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John McCain was for ethanol before he was against it. And oh, he was also against it before that.
McCain told a conference of renewable-energy proponents in Iowa yesterday that he opposes federal subsidies for ethanol. He argued that American farmers can still compete with growers overseas: "I trust Americans. I trust the markets. And I oppose subsidies," he said. But this is the same guy who told Iowa voters in February that "[w]e need energy independence. We need it for a whole variety of reasons, and obviously ethanol is a big part of that equation.” Then compare that statement to his platform in 1999, when he argued during a debate that "[e]thanol is not worth it. It does not help the consumer. Those ethanol subsidies should be phased out.”
On the one hand, you could call it flip-flopping. But on the other, the ethanol issue is so complicated that it’s hard to say what constitutes a reversal. Support for ethanol is often linked to energy independence and other green agendas. For example, Hillary currently supports ethanol subsidies as part of a $150 billion energy plan meant to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. (She has voted against ethanol perks in the past.) But ethanol subsidies are also a form of protectionism, and as the government promotes ethanol and other biofuels, the price of domestic corn soars.
Because of these crisscrossing issues of the environment and trade, it’s tough to analyze the motivations behind each candidate’s stance. Both Hillary and Fred Thompson are ethanol converts, and their transformations are widely seen as pandering to voters in Iowa, the country’s largest corn grower. It’s interesting, then, that McCain would come out so brazenly against it, especially in front of the very voters he’s hoping to win over. He prides himself on his “straight talk.” But when it comes to the state’s No. 1 crop, Iowans would probably prefer his support over his bluntness. Or, better yet, that he make up his mind.
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Security, small government, and family values, according to a panel of four spokeswomen for the top Republican presidential campaigns. In other words, they want the same thing as their male counterparts.
The panel, organized by the National Review and held today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., discussed how each GOP candidate could appeal to women voters. But for a gathering of Romney/Giuliani/Thompson/McCain reps, they didn’t disagree on much. Instead, they turned most of their barbs toward Hillary Clinton. Barbara Comstock, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, chided Hillary’s campaign for “playing the gender card” after the last Democratic debate. Karen Hanretty, representing Fred Thompson, called the notion that women should automatically vote for Clinton “insulting.” And as for whether Hillary can get mileage out of her womanhood, the panelists were dubious. Just because she’s a woman “doesn’t mean you can’t have a tough discussion on the issues,” said Giuliani communications director Katie Levinson.
But they refused to go after each other or their men. Except for the occasional familiar sound bite—a reference to the “terrorists’ war on us,” say, or the “three-legged stool”—you could be forgiven for assuming they were backing the same candidate. Rather than talking about differences, they mostly discussed similarities. “I think we all support a market-driven approach” to health care, said Comstock. The need to fight Islamic extremists is “something our candidates all agree on,” said Hanretty. Levinson argued that the differences between the candidates are “minimal.”
It wasn’t until the end, when a questioner asked about abortion, that the women began to seriously disagree. As a senator, Thompson opposed the federal funding of abortion and as president would not sign the Freedom of Choice Act, Hanretty said. Romney would go a step further and veto the act, said Comstock. Giuliani’s spokeswoman emphasized the former mayor’s record as a “strict constructionist” and his support for adoptions over abortions. But even then, none of the panelists challenged each other, and the moderator, NR’s Kate O’Beirne, didn’t press them.
It was actually amazing how little time the panelists spent discussing “women’s issues.” The reason, they would argue, is that there’s no such thing. Women care most about Iraq and national security. And on those issues, Hillary’s gender shouldn’t be an advantage or a disadvantage. As far as they're concerned, the general election might as well be mano a mano.
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Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for Fred Thompson,
fired off a great (and telling) line at a panel
today on “Women Voters and the Right Guy,” sponsored by the National Review. Responding to a question on how much personality
matters in the 2008 election, she argued that it matters quite a bit: “Fred
will never rush to war because Fred doesn’t rush to anything.”
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John Edwards rereleased his Iowa "Heroes" ad in New Hampshire today, but not all of the b-roll characters made the trip. (Watch the original Iowa ad here; here's the New Hampshire version.) The ads share the same audio track—a speech about true American heroes—but the campaign has made a few visual changes.
Gone are the tractors, suspenders, and trucker hats. Instead, the new characters have nondescript profile shots. The ad replaces an image of an older white couple with two younger adults, one of whom appears to be a person of color. Plus, instead of a white woman near the end of the ad, the ad shows a black woman.
The changes come after the Iowa ad caught flak from bloggers for being almost exclusively white. The Edwards campaign countered that the waitress in the diner is Hispanic, but ABC News' Jake Tapper insisted that the "optics" of the ad didn't convey any diversity.
Edwards' national spokesman, Eric Schultz, told me that the "Heroes" series of ads "highlights the hard-working men and women from across the country." The new version, he says, is specific to New Hampshire, and the new faces in it are all New Hampshire residents. Many of the characters in the Iowa ad, however, are also in the New Hampshire ad (including the Latina waitress).
According to the Census Bureau's 2005 stats, New Hampshire's percentage of black residents is half that of Iowa—1 percent to 2.3 percent. Similarly with Hispanics—2.2 percent to 3.7 percent. Which makes it interesting that the New Hampshire version has more minorities in it. Still, the changes may be an effort to better reflect the demographics of the audience.
What we're seeing may be yet another example of the YouTube Effect. Advertisements can no longer be contained to a specific audience in the age of YouTube. The campaign got burned on its Iowa ad because the world had access to it, not just 3 million Iowa residents. Now we have a different set of characters in the New Hampshire ad.
UPDATE 2:32 p.m.: Here's a side-by-side comparison our SlateV team put together. Allow it about 20 seconds to load:
[Video]
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Party Pooper of the Day award goes to Inez Tenenbaum and Rep. Bakari Sellers, two Obama supporters in South Carolina who phoned the state’s Democratic Party to oppose Stephen Colbert’s inclusion on the ballot. It shows how secretly nervous Democrats were, even as they pretended to laugh along with Colbert. Just look at the Obama campaign’s statement to Politico’s Mike Allen today: “We will always respect Colbert's willingness to speak truthiness to power.” But, the statement doesn’t say: We also have an election to win.
The campaign denied any connection to the phone calls. But there was no way that Obama, whose campaign is focusing heavily on getting young people to the polls, would let a joke candidacy—even a funny one—get between him and the nomination. And it’s not like pressure from Tenenbaum and Sellers sealed the deal, either. The state party’s executive council voted 13-3 against putting Colbert on the ballot. He never had a chance. But I would have loved to see this story drag out, if only to watch the campaigns play along in public while frantically trying to sabotage it behind closed doors.
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