If it was on the ballot in Iowa, New Hampshire, or anywhere in the country, None of the Above would win in a laugher.

Three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Republicans voters across the country appear uninspired by their field of presidential candidates, with a vast majority saying they have not made a final decision about who to support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

None of the Republican candidates is viewed favorably by even half of the Republican electorate, the poll found. In a sign of the fluidity of the race, one candidate who had barely registered in early polls several months ago, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, is now locked in a tight contest nationally with Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

Here’s my favorite part:

Libby Bass, 67, a Republican poll respondent from Woodbine, Georgia, said in a follow-up interview that she was weary of hearing the Republicans argue with one another, and that she was not ready to make a decision. “They’re not telling us what their plans or goals are; they’re just mimicking each other,” she said. “I’m waiting to see if someone comes up with something that will change my mind.

Keep waiting, Libby. In fact, the race is about to enter the nasty phase, as the opportunity afforded by no clear frontrunner will yield all sorts of negative attacks. I’m eagerly anticipating the attack ad on “None of the above.”

“None of the Above CLAIMS to be the candidate that unites all Republicans. But where does he REALLY stand on the issues? Aren’t people supporting nobody simply because they don’t like anybody else? None of the Above: wrong for America.”

Mike Huckabee, Other Candidates, Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »

Last week, comedian Stephen Colbert announced his intention to run in both the Republican and Democratic primaries, only in his native state of South Carolina. Colbert instructed faithful fans in the state to organize a petition seeking enough signatures to be on the ballot next year.

Yesterday, he appeared on NBC News’ Meet the Press with Tim Russert and let the cat out of the bag that his goal is really to obtain at least one delegate at either convention.

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza looks at national polling with Stephen Colbert’s name with both parties. Not surprisingly, Colbert performs much better among Democrats than Republicans. On the Democratic ticket, Colbert received 2.7 percent of the vote, good enough to be ahead of Senator Joe Biden, Governor Bill Richardson, Representative Dennis Kucinich and former Senator Mike Gravel.

He was less lucky in the Republican field, where he took less than 1 percent of the vote behind even longshot candidates like Reps. Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani led the Republican field with 29 percent, followed by former Gov. Mitt Romney at 12 percent, former Sen. Fred Thompson (11 percent) and Sen. John McCain (10 percent).

Joshua Green of The Atlantic dissected the potential army of Colbert supporters in South Carolina.

Colbert’s viewers tend to be young, white, educated, and male. Their median age is 37 and there’s a 60/40 male-female split. So far this year, he’s drawn a nightly audience that averages 1.3 million viewers nationwide, 874,000 of them in the 18-49 year-old demographic. (Research leaked to me by Will Feltus, a national ad buyer, shows that Colbert’s viewers are the same demographic targeted by beer marketers: men ages 18 to 34 who are “above-average consumers of adult beverages.”) How many of them live in South Carolina? The U.S. Census bureau says South Carolina has about 1.4 percent of the nation’s population, which would suggest that Colbert has about 12,200 viewers there. [...]

Good sport that he is, Graham crunched the numbers anyway. About 2.4 million people voted in the last presidential election, only a fraction of whom will vote in the primaries. Graham estimated that about 600,000 will turn out for the Republican primary and about 350,000 for the Democratic primary. Colbert’s focus is on younger voters. Graham made a back-of-the-envelope calculation that 260,000 people between the ages of 18 and 44 will vote in both primaries: 169,000 in the Republican primary and 91,000 in the Democratic primary. That’s Colbert’s target.

Read the full article.

Other Candidates | 2 Comments »

It’s clear that the Republicans are going so crazy at the prospect of losing in 2008 that they’re searching under every rock and in every nook and cranny for a new savior, a new great (extremely) white hope. Today’s entry is General Peter Pace, for no other reason, apparently, than that he sufficiently hates the gay. This is from WorldNutDaily’s Joseph Farah, who lets his slip show and admits that nothing is a more important quality in a President than abject, irrational hatred.

What Pace had said last March wasn’t exactly controversial in my eyes: “I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.” […]

You know Pace speaks for the vast majority of Americas on this issue, but most today would be too intimidated by the forces of political correctness to say it so forcefully and unflinchingly. […]

And that’s why I wish a good man like Peter Pace would consider serving his country one more time — not in uniform, but as commander in chief.

Is it too late for 2008?

How about a draft Peter Pace movement?

I don’t know where he stands on the other major issues of the day, but he is clearly a man of courage and conviction. And that’s a good start.

The military fetish from the Republicans is getting to be a little much. Pace is at least the third general floated for the Republican ticket, joining Tommy Franks and David Petraeus. No mention of any additional quality or characteristic is given
(I mean besides gay-bashing); it’s just that they were in the military (and presided over the greatest military catastrophe of several generations, although it’s arguable whose fault that is). I should remind you that when Democrats run military veterans, returning war heroes, and even generals, they are slandered and defamed and even called phony soldiers.

This reeks of desperation more than anything else. And it does show that the political bench for Republicans is on fire, leading them to a military one.

Other Candidates | 1 Comment »

Christian conservatives met in Salt Lake City on Saturday to discuss the possibility of backing a third-party candidate should the Republican Party nominate a pro-choice candidate, namely Rudy Giuliani.

The group making the threat, which came together Saturday in Salt Lake City during a break-away gathering during a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy, includes Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who is perhaps the most influential of the group, as well as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, the direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie and dozens of other politically-oriented conservative Christians, participants said. Almost everyone present expressed support for a written resolution that “if the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate we will consider running a third party candidate.”

However, not everyone in the Christian Right are firmly behind running a third-party candidate — yet.

Rev. Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network, for example, has provided relatively generous coverage to Mr. Giuliani and his campaign. Gary Bauer, a Christian conservative political advocate and a Republican primary candidate eight years ago, said that, speaking by phone to the meeting, he urged the group to proceed with caution. “I can’t think of a bigger disaster for social conservatives, defense conservatives, and economic conservatives than Hillary Clinton in the White House,” Mr. Bauer said.

Still, he added, “But I do believe there are certain core issues for the Republican Party—low taxes, strong defense and pro life— and if we nominate some who is hostile on one of those three thing it will blow up the GOP.”

Other Candidates, Rudy Giuliani | 7 Comments »

… and it ain’t Fred Thompson, now on his third campaign manager, either. No, this candidate comes jumps into the fray leading in the polls!

Other Candidates | No Comments »

John Cox, the former Cook County GOP chairman, released a “music video” that aligns illegal immigrants to that of the 9/11 terrorists. It’s GOP fear-mongering meets cheap ’80s hair band rock.

My favorite part is where the video has several pictures of key Republicans and Democrats on the Hill and that of a storm trooper from the film Star Wars. I’m. Not. Kidding.

I’ve seen 7th grade A/V class productions better than this.

Other Candidates | 8 Comments »

Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) is mulling over a bid for the Republican presidential nomination. And why not? It’s not like the GOP field is overcrowded with aging white guys…

“He’s all about faith, lower taxes, and staying the course in Iraq,” says an adviser outside of the Senate who has been speaking to Coburn.

Doesn’t Coburn’s “adviser” know that “staying the course” is now an inoperative phrase?

Here’s more on Coburn, again via Paddy at Cliff Schecter’s blog.

In 1997, Coburn introduced a bill called the HIV Prevention Act of 1997, which would have amended the Social Security Act. The bill would have mandated HIV testing in some situations, would have allowed physicians to demand an HIV test before providing medical care, and would have allowed insurance companies to demand an HIV test as a condition of issuing health insurance.[2] [...]

Coburn said that he favored the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions[2] and that homosexuality was the biggest threat to America.

Sounds like he’d fit right in.

Other Candidates | 1 Comment »

Is that what Hagel’s hinting at? Weird.

Other Candidates | 5 Comments »

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 »

Yesterday the Senate nearly unanimously passed S.214, “Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007.” The vote was 94-2, with only Republicans Chuck Hagel and Kit Bond voting against it. The bill removes the authority of the Attorney General, granted by the Patriot Act, to appoint US attorneys without confirmation from the Senate.

I haven’t been able to find any statements Hagel or articles that explain his vote. Hagel had previously said that he had lost confidence in Gonzales because of this scandal, but this vote suggests that he still wants Gonzalez to retain power to fill US attorney vacancies.

At bare minimum Hagel’s vote shows that he will use his office to support President Bush, even if it means opposing the overwhelming majority of his Republican cohorts in the Senate.

Technorati Tags: Chuck Hagel, US Attorneys

Other Candidates | 4 Comments »