This is it. Today could very likely determine who emerges from the rabid dog pile known as The Right’s Field, and leads the Republican Party to a win, a loss, or a tie (?) in the general election in November.

Who will win today?

Will it be Mittens Romney?

Will it be Walnuts McCain?

Will 9iu11ani somehow make a comeback?

Or will non-candidate Fred Thompson and Ron Paul both beat Rudy?

Will Rudy drop out tomorrow?

Will lowercase matt disappear from The Right’s Field?

Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Florida | 12 Comments »

Mitt Romney went into his oppo research bag of tricks and found this obvious nugget:

Republican Mitt Romney took aim at John McCain Monday over reports he once considered signing on to John Kerry’s presidential ticket, the latest effort by the Massachusetts Republican to paint his chief rival as an inconsistent and unpredictable conservative.

“I do recall a story that he was thinking about being John Kerry’s running mate — he gave that some thought,” Romney said at an early-morning rally in West Palm Beach. “Had someone asked me that question, there would not have been a nanosecond of thought about it — It would’ve been an immediate laugh. And of course, if someone asked him if he would consider me as a running mate, he would have also laughed immediately.”

“So, we are different,” Romney continued. “I’m conservative.”

I know that everything St. McCain has done immediately goes down the media memory hole, but in 2001 he was openly talking about leaving the Republican Party, and in 2004 McCain actually approached Kerry about joining the ticket as the Vice Presidential nominee.

Romney is obviously pulling out all the stops, because in recent days McCain has regained momentum in Florida, due in part to endorsements from Senator Mel Martinez and the popular governor Charlie Crist. But it is a closed Republican primary, and this re-hash of McCain’s past flirtations with the Democratic Party can be combined with this column alleging that McCain would never nominate an open partisan like Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court to confirm the suspicions many Republicans have about the Arizona Senator.

Fund wrote that “Mr. McCain has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because ‘he wore his conservatism on his sleeve.’”

Commenters at conservative blogs such as the The Corner on National Review Online have been churning all morning:

McCain has got to explain himself to conservatives now, on Alito for sure, and on much else as well. While I’m unquestionably concerned about what a McCain nomination might mean for the Republican coalition, I’m not one of those who feels it would necessarily be disastrous. On the contrary, I can see scenarios where McCain and conservatives could patch things up rather well. But this Alito thing is serious. It bugs me, and I need to know more, quickly. McCain needs to forthrightly address conservatives concerns on this and other issues, and he needs to do it before Super Tuesday.

It seems to me that this all is coming a bit late. The winner in Florida is going to absolutely have a leg up going into Super Tuesday, and the time for Romney to stop McCain’s momentum was a few days earlier.

Florida, John McCain, Mitt Romney | No Comments »

You see, now even his campaign says so. Everything bad is good, two plus two equals five, and failing to be endorsed by anyone or anything of any note in the state you’ve staked your presidential bid on means you are qualified to be America’s main man:

Election 2008, Florida, Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »

My grandfather always said that after three days, houseguests and fish start to smell the same. I guess in the case of Florida and the presidential election, it’s three months.

It’s been close to three months since Rudy Giuliani declared that his road to the White House marched up the Florida Turnpike. And now Governor Charlie Crist has said, “Hey Rudy, it’s been nice having you here. If you could take the sheets off the bed and put them in the laundry hamper on your way out the door, we’d appreciate it.”

How else can we read Crist’s endorsement of Sen. John McCain to be the Republican nominee yesterday? He’s saying to Giuliani that it’s time to pack your bags, get on that Fort Lauderdale to JFK flight on JetBlue, and head back to New York and the private sector.

All those cafe con leches and all that key lime pie didn’t mean much to Florida’s political establishment.

This comes as something of a shock to Team Rudy. Giuliani believed he had brought the best possible gift to his hosts - a promise that he’ll set up a National Catastrophic Insurance Fund for the hurricane-prone state, which is Crist’s favorite policy hobby horse. By promising to help property-owners recover their losses from big storms, Giuliani was convinced that he’d get Floridians, including Crist, in his pocket.

After all, according to Giuliani, McCain says that he’s opposed to a national catastrophe fund. How could Crist, or Floridians, support a candidate who opposes one of their top national policy priorities?

Instead, it’s apparently been more like Hurricane Rudy moving up the length of the peninsula. Most Floridians have simply been ducking for cover, waiting for the storm to pass, and hoping the Spanish tiles will still be up on their rooftops when it’s over.

The calculation here seems to be one of viability. According to Fox News, Crist had promised Giuliani an endorsement until New Hampshire, where the New Yorker finished so poorly in the polls. And so it appears that Rudy’s last one out of the gate, first one across the finish line strategy caused Crist and other Republican Party leaders to question his real chances of picking up across the country.

But what’s most significant about this endorsement is what it means for McCain. As a former official in the Jeb Bush administration, Crist is closer to the Bush dynasty than many of McCain’s supporters. Crist’s thumbs up will allow the Arizona senator to put on the mantle of true conservative and party leader with the backing of his party’s power structure. And if Crist can help McCain appear closer to the Bush family and their core Republican supporters, it will allow him to once and for all overcome the argument that he only gets the votes of independents and moderate Republicans. That’s what he must do if he’s going to build the coalition he needs to credibly claim he can defeat the Democrats in November.

Florida, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani | No Comments »

The campaign for the Republican nomination doesn’t have any clear winners yet. But it does have its obvious losers. Minor candidates like Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo have bowed out, and Fred Thompson’s exit can’t be far off. What we’re all waiting for now is to see whether Jan. 29’s contest in Florida will confirm that Rudy Giuliani has become as irrelevant as Thompson, or give him the shot in the arm he’s hungering for.

But it need not be that way. The current front runners who have worked to capitalize on the calendar’s early votes can make Republican primary goers forget Giuliani if they bypass the state the way that Giuliani has sat out the contests in which they have succeeded. Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee should skip Florida.

The conventional wisdom now says that Florida’s primary will crown a leader heading into Feb. 5’s Super Duper Tuesday and it’s 1000+ delegates. And if you look at the calendars for McCain and Romney, their strategists would appear to agree.

But Florida will do no such thing. Even if Giuliani is defeated by one of his competitors in the Sunshine State, the contest is likely to be a close one. It will be difficult for any of the candidates to claim strong momentum from a decisive victory if they only take the state’s 57 delegates by a few thousand votes.

Instead, a victory in Florida that appears hard won by Giuliani will move him back into the column of seeming viability. And lack of viability for Giuliani’s campaign appears to be confirmed over and over again in recent polls results. While Romney more or less closed up shop in South Carolina, he still received a reasonable share of votes. Giuliani, on the other hand, came in behind Ron Paul once again, showing that all but the zaniest of Republican primary voters think that “America’s mayor” isn’t the right man to lead their party.

Giuliani wants to be out of that column, and he’s setting up Florida as his Waterloo. He’s sort of like an 18-year-old bully with a muscle car. He’ll challenge you to a game of chicken on the outskirts of town late at night to show you up in front of all the other kids in town. And because his car is meaner than yours and he spends every day working on it, he very well could win.

But that victory will only mean a lot if he runs you off the road in front of that big audience. And if you don’t show, and they sit out the game of chicken, too, the bully’s cry of victory sounds pretty hollow.

A collective decision to skip Florida would be a lot like everyone deciding they have something better to do than watch the bully play chicken. It would represent the three leading candidates saying they aren’t willing to play the game as the Giuliani campaign is trying to dictate it. Instead, the candidates could say they were getting ready for the big dance, which won’t come until Feb. 5.

Thus the other Republicans ought to really make Florida a knock-out punch against Giuliani’s campaign. The latest polls seem to indicate that even if Rudy wins, it’s going to be a close one for him. And that’s after the other candidates have done the hard work of winning contests in other states and haven’t spent too much time in Florida. Giuliani achieving a difficult victory against challengers who don’t even bother showing up will complete his transformation into an eccentric irrelevancy who is unproven in other states. By letting him have this one and focusing on the national primary day, Romney, McCain, and Huckabee can spend the next two weeks proving they are nationally palatable to the Republican Party and further thin out their herd.

Florida, Rudy Giuliani | 8 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 »

With yesterday’s Des Moines Register poll showing former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee out in the lead for the first time, some members of the Republican base must be pinching themselves to make sure it’s not a dream. And often, the question that pundits want to answer is who does this hurt?

But if I may offer an alternative idea, it might be more interesting to wonder who this development helps. And I think the answer could be Rudy Giuliani.

New York City’s former mayor and the Hamptons’ favorite visitor has all but given up on winning any of the first wave of primaries/caucuses. His staff announced in November that Giuliani will enter the February 5 “national primary” with a lead in the total number of delegates because he will win Florida, a large state with a winner take all primary. Once Giuliani wins Florida on January 29, they say, he will have a higher delegate total going into the Republican National Convention than any of his opponents who win the first set of races. And he’ll build on that momentum to seal the deal on February 5 when 22 states will pick their candidates.

Huckabee’s gains could help Giuliani work this strategy out. While Huckabee is leading in the polls in Iowa, no one is predicting he’s going to run away with January’s early Republican contests. The real impact of this development is that Huckabee may weaken the three “frontrunners” other than Giuliani, that is Romney, McCain, and Thompson. The four are competing for the moniker of “real conservative” much more than Giuliani ever has, and Huckabee’s rise is most likely taking away from their votes.

So what scenario could come to pass? Huckabee, McCain, or Romney could jostle for victory in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina with none winning a decisive victory. Giuliani will head into Florida, where polls show him doing fine, and win the first decisive victory of the campaign. Ultimately, that’s what Giuliani’s people may be hoping for.

But don’t worry: Huckabee is getting drawn into the sights of his opponents. The misty eyed gazes at Huckabee, the “gee, there still are some honest Republicans out there” carpet the media has rolled out, these things will soon get vacuumed up by the desire for a bad story to go with the good.

Take a look at this laundry list of Huckabee’s transgressions ginned up by the San Diego Union Tribune:

Used campaign funds to pay himself $14,000 for being his own media consultant.

Used campaign funds to pay himself $43,000 for use of his private plane while attempting to hide what the payment was actually in return for.

Used an account set up to cover operational costs of the governor’s mansion to pay such obviously personal expenses as fast-food and dry-cleaning bills.

Set up a nonprofit organization that paid him $23,500 without disclosing the source of the money.

Attempted to take $70,000 of furniture with him when moving out of the governor’s mansion.

Took more than 130 gifts worth more than $300,000 – while suing to overturn a law that made him disclose the gifts.

We could go on in this vein, but space is limited. The bottom line: Mike Huckabee has an awful lot of explaining to do. And neither voters nor the national media should let the man Arkansas journalists call the “Huckster” get away with pretending that tough questions over his tawdry ethics record amount to mudslinging.

That may be all the anchor Huckabee needs to get knocked down a peg or two. And for a man who never got that high up the ladder, that might be enough.

Election 2008, Florida, Iowa, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani | 6 Comments »

Continuing the GOP’s effort to remake itself as the “Whites Only” party, Fred Thompson suggested earlier this month that he’d abolish birthright citizenship, thus overturning one of the foundational principles of the American melting pot. Now the Orlando Sentinel reports that Thompson’s ill-conceived remarks have stirred up yet more anger among Hispanics in Florida:

Thompson’s comments have angered Hispanic leaders — many of them Republicans — who say they are a crass attempt to court the GOP base. […]

“It’s not just ramping up the rhetoric,” said Alex Villalobos, a Republican state senator from Miami. “It’s pandering to extremists.”

State Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, while not criticizing any candidate directly, called the idea a “xenophobic” notion that could drive Hispanic voters from the GOP.

“At best, this would be seen as mean-spirited,” he said. “At worst, it’s seen as bigotry.”

Republicans in recent years have shown a remarkable ability to divide themselves by their own extremism. In Kansas, the GOP surrendered its natural majority as fundamentalist radicals drove moderates into the ranks of the Democratic Party. Will the Republicans’ constant pandering to the nativist white base force a similar outmigration among Hispanic party members in Florida?

Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Enquirer takes a look at the potential consequences of the Republican snub of minority voters for the party’s chances in Ohio. Bush won the Buckeye state in 2004 thanks in large part to his ability to increase his share of the African-American vote there to 16%. The Republican candidate in 2008 looks unlikely to repeat such a performance, thanks to the GOP’s process of ethnic self-cleansing.

Ohio, Fred Thompson, Florida | 4 Comments »

Florida has been a total disaster for FDT.

Apparently, Fred Thompson didn’t know possible oil drilling in the Everglades is a big issue in Florida.

Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson seemed taken by surprise when asked Tuesday about oil drilling in the Everglades, apparently unaware it’s been a major Florida issue.

Before answering, he laughed at the question.

“Gosh, no one has told me that there’s any major reserves in the Everglades, but maybe that’s one of the things I need to learn while I’m down here,” Thompson said after talking over state issues with Gov. Charlie Crist. [emphasis added]

Just as an FYI to FDT before he comes out to California: offshore drilling is a big deal here, too.

Remember, this guy is breaking his way into the top-tier of Republican candidates.

Grandpa Fred strikes again.

Fred Thompson, Florida | 9 Comments »

World Net Daily puts a literary spin on the failure of the “Values Voter Debate”:

With “invisible” candidates who failed to show up getting grilled with questions, hundreds of empty seats, not a single mainstream television network on hand, and the name of God invoked countless times, the “unseen world” clearly dominated last night’s Republican presidential debate in South Florida.

High-profile contenders Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson all chose not to participate, though each had an empty podium with his name displayed on stage to emphasize his absence.

You might have thought all that nothingness would drive the organizers to atheism — certainly it doesn’t say much for their political clout.

The second tier was out in force, at any rate, and Mike Huckabee led the pack, winning the straw poll. Huckabee, it might seem, has nothing to lose by pandering to a religious right that has been feeling neglected lately, though if he were somehow to catapult himself to the nomination, such associations might come back to damage his image as a new and different kind of evangelical politician.

If you missed the debate, or if your streaming video link didn’t work (mine didn’t), you can find the questions here. One is by a gentleman from an organization called “Americans for Truth About Homosexuality.” Sadly, my gay friends and family members inform me that the truth about homosexuality is not nearly as exciting as you might think. But I digress. Video clips will be up at the VVD website, I presume, so you can watch the parade of moral warriors demanding, on behalf of invisible constituencies, just what the invisible candidates plan to do about the imaginary problems confronting their made-up version of America.

Florida, Ron Paul, Fred Thompson, Presidential Debates, Alan Keyes, John H. Cox, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback, John McCain, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, Mitt Romney | 4 Comments »