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The candidates get to ask each other the questions—how cute. Yet not even Q&A sessions can spruce up this snoozer of a debate. Here's who asked whom what, and why:
Romney asks Giuliani about China: Look how far we've come since autumn, when Romney and Giuliani were at each other's throats. What's more important here is that Romney gave Giuliani a charity question rather than talking to McCain, which was a gutsy move because of its timidness. Romney had the chance to set the tone for the next five days by ribbing McCain on immigration, fiscal policy, or a lack of executive experience. But instead, Romney decided to trust the polls and shy away from his mean-guy image. Considering he didn't do that in Iowa or New Hampshire and ended up losing, it might be a good move.
McCain asks Huckabee about the fair tax: This is a strange choice. McCain could have asked Mitt about his flip-flopping (which he doesn't hesitate to do in a new Web ad), but instead he turns to Huckabee and makes him seem like an economic pariah. A fine gesture, but McCain isn't after Huck's supporters, and Huck's supporters don't want McCain as a second choice. His question should have been directed at Romney to chip away at his maybe-lead in the polls.
Paul asks McCain about the economy: If Paul was determined to ask McCain a question, why not ask him about the war in Iraq? Considering they are as far apart on this issue as Iraq and America are on the globe, it seemed strange to fall back on the economy.
Huck asks Romney about gun control: Finally, somebody puts the press on another candidate. Huck claims Romney isn't consistent about his support for an assault-weapons ban, and Romney answers smoothly. He leans on President Bush's own support of the ban to bolster his support of it and wiggles his way out of another potential flip-flop trap.
Giuliani asks Romney and McCain about the national catastrophe fund: Giuliani, realizing he's screwed unless he goes on the offensive, resorts to his bread-and-butter issue in Florida: hurricane defense. Giuliani has been advocating a national catastrophe fund that Floridians favor because it helps with hurricanes but that none of the other candidates likes because, as Romney put it, Iowans shouldn't have to subsidize insurance efforts in Florida. Giuliani gets points for making sure Florida residents know that he's the only guy who likes the fund, but looks like a bit of a tax-and-spender to a national audience that doesn't care about hurricane insurance. It's a sacrifice he's willing to make since at this point he's essentially running to be Florida's governor (like Romney ran to be Michigan's governor, Huck Iowa's governor, and McCain ran to be New Hampshire's senator).
Despite the brief glimpse into the candidates' strategies, this debate quirk fell flat. There was no dialogue or back-and-forth, which meant this was a glorified Q&A. At this point, five days before Florida, we don't need to baby the candidates with time limits and one-question, one-answer rules. They're adults; it's time to treat them as such.
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Has anybody else noticed that the majority of the debates have had awful sound quality? Tonight's is no different, with a constant, hollow echo sound whenever anybody speaks. It's especially bad when they go out into the audience. I may be wrong, but I don't remember this being an issue at the last Democratic debate on CNN, though it was an issue with the YouTube debates. You'd think that after more than a dozen of these things, they could have figured it out.
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Everybody seems to think that a faltering economy helps Mitt Romney because of Romney's Bain Capital past. Romney, reason says, made money himself, so he can make the country some money. That's all fine and good, but what about Ron Paul?
Paul, of course, has been trying to be the canary in economic coal mine for months now. When Brian Williams asked him whether the government has a role in stimulating the economy, Paul started his answer with solid conservative logic: Lower taxes, fix the dollar, and deregulate the hell out of everything. It sounded great until he started talking about those pesky foreign-policy views of his. Once Paul started saying the war in Iraq and the fight against terror are reasons for the potential recession, he lost the fiscal conservatives in the audience. While Paul doesn't need to hide his beliefs, he also doesn't need to include all of them in every one of his answers. If he keeps his anti-war, semi-isolationist foreign-policy views separate from his economic talk, his menu looks pretty good: an entree for fiscal conservatives and dessert for anti-war independents. But when he mixes them together, the dish starts to look unappetizing.
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And we're back at yet another of these powwows. Thus far co-moderator Tim Russert has tried to play Gotcha with McCain, Huckabee, and Romney, yet none has taken the bait. Russert seems consumed with trying to get the candidates to say they don't trust one another, but his craving for conflict just looks desperate. Didn't he learn from the Democratic debate on Monday? Less moderator involvement means more squabbling.
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SENECA, S.C.—There’s a traveling variety show traversing rural South Carolina right now, featuring Danny Glover of Angels in the Outfield, former Rep. Ben “Cooter” Jones of Dukes of Hazzard fame, Madeleine Stowe of Last of the Mohicans, and bluegrass superstars Dr. Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys. Oh, and some guy named John Edwards.
A big theme of Edwards’ campaign this week has been the media’s neglect. Against his “two glitzy opponents,” he gripes, his message of corporate greed and middle-class struggle doesn’t merit much attention. “When they take a good man like John Edwards … and remove him from the story, it is wrong!” Jones railed today. (Never mind that Edwards appeared on David Letterman's and Tyra Banks' shows this week.) So, he’s pulling out all the stops for what could be his last grass-roots bus tour.
At a community center here in Edwards’ hometown, Jones warms up the crowd with a good 20 minutes of jokes, political opinions, and Dukes of Hazzard anecdotes. Wearing a yellow hat with the words Cooter’s Garage in bright red, Jones reminds everyone that Edwards, unlike some people we won’t name, is no phony: “John Edwards is like that, 'cause he comes from y’all. That’s the way y’all are.”
What I'm seeing is identity politics taken to the extreme. Edwards isn’t just like these people. He is of them. Seneca is his. Never mind that Edwards has a jillion in the bank and a 28,000 square-foot house. This is a home game, with a crowd to match. As one supporter put it to me, “In Seneca, either you’re voting for Edwards, or you’re a Republican.”
Still, the senator fires off a few shots. He chides candidates (ahem) who “jet in, hold a political event, and jet out. … If they’re not willing to be here the week before the South Carolina primary, what are the chances they’ll be here after the South Carolina primary?” He derides the “bickering” that occurred at the Democratic debate Monday, joking that “I represent the grown-up wing of the Democratic party.”
But for all his fire, you can tell this is the beginning of the end. (Here’s that dastardly media bias creeping in.) Edwards will likely stick it out through Feb. 5. Heck, he might push into the summer. But retail politics is his specialty, and South Carolina ends the slew of primaries that can be won by shaking hands. From here on out, it’s a cocktail of momentum, advertising, and free media that decides the races. And Edwards is right that on that last count—not to mention the first two—his opponents have him beat.
As Edwards prepared to come onstage tonight, the room suddenly went quiet as Dr. Stanley sang his haunting a cappella rendition of “O Death” (the version made famous by the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack). “Ooooo Death, Ooooo Death,” he crooned, as if he staring down the reaper himself. “Won’t you spare me over for another year?” Not exactly the kind of ditty you want on the campaign trail.
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Another day means another bicker-thon between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. First, there was the Cat Fight Debate on Monday night. Then yesterday Clinton aired a nasty, barely not-false ad that questioned Obama’s Reagan’s comments (again). That ad mysteriously disappeared today, supposedly after running its full rotation (all of 24 hours). In response, Obama put up his own ad on South Carolina radio that says Clinton will “say anything and change nothing.” In a rare act of civility, Obama’s campaign took the ad down once they found out Clinton took hers down.
But wait, there’s more! I just received an e-mail from Clinton’s press office slugged, “WHO’S DISTORTING THE FACTS?” that lists Obama’s “kneecapping and distortion” over the past few months. The fibs-in-question range from Obama’s innocent mistakes to more nuanced policy disagreements.
That missive is ostensibly in response to Obama’s comments earlier today, when he all but called the Clintons liars at an event in South Carolina.
When you run an ad making assertions that everybody who looks at it says it is wrong, you know it is wrong and you still make it, it means you are not concerned about accuracy or the truth.
Let’s take a moment to note that despite all this Obama and Clinton refuse to call each other liars or even say that the other person is lying. It’s like they’re afraid to confirm the cardinal Washington stereotype—that politicians are all a bunch of damn, dirty liars. Remember, they’ve been casually tracking each other’s “errors” for months on their respective "Fact Hub" and "Fact Check" sites. But now we’re getting closer and closer to a slip of the l-word. In the mean time, they continue to restrain themselves from launching full accusations of deception, falsehoods, and fabrications.
There’s only way to settle this: Fox’s new show The Moment of Truth. It debuted last night, and it’s handcrafted for politicians. The premise: Contestants take a polygraph test offstage, answer 21 questions, and then answer the same questions on camera with their spouses and friends watching on. If they answer all 21 questions truthfully—whatever that means—they win money but piss off their spouses. If they lie, they lose the money and still piss off their spouses. This is made for the Clintons!
Unlikely, sure. But it’s the only solution. It takes a lie detector test to get the candidates to speak honestly about lying. And that’s a sad truth.
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His lawsuit against NBC was thrown out. His New Hampshire recount effort failed to uncover widespread anti-Kucinich ballot stuffing. So, Dennis Kucinich has dropped out.
Correction: He’s “transitioning out of the Democratic Presidential primary race,” according to a statement. But why does the person who rode out a long, painful 2004 race drop out so early this go-round? One theory: the wife. As one Slate-ster points out: “He didn’t have the wife last time. The wife is the person who tells you, ‘Honey, it’s time to drop out.’ ” Of course, if Fred Thompson weren’t married to Jeri, he probably never would have run in the first place.
Kucinich will be making a more detailed speech tomorrow, but chances are he’ll be spending his newfound free time fending off a challenge for his congressional seat from Cleveland city Councilman Joe Cimperman, who already produced an attack ad accusing Kucinich of being an absentee rep.
So, will the Cleveland Steamer be endorsing another candidate? In an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Kucinich said he has “zero intention of getting involved in the primaries.” (If he changes his mind, here's whom he should support.) Viggo Mortensen’s nod, on the other hand, is still available.
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GREENVILLE, S.C.—While Barack Obama and Clinton (both of them) butt heads in South Carolina, there’s a second, parallel campaign going on: the expectations game.
The rules are simple: If you think you’re going to win, argue that the election matters. If you fear you won’t win, tamp down expectations and argue that the race doesn’t matter anyway. The importance of an election is only as big as the likelihood of you winning it.
Here’s one quintessential salvo: a new e-mail sent out by the Obama camp claiming that Hillary is going “all out” in South Carolina. “The truth is Hillary Clinton’s campaign is pulling out all the stops to win in South Carolina,” writes Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “And it includes saying and doing just about anything to win.” The e-mail goes on to detail Clinton’s various surrogates, radio ads, and upcoming appearances in the state.
It’s as if to say, Look, she’s trying! Naturally, the Obama campaign wants credit for what most people expect to be a win in South Carolina. (Of course, that’s what they thought about New Hampshire and Nevada.) Plus, it’s impossible for Hillary to refute. She can’t say, “No, South Carolina isn’t important to me.”
What she can do—and what Clinton spokesman Jay Carson did when I mentioned the e-mail to him—is laugh. “Yesterday, they said we’re not campaigning here,” he said. “Now they say we’re going all out. They’re talking out of both sides of their mouth.”
The fact is, the battle in South Carolina has been vicious. Hillary filled the airwaves here with an ad accusing Obama of championing Republican ideas; Obama in return unveiled a new radio spot claiming that Clinton would “say anything” to get elected. The battle between Obama and the former president has been well-documented. Now Hillary herself has returned, kicking off a fresh swing with a speech on the economy at Furman University.
And with less than 48 hours before polls open, the theatrics won’t be letting up. At least that’s the expectation.
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This is the first entry in what may become a Trailhead series called "The Neglected" on primaries and caucuses nobody cares about.
If you thought the Iowa caucuses were undemocratic, then you obviously aren't a Louisiana Republican.
On Tuesday night, more than 10,000 Louisiana Republicans got together to talk about whom they wanted to be president. For some context: 4.3 million people (Republicans and Democrats) live in Louisiana, and it's safe to assume that at least half may be inclined to vote Republican. The 10,000-person caucus, therefore, encompasses well below 0.5 percent of the party. The low turnout can partly be blamed on Louisiana's paltry number of caucus sites. Its 11 sites pale in comparison with Iowa's 1,784 locations. (To be fair, Iowa is a larger, less dense state—but not 150 times larger.)
But here's the thing—their Tuesday night vote didn't actually select a nominee. The 10,000-plus people merely chose delegates for the state convention—and the winning delegate body didn't even represent a specific candidate. "Pro-life uncommitted" won the Louisiana state caucuses, which means every Republican besides Rudy Giuliani has a chance of getting those delegates because the delegates will remain uncommitted until the state convention later this year. At the state convention, a select number of delegates will be chosen to go to the national convention to represent Louisiana. They'll have to commit to a candidate before they do that.
There are further complications to this process, by the way. This year, delegates decided to make things even more confusing by running on more than one platform at once (this usually doesn't happen). So, for example, some of those pro-life uncommitted delegates also explicitly supported John McCain. Reason would suggest that if you were uncommitted, that means you wouldn't be allowed to commit to any of the candidates, but we obviously left rationality behind about three paragraphs ago. So, among the candidate-committed delegates, John McCain won the most votes, followed by Ron Paul and Mitt Romney.
We could go into what this says about their efforts in the state or what this says about their chances in other Southern states, but why bother? It should come as no surprise by now, but Louisiana's delegate landscape might be blown up in two weeks. In an act of democratic polygamy, the state has a primary on Feb. 9. The primary abides by a traditional statewide, one-person-one-vote system, which you may remember from such classic grade-school concepts as "American democracy" and "representative government."
But, alas, it's not actually that simple. If Louisiana Republicans throw more than 50 percent of their support behind one candidate in the primary, then whatever limited importance the caucuses had is drained even further. That's because if Louisiana rallies behind one candidate to give him a majority of the vote, 20 of the state's 47 national convention delegates automatically go to that candidate. That, obviously, limits the number of national delegates that can be selected from the caucus-created state delegate reservoir.
So, while we know what's happening in the bayou, it still remains a mystery (which should come as no surprise, considering this is Louisiana politics). There are even more complications involving provisional ballots and preliminary results, but we thought we'd be kind and spare you those details.
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SUMTER, S.C.—During his speech at the M.H. Newton Family Life Center on Wednesday, Obama rolled out his usual riff about how Bush and Cheney won’t be on the ballot in 2008: “No Cheney! No Bush!” he said. Someone in the audience took the bait: “No Hillary!” “We won’t go there just yet,” Obama said, smiling. “We’ll get to that.”
Indeed, Obama is not going there just yet. While Hillary blitzes the 22 states that vote on Feb. 5, Obama is doubling down on South Carolina, banking that a big win in the Palmetto State will build enough momentum to launch him, Rocketeer-like, into Super Tuesday.
The result is a battle between Obama’s regional focus and Clinton’s grand strategy. Obama and John Edwards chastise Hillary for failing to appear in South Carolina so far this week, while Clinton tries to portray Obama as a one-state wonder. Her campaign’s daily e-mail blast includes “YESTERDAY IN THE STATES,” a roundup of all the things they accomplished across the Super Tuesday map, as if Jan. 26 were already over.
Obama, for his part, has been calibrating his pitch to his largely black audience. And not just the voice. (Although he did take a moment to recognize a volunteer who likes to “speak up and let folks know what she’s thankin'.”) The Sumter event also had more audience participation than usual. “I wish I could take credit for all the big crowds,” Obama said. “Take it!” shouted a woman’s voice.
Obama went after Hillary without much hesitation. He denied her claims that Obama championed Republican ideas when he called them the “party of ideas.” (An accusation that’s central to a new Clinton radio spot.) He mocked her answer at the Las Vegas debate, when she cited impatience about getting things done as her weakness. He disputed her characterization of his tax plan as containing a “trillion dollar tax increase.”
Which all points to one thing: “They’re trying to bamboozle you,” he said. “It’s the same old okey-doke.” That phrasing surprised me. You don’t see "bamboozle" and "okey-doke" much outside the context of whites trying to deceive blacks. No doubt Obama was aware of the association. He was probably trying to connect with the crowd on a personal level. But he might have thought twice about the wording, given that the Clintons and their surrogates have accused him of injecting race into the campaign.
But at this event, Obama made no attempt to skirt the subject. “I’ve been hearing people say, He can’t do it. ... An African-American can’t do it, or he’s got a funny name.” It’s true, I’d heard three people say that on Wednesday alone—one driving a cab in Washington D.C., one calling into Rush Limbaugh’s talk show, and one at a Clinton event that evening.
Of course, it’s not this crowd—or even this state—that’s going to need convincing. If you believe the pessimists, it’s the rest of the country.