Joe Hallett of The Columbus Dispatch reports that Ohio Senator George Voinovich recently approached former Secretary of State Colin Powell and tried to get him to run for the GOP’s nomination.

Sen. George V. Voinovich visited former Secretary of State Colin Powell about a month ago and urged him to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

Powell, who resigned after President Bush’s first term, balked.

“He said he had given his service to this country, and his wife’s a little bit reluctant about doing it,” Voinovich, an Ohio Republican, said Wednesday during an interview in his Capitol Hill office.

“I told him it’s time to re-up.”

Voinovich, who is given to public displays of emotion, then paused and got teary-eyed as he continued speaking about Powell.

“I said, ‘You have a moral obligation and I have a moral obligation, and this country is running out of time. And if you’re running out of time, then I’m running out of time, and I think we have a moral obligation to try to leave a better legacy than it looks like we’re going to leave to our kids.’ ” [Emphasis added]

Voinovich’s concern about how he and Powell’s rubber stamping of the Bush administration’s failures in Iraq and Afghanistan will reflect on their personal legacies is truly touching [/ world's smallest violin]. I agree that he and Powell do have a moral obligation to leave a better legacy for America than the string of failures via lack of principle in their opposition to the disasters their party has brought America to. Barring any of Powell’s actions during tenure as Bush’s Secretary of State who sold the Iraq War to the world, he might even make a better candidate than the dozen-odd hacks and has-beens that make up the Republican field now.

But Voinovich and Powell are deluding themselves if they think now’s the time for Powell to save his legacy and fix the problems facing America and the Republican Party stemming from Iraq and Bush’s war on terror. Powell owns these failures just as much as Condi Rice, George Tenet, Don Rumsfeld, and the raft of other neocon administration officials. It’s not exactly a prime platform for saving your reputation by launching a presidential campaign.

I don’t know if Powell will do well as a candidate. He once noted, though, that he was picked to sell the war because the only person who polls higher than him in America is Mother Teresa. So who knows. I just don’t relish the thought of this man trying to make himself into a saint to save America from a problem that he helped create.

Other Candidates | 5 Comments »

Chris Richter, national coordinator of the John Cox campaign (whatever that means), wants me to do something. From my inbox:

On Tuesday, May 15th, there will be the second Republican Presidential Debate and Republican Presidential Candidate John Cox has not been invited. We are asking our supporters to call both Fox News and the South Carolina Republican Party and ask why Mr. Cox is not being included in the debate, and demand that they include him since he is on the South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary Ballot. It is important to point out that in South Carolina he won the Aiken County Republican Party Straw Poll, and that he came in 5th place overall after 4 recent County Republican Party Straw Polls in South Carolina.

SC Republican Party: Mr. Katon Dawson (State GOP Chairman) Phone: (803) 988-8440

Fox News: Ask to speak to someone who is in charge of the upcoming Republican Presidential Debate in South Carolina on May 15th. Phone: 1-888-369-4762.

Cox is on the ballot for the primary in South Carolina. He’s won straw polls there in a couple of small towns. He has an operation there. There’s no reason Cox should not be in the GOP debate if he’s on the GOP ballot.

Come on South Carolina – the Democrats let Gravel into the debate, you should let Cox in. What are you afraid of?

Presidential Debates | 6 Comments »

Matthew Yglesias on Mitt Romney’s trawler-sized net for Islamic bad guys:

To put it bluntly, the trouble here is that the Muslim Brotherhood just isn’t a violent terrorist organization, and certainly doesn’t commit acts of violence against the United States. It’s an extremely traditionalist multinational civil society organization. It’s true that a lot of violent types used to be in the Brotherhood and now they’re in terrorist groups, but used to be is the key phrase here, they left the Brotherhood because the Brotherhood wouldn’t sign on for their agenda. In one clause, Romney’s just gone and broadened the war to include a huge new category of people who have no intention of waging war against the United States or even against Israel.

Note that even without the Muslim Brotherhood bit, this is a terrible idea. If you liked Iraq, you’re going to love trying to root Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon and Hamas out of the West Bank. Check out Spencer’s remarks on this as well. He notes that “it’s hardly remarkable that Romney doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” It isn’t surprising, but then again this point needs to be driven home again and again — Mitt Romney displayed zero understanding of political Islam or global terrorism, none of his Republican opponents called him on it, and as far as I know, nobody in the press (the same press, you’ll recall, that’s concerned with the Pursuit of Truth above all else) bothered to notice.

Understanding who the different players in Islamic politics, radical or otherwise, has not been a Republican strong suit over the last seven years. It’s not surprising that Romney will paint with an oversized, novelty brush because he’s perpetuating false impressions held by the fear-mongering Republican base. But Romney’s lack of education as to who and what different Islamic groups are, when taken at the presidential level, is a potential risk for escalating and expanding the field from legitimate enemies of the United States to anyone who would fit snugly on the business end of a crusade.

Words mean things. As a presidential candidate, if you don’t know what you’re saying, you shouldn’t speak.

Mitt Romney, Presidential Debates | No Comments »

Giuliani: “It’ll be OK” if Roe v. Wade is repealed. “It would also be OK if the court decides it should be upheld.”

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McCain on spending: Government programs must justify their existence every year.

Did McCain just grant Dasein to line-items on the federal budget?

I didn’t know government programs could talk. Let alone argue. Let alone be beings whose being is an issue for them.

Presidential Debates | 7 Comments »

Apparently Fred Thompson has a blog, The Fred Thompson Report. It’s hosted by ABC Radio, has new content almost every day, and does not allow comments.

I wonder if Thompson actually writes the posts himself.

Fred Thompson | 3 Comments »

Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff has a great look at the balance between Giuliani as star politician who commands the spotlight and Giuliani the crazed nut who’s probably moments away from doing something to completely destroy his presidential campaign.

His reign in New York—cutting his opponents dead while micro-managing or attacking the media as he sped off to cop shootings, fires, and water-main breaks—was all about his passions and personality. It was all dramatic persona, a governing style much closer to that of a banana-republic potentate than to your average city administrator’s. (This has a structural explanation: The mayors in most municipalities are constrained by county authorities. The anomalous condition in New York is that the city subsumes five counties, making it a kind of duchy, and giving its chief executive wide discretion and, if he is so inclined, the freedom to act out grandly.)

This translates into a certain kick-assness (of the criminals as well as the liberals). What’s lost in the translation is the neurosis and eccentricity and ludicrousness and hubris of Rudy as supreme ruler. That’s in the finer details.
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There were, memorably, his bitter fights with anybody in his administration who got more publicity than he did (especially his police commissioner William Bratton, whom he fired because Bratton got credit for the drop in crime); his refusal (more childish and foot-stamping than strictly racist) to meet with virtually any elected black official during his tenure (justified with a series of odd ruminations: “If you engage in dialogue with political leaders that pander … then you end up watering down your change so much that nothing changes”); his jihadish campaign against the Brooklyn Museum of Art over a painting that mocked the Virgin Mary; and his authoritarian campaign against jaywalkers (resulting in formidable street barricades).

Check out the whole piece. It’s one of the best encapsulations I’ve read as to all the idiosyncrasies that New Yorkers know, but the rest of the country probably doesn’t, about Rudy Giuliani. Wolff thinks that there’s probably a place for Giuliani qua Nut in the presidential race and he may be right. But for Giuliani to find his place, he has to work against powerful forces of historical preference within the Republican Party. I don’t think that process will be simple, unless Giuliani’s national image has been formed in such a way as to be substantial enough that Republican voters don’t actually have to think about who he is to know him as a candidate.

Technorati Tags: 2008 Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »

The NY Times documents how Rudy Giuliani’s extensive fund raising in Texas through energy industry donors connected to his law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, could actually pose risks for the campaign. Giuliani’s firm has a long history of lobbying against environmental regulations for energy companies working in the coal, oil, gas, and nuclear fields. Many of Giuliani’s Texas donors come from the energy industry and are connected to Bracewell, as well as the Bush fund raising machine.

Actually I think this concern trolling by the Times’ Russ Buettner is pretty silly. There are only two ways that Giuliani receiving massive donations from Texas energy tycoons can hurt him: first, if the media repeatedly reports who these donors are and what responsibility they bear for the reduction in environmental protections under the Bush administration; second, if Giuliani transparently takes policy cues from these donors. The second may happen, but unless the media consistently gives coverage to these connections, they will not hurt Giuliani.

In fact, the opposite is true — the energy industry will remain a deep, steady stream of income for him, propelling his campaign forward. What’s more, though I’d happily be wrong, I can say with a high degree of certainty that this single Buettner article is likely going to be the only article the Times ever commissions on the connections between Giuliani and his energy industry donors.

Technorati Tags: 2008 Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »

Marc Santora and Sam Roberts of the New York Times have an article out today documenting Rudy Giuliani’s ways of talking about immigration and how, to borrow their words, his tone has shifted now that he’s in the presidential race. As mayor of New York Giuliani held what would be considered fairly liberal positions on immigration — New York has a very large immigrant community, both legal and illegal. Giuliani used to work to protect rights and services available to illegal immigrants; now he’s falling in line with the rest of the Republican field and kow-towing to the Dan Riehl wing of the Republican Party.

I’ll leave aside that if this article were written by Adam Nagourney about a position held by a top-tier Democratic candidate, Giuliani’s shift to the right on an issue important to the far right of the Republican base, his rhetorical and philosophical move would have been repeatedly described as “flip-flopping.”

What concerns me is that for however bad Giuliani was as mayor of New York before 9/11 (watertiger has a lot on this) he has shifted positions on one of the few issues where his old stance could actually add substance and value to the Republican Party’s debate on immigration. “In the 1990s, Mr. Giuliani saw the city’s great number of immigrants as integral to the work force and a politically potent key to the resurgence of a struggling New York.” The same could be said for America. Those that try to gloss over the value of immigrants in the fabric of American life do so at the peril of the middle class, as the Drum Major Institute extensively reports. I believe that there is a real space for Republicans who want to talk about immigration but aren’t going to go the route of confounding Mexican laborers with Al Qaeda terrorists.

Giuliani would have been the natural guy to pull the conversation back towards the sensible. His tough on crime veneer did not diminish his ability to say the right things about immigration when he was mayor. After all, the place that the debate needs to go is the place where Giuliani used to be.

But for Giuliani to be a serious contender for the Republican nomination, he has to appease anti-immigration voters in Iowa and South Carolina and answer questions about immigration with tough, law and order style language. Does it mean that he is actually believing what he says? Who knows. He’s definitely not saying what he used to believe, though, as Santora and Roberts well document. That signals a loss in the debate within the Republican Party on immigration and subsequently will decrease the chance that the national dialogue on immigration includes sober voices from the right on policy.

Technorati Tags: Dan Riehl, immigration reform, Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani | 3 Comments »

I recently had a conversation with a proprietor of a political web consulting company that designs campaign websites for candidates. He had been contacted by a staffer for Fred Thompson about building a campaign website for the former senator from Tennessee. It is highly unusual for someone who isn’t considering running for president to be requesting bids on building out their website; ergo, Thompson is laying infrastructural groundwork for a presidential run.

One last thing: the company Thompson was asking to build his website is Democratic, with only Democrats and liberal organizations on their client list.

That’s either a statement about Thompson’s lack of commitment to supporting Republican businesses or the sorry state of the Republican online campaigning infrastructure. I’d lean towards the latter, but then again I wouldn’t be personally hurt if it was the former.

Technorati Tags: 2008 Presidential election, Fred Thompson

Fred Thompson | 1 Comment »

Mike Turk, writing at techPresident, casts serious doubts on the credibility of the Romney campaign’s claim of $7.2 million raised online ($3.3 million in website donations, $3.8 million in online donation pledges). I won’t recap the whole post, but Turk provides pretty clear evidence through analyzing average donations, donation size, web traffic and simple comparisons between other campaigns online donation successes to make it clear that Romney’s large online donation numbers in no way signify a massive grassroots campaign in support of him.

If you assume the overwhelming majority of of the $3,365,625 in “pure and simple” online fundraising was small dollar donations (which you have to because it takes a lot of $25 contributions to balance $2,300 to get a $100 average), Romney would have to have the most successful Internet fundraising effort ever run by anyone (including Democrats), together with the worst direct mail and telemarketing campaign in the history of politics. (Telemarketing and direct mail donors are typically small dollar gifts) There is no way that number represents “pure and simple” website giving. The math just doesn’t support the claim.
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This is a large dollar candidate, not an Internet candidate. No matter how you cook the books, Mitt, that dog doesn’t hunt, either.

Read the whole post — it’s a reminder that campaigns cannot try to deceive the public about where their support comes from and what it means. In the internet age, these claims are easy to prove false.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney

Internet Operations, Mitt Romney | 4 Comments »