Monday, January 07, 2008 - Posts
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Sometimes it seems like the campaigns have an unofficial contest to see who can place their signs in the most unlikely/dangerous places.
I spotted three Rudy Giuliani signs in a row, planted in the snow on the median of a four-lane highway here. (Wish I had a photo--but it would just be a blur.) That means a volunteer had to either place the signs at 3 a.m. or sprint across four lanes of traffic. Either way, that’s devotion.
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A Q+A with Barack Obama, per the New York Times.
Q. How's the throat?
A: "It's a little better." After he ordered his tea, he added: "We sprinkled some magic powder in it." (emphasis added)
Not what you want to say when you have a history of cocaine use.
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In an act of desperation, Duncan Hunter resorted to Aesop to get people to pay attention to him. In a presidential reenactment of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," Duncan Hunter—the 27-year congressman from California who is (sort of) running for president—held a press conference today to talk about "the future." The morbid press corps (guilty as charged) turned out for the presser, where he proceeded to say he was pissed off about not getting invited to the FOX debate. A candidate playing "gotcha" with the press. How poetic.
This following a bizarre appearance on MSNBC this morning in which he gloated about his one delegate haul in Wyoming—a primary that nobody cares about. Armed with one delegate, Hunter says he's doing better than Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Therefore he should have been allowed into the debate. Booyakasha!
But this stunt means Hunter has now spent his withdrawal capital. CNN was the only cable network to carry the presser live, and you can be sure they won't be doing it again. The national press corps doesn't like being toyed with, and I bet they won't feel guilty if they don't come running next time Hunter wants to talk about "the future." Maybe Hunter thinks he can fight off the political wolves armed with his one puny delegate.
P.S.: No matter what we wrote on this matter, nothing would top the magnificent post Red State put together. Kudos.
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Being a Masshole, I just got this in the mail:
Damn you, mandates!
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Back in November, Barack Obama delighted HBO fans across America by declaring that one of his favorite TV shows is The Wire.
So you'd think he would have put this campaign thing on hiatus for an hour to catch the Season 5 premiere last night at 9 p.m. Apparently not.
According to his deputy press secretary, Ben LaBolt, Obama was on the bus at the time. I asked if that means he'll be watching it on demand. "First comes New Hampshire," LaBolt said. "Then we'll worry about The Wire."
In the meantime, Obama can keep up by reading Slate's Wire "TV Club," to which, as of now, he has a standing invitation.
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Interesting piece in the Washington Times about Obama's ramped-up security detail. One passage describes how agents with bomb-sniffing dogs are vetting the media's equipment at every stop:
"Just put all your equipment down, leave the room, and close the door," one agent barked as another agent paced the hallway with a bomb-detection dog. Known as a "sweep" on the White House beat, the media did as told, allowing agents to rustle through their computer bags and turn on electronic equipment to make sure it was real.
But it's a far from perfect system. At this morning's event in Claremont, N.H., I stood against the wall and watched the whole bomb squad process happen. They never asked to look in my bag. With a dozen Secret Service agents and a team of dogs, they're doing their best to thwart saboteurs. (Just try and enter the building once the event has begun.) But there's only so much they can do. And that's scary.
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LEBANON, N.H.—"It’s time for a president who will talk to you in clear terms," said Barack Obama, addressing a packed room at City Hall. He paused as the crowd laughed. "I wasn’t talking about pronouncing nuclear, but that’s another thing."
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Mitt Romney, in an ad last week:
In the next 10 years, we'll see more progress, more change than the world has seen in the last 10 centuries.
Mitt Romney, in a two-minute address on New Hampshire TV to air tonight:
We're going to see more dramatic change in the next decade than we've seen in our entire lifetimes.
I don't know about you, but I've met plenty of people who are 1,000 years old.
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Even the New York Sun likes Obama:
One of the questions we've been thinking about in advance of the New Hampshire primary is whether a case can be made for Senator Obama. We understand that, in respect of these columns, the notion sounds improbable. He is running on a war plank—withdrawal—that is almost the polar opposite of ours and on an economic approach that is Keynesian. But he is such an attractive individual, speaks in such an inspiring way, and uses language in a way that evinces such intelligence that it would be short-sighted to fail to look for the upside of Mr. Obama and the aspects of his candidacy on which one might make common cause. ...
Not quite an endorsement. But given what you'd expect from their editorial page, maybe this counts as one.
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On Saturday, the Clinton campaign released a statement—“WHERE IS THE BOUNCE?”—asking why Obama’s victory in Iowa hadn’t given him a bump in the New Hampshire polls.
They sent it about 24 hours too early. Last we heard, Obama was “narrowing the gap” between him and Hillary. Now it looks like the gap has flipped. Drudge puts it most pithily:
CNNUSATODAYGALLUP: Obama 41% Clinton: 28% ... [+/- 4 % margin]
RASMUSSEN: Obama 39% Clinton 27% ... [+/- 3 % margin]
CNNWMUR: Obama 39% Clinton 29% ... [+/- 5% margin]
These polls were all taken in the days following the Iowa caucus results. All of them show Obama leading at or beyond the margin of error. This, despite Hillary entering “contrast mode.”
She’s now pitching last night’s debate as a battle of words versus actions from which she emerged victorious. That this argument will be her last before the primaries shows just how short five days really is. If she had another week, things would be different—Obama’s glow would fade a little, and Hillary’s charges about his vote on the Patriot Act and Iraq war funding would have more time to sink in. But as it is, her performance in New Hampshire—and, it appears, her campaign—rides on this argument.
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