The Attacks Begin

John McCain is the nominee for the Republican Party for President of the United States. And therefore, the national attacks upon him have begun...



I'll have commentary and analysis from the weekend's primaries tomorrow. But this was too funny not to share.

Mitt Romney - "F@#K You!"

Mitt Romney Withdraws

$30 million dollars of his own money, a string of defeats and a couple of victories to show for it and Mitt Romney today announced to a stunned audience that he was withdrawing from the campaign for President of the United States. Forgive me a brief unscripted moment of joy, but this is the news that has made me most excited this today. WOOHOO!! Mitt Romney has moved on, and thank God he won't be in the White House as President of the United States (perhaps until next cycle, but we'll deal with that then.)

I have to hand it to Mitt Romney and provide him a little credit - he knew that it was time to get out. He could have kept going and been the anti-McCain, but he wouldn't have won and just weakened the Republicans because of it. With McCain the presumptive nominee he can now work on bringing the party together and fighting the divided Democrats from a united position. So credit to Romney - he put aside his own ego (which would have been telling him to continue fighting) for the good of his party. They sure need it to unite behind McCain and beat the Democrats in the Fall!

Like it or not, odd-ball conservatives, your nominee is now John McCain. I don't know why you're bitching so much - of all the candidates you had on offer he's best placed to win. Do you really want to nominate someone who's going to lose? Please, you're smarter than that, surely?

But back to Romney and his campaign. He just never connected with the voters, in any of his iterations. Has there ever been a candidate who has remade himself so many times on the campaign trail? The ultimate panderer. Not only were his issues inconsistent from his days as Massachusetts Governor (and we talk about it as though he left office years ago rather than in January of 2007) but he literally re-made his image on the stump several times - going from Powerpoint presentations to untucked shirts. It didn't resonate because it wasn't genuine, and I still believe that his near-bald-faced lies to the people of Michigan about their economic prospects are a pretty horrendous thing to do.

I'm glad that Mitt Romney is out of the race because I don't like him as a candidate (I won't say I don't like him as a person because I don't know him...but his characteristics as a candidate indicate don't bode well..) Farewell Mitt. I'm sure we'll see you somewhere again.

Super Tuesday - The Republicans

Tonight also hasn't given us a decisive nominee on the Republican side. However, having said that, it's definitely more decisive for the Republicans - John McCain is the front-runner and he's probably on track to nomination. Inevitable it is not yet completely so, but we're getting closer to seeing a nomination of Senator John McCain.

The story of the night on the Republican side, though, is not really about McCain, though there are some interesting features of his running this evening, but rather Mike Huckabee. Let's see who won what and then talk a little more about this:

John McCain - Arizona, California, Conneticut, Delaware, Illionois, Missouri, New Jersey and New York.

Mitt Romney - Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Utah.

Mike Huckabee - Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Mike Huckabee scored very well in the South, though is appeal doesn't extend very far beyond that point. He ate away from Romney a lot, because Romney wanted to be the choice of Southern conservatives but Huckabee beat him in a lot of the big southern states - Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. With very little money Huckabee has taken quite a few big contests, whereas with all the money in the world Mitt Romney was not able to score any big victories. He didn't win in California, which is the only 'big prize' where it looked like he could have been competitive.

I would be about to announce that Mitt Romney should withdraw (well, that's nothing new from me - I don't like him enough that I think he should have withdrawn ages ago!) and probably been right about it...except for the fact that John McCain still can't get it together amongst conservatives. In states like Missouri, which he won, he still came third amongst self-described conservative voters. McCain wins because moderates support him in droves, even when they hold different positions on wedge issues (anti-war moderate Republicans support McCain. Confused? I imagine so are they!) He won't pull out though, because there's still slim hope that he can rally conservatives around him and ride the surge of some kind of anti-McCain backlash.

But I think Romney's circling the drain. No doubt that Huckabee is also, but he's done much better than expected (even though it won't be enough), whereas Romney has under-performed in a lot of places. I look forward to his eventual withdrawal.

Anyone want to start offering predictions for Mini-Super-Tuesday on March 4th?

Super Tuesday - The Democrats

Well this has certainly been an interesting night for the Democrats! Super Tuesday has ended...nothing. The race continues to Saturday, and Sunday, and Tuesday and Tuesday and Tuesday... The Democrats will continue fighting for a little while to come. Just look at how the races break down to see the extent to which the race for the Democratic nomination is truly divided.

Hillary Clinton wins: Arizona, Arkansas, CALIFORNIA, Massachussetts, New Jersey, NEW YORK, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

Barack Obama wins: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Conneticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, ILLINOIS, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota and Utah.

In just plain number of states Barack Obama has the edge, but in terms of big states Clinton has the edge with wins in New York and California. No candidate has made a decisive breakthrough this evening, though both now have big bragging rights about the different states and regions in which they have performed well. I can't yet give any kind of breakdown on delegates (will later in the week) because it'll take a while to work out how they get allocated to the different delegates because of the eccentricities of local rules.

Let's look at some of the states:

NEW YORK and ILLIONOIS - Clinton and Obama took New York and Illionois, the states they respectively represent, which was sort of predictable. However, Obama did better in New York than Clinton did in Illionois, which could be indicative of the ability that Obama has to penetrate around the country.

CALIFORNIA - At time of writing the California returns are still coming in, though many networks have already called it for Clinton. The polls closed a bit in the days leading up to Super Tuesday, but it looks like Clinton retained her lead from 2007 in California.


Two things are clear looking at the poll numbers - something potentially negative and something definitely positive. The potentially negative thing about tonight is the gut-wrenching indecision of Democratic voters over their preferred nominee. Just look at how divided things are and see the way in which the Democrats are unable to coalesce around a single nominee. In only 3 contests - Arkansas, Idaho and Kansas - did one of the candidates drop below 30% of the vote. In every other contest both candidates drew at the very least one third of the votes cast. What's positive in this? Well, though Democratic voters are still very unsure about who to support, they would be happy with either candidate. 71/2% of Obama supporters would be happy with a Clinton nomination and the same number of Clinton supporters would be happy with an Obama nomination.

The result of tonight's contests? The Democrats are having a lot of fun picking their nominee. Though it's a difficult decision for them to make, they are happy to make it. We can only hope that the candidates maintain the spirit of this contest - a hopeful search for the next President of the United States - and not go on the attack after tonight. The candidates can ruin this for the voters. I can only hope that they won't.

Because It's Been a While...

I don't like Mitt Romney. I haven't said that in a while. To make up for it, I present an ad from the McCain campaign that makes a lot of my points about why I hate Romney.



There. I feel satisfied for a little while.

Conservative Base Fracturing?

This video is very interesting, and it's one of many that you can find across Youtube of popular conservative icons slating their own frontrunner, Senator John McCain. Ann Coulter goes so far in this video to say that if McCain is the nominee then Clinton has her vote! (Which if you know anything about Ann Coulter, is the equivalent admission of hell itself freezing over).

There has been a lot of chatter about the way in which the normally disciplined Republican Party has been fracruting because of this presidential contest. It seems that none of the candidates appeal to every wing of the party, and from the fund-raising totals the idea that Democrats are much more excited about their possibilities this year is borne out (2 Democrats out-raised 4 Republicans in the past quarter...and even over the past year.)

Is this potential fracturing of the base a problem for Republicans? Well, it's a problem for conservatives because they don't like John McCain and think that he's a liberal or too much of a maverick on too many issues. They'll give him a frosty polite reception at the convention if he's the nominee, and promptly ignore the rest of the election.

They obviously perceive this to be a bad thing, and something that will hurt their chances in November because if they can't get excited then their nominee won't get elected. But...is conservative disdain for McCain actually to his advantage? Let's face it, the conservative base of the Republican Party are the group that elected George W Bush and defeated John McCain in 2000. They're connected to the Bush legacy because that's the kind of candidate they want. The country, from the seeming success of the Democrats so far this year, does not want another Bush.

So perhaps it's good for John McCain that he's rejected by the conservative base of the Republican Party. It allows him to be a moderate Republican candidate who *isn't* George W. Bush, and so rather than pandering to a group that hates and has already rejected him, he can fight with the Democrat over the voters in the center. This year they're trending Democrat, and if they do then the Republicans lose whoever their nominee is. A conservative Republican has lost that center almost for sure. A moderate one has a fighting chance, which is borne out by the polls that show John McCain best placed to defeat a Democrat in November.

The result? The choices for VP are wide open, in some ways. There's been chatter about Giuliani VP since they're so chummy on the campaign trail right now, but the common wisdom says to reject that because McCain would need a conservative to balance the ticket, not a *more* liberal Republican. But if the base is lost (they'll probably still vote for him in November, though they won't like it) and the center is where the fight is at, then a McCain/Giuliani ticket is less absurd than it originally sounded. But only a little less absurd.

(ADDENDUM: You certainly know that something unusual is going on when the following ad becomes necessary:)

CNN Democratic Debate

And so we have the first debate between just two candidates - Barack Obama faced off against Hillary Clinton last night in their first face-off debate. But before I start writing about what each candidate talked about and what the tone of the debate was like, I just wanted to take a moment to contrast this CNN Democratic debate in Los Angeles with the CNN Republican debate the night before at the Ronald Reagan library.

The opening of this debate was like a rally. Those spectators were pumped up, and there were a lot of them. The Republicans had quite a dry debate with Air Force One in the background, and there was some applause for certain lines but there wasn't anywhere near the opening atmosphere that this debate had. It seems there's significantly more excitement on the part of the Democrats than the Republicans - which bodes extremely well for the summer campaign.

The debate, therefore, was exactly the fire that was needed for this rally. Both parties' supporters can walk away from the debate tonight pumped about the Democrats opportunities in November. The candidates were nice to each other - so nice that the talking heads are back to talking about the Obama/Clinton/Obama/Clinton dream ticket. It didn't leave you as dispirited as the previous CNN debate where the two candidates destroyed each other. Makes you hopeful that the campaign can be much more positive as it continues and the Democrats can assume the kind of unity Republicans are renowned for but can't get together this cycle, and march on to an election victory with, in some ways, a sense of entitlement.

Obama's and Clinton's opening speeches were particularly welcome about how Democrats should be unified and everyone be friends. I'm also glad that they acknowledged John Edwards and his withdrawal. Notice that noone in the Republican field made any mention about Rudy Giuliani now that he has withdrawn.

There's no doubt that we're on the cusp of something historic. This debate showed that - a woman debating an African American, (and they're actually the front-runners and not Elizabeth Dole debating Alan Keyes), and hundreds of people in the audience going nuts for these candidates. It's so great to see social progress in the United States, and the glass ceiling being beaten.

There's definitely something more hopeful listening to the Democrats than the Republicans. I feel the Republican candidates are pretty dour about the world around them, whereas Clinton and Obama seem to recognise that there are serious problems, but they face those problems with hopefulness. Perhaps they feel the tide moving in their direction and that's why they're feeling so good.

Ron Paul - The Kind of Crazy You Wash Down

CNN Republican Debate

It was a rather emptier stage than we are used to in the CNN Republican Debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. No Thompson, no Giuliani...there were some big personalities absent and it brings into focus the fact that this race is starting to coalesce around one nominee, because at the end of the day there can be only one presidential candidate left on that stage, facing off against one Democrat.

Mitt Romney and John McCain don't like each other. That much is clea from how they fought each other throughout this debate. Some of it was civil, some of it was decidedly not. I'm also not one to defend Romney, but he is right on his position on timetables as opposed to what McCain says Romney's position is. It's a rather wide interpretation of Romney's quote to say that he's in favour of timetables, and I think McCain looks a little silly saying it. He should stop listening to whichever campaign aide fed him that line.

We're looking at a situation in which John McCain is emerging as the Republican front-runner. He's picking up multiple endorsements - Governor Schwarzzenager, Rudy Giuliani, Senator Lieberman and a whole host of others - but he still doesn't looks like a front-runner sitting on that stage. Huckabee and Paul certainly aren't front-runners anymore, and you can see from the way in which Huckabee was more shut out of the debate tonight than on previous occassions that he's starting to be pushed to the sidelines, and might not have long left in this race.

I'll tell you why McCain didn't seem like a front-runner - all the applause lines went to other candidates, mostly Romney, some of which were at McCain's expense. If he were the front-runner and the choice of the Republican Party for presidential candidate, why is he getting applauded *against*?

There are some serious problems in the Republican Party, I think. There's another post in that though, which harks back to one of my original posts on this blog about the Republican Identity Crisis. One month later it's time for a review of that situation.

Rudy Giuliani Withdraws

Following on the heels of John Edwards announcement of withdrawal from the race for nomination, the Republican race has also today decreased by one candidate - Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani has, in the last few minutes, announced the end of his campaign and endorsed Senator John McCain for President.

Wow, that was fast after Florida. I guess it wasn't completely unexpected; he's already lost a lot of contests and fell third in the place where he pegged his flag to the mast. But it just seemed to come all so fast, and seemed a bit like a waste for Giuliani. He didn't compete in so many contests, then competed once, lost and dropped out.

People will write about the Giuliani strategy for quite some time. The critical ones will speak of the stupidest presidential campaign ever waged. The serious ones will discuss an attempt by the Giuliani campaign to remake the way that primary campaigns are fought, casting them as national and not local battles that take place in several, unrepresentative states.

The strategy may have worked if there were 2 or 3 states prior to Florida and Super-Duper Tuesday. The people could put up with Giuliani skipping Iowa and New Hampshire - after all, why do those two states get all the attention as it is? But having then skipped Michigan, Wyoming, Nevada and South Carolina indicates a real weakness in the Giuliani campaign which we hadn't really prediced because of his phantom 'national' frontrunner status. It only really now becomes clear (though I spoke about this in my previous post on Giuliani) that he'd bowed out of competing in every state that, combined, had created a fair slice of America. He chose not to compete amongst Evangelicals, independents, Hispanics, southern conservatives...who in the Republican Party was therefore left to support him? Retired New Yorkers, who got him as far as third place in the Florida primary.

Why then was Giuliani the national front-runner? It's a question I'll have to look into. It seems that Rudy's Republican party doesn't exist anymore. Senator McCain is finding that his Republican Party isn't quite there anymore, but he's not as far out in the socially conservative cold as Giuliani was. Pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-gun control, pro-anything that social conservatives hate. Tough job, Rudy.

Where Rudy's national frontrunner status originated from will provide us with a lot of information about his campaign. There's also been a lot of talk about the laziness factor for Giuliani in the same way that there was for Thompson. He was too lazy to fight in the previous states, where he needed to get down and scrap with McCain, Romney and Huckabee. He wasn't willing to do that...and so was he lazy? Or was he (failing to) reshape the way that primary campaigns are fought? Give it a couple of weeks to simmer down, and we'll see what reflections come forward.

What now for Rudy Giuliani? He's made a ton of money. He may go back to doing that...or perhaps there's a spot in the McCain Adminstration. Or an open Senate seat in New York... Many, many options to see Giuliani again.

John Edwards Withdraws

John Edwards has just announced his withdrawal from the race for the Democratic nomination in the place where he started that race - the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. I have to be completely honest - I wasn't expecting this decision at all. See my last post for the multitude of ways that Edwards still had a role to play going into February 5th and even beyond. He had the power to make king, but apparently that wasn't enough for John Edwards. I respect him for that decision, because it's the good decision of a good person, and not political.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but John Edwards is a good man. He's also a good candidate. It's just such a shame that he was running in this cycle against a woman and an African American. His contribution to the race has been substansive - he's talked about issues that few Democratic candidates in recent times have had the stomach to talk about. He speakes about poverty because noone else will. I wish he'd stayed in the race; I don't particularly relish the idea of a two person Democratic debate. That's going to be brutal, and there won't be a moderate Edwards voice to bring the conversation back to the issues.

Why did Edwards do this considering his options? Perhaps he wants Barack Obama to be nominated more than Clinton, in which case he was standing as something of an impediment to that (Edwards supports are likely to split to Obama who shares a similar message.) Without Edwards it's possible Obama gets a boost and can overcome Clinton. Perhaps he'll endorse another candidate and receive a reward because of that (a spot on the ticket as Vice President.)

I hope that we haven't seen the end of John Edwards. He's a crusader for important issues and his Two Americas theme resonates quite a lot. He wasn't going to win the nomination, but I think it's a shame he's dropped out now. I hope he'll continue to play a role in this campaign and not disappear off the radar, and I hope his voice in the Democratic Party continues to be heard.

Bless you and your campaign, John Edwards.

And now the race is down to two.

McCain Wins Florida!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Republican front-runner: Senator John McCain! With 99% of precincts reporting John McCain is the winner in Florida with 36% of the vote, beating Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani for Florida's 57 delegates. After six contests a Republican front-runner has emerged with a candidate who has won 3 states - New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. The candidate who was declared dead by the news media in the summer is now best placed to become the Republican nominee for President.

However, is it all over? Not by a long shot! Though we can definitely say that McCain is now the front-runner, he's not decisively so. He took 36% of the vote and won all the state's delegates - Romney wasn't all that far behind at 31%. McCain, after all, was only the choice of just over one third of Floridian Republican primary voters. But that's for Super-Duper Tuesday to see if McCain can lock things up there. For now he should bask in front-runner status.

Mike Huckabee's campaign is drawing to a close. He almost came third in this race, but he can't always be fighting for the spot behind the front-runner. After Super Tuesday, in which it's certainly possible that he walks away with a couple of wins, Mike Huckabee will probably withdraw (and if McCain is the nominee get chosen to be his Vice President).

Rudy Giuliani... Well, D-Day came. Ladies and gentlemen, I not only have the honour of presenting you with the Republican front-runner but one of the stupidest campaigns in the history of presidential primaries. I have more to say analysing the Giuliani strategy now that we know it hasn't worked...and so will confront the issue in another post. For now what I will say is that the news media is talking about Giuliani dropping out and endorsing John McCain, perhaps as early as tomorrow.

On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton won with 50% of the vote, but it doesn't matter because Florida had all its delegates stripped for moving its primary before February 5th without the sanction of the Democratic Party. The results, therefore, are suspect since none of the candidates campaigned there or were able to influence the results. Much like Michigan, I'm not covering it because I don't trust the results (and it doesn't matter.)

Bush's Last State of the Union

Last night President Bush gave his last State of the Union address to Congress. Many were rejoicing that this is the last time he would step foot in the House chamber to address a joint session of Congress, and many more hoped that the next person standing in the well of the House would either be a woman or an African American (but certainly a Democrat.)

It was a fairly good speech by Bush standards. But it suffered from lame-duck-itis. So many worthy ideas (and a lot of stuff about global warming, which was very nice to hear from a President whose administration refused to accepts its existence for much of the President's two terms) but alas, so much campaigning to be done. This last State of the Union doesn't matter for how it'll effect President Bush's last year, but rather what effect it had on the campaigns. Case in point, the CNN Political Ticker this morning whose top story (right now, anyway) has been carried over from last night:

Yes, Clinton and Obama shared an awkward moment and were saved from it by Teddy Kennedy and Claire McCaskill. One important thing we did hear from the President, and picks up on a previous post, was about earmarking. Now in his last year and so with literally nothing to lose and nothing that he really wants from Congress anymore the President is going to get tough on earmarks. He's going to be John McCain 7 years late. He'll veto any bills which contain earmarks not voted upon by the Congress (many earmarks are inserted into conference reports and bypass the vote of the two houses.) Way for Bush to get tough when he's got nothing to lose!

I'm personally not a fan of earmarks, simply because they drive member ambitions in some ugly directions. Their congressional careers shouldn't be about who can be the biggest ear-marker, but about who can do the most good for America. The people's schyzophrenia on this issue aside - earmarks are bad because they do not efficiently allocate money. They do it based upon the political power of the Representative or Senator and not based upon where that money is best spent. I think it's a shame Bush is manning up on this issue so late. He seems to have huge balls on the issue of Iraq, but not on earmarking? Perhaps because the practice is just as popular (if not more so) amongst his Republican brethren as it is amongst Democrats. Senator Ted Stevens was no doubt weeping, though Representative Jeff Flake may have been celebrating.

Dennis Kucinich Withdraws

Dennis is done. Apparently he read my open letter (I imagine that he has time) and found its points relevant. I'm not going to miss Dennis Kucinich, he is one of the goofiest presidential candidates that have run for the highest office in the land. I'm not even sure why the people of Ohio's 10th District keep returning him to office - and apparently neither do they considering that he's facing a tough primary fight this March.

He claimed that his reason for withdrawal is because his exclusion from the presidential debates effectively ended his campaign. That has nothing to do with why he's done so badly - so few people watch all of the debates that they would have made zero difference. Dennis Kucinich lost because he sucked as a candidate. He's not presidential.

Cya Dennis.