican presidential candidate.

“We have enough money, but we could always use more money,” contended Mike DuHaime, Giuliani’s campaign manager and one of those who now is working for free. “We want to make sure we have enough to win.”

At the end of December, he said the campaign had $11.5 million cash on hand, $7 million of which can be used for the primary. He disputed the notion of a cash-strapped campaign, and said Giuliani continues to bring in cash; several fundraisers are scheduled this week in Florida.

DuHaime and other aides stressed that relinquishing pay was voluntary and was limited to senior staffers.

What’s incredible is that every Republican campaign has now shown money troubles except for Ron Paul. Freddie Thompson was begging for donors to fill up his red pickup truck, McCain’s in debt, Huckabee couldn’t raise anything until Iowa, and Romney has pulled all his ads to double down in Michigan.

The more these guys campaign, the less anyone wants to give them money.

Fundraising, Rudy Giuliani | 2 Comments »

This is hilarious. Turns out that the one state Multiple Choice Mitt managed to win was completely irregular (h/t dc20005):

The results of Republican nonbinding straw polls in some Wyoming counties Saturday don’t jibe with the statewide delegate selection results in favor of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

In Johnson County, for example, former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee came in first in the straw poll, while Romney was in fourth place [...]

In Park County’s straw poll, Hunter outpolled Romney 26-20, according to the Cody Enterprise’s online edition. But the county delegates chose Marilyn Taylor, a Romney supporter, as an alternate delegate to the national GOP convention.

In Campbell County, Romney supporter Greg Schaefer won the delegate slot although Paul won the straw poll, according to published accounts.

And in as many as half the counties, they didn’t even HOLD a straw poll.

Isn’t this what the primary process was meant to STOP, these kind of Tammany Hall (or Laramie Hall, in this case) tactics? I mean, this pretty much comes off like Romney bought the Wyoming primary, far from the media spotlight.

Prompting Tagg Romney to say, “I can haz inheritance now?”

Mitt Romney, Wyoming | No Comments »

Rudy 9iu11iani slips 9/11 into conversation like the pretty girl you meet in a bar slips in the word “boyfriend”:

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Rudy Giuliani discussed Hillary Clinton’s “emotional moment.” “This is not something I would judge anyone on,” Giuliani said. He then quickly slipped in a reference to 9/11, pointing out that it was impossible for him not to feel emotion then:

“The reality is, if you look at me, September 11 — the funerals, the memorial services — there were times in which it was impossible not to feel the emotion.”

If this President thing doesn’t work out, I hear Giuliani will be selling his own 9/11 calendars, where every day is 9/11, and time is divided into B.9.11 and A.9.11, putting us in the beginning of 7 B.9.11.

Rudy Giuliani | 12 Comments »

It truly is exciting today, here in this small, mostly white state out in flyover country, where a small subset of Americans will cast their ballot and determine the fate of the GOP hopefuls. The media crush is simply amazing, everywhere you look there’s another reporter. And the polling has been so non-stop that you expect another one after the caucusues are over! Yes, the eyes of the nation are truly upon Wyoming today!

Wait, you haven’t heard about it?

Don’t forget Wyoming. It’s been overlooked in the hoopla surrounding Thursday’s Iowa caucuses and next week’s New Hampshire primary, but Wyoming Republicans will caucus Saturday and choose delegates to the national convention in September.Candidates have paid little attention to the state, though.

Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul have passed through since September. Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain have not.

“Yes, there have been some appearances by the candidates in this state that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred this early in the process,” said Jim King, who teaches political science at the University of Wyoming. “But candidates are where the media are — in Iowa and New Hampshire.”

This is an example of how truly arbitrary this whole selection process is. The media isn’t covering Wyoming because they’ve decided New Hampshire is more important, and anyway who wants to go to Wyoming after spending all that time in Iowa? So they ignore it, which causes the candidates to ignore it, because the important thing about these early races is the bump and not the win. Not that Wyoming should be decisive, but there’s no real reason it should be dramatically less decisive than Iow and New Hampshire; all they have going for them is history. This is exhibit A of why the whole system needs an overhaul.

The good news here for Fred Thompson is that it’s another state he gets to skip! And a roar went up in Thompson headquarters. Or a snore. Or something.

UPDATE: Mitt-mentum!  

CHEYENNE, Wyoming: U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney grabbed the early lead in Wyoming’s Republican caucuses Saturday as the state had its brief moment in the political spotlight between the traditional attention-getting contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

This is good news for John McCain.

UPDATE II: With 83% of precincts reporting Romney has 70% of the delegates, Freddie Thompson 20%, and Duncan Hunter 10%. Hugh Hewitt just had a heart palpitation.

Wyoming | 1 Comment »

GOP Race In Total Disarray, says the Drudgico.

Stephen Green speaks for most wingnut bloggers who are actually contemptible of “regular people,” calling Iowans “corn-sucking idiots” for picking the non-millionaire.

The National Review is imploding, as Tagg Romney sees his inheritance go to some ad sales director in Des Moines with nothing to show for it.

Fred Thompson is resting, and offered this STIRRING oratory:

“It looks like somebody is going to need to carry a strong, consistent, conservative message — and it looks like it ought to be me.”

It’s not a good day to be a member of The Right’s Field. (But it’s good news for John McCain, because as we know, everything is good news for John McCain.

Election 2008 | No Comments »