Tag: Campaign 2008

Lowering the Bloom — On the GOP

Buck Banks

Political analyst Craig Crawford says that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s noisy exit from the Republican Party and foray into the ranks of political independence helps the Democrats and harms the Repugs:

Even though he was once a Democrat and despite his liberal social views, Bloomberg more naturally appeals to those Republicans who are iffy on social matters but who tend to admire a wealthy businessmen who runs government like a CEO (which he also once was).

What little polling data exists right now suggests a break toward Democrats. For instance, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York nets an across-the-board gain of three percentage points in a 3-way matchup against Bloomberg and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani done this month by SurveyUSA in battleground states. A Bloomberg candidacy boosts Clinton’s net margin in 10 of the 15 states surveyed, while giving Giuliani a bump in only three and producing no change in two.

The Bloomberg assist to Clinton is most evident in Southern and border states. Missouri actually flips from a Giuliani lead to a Clinton lead if Bloomberg is in the mix. And in Kentucky – one of the few Southern states that the Clinton campaign intends to target – the Bloomberg factor tightens a Giuliani lead to a dead heat between he and Clinton.

While a slew of new polls will surely test other matchups, expect the Bloomberg spoiler effect to narrowly benefit Democrats.

Bloomberg had better run for something and win because he’s quickly running out of potential party affiliations. Forget the Greens, maybe the Libertarians and there’s always the World Socialist Party of the United States or the National Nihilist Party, if he gets really desperate.

Where Is Team Thompson’s Rapid Response? ‘Daniel Boone’ Error Still Up on Campaign Site

Jon Ponder

Former senator and lobbyist, Joe Don Thompson, with friend

The presidential campaign team of former lobbyist Fred Thompson is either unaware — or does not care — that the Tennessee-born candidate’s bio contains an error about an important historical figure in his home state.

The mistake, which I saw at TBogg’s place and reported on yesterday, is a mix up of the identities of Davy Crockett, a native son and hero of Tennessee, and Daniel Boone, who was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in North Carolina. The Thompson bio reads, in part:

In the tradition of Daniel Boone of Tennessee and President George Washington, citizen-legislators and leaders Thompson had admired growing up, he walked away from an easy reelection victory to seek new challenges.

As of 8 a.m., Pacific, the error had not been corrected. Republicans who cling to Thompson as their last best chance for keeping the White House had better hope his campaign’s rapid response team gets its act in order before he enters the race next month.

We speculated that the source of the confusion is, first, the lack of Tennesseans on the campaign team, which is dominated by non-Southern elites like Mary Matalan, Larry Lindsey, Ken Khachigian and Victoria Toensing. Secondly, like Thompson, these folks are all Boomers, and probably confused Crockett and Boone because the actor Fess Parker established himself as an icon 40 years ago by playing both men.

Our friends at BuzzFlash.com, in effort to help Team Thompson keep straight which frontier hero is which, posted a link to the lyrics to the Davy Crockett theme song. Buzz said:

To Assist the Fred Thompson “Hollywood Light” Campaign, We are Posting the Lyrics to the Davy Crockett Song. We Saw Davy Crockett on TV, and Fred Thompson is No Davy Crockett.

We also had a couple of comments yesterday that were interesting.

Stephen Crockett — co-host of Democratic Talk Radio — who should know from Davy Crockett, agreed with BuzzFlash:

Fred Thompson is no Davy Crockett. My ancestor was a strong defender of the poor and powerless. Thompson is an enemy of the poor and powerless.

While a Senator, Thompson represented the interests of Wall Street. He spent a third of his professional life as a corporate lobbyist.

Davy Crockett would have been a campaigning actively against any elected office for Fred Thompson. This Crockett will do the same!

And from Ricardo, who wrote:

That’s OK. I confuse Fred Thompson with Joe Don Baker. Another actor that played dumb hicks in movies.

Thanks, Ricardo — you inspired our choice of photos to go with this story.

Update: 11:25 a.m., Pacific: Had a nice note from the Thompson campaign website developers who said the text of the site had been corrected. The bio now reads, “In the tradition of Daniel Boone and President George Washington.” Not “Davy Crockett of Tennessee.”

A Bad Day for Rudy: Report Says He Was Kicked Off the Iraq Study Group for Poor Attendance — And His S.C. Finance Chair Was Indicted on Coke Charges by the Feds

Jon Ponder

George Bush famously had no foreign policy experience before he was elected president, and after seven years of bumpersticker slogans and bad, sometimes awful, decision-making, the result of his inexperience has been disastrous by every rational measure.

The fact that Rudolph Giuliani is the GOP frontrunner demonstrates that the Republicans are fully prepared to foist another tough-talking foreign policy featherweight onto the rest of us again.

The fact that Rudolph Giuliani, whose foreign affairs resume is equally thin, is the GOP frontrunner at the moment demonstrates that the Republicans are fully prepared to foist another featherweight onto the rest of us again, mainly because he makes the slogans sound convincingly mean.

But a revelation today about the events that led to Giuliani’s abrupt resignation from the Iraq Study Group in 2006 will provide ammunition for his critics:

Rudolph Giuliani’s membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel’s top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

He was replaced by former Attorney General Edwin Meese in May 2006.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina:

South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, a former real estate developer who became a rising political star after his election last year, was indicted Tuesday on federal cocaine charges.

Ravenel and another man were accused of distributing less than 500 grams of the drug starting in late 2005…

Thomas Ravenel is also the state chairman for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

Fred Thompson’s Campaign Confuses Home State Icon Davy Crockett with Daniel Boone

Jon Ponder


The campaign team for Fred Thompson, the Tennessee-born former lobbyist who is running for president, made a mistake on its website that wouldn’t get past your average 10-year-old from Chattanooga: They confused Tennessee-born frontiersman and politician Davy Crockett with Daniel Boone, the trailblazer who was born in Pennsylvania, raised in North Carolina, and served in the Virginia legislature.

Comparing the former K Street lobbyist to George Washington is wildly hubristic, but the Daniel Boone mix-up is just sloppy.

The site serves as the official house organ for the Thompson campaign until, as TBogg says,”[Thompson] gets done with sitting on the front porch and whittling and finally moseys on into town to file papers with the county recorder or some other act suitably bucolic enough to make Chris Matthews swoon.” (We hear Thompson is fixin’ to get ready to announce in mid-July.)

Framing Thompson, who worked as a Washington lobbyist for 18 years and served in the Senate for nine years, as a “citizen legislator,” the campaign site says:

In the tradition of Daniel Boone of Tennessee and President George Washington, citizen-legislators and leaders Thompson had admired growing up, he walked away from an easy reelection victory to seek new challenges.

Leaving aside the wildly hubristic comparison with George Washington, the facts about Daniel Boone are wrong.

After his family moved south from Pennsylvania, Boone grew up in the Yadkin River Valley near present-day Mocksville, N.C. As an adult, he made his name by establishing the trail through the Cumberland Gap from Tennessee into the Kentucky wilderness. He did serve as a legislator, but in the Virginia Assembly, not Tennessee’s. In fact, while Daniel Boone lived in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri and even bought land near Pensacola, Fla., he was never a permanent resident of Tennessee, as far as I can tell.

On the other hand, Davy Crockett was born in Tennessee, and later represented the state in the U.S. House. But Crockett did not walk away from an easy reelection victory.

Elected in 1828, he lost his seat in 1830 but won it back in 1832, only to lose it again in 1835, at which point he famously said to his constituents, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” He did just that — leaving behind his wife, children, mother and siblings. In March 1836, he was killed at the siege of the Alamo.

Of course, what may be confusing the campaign team — which is said to include non-Tennesseans like Mary Matalan, Lawrence Lindsey, Ken Khachigian, Dave Bossie and Victoria Toensing — is the fact that Crockett and Boone were both played by Fess Parker on television 40 years ago.

Chris Matthews’ New Man Crush: Fred ‘K Street’ Thompson

Jon Ponder

Left: Bush with pilot on aircraft carrier in 2003. Right: Fred Thompson, the former K Street lobbyist

Chris Matthews, the host of “Hardball” on MSNBC, has a bad habit of developing man-crushes on tough-acting politicians. He’s just getting over one of these affairs of the heart, and is showing signs that him may be ready to get back on the pony of love and ride.

“Can you smell the English leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man‘s shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of — a little bit of cigar smoke?”
— Chris Matthews

Like his former crush, the new one is a macho-acting Republican. And like the ex, he’s an obvious phony to anyone not smitten with him. Poor Chris. Here’s how he gushed over his new bff, the erstwhile presidential candidate, Fred Thompson:

MATTHEWS: Can you smell the English leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man‘s shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of — a little bit of cigar smoke? You know, whatever.

He has also recently flirted with Sen. John McCain, whose “jib” he said he liked (whereas about the New England preppie, Mitt Romney, Matthews said, “He’s got a nice chin, which I noticed.”)

Matthews’ long, lamented ex, of course, is Pres. George W. Bush. Here’s a snippet of Matthews’ perving on the president during the coverage of Bush’s landing on an aircraft carrier in a fighter jet, on May 1, 2003:

Here’s a president who’s really nonverbal. He’s like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. I remember him standing at that fence with Colin Powell. Was [that] the best picture in the 2000 campaign?

And:

MATTHEWS: The president there — look at this guy! We’re watching him. He looks like he flew the plane. He only flew it as a passenger, but he’s flown —

[A PRO-BUSH PUNDIT]: He looks like a fighter pilot.

MATTHEWS: He looks for real. What is it about the commander in chief role, the hat that he does wear, that makes him — I mean, he seems like — he didn’t fight in a war, but he looks like he does.

But he wasn’t for real, and Matthews had his hopes crushed, and now it appears he’s about to make the same mistake.

Unfortunately, Fred Thompson is not the down-to-earth, Reaganesque figure he appears to be. In reality, he was a professional lobbyist for 18 years — twice as long as he served in the Senate.

Florida to Determine ’08 Election — for the Republican Party

Buck Banks

Deja-screw all over again: The GOP is going to party like it’s 2000 next year when Florida, through vote-count fraud and the machinations of then-state attorney general Katherine Harris, stole the election from Al Gore and gave it to George W. Bush. This time, however, the Democratic Party is playing the role of Harris in giving the election to the GOP.

‘Anybody who campaigns in Florida is ineligible for delegates.’
— Howard Dean

That’s the takeaway from Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean’s comments to a bunch of worried rubes from New Hampshire the other day.

“Their primary essentially won’t count, ” Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said of Florida. “Anybody who campaigns in Florida is ineligible for delegates.”

Why? Because Florida’s Republican legislature and its Republican governor decided to move the state’s presidential primary to Jan. 29 in clear violation of DNC rules that decreed that no primary was to be held before Feb. 5.

What’s at stake here are Florida’s 208 Democratic Party delegates and its 27 electoral votes. Florida is the nation’s fourth most populous state, which is why it can swing an election. Which is why the GOP engineered the primary move — to render the Democratic Party meaningless in Florida in the upcoming election.

Which is why the Republican candidates can ignore a major Hispanic political gathering, because they know they’ll have Florida and its large, politically active Hispanic populace to itself during the campaign.

So Howard Dean is taking his cue from George Bush and is sticking by his guns and refusing to waive the DNC’s rules, effectively punishing the Democratic Party because the Republicans screwed them over by moving the primary date. Yeeaaugh!

Liz Cheney to Join Fred ‘K Street’ Thompson’s Campaign

Jon Ponder

On MSNBC just now, Tucker Carlson said an announcement will come soon that Liz Cheney, the vice president’s not-gay daughter, is joining the as-yet unannounced presidential campaign of former Washington lobbyist Fred Thompson.

If he were to win in 2008, Thompson would be the first lobbyist elected president.

Since 2005, Cheney has served in the specially created job of Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Near Eastern Affairs, in the U.S. State Dept. Assuming Carson is correct, at the Thompson campaign, she will join other GOP operatives said to include Cheney-family lackey Mary Matalin and U.S. attorneys scandal figure Tim Griffin, the former Bush White House official who recently resigned as the federal prosecutor in Arkansas after evidence implicated him in Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign voter suppression activities.

If he were to win in 2008,Thompson would be the first lobbyist elected president. During his 18 years as a lobbyist, his clients included General Electric and Westinghouse, and he successfully pushed the passage of the deregulatory legislation that led to the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s.

Thompson also briefly served as a U.S. senator representing Tennessee.

Rev. Huckabee Jokes about Edwards’ Haircut – But Does He Wear a Rug?

Jon Ponder

Is it a rug or the lighting? Left: Huckabee at the studios of WNYC in January 2007. Right: Another view.

Rev. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and current vice-presidential hopeful, is leading the Republican charge to diffuse Democrat John Edwards’ campaign to alleviate poverty by joking about Edwards’ expensive haircuts:

It is as instructive as it is unsurprising that the rightwinger leading the charge against helping the poor is an ordained Baptist minister.

“We’ve had a Congress that spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said to roaring laughter.

It is as instructive as it is unsurprising that the rightwinger leading the charge against helping the poor is an ordained Baptist minister.

But it is also interesting that he seems to have his own hair issues, as illustrated in the two photos above.

According to the Ten Commandments, it is a mortal sin to covet thy neighbor’s ass. But what about his hair, Reverend?

Since the Republicans and their cohorts in the media have made hair styles an important issue in the presidential campaign, I wonder if anyone will ask the good reverend if he wears a wig and, if so, how much does it cost, and who pays for its styling and upkeep.

If he’s not wearing a toupe, here’s a question our breathless TV newsers might then want to pursue: Should he? After all, we haven’t had a bald president since Eisenhower.

O’Reilly Attacks an Evangelical – And Converts Me

Trish

Bill O’Reilly has done the impossible. He’s got me cheering for an evangelist who says homosexuals and people who don’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior are going to hell. Through the magic of O’Reilly’s utter foulness, I am now on the same team as Bill Keller, who according to the Tampa Tribune, “writes a daily devotional published on his Web site and e-mailed to more than 2 million subscribers. His live, call-in program is televised weeknights at 1 a.m. in the Tampa market.”

Keller: Going on O’Reilly “requires you are really prayed up surrendered”

Keller recently appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, taking the usual abuse and sanctimonious hot air from Bill, who tried to appear to be the voice of reason. The topic was Mitt Romney, whose faith Keller has consistently referred to as a cult (go Rev.!). His charge that a vote for Romney is a vote for Satan has Americans United for the Separation of Church and State asking the IRS to revoke Keller’s tax exemption.

Keller posted his reaction to being beaten up by O’Reilly on his web site, www.liveprayer.com. And he makes some good points. FOX, O’Reilly, and most of their viewers, he says, only pretend they love Jesus and the flag.

As “conservative friendly” and “Christian friendly” as FOX News tries to portray itself, it is still very much part of the world…Anyone who goes into that environment taking a Biblical position on the issues and telling people Jesus is the only way to be saved, immediately comes under intense fire. The world for the most part may believe in God, but they don’t honor Him, they clearly reject His Truth, and very few have really committed their hearts and lives to Jesus Christ.

In addition to speaking to an audience that for the most part rejects Biblical Truth, I was also dealing with exposing a satanically inspired cult that has done a masterful public relationship job of getting people, including many Christians, to believe they are “just another Christian church.” As I have stated often, the teachings and theology of the Mormon cult are completely inconsistent with Biblical Christianity…

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