…as if.

Have a look at the results from New Hampshire last night. The Great Reagan-like Hope was decisively in seventh place in New Hampshre.  In fact, “Total Write-Ins” got 1,300 votes more than the wise-cracking actor who once played a senator on C-SPAN2.

That means instead of voting for Fred Thompson, more of New Hampshire’s discerning primary voters were interested in writing in some random candidate for president like Tinky Winky, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, or perhaps even Democratic candidates selected by Republican voters who didn’t want to change their registration.

Just you wait for South Carolina. It’s all going to turn around in South Carolina his people insist. But if you look in the latest polls, he’s not even registering.

So please please please help Fred fill up the red truck.

Seriously, isn’t it a little scary that his campaign would think it’s a good idea to even engage in visual metaphors that hint that the vessel of the campaign is running out of gas? When you look at the latest fundraising appeal, it appears that Thompson is working out of his home, maybe because paying the rent on a campaign office can’t compete with rising gas prices, and he’s going to have to do a lot of driving around the Palmetto State if he’s going to be able to convince the state’s voters to choose him over Total Write-Ins.

Fred Thompson, New Hampshire, South Carolina | 2 Comments »

Bay Buchanan was on CNN this morning all but conceding Mitt Romney’s defeat to John McCain in the New Hampshire primary.  She intimated that the Arizona senator would prove himself to be a one-state winner, with echoes of 2000.  Then she argued that Mitt Romney would show that he’s the nominee through a Michigan victory.

I wish I could also get paid a lot of money to rationalize losing. It’s about as likely that Romney is going to put together a victory through Michigan as it is that his father actually marched with Martin Luther King in the 1960s.

It’s been awhile since there was any polling done in the state.  But the most recent measures did not look good for Mitt – Rasmussen’s Dec. 8 poll showed Huckabee taking the lead, and we all know what happened in the last state where that occurred.  What’s more, it appears that Michiganders were so enamored of Romney after the October debate in Dearborn that they put Rudy Giuliani ahead of him in a November poll.

It’s worth bearing in mind that Michigan has lost half of its delegates for bucking Republican Party rules and moving the date of the primary up to Jan. 15.  That means that even if Romney wins, he won’t be able to claim a decisive delegate count as evidence of his momentum.

So what’s really going on out there in Michigan?  McCain is making a significant press, according to the Ann Arbor News, with two events planned in the state over the coming week.  Dawson Bell at the Detroit Free Press points out that McCain has a variety of endorsements in the state, as well as organization to put up a fight against Romney.  And he also warns of the unsettled state of the Republican electorate, highlighting Huckabee’s recent gains among the state’s religious conservatives.  That can’t be good news for Romney, whose loss of “values voters” to Huckabee in Iowa proved his undoing.  In a state that has had its economy sundered by the global marketplace, the former Arkansas Governor’s cracks about not wanting to elect the guy that took your job away from you ought to ring true.

For a formerly presumptive frontrunner who told us he’d run away with the early contests, telling us you’ll pull it out in the third real contest (since not even Romney is trumpeting his Wyoming victory) doesn’t sound too hopeful.  It might be time to pull the family car into the rest stop and hose down the dog again.

John McCain, Michigan, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney | 1 Comment »

With Iowa ready to explode in an ethanol-fuled burst of Caucus-going, the editors of the Right’s Field have been chatting amongst themselves about what we think will go down.  And I’m personally ready to put my predictions out in the open.

In Iowa, it’s going to be Romney by a nose with Huckabee right behind him, and McCain not too far off, but a decisive third.  And it’s going to shake out a similar way in New Hampshire, with Romney taking it, but McCain not far behind him again.

Based on this prediction, you might conclude that I think Romney is going to run away with the nomination, but that’s uncertain.  What is certain that after a pair of “first in the nation” contests that prove indecisive, Iowa and New Hampshire, at least on the GOP side, will prove they’re no longer the testing grounds of presidential politics.  States like Wyoming, Florida, and Michigan are already in full-on revolt against the current primary system, and the chorus they are building will only get louder after 2008.  With a pair of narrow margins of victory for one candidate in the two states, Iowans and New Hampshireans will show that they are just as conflicted about the candidates as the rest of the country, and not the decisive, sound-minded judges of political character that we have assumed them to be.

But don’t take my word for it, look at what the campaigns themselves are doing.  The most recent evidence is the anti-Mormon smear campaign against Mitt Romney in South Carolina uncovered by CNN.  They reported yesterday on the phony holiday greeting sent to South Carolinians by “the Romney family” that plays up the Mormon faith’s history of polygamy.

What the tactic says is that while we’re a couple of weeks out from South Carolina, the campaigns are convinced that there will be no decisive victory in the Hawkeye or the Granite States for the Republican field.  It’s going to be a bruising two months, especially for the Republicans, and the winner is going to have to marshal limited momentum into deft organization as February’s “national primary” day speeds forward like a mack truck.  While it’s going to be fun to watch, it’ll be bad for those Iowa and New Hampshire power brokers grasping to hold onto their current positions.

Iowa, Mitt Romney, New Hampshire, South Carolina | 3 Comments »

Funny when you can’t really tell a gaffe from a tongue-in-cheek answer. Fred Thompson was asked by the AP what he considered his prized possession. The answer: “Trophy wife.”

(Thanks, Greg.)

And stock in Pfizer, which owns Viagra, surges in after hours trading!

Here are a few of the other favorite things of our Republican hopefuls:

REPUBLICANS:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani: “My grandfather’s pocket watch.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: “Probably my Tobias bass guitar or maybe, I’ve got a handmade musket rifle that was made by a guy in Eureka Springs, Ark. I’ve hunted turkey with it. It’s really an amazing firearm. Probably one of those two as far as just real heirlooms.”

Arizona Sen. John McCain: “I have a baseball signed by Ted Williams, my childhood hero, a Marine pilot as well.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: 1962 Rambler American, which his sons bought for him. “The last year that my dad was president of American Motors and made Ramblers was 1962, so it’s a connection with my dad and that era.”

Here’s your man Mitt’s favorite car:

Brings to mind that “boxy but good” joke from the movie Crazy People.

Or maybe that ought to be the campaign’s new slogan: “Drive back to simpler times before many inferior American brands were out of business. Vote Mitt Romney.”

But ultimately, you just need to imagine a dog in a carrier strapped to the top of the thing to complete the picture.

Election 2008, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani | 6 Comments »

Maybe I was wrong.

Rudy Giuliani’s advisers announced in November that they would rely on a decisive victory in Florida to rocket him toward the Republican nomination for president. That dream of orange-tinged momentum conquering all may be over if the snapshot presented by the latest Rasmussen poll is reliable.

Rasmussen puts Giuliani in third place in Florida, behind Mitt Romney at second and Mike Huckabee in first place. Huckabee gets 27% of voters, and Giuliani now only wins over 19%.

It would appear that news of the “shag fund” has taken Giuliani down a peg. At last voters who were formerly able to overlook the former New York City Mayor’s past peccadilloes believe that his purported security credentials are less important than the scandals left in his wake. Combined with the state’s religious conservatives thinking they have finally found their man in Huckabee, it’s awful, awful news for Giuliani.

If there is any silver-lining here, it’s that Rasmussen says that less than half of the voters are certain that Huckabee or Romney (or anyone else for that matter) are their final picks, and for 18% of the voters who said they had a second choice, Giuliani was their man.

But it sounds like Giuliani is going to have to fight like hell if he’s going to get Florida’s voters back on his side. He’s got no shot of winning in Iowa or New Hampshire, and dropping Florida would represent a complete implosion of his strategy.

Florida, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani | 3 Comments »

Hey you guys – stop making jokes about Mrs. Paul’s balls.

Tomorrow, you may remember, is the deadline to vote for Yankee Magazine’s cookie primary.  And which candidate’s recipe is the winner?  Oh, you didn’t have to think about that one too hard, did you?

Because with just shy of 10,000 votes on the night of December 13, Carol Paul’s Apricot-Coconut Balls have received 93% of the vote!  The Cookie Monster, between stuffing Mrs. Paul’s balls in his mouth, was apparently stuffing the cookie primary ballot box, too. As goes Mrs. Paul’s balls, so goes the nation?

Alas, while the Paul fans may be gearing up for their cookie party, they can’t declare decisive victory yet.  We’ll have to leave that to our panel of expert tasters at Southern New Hampshire University who will be like a small caucus of voters themselves.

In the meanwhile, for those of you who will fix every online Ron Paul-related vote that you can, just remember not to eat too many of Mrs. Paul’s balls or you’ll turn into a blimp.

New Hampshire, Ron Paul | No Comments »

Mitt Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, just bought out Clear Channel, the gargantuan owner of talk radio stations:

Clear Channel Communications, Inc. (NYSE: CCU), a global leader in the out-of-home advertising industry, today announced the execution of a definitive merger agreement with a group led by Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. and Bain Capital Partners, LLC, pursuant to which the group will acquire Clear Channel in a transaction with a total value of approximately $26.7 billion, including the assumption or repayment of approximately $8.0 billion of net debt.

John Connaughton, Bain’s managing partner who is quoted in the press release, is a donor to Romney’s campaign. So is Scott Sperling, who represents Lee Partners and speaks for that end of the merger.

More from Jason Rosenbaum at The Seminal:

Still, seeing as how Clear Channel hosts Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity and controls over 1,000 TV and radio stations nationwide, does anyone here really think Romney won’t use this newfound pedestal to promote his candidacy, however subtly?

Who says anything about subtle?  Governor Romney, say hello to Prime Minister Berlusconi!  If he gets the nod, I can’t wait to see how right wing talk radio is going to be turned into a turnout machine.

Mitt Romney | 1 Comment »

So one of the great things about being an anti-immigrant xenophobe in a nation of immigrants is that you get to point to great things done by Americans born in other nations and take credit for them, and blame immigrants for all the bad things they may or may not be responsible for.

Consider Duncan Hunter in yesterday’s Republican debate in Iowa when he was asked to outline his education policy:

REP. HUNTER: Three words: Jaime Escalante and inspiration. Jaime Escalante was a great math teacher who in the barrio of Los Angeles taught young kids calculus, and he taught them so well that the school district called up and said, “We got a problem. We think your kids are cheating on the tests.” And he said, “Test them again.” And he established this incredible system of calculus in the school district by inspiring young people.

How many of us have — have our careers — can — can point back to a teacher and say, “That teacher inspired me”? What we have to do is take away the bureaucratic credentialing of teachers and allow people who are aerospace engineers and — and pilots and scientists and retired folks to come in and inspire young people in third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Let — let’s inspire them to reach for the stars and give them the incentive to work hard enough to get there — inspiration, changing the credentialing system, and school choice.

MS. WASHBURN: Hasn’t that teacher since left the public school system?

REP. HUNTER: And you know why? I read the — the — the post- mortem on Jaime Escalante is that the unions ran him out of the school district, and I think that goes right to one of the — one of the big problems that we have.

You’ve got to hand it to Hunter for getting the shot in at the teachers’ unions. But when you consider where Border Wall Hunter stands on immigration, there are some inconvenient facts that we might want to consider when he holds up Dr. Escalante as an inspirational example to sketch out his education policy:

• Dr. Escalante did not speak English when he came to the United States from Bolivia by way of Puerto Rico looking for work
• Dr. Escalante took a job with an electronics company that an American citizen probably could have performed
• 99% of the students at Garfield High where Dr. Escalante’s inspirational story began are of Latino origin, and while the LA Unified School District doesn’t report on this, I bet you a whole lot of them did not immigrate to this country legally

None of that is skin off my back, but in an America led by Duncan Hunter, or any of the other hotheads who are trying to “out Tancredo Tancredo,” I suspect that you’d see fewer Jaime Escalantes. Men of his mettle, because they would face more barriers to entry in our country, would not be able to reach out to and educate hundreds of thousands of Latino students who are studying in poor schools because we want to keep them and their families part of our underground economy.

Duncan Hunter, Presidential Debates, Tom Tancredo | 3 Comments »

Or maybe make that a smart alexandra.

Steve Clemons furnishes us with an e-mail exchange between Arkansas First Lady Janet Huckabee, wife of the former governor and now presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, and an Arkansan.

The constituent objected to Mrs. Huckabee volunteering at a polling place on an election day, and Mrs. Huckabee herself wrote back:

I received your e-mail concerning my working at the polls. I am sure that you understand that if I can pay taxes and serve on a jury, I certainly can work on the polls. I , by the way, volunteer at several charities and the Waffle House has already said they would give me a job.

I guess context is necessary here – Mrs. Huckabee had volunteer-waitressed at a Waffle House for a charity event.   The constituent proposed she go take on some part-time work at the Waffle House if she needed to fill up her time.

But we’re beginning to see a trend here, what with Huckabee cracking wise throughout recent debates, like his suggestions that we send Hillary to Mars and arguing that Jesus was too smart to run for office. I guess you can say it runs through the length of the Huckabee household.

And that could be one smart-lipped White House some day.  Of course, it also sounds like the kind of sassy southern family that might appear in all manner of sitcoms, and it makes you wonder if Huckabee’s campaign and eventual narrative is also going to sound almost like something that’s right of Hollywood.

Arkansas, Mike Huckabee | No Comments »

Duncan Hunter is trying to pull Mitt Romney into some China-related brambles, and in doing so, is more or less accusing the former Massachusetts Governor of selling out America’s security.  See Bill Gertz in today’s Washington Times:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is being asked to intervene with the company he founded to block the proposed merger between 3Com and China’s Huawei Technologies.

The request was made in a letter sent last week by Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee [sic], opposing the purchase of 3Com Corp. by China’s Huawei Technologies Co., linked to past industrial espionage and support for America’s enemies. Bain Capital, the investment firm founded by Mr. Romney, is leading the merger, with Huawei taking a minority stake in the deal in an apparent bid to avoid national security scrutiny.

A classified U.S. intelligence assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, disclosed by The Washington Times, stated that the 3Com-Huawei deal poses a threat to U.S. national security. The assessment was sent to the Treasury Department-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is reviewing the merger.

“Your company, Bain Capital, is taking on a ’strategic partner,’ Huawei, in the acquisition of 3Com,” Mr. Hunter wrote, noting that Huawei has close ties to the Chinese military and aided Saddam Hussein and the Taliban.

Mr. Hunter said even though Mr. Romney no longer controls Bain, “the contributions you have received from its principals indicate that your influence within the company remains strong.”

So far, it would appear Hunter hasn’t made a stink about this in the Congressional context, which would almost certainly provoke an ethics complaint against him – you can’t send your electoral opponent a complaint on Congressional letterhead.

But it’s an interesting example of what happens when you put a long-serving, ultra-wonkish congressman in the position of presidential candidate.  Warning Americans about China threatening our national security by gobbling up our industrial base is daily language for Hunter and the company he keeps.  For the rest of us, it just sounds unglued and weird.  The only attention Hunter is likely to attract with this move will come from the 1% who already support him – people who get angry every time they see the words “Mushu Pork.”

And don’t expect this question to hang around Romney’s neck the way Giuliani’s consulting hi jinks grappled onto him.  Romney hasn’t headed up Bain Capital since 1998.

Still, you have to wonder if Giuliani and the others will try to use this against him – any knife in a fight, they say.

Duncan Hunter, Mitt Romney | 1 Comment »