Update: Iowa's not over, but gearing up for South Carolina, the GOP is sliming its own. Crooks and Liars reports: A holiday card that falsely claims to be from “the Romney family” and highlights Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith was anonymously sent to Republican mailboxes across South Carolina earlier this week.
On to Iowa predictions:
From the Evans-Novak Political Report:
Republicans
1st Place: Mitt Romney
2nd Place: Mike Huckabee
3rd Place: Fred Thompson
4th Place: John McCain
Democrats
1st Place: Barack Obama
2nd Place: John Edwards
3rd Place: Hillary Clinton
4th Place: Bill Richardson
MAL's Prediction
Republicans
1st Place: Mike Huckabee
2nd Place: Mitt Romney
3rd Place: John McCain
4th Place: Fred Thompson
Democrats
1st Place: Hillary Clinton
2nd Place: John Edwards (tie)
2nd Place: Barack Obama (tie)
4th Place: Bill Richardson
###
Showing posts with label Fred Thompson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fred Thompson. Show all posts
Dec 21, 2007
GOP Pres Candidates Looking Bad
Update II: The GOP is not so hot on the Huckster:
- National Review's Rich Lowry: "Huckacide"
- Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer: "overdose of public piety," "scriptural literalism,"
- Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes: Huckster "seems to believe the best foreign policy is one guided by the Golden Rule;" [maybe the Huckster is dangerous; if the guy starts campaigning on human rights and compassion, look out, though I doubt that will happen].
Update: Arianna Huffington has a piece comparing the Huckster to Frankenstein running amok and leading the pack in the GOP primary. Writes Huffington:
With Mike Huckabee's continuing surge, the Republican Party now has an Iowa front-runner whose religious beliefs are virtually identical to those of George Bush. He's anti-choice, born-again, against gay-marriage, and gets political advice directly from God.
So why is the Republican establishment suddenly in a state of near-apoplexy about Mike Huckabee? Shouldn't they be happy? They've been cultivating evangelicals and fundamentalists for 30 years. Now they finally have a candidate who's truly part of the movement. So what's the problem?
Actually, that is the problem. The evangelical crowd was fine when it was just a resource to be cynically exploited every few years in demagogic anti-gay get-out-the-vote campaigns. But now the holy-rolling monster the GOP's Dr. Frankensteins have created has thrown off the shackles, fled the lab, and is currently leading in Iowa. And the party doesn't know what to do.
In the 2008 election that is indisputably a challenging historical period for the GOP to begin with, the top five candidates for the GOP presidential nomination all present major problems in assembling a winning GOP coalition in the general election, and even two weeks away from the Iowa caucuses no candidate looks like a winner.
But as Chris Cillizza says: Someone Has to Win the GOP Nomination.
Below is Cillizza's take on the top five GOP presidential candidates with additional weaknesses (most previously published) added in brackets.
Rudy Giuliani isn't positioned to win a single state before Florida's Jan. 29 primary. [James Dobson, the leading religious right leader of the Focus on the Family group that self-consciously rallies religious right voters has made clear that Rudy is political anathema; hence Rudy will perform badly with the religious right; and Rudy’s past positions on affirmative action, abortion, civil right for gays, and immigration will kill his candidacy, no matter how often he portrays his inner-jerk persona in an attempt to appear tough.]
Mitt Romney has fallen behind in Iowa and his flip flops on issues like abortion and gay rights make him unacceptable to the Republican base. [As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney was even more pro-choice and pro-civil rights for gays than Rudy. The massive effort underway to convert him into a rightwinger won’t fly (detailed in a Harper’s (November) piece by Ken Silverstein). As quoted by Silverstein: “(Romney) says all the right things, his speeches run through the litmus test on conservative issues, but there’s no conviction behind it. …,” said Cyndi Mosteller, a social rightwinger and GOP politico in South Carolina. Add to that Christian religious bigotry against Mormons and you have a political loser.] Update: Romney drawing heat for falsely claiming he and his father marched with Martin Luther King, adding to the growing perception that Romney will do and say much anything to further his political ambitions. See also NYT's Romney Learns That ‘Facts Are Stubborn Things’.
Mike Huckabee is surging in Iowa but doesn't have the money or organization to take advantage of a win in the Hawkeye State.
[The rapist-pardoning Huckster is a divisive fake just dying to be found out. Even the Republican establishment has blasted the guy. Provincial, ignorant of foreign affairs, his success in the GOP race thus far has depended directly upon his below-the-radar-and-ascending appeals to the religious right, and his ability to mount a positive, above-the-fray campaign as the other Republicans competed for who is the most mean-spirited in advocating for draconian measures such as more torture, more Gitmo prisons, more war, more fences, and more trashing of Mexicans as Karl Rove's dream of a GOP appeal to Hispanics evaporates. Add to this that he would be deficient in traditional GOP political strengths in foreign affairs and tough-on-crime appeals, and the Huckster would be a goner in the general election.]
John McCain is running a single-state strategy in New Hampshire, but in that state he trails Romney by double digits. ["Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," said James Dobson. Few religious right leaders have forgiven McCain for his wildly unpopular (in Republican circles) McCain/Feingold bill, and his April 9, 2000 speech trashing the religious right (that’s the Robertson/Falwell “agents of intolerance” speech). McCain would perform worse than Rudy; let's hope for Joe-mentum for McCain.]
Fred Thompson doesn't seem to care much whether he wins or loses. [As a late September piece in The Politico notes, quoting Dobson: "Isn’t Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won’t talk at all about what he believes, and can’t speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson asked in the message, obtained by The Associated Press. "He has no passion, no zeal and no apparent ‘want to.’ And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!" Grandpa Fred is dead, and he comes across as tired and wooden: An older version of an unenergetic John Kerry.] And as Cillizza notes: Apathetic.
###
But as Chris Cillizza says: Someone Has to Win the GOP Nomination.
Below is Cillizza's take on the top five GOP presidential candidates with additional weaknesses (most previously published) added in brackets.
Rudy Giuliani isn't positioned to win a single state before Florida's Jan. 29 primary. [James Dobson, the leading religious right leader of the Focus on the Family group that self-consciously rallies religious right voters has made clear that Rudy is political anathema; hence Rudy will perform badly with the religious right; and Rudy’s past positions on affirmative action, abortion, civil right for gays, and immigration will kill his candidacy, no matter how often he portrays his inner-jerk persona in an attempt to appear tough.]
Mitt Romney has fallen behind in Iowa and his flip flops on issues like abortion and gay rights make him unacceptable to the Republican base. [As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney was even more pro-choice and pro-civil rights for gays than Rudy. The massive effort underway to convert him into a rightwinger won’t fly (detailed in a Harper’s (November) piece by Ken Silverstein). As quoted by Silverstein: “(Romney) says all the right things, his speeches run through the litmus test on conservative issues, but there’s no conviction behind it. …,” said Cyndi Mosteller, a social rightwinger and GOP politico in South Carolina. Add to that Christian religious bigotry against Mormons and you have a political loser.] Update: Romney drawing heat for falsely claiming he and his father marched with Martin Luther King, adding to the growing perception that Romney will do and say much anything to further his political ambitions. See also NYT's Romney Learns That ‘Facts Are Stubborn Things’.
Mike Huckabee is surging in Iowa but doesn't have the money or organization to take advantage of a win in the Hawkeye State.
[The rapist-pardoning Huckster is a divisive fake just dying to be found out. Even the Republican establishment has blasted the guy. Provincial, ignorant of foreign affairs, his success in the GOP race thus far has depended directly upon his below-the-radar-and-ascending appeals to the religious right, and his ability to mount a positive, above-the-fray campaign as the other Republicans competed for who is the most mean-spirited in advocating for draconian measures such as more torture, more Gitmo prisons, more war, more fences, and more trashing of Mexicans as Karl Rove's dream of a GOP appeal to Hispanics evaporates. Add to this that he would be deficient in traditional GOP political strengths in foreign affairs and tough-on-crime appeals, and the Huckster would be a goner in the general election.]
John McCain is running a single-state strategy in New Hampshire, but in that state he trails Romney by double digits. ["Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," said James Dobson. Few religious right leaders have forgiven McCain for his wildly unpopular (in Republican circles) McCain/Feingold bill, and his April 9, 2000 speech trashing the religious right (that’s the Robertson/Falwell “agents of intolerance” speech). McCain would perform worse than Rudy; let's hope for Joe-mentum for McCain.]
Fred Thompson doesn't seem to care much whether he wins or loses. [As a late September piece in The Politico notes, quoting Dobson: "Isn’t Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won’t talk at all about what he believes, and can’t speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson asked in the message, obtained by The Associated Press. "He has no passion, no zeal and no apparent ‘want to.’ And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!" Grandpa Fred is dead, and he comes across as tired and wooden: An older version of an unenergetic John Kerry.] And as Cillizza notes: Apathetic.
###
Dec 19, 2007
Religious Right Still Potent in GOP Circles, Buffoonish Elsewhere
With the rise of Mike Huckabee to the top of polls in the race for the Republican nomination for president, the pile of candidates rejected by the religious right is a roster of formerly regarded GOP front-runners or political saviors: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.
[John McCain's recently acquired Joe-mentum is a joke, and McCain, of the top four Republican candidates, remains the least acceptable to the religious right, as he deviates slightly from being mean-spirited and dogmatic.]
So, will Huckabee sustain his frontrunner status, propped up by the religious right?
Let's hope so, because the religious right has worn out its welcome among the center of American politics.
As Harold Meyerson writes today in the Post:
As Christians across the world prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it's a fitting moment to contemplate the mountain of moral, and mortal, hypocrisy that is our Christianized Republican Party. ...
The most depressing thing about the Republican presidential race is that the party's rank and file require their candidates to grow meaner with each passing week. And now, inconveniently, inconsiderately, comes Christmas, a holiday that couldn't be better calibrated to expose the Republicans' rank, fetid hypocrisy.
As fans of the popular television series House and Bones attest, heroically free-thinking, compassionate and secular American archetypes remain admired figures in the American consciousness.
I mean who wants to see a Gastroenterology specialist who isn't brilliant and rational-minded? And a brilliant and rational president has its advantages too, even imperatives, as the ruin of Bush/Cheney becomes clear and irrefutable.
Craig Unger puts the conflict between reason and religion this way:
(As discussed in the new book, The Fall of the House of Bush), most secularists, who refer to the culture wars or the red state-blue state conflict, still don't understand that what is really going on is an age old battle between faith and reason. After all, America is not only the country that put a man on the moon, that unraveled the human genome, that invented the iPod. It's also a country with tens of millions of people who don't believe in evolution, who think the earth was created 6,000 years ago and who think that the Final Conflict may bring the world to an end any day now.
The religious right remains powerful on Planet GOP, but is faltering badly in the greater reality-based American consciousness.
###
[John McCain's recently acquired Joe-mentum is a joke, and McCain, of the top four Republican candidates, remains the least acceptable to the religious right, as he deviates slightly from being mean-spirited and dogmatic.]
So, will Huckabee sustain his frontrunner status, propped up by the religious right?
Let's hope so, because the religious right has worn out its welcome among the center of American politics.
As Harold Meyerson writes today in the Post:
As Christians across the world prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it's a fitting moment to contemplate the mountain of moral, and mortal, hypocrisy that is our Christianized Republican Party. ...
The most depressing thing about the Republican presidential race is that the party's rank and file require their candidates to grow meaner with each passing week. And now, inconveniently, inconsiderately, comes Christmas, a holiday that couldn't be better calibrated to expose the Republicans' rank, fetid hypocrisy.
As fans of the popular television series House and Bones attest, heroically free-thinking, compassionate and secular American archetypes remain admired figures in the American consciousness.
I mean who wants to see a Gastroenterology specialist who isn't brilliant and rational-minded? And a brilliant and rational president has its advantages too, even imperatives, as the ruin of Bush/Cheney becomes clear and irrefutable.
Craig Unger puts the conflict between reason and religion this way:
(As discussed in the new book, The Fall of the House of Bush), most secularists, who refer to the culture wars or the red state-blue state conflict, still don't understand that what is really going on is an age old battle between faith and reason. After all, America is not only the country that put a man on the moon, that unraveled the human genome, that invented the iPod. It's also a country with tens of millions of people who don't believe in evolution, who think the earth was created 6,000 years ago and who think that the Final Conflict may bring the world to an end any day now.
The religious right remains powerful on Planet GOP, but is faltering badly in the greater reality-based American consciousness.
###
Nov 28, 2007
Huckabee and Paul Impress, Romney and Thompson Flop in CNN/YouTube Debate
Update: For those of you not pretending to think like a Republican primary voter, Salon has two analyses, and here's Nichols' take:
- What you missed while watching "Chad Vader" by Michael Scherer
- The godawful GOP debate by Walter Shapiro
- Out-Tancredoing Tancredo at GOP's Anti-Immigrant Debate by John Nichols
As a libertarian liberal watching the GOP's CNN/YouTube debate trying to think as a Republican primary voter, here are some impressions:
Rudy Giuliani - Did nothing to hurt himself. Seems unafraid to take unpopular positions, but reeks of the City. Still standing after immigration grilling. Not great on today's Politico's Billing-the-city piece. Third place.
Mike Huckabee - Impressive, witty, and religious; appears in sharper command of issues than in previous weeks. Co-winner.
Rep. Duncan Hunter - Unremarkable
Sen. John McCain - Slow start, but took off after torture question and demonstrated the command and clarity that made McCain an early front-runner. Second place.
Rep. Ron Paul - Decisive, earnest, anti-war and pro-vet. This guy is popular with veterans and is raising one hell of a lot of money. And the Iraq War is not nearly as popular with GOP voters as many pretend. GOP better find a way to stop this guy. Co-winner.
Mitt Romney - Indecisive, insincere and slick; unsteady, especially on the gays-in-the-military and torture questions. Big loser.
Rep. Tom Tancredo - Unremarkable
Fred Thompson - Listless, uninspired, and fading fast. Big loser.
The first primary is weeks away. And debates, mini-scandals and talking heads now matter. Campaign operatives are losing hair, I assure you.
###
- What you missed while watching "Chad Vader" by Michael Scherer
- The godawful GOP debate by Walter Shapiro
- Out-Tancredoing Tancredo at GOP's Anti-Immigrant Debate by John Nichols
As a libertarian liberal watching the GOP's CNN/YouTube debate trying to think as a Republican primary voter, here are some impressions:
Rudy Giuliani - Did nothing to hurt himself. Seems unafraid to take unpopular positions, but reeks of the City. Still standing after immigration grilling. Not great on today's Politico's Billing-the-city piece. Third place.
Mike Huckabee - Impressive, witty, and religious; appears in sharper command of issues than in previous weeks. Co-winner.
Rep. Duncan Hunter - Unremarkable
Sen. John McCain - Slow start, but took off after torture question and demonstrated the command and clarity that made McCain an early front-runner. Second place.
Rep. Ron Paul - Decisive, earnest, anti-war and pro-vet. This guy is popular with veterans and is raising one hell of a lot of money. And the Iraq War is not nearly as popular with GOP voters as many pretend. GOP better find a way to stop this guy. Co-winner.
Mitt Romney - Indecisive, insincere and slick; unsteady, especially on the gays-in-the-military and torture questions. Big loser.
Rep. Tom Tancredo - Unremarkable
Fred Thompson - Listless, uninspired, and fading fast. Big loser.
The first primary is weeks away. And debates, mini-scandals and talking heads now matter. Campaign operatives are losing hair, I assure you.
###
Oct 14, 2007
Religious Right to Kill 2008 Republican Nominee
Update II: Novak - McCain's Christian Problem
Update: Evangelicals deserting ahead of 2008 election
The Republicans Are Going to Lose.
[A recurring feature pointing to evidence and analyses of the Republicans’ coming defeat in 2008.]
Perhaps the key question about the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nominee is: How badly will the Republican nominee under-perform with the religious right in the general election?
Looking at the top four Republican contenders, the answer appears to be very badly; and though the religious right voters arguably comprise merely some 15-to-20 percent of the electorate in the general election, absent their enthusiastic support, the Republican nominee looks dead.
The religious right has found no acceptable candidates in the GOP's first-tier candidates, so Democrats can have some fun observing their nomination process.
Some quick notes on the four leading candidates:
Rudy Giuliani — James Dobson, the leading religious right leader of the Focus on the Family group that self-consciously rallies religious right voters has made clear that Rudy is political anathema; hence Rudy will perform badly with the religious right; and Rudy’s past positions on Affirmative Action, Abortion, civil right for gays and Immigration will kill his candidacy. [Rudy won’t play in the general election, and his cross-over appeal because of his strength has never been demonstrated and will be off-set by any agile Democratic campaign.]
John McCain — "Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," said James Dobson. Few religious right leaders have forgiven McCain for his wildly unpopular (in Republican circles) McCain/Feingold bill, and his April 9, 2000 speech trashing the religious right (that’s the Robertson/Falwell “agents of intolerance” speech). McCain would perform as badly as Rudy.
Mitt Romney — As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney was even more pro-choice and pro-civil rights for gays than Rudy. The massive effort underway to convert him into a rightwinger won’t fly (detailed in the current Harper’s (November) piece by Ken Silverstein). As quoted by Silverstein: “(Romney) says all the right things, his speeches run through the litmus test on conservative issues, but there’s no conviction behind it. …,” said Cyndi Mosteller, a social rightwinger and GOP politico in South Carolina. Add to that Christian religious bigotry against Mormons and you have a political Loser.
Fred Thompson — As a late September piece in The Politico notes: "Isn’t Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won’t talk at all about what he believes, and can’t speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson asked in the message, obtained by The Associated Press. "He has no passion, no zeal and no apparent ‘want to.’ And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"
Grandpa Fred is dead, and he comes across as tired and wooden: An older version of an unenergetic John Kerry.
###
Update: Evangelicals deserting ahead of 2008 electionThe Republicans Are Going to Lose.
[A recurring feature pointing to evidence and analyses of the Republicans’ coming defeat in 2008.]
Perhaps the key question about the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nominee is: How badly will the Republican nominee under-perform with the religious right in the general election?
Looking at the top four Republican contenders, the answer appears to be very badly; and though the religious right voters arguably comprise merely some 15-to-20 percent of the electorate in the general election, absent their enthusiastic support, the Republican nominee looks dead.
The religious right has found no acceptable candidates in the GOP's first-tier candidates, so Democrats can have some fun observing their nomination process.
Some quick notes on the four leading candidates:
Rudy Giuliani — James Dobson, the leading religious right leader of the Focus on the Family group that self-consciously rallies religious right voters has made clear that Rudy is political anathema; hence Rudy will perform badly with the religious right; and Rudy’s past positions on Affirmative Action, Abortion, civil right for gays and Immigration will kill his candidacy. [Rudy won’t play in the general election, and his cross-over appeal because of his strength has never been demonstrated and will be off-set by any agile Democratic campaign.]
John McCain — "Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," said James Dobson. Few religious right leaders have forgiven McCain for his wildly unpopular (in Republican circles) McCain/Feingold bill, and his April 9, 2000 speech trashing the religious right (that’s the Robertson/Falwell “agents of intolerance” speech). McCain would perform as badly as Rudy.
Mitt Romney — As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney was even more pro-choice and pro-civil rights for gays than Rudy. The massive effort underway to convert him into a rightwinger won’t fly (detailed in the current Harper’s (November) piece by Ken Silverstein). As quoted by Silverstein: “(Romney) says all the right things, his speeches run through the litmus test on conservative issues, but there’s no conviction behind it. …,” said Cyndi Mosteller, a social rightwinger and GOP politico in South Carolina. Add to that Christian religious bigotry against Mormons and you have a political Loser.
Fred Thompson — As a late September piece in The Politico notes: "Isn’t Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won’t talk at all about what he believes, and can’t speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson asked in the message, obtained by The Associated Press. "He has no passion, no zeal and no apparent ‘want to.’ And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"
Grandpa Fred is dead, and he comes across as tired and wooden: An older version of an unenergetic John Kerry.
###
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