Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - Posts
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"Kucinich questions Bush's mental health" via the AP:
'You cannot be a president of the United States who's wanton in his
expression of violence,' Kucinich said. 'There's a lot of people who
need care. He might be one of them. If there isn't something wrong with
him, then there's something wrong with us. This, to me, is a very
serious question.'
This coming from a man who "heard directions" from a UFO.
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That shouldn’t be news. But it
is, seeing as it was only his second time there.
Fred Thompson is sticking with his “Southern Strategy,” the Wall Street Journal reports
today. In other words, he’s largely bypassing Iowa
and New Hampshire in favor of early southern states like South Carolina
and Florida instead of :
It's not a conventional presidential strategy to play down Iowa and New
Hampshire. Candidates who have tried skipping them
generally haven't fared well. And Mr. Thompson said during his visit yesterday
that he's planning on spending enough time and money in New Hampshire to at least make a respectable
showing before the vote heads South.
Is he serious? It’s not just that Iowa
and New Hampshire
have been important in the past. They’ve been essential. In the last 28 years,
the only presidential candidate to win his party’s nomination without winning one
of those two states has been Bill Clinton. And, to borrow a put-down, Fred Thompson
is no Bill Clinton. Sure, he’s faring better in South
Carolina and Florida—second
place behind Giuliani. But even Giuliani knows that’s not enough.
Giuliani, who initially planned to focus on the February 5 “Tsunami
Tuesday,” has decided to go all in in the
Granite State. You don’t want to risk going into
Feb. 5 having already lost a handful of states—Iowa,
New Hampshire, and Michigan being the riskiest. He has recently
seen a jump in the polls there—although
Romney still leads—and he plans to start
airing TV ads as well. Without a victory, or at least a respectable showing, in
NH, he would have trouble stopping Romney’s momentum.
Thompson has yet to face this fact. It’s one thing to
recognize your limits in the early states. It’s another to pretend they don’t
exist.
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The three Democratic frontrunners rode Chris Dodd’s
coattails today when they announced
their opposition to Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey. Obama called
Mukasey’s “professed ignorance” on waterboarding “appalling.” Edwards said if
waterboarding was used in the
Spanish Inquisition, it shouldn’t be used in America’s fight against terrorism. Clinton looked inward,
saying she was “deeply troubled” by Mukasey’s Senate testimony.
But Dodd was the first candidate to speak out against
Mukasey’s nomination on Sunday after he finished
his Meet the Press interview. On Monday,
sensing an anti-Mukasey vacuum, he held a conference call with journalists to reassert
his opposition. For two days he had all of the anti-Mukasey headlines to
himself.
But now the frontrunners have entered the fray. The three
candidates all voiced opposition to both Mukasey’s waterboarding position and
his support of an expanded executive branch. Dodd is not nearly as upset about
Mukasey’s wishy-washy
stance on waterboarding as he is about the AG nominee’s support
of expanded executive power. But his decision to speak out will likely force the
frontrunners to add this issue to the already
packed agenda for this evening’s debate.
Dodd is doing what a third tier candidate is supposed to do.
He’s changing the conversation and pressuring the frontrunners into making
decisions. If he’s smart, he’ll brag about his trendsetting tonight at the
debate.
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Imagine all the children whose Halloweens will be ruined when their parents make them go as Chris Dodd.
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With tonight’s Democratic debate billed
as a three-way showdown, it looks like Obama and Edwards have signed a
temporary non-aggression pact in order to focus all their audacity and hope on
Hillary.
Obama announced
over the weekend that he plans to
start talking tough with Clinton.
Then yesterday, Edwards lobbed the first grenade, attacking
Hillary’s integrity in a lofty speech
his campaign billed as “definitional,” “Senator Clinton's road to the middle
class,” he said, “takes a major detour right through the deep canyon of
corporate lobbyists and the hidden bidding of K Street in Washington -- and
history tells us that when that bus stops there it is the middle class that
loses.”
Both attacks come at slightly different angles. Obama challenges
Hillary’s policy ideas. He’s been tweaking her for her Iran vote—not to mention her Iraq
authorization—and pushing her to give details on how she’d fix Social Security.
(So far, she won’t say whether she’s willing to raise the retirement age or
lift the cap on collecting Social Security taxes.) On Iran, he’s
questioning her judgment. On Social Security, he’s daring her to give a straight
answer. But in both cases, he can dodge her accusation that he has “abandoned
the politics of hope” by insisting that he’s focusing on policy.
Edwards, meanwhile, is going after Hillary’s character. He
pointed out yesterday that she has “taken more money from Washington lobbyists than any candidate from
either party -- more money than any Republican candidate.” He’s not just
talking about policy tweaks. He’s saying that she’s part of the “bankrupt ways
of Washington.”
It’s risky to sell the primary as a referendum on character, since personal
attacks never reflect well on the attacker. But Edwards knows that for some voters,
Hillary is on shaky ground already. An extra tremor, he figures, and the earth
will open up.
With attacks coming from both sides—perhaps literally—Hillary
will have to play some serious D. But it could also play to her advantage. If
they go too hard on her, they might come off looking like bullies. If they go
too easy, she could just swat them away with a laugh and a joke about getting
attention from men. Either way, they will only solidify her status as the one to beat.
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Like what we've done with the place? Welcome to Trailhead's new look, which should make us feel more like blogs you're already used to. We’ve got all
of the usual fixings: an RSS feed, comments in The Fray,
and an individual page for each post. If you're new to Trailhead, take a peek at our archives.
In political news,
this email from Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn just arrived:
Losing ground in the
polls, Senator Obama announced over the weekend that he will abandon
the politics of hope and attack Hillary in tonight’s debate. Senator Edwards,
who rose to prominence in 2004 by eschewing attacks on other Democrats,
formally announced last night that he is going to attack Senator Clinton’s
character.
Considering that both Senators
Obama and Edwards made their names by pledging to be positive, the last thing
one would have expected was for either of them to go out and announce with
pride that they were now going to go negative on a fellow Democrat. It’s
unprecedented in my experience.
Of course, Hillary will not hesitate
to set the record straight on the issues that opponents raise about her.
But as we move deeper into the Fall we are seeing the clear contours
emerge:
One candidate is defining the
“politics of hope” while the others are abandoning them.
Want to guess which one?
We're certainly looking forward to this evening's debate.
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Via the AP:
Biden: Race Is About Ideas, Not Money
By RANDALL CHASE
Associated Press Writer
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) - Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden said Monday that the race for the White House is more about ideas than the huge amounts of money being raised by many of the other candidates.
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