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Tom Tancredo has announced he's quitting politics—congressional politics.The Colorado congressman announced today
that he will not seek another term after his expires in 2008. You'd
think this would mean Tancredo wants to focus on his efforts to grab
the Republican presidential nod. But instead, his spokesman said his
decision was partly based on wanting to spend more time with his
grandkids.
Last time we checked, somebody doesn't run for
president to spend more time with his grandkids. If Tancredo wants out
so badly, then why is he still in it?
It may have to do with his
other reason for leaving Congress: He thinks he's accomplished all he
can on the immigration issue inside of the Capitol. Whereas he feels he
can pass the hard-line-immigration baton to other House members, he
doesn't see any other presidential candidates who share his
anti-immigrant vigor. Tancredo is willing to sully his political legacy
to enforce America's borders.
Last week, Tancredo offered Mitt
Romney a deal: If the Red Sox lost the World Series, Romney would have
to bow out of the race. But if the Rockies lost, Tancredo would drop
out. If only Romney had accepted, Tancredo would have said Adios to both of his campaigns today.
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If you haven't had your daily dose of meta, check out the new study analyzing coverage of the 2008 presidential race, conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. (If that's not quite meta enough, read the coverage
of the coverage of the coverage.) The study's general findings:
Democrats have gotten more coverage than Republicans in 2007; Barack
Obama hasn't been able to translate positive news stories into gains in
the polls; and the media isn't reporting what the public wants to hear
about. (They allegedly want substance, we give them horse-race
minutiae.)
But a few interesting details seem to have passed under our navel-gazing radar:
- Hillary
Clinton and Rudy Giuliani have more negative coverage than positive.
Yet they're both still front-runners. How is that? Tom Rosenstiel,
director of Project for Excellence in Journalism, suggested it's the
result of the frontrunners getting "scrubbed a little harder than
others." He also pointed out that both candidates, being from New York,
get more than the usual scrutiny from the New York Times, which tends to set the tone for networks, magazines, etc.
- Most Americans claim they want more debate coverage. I blinked when I saw this. What about all that debate fatigue I hear about?
- More coverage doesn't necessarily mean better poll numbers—see the Obama example above—but it does correlate with higher name recognition. Hillary and Obama had more stories written about them than any other candidates. Likewise, 78 percent of Americans could name Hillary as a candidate, and 62 percent could name Obama—higher name recognition than any of the GOP candidates. So, if I'm reading this right: people pay attention to the media, they just don't care what we say.
—The Democrats drive a higher proportion of stories about themselves than the Republicans do. An analysis of "triggers"—what causes a story to be written—shows that 57 percent of stories about Dems are inspired by the candidate or the campaign, as opposed to 46 percent in the case of Republicans. Perhaps the "right-wing message machine" could use some repairs.
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Bill
Richardson's a believer. So is Dennis Kucinich. Even Rudy Giuliani is
willing to admit that extraterrestrials might be out there.
The 2008 presidential race is starting to look like an Alf convention. Last week, Kucinich's alien beliefs were outed
by his good friend Shirley MacLaine. Her new book details Kucinich's
run-in with a UFO on her porch: "It hovered, soundless, for 10 minutes
or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he
felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind." One
can only guess what those directions may have said.
Earlier this month, an 8-year-old kid asked Giuliani,
"If you find that there is something living on another planet and it is
bad and it comes over here what would you do?" Rudy, ever vigilant on
national security matters, assured the boy that there won't be a repeat
of Independence Day
if he's in the Oval Office. "Well if we're properly prepared for all of
the different things that can happen to us, we'll be prepared for that,
as well," he said with a grin.
But it was Bill Richardson
who spoke most explicitly on the UFO issue last weekend. Speaking to
Dell employees in Texas, Richardson said
that if he became president, he would continue his long fight to
release top-secret files on Roswell, New Mexico's infamous "flying
disc" recovery. In a foreword to Roswell Dig Diaries, a 2004 Sci Fi Channel book, the New Mexico governor wrote
that he has never been satisfied with the government's explanation and
that the "American people can handle the truth." Considering Richardson
makes up part of the "ET Ticket," I guess it should come as no surprise.
Giuliani
and Richardson have even managed to use aliens for political gain. The
terrorist threat pales in comparison with an alien invasion, so if
Giuliani can protect us from little green men, then Osama should be a
walk in the Pakistani park. Richardson's assertion that he would
release top-secret Roswell files if he became president implies that he
is willing to run a transparent White House with all nonalien issues,
as well.
One more thing—it shouldn't come as a shock, but Mike Gravel is a believer, too.
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The
politics of illness is particularly sensitive in this election, with so
many candidates and their spouses battling one disease or another. Fred
Thompson announced in April that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma but that the cancer was in remission. Before that, Elizabeth Edwards revealed
that her cancer had returned but that her husband's campaign would
continue. And now Rudy Giuliani, pushing his health-care plan in New
Hampshire, is rolling out a new radio ad discussing his experience with prostate cancer, which he defeated in 2000.
"I
had prostate cancer, five, six years ago," Giuliani says in the spot.
"My chance of surviving prostate cancer, and thank God I was cured of
it, in the United States, 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate
cancer in England, only 44 percent under socialized medicine."
It
feels icky to discuss life-threatening illnesses in PR terms, but it's
no accident that Rudy chose to weave his own story into his message
about health care. We're used to seeing warrior Rudy, victory this and
security that. We're not used to seeing vulnerable Rudy.
Of
course, there's good vulnerable and there's bad vulnerable. In
Thompson's case, people initially wondered if he would be able to
launch his campaign. In Edwards' case, allies speculated that he would
drop out. But Rudy's case is—forgive me for saying it—a good one, at
least from the political angle. For one thing, he beat the cancer.
(Look out, Islamofascism.) But more importantly, it softens him up. As
Elizabeth Edwards might say, he has stared the worst in the face and not blinked.
This
sort of human touch—candid without being cheesy—is just what Rudy
needs. For him, religion is private, and the same seems to be true for
other personal and emotional issues. But personal narratives matter to
voters. We know he's willing to put people in a hospital. It's also
good to know he's been there himself.
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One argument for keeping fringe candidates around is that they make the mainstream pack address difficult topics. You could say the same thing about Stephen Colbert's sudden presence in the 2008 race, only in this case he's making them funny.
After a South Carolina newspaper let readers vote on whether John Edwards or Stephen Colbert was actually the state's "favorite son," the Edwards camp issued this rebuttal:
CLAIM: Edwards abandoned South Carolina when he was one year old.
FACT: Edwards was born in South Carolina, learned to walk in South Carolina, learned to talk to in South Carolina, and will kick Stephen Colbert's New York City butt in South Carolina.
Stephen Colbert claims to represent a new kind of politics, but today we see he's participating in the slash and burn politics that has no place in American discourse. The truthiness is, as the candidate of Doritos, Colbert's hands are stained by corporate corruption and nacho cheese. John Edwards has never taken a dime from salty food lobbyists and America deserves a President who isn't in the pocket of the snack food special interests.
N
ot bad for a political communications team. Voters like a candidate who can make fun of himself, and Edwards hasn't always fit the bill—see his bristling response to the admittedly ubiquitous coverage of his hair. Poking fun at his anti-corporate, anti-lobby image is a smart move.
Hopefully we'll see Colbert engage the other candidates, too. Something tells me Mitt Romney is already readying the canned-joke assembly line.
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