Tag: Elections

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Contributions to Democrats Blow Republicans Out of the Water

Trish

Democratic presidential candidates raised $27 million more than Republicans, according to their first-quarter ’07 financial filings.

And John McCain looks worse on paper than anyone guessed.

SNL-related donations: Chevy Chase gave $4,600 to Clinton. Eddie Murphy kicked in $2,300 to Obama. Adam Sandler gave $2,100 to Giuliani. Lorne Michaels dished out $1,000 to McCain.

Obama…nearly tied Clinton in total donations, having raised $25.8 million compared to Clinton’s $26 million — an astounding achievement for a political novice going up against such a veteran…

…Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who hopes to be the first Mormon elected president, received more donations from Utah, $2.8 million, than from the state he used to govern, whose residents gave him $2.3 million.

…Rudy Giuiani, the former mayor of New York, raised $14 million, but it came from fewer donors than any other major candidate, indicating access to big-money donors but not widespread support.

Writing for ABC, Jake Tapper and David Chalian analyzed the financial reports as they went along, but saved the most loaded labels for Democrats, referring to Sen. Barack Obama as an “insurgent” candidate (OMIGOD) and Sen. Hillary Clinton as the “frontrunner.” Huh?

They also spared John McCain no illusions.

One of the key indicators of whether or not a campaign is being managed efficiently is the “burn rate” — the percentage of the money raised that the campaign spent during the same time period.

McCain is the big loser in this category. His campaign hemorrhaged money by spending 64 percent of what it raised in the first quarter…and assumed a stunning amount (to the tune of $1.8 million) of debt…

McCain’s one bright spot on the GOP side is that he can boast of significantly more donors — roughly 50,000 people contributed to his campaign — than his Republican rivals, perhaps indicating a broader base of support.

Clinton also had roughly 60,000 donors and Edwards had north of 40,000.

A fascinating footnote to the first quarter filings was how people associated with NBC’s Saturday Night Live gave.

Old-school star Chevy Chase gave $4,600 to Clinton. Eddie Murphy kicked in $2,300 to Obama. Adam Sandler gave $2,100 to Giuliani. And their former boss, SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels, dished out $1,000 to McCain.

At least Michaels is as cheap as he is wrong.

CA Dem Leader Urges Putting War on Feb. 5 Ballot

Jon Ponder

California Senate leader Don Perata introduced legislation yesterday that would place a nonbinding advisory measure on the Iraq war on the ballot for the super-duper Tuesday primary in February. Now he’s calling on governors in the other 20 primary states to do the same thing:

“I propose we also use this opportunity to tell the current President where we stand on this fundamental issue of the day,” writes Perata. “It’s time for our citizens to be heard.”

In addition to giving voters a voice in the debate, Perata says the campaign for the referendum might bring clarity to the presidential candidates’ positions on the war.

Poll: Fred Thompson Surge Cuts Rudy Support; Romney at 3%

Jon Ponder

I complain about obsessing on the horse race so early, and yet somehow it is… irresistible.

According to the USA Today-Gallup poll,the GOP’s putative frontrunner, Rudy Giuliani lost 13 percentage points over the last three weeks, from 44 percent on March 4 to 31 percent now. His support was drained by “Law & Order” star Fred Thompson, who is not in the race. Thompson has support from 12 percent of voters now, and was not listed in the poll last time.

Sen. John McCain is up two points at 22 percent. Newt Gingrich is down one point to 8 percent. But my favorite is Mitt Romney, who is at 3 percent, down from 8 percent in the last poll. Looks like Republicans aren’t buying his filp-flops.

On the Democratic side, the top three are virtually unchanged: Hillary Clinton at 35 percent, Barack Obama at 22 percent and Al Gore — also not running — at 17 percent.

John Edwards is fourth with 14 percent, gaining 5 points after the announcement he would stay in the race despite the reocurrence of his wife’s cancer.

Bill Richardson and Joe Biden have flipped for bottom of the heap. Richardson has 3 percent, up from 1 percent; Biden has 1 percent, down from 3 percent.

For what it is worth.

Oops, Rudy’s Wife Did It Again

Trish

Oh no, she di-ent say that: Turns out Rudy Giuliani’s third wife is mathematically challenged. She — like her current husband — is currently on her third, not second, marriage.

Rudy’s third wife commenting on their six marriages: “It makes you appreciate marriage a little bit more”

She kind of forgot the five years she was married to some guy in the ’70s. These things happen, but the good news for Republicans is that the Giulianis really respect the sanctity of marriage.

“Rudy and I both have been married three times,” Judith, 52, told the New York Post.

“I’d honestly like to say we got it right the first time around,” she told the paper. “But that was not to be … and so what that has done for us is, I think, it makes you appreciate marriage a little bit more.”

She and Rudy are appreciating the heck out of marriage, with six total between them. And counting…

Miami to Romney: ‘!El Mitt es realmente estúpido!’

Buck Banks

Ethnomoronic Mormon: For all his touted smarts and political savvy, Mitt Romney really laid a boner here in Miami during a recent speech where he was trying — some say way too hard — to court the notoriously conservative Cuban-American vote. Besides sprinkling his speech with “Libertad, libertad, libertad” like a drunk priest slinging holy water, and mangling several Cuban-American politicians’ names like JKimmy Durante on crack, Romney casually used one of Fidel Castro’s favorite closers like a drunk who swaps one joke’s punchline for another’s — with similar effect.

According to the Miami Herald:

People chuckled when presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon raised in Michigan and elected in Massachusetts, bungled the names of Cuban-American politicians during a recent speech in Miami.

But when he mistakenly associated Fidel Castro’s trademark speech-ending slogan — Patria o muerte, venceremos! — with a free Cuba, listeners didn’t laugh. They winced.

Castro has closed his speeches with the phrase — in English, ”Fatherland or death, we shall overcome” — for decades.

Despite the fact that Romney has Al Cárdenas, a Cuban immigrant who is a well-known Miami lawyer and former Florida GOP campaign chair, he still screwed up, like so many before him. The Republicans think they need the Cuban voter base of South Florida to win the state, and they are embarrassingly unembarrassed about sucking up to people for whom “politics” and “corruption” are virtual synonyms, and for whom the only reason to enter politics is for the power and the perks. “Service” never really enters into it.

So, though it’s too late to save Mitt from making an ass of himself, and since the pilgrimage to the Versaille Restaurant in Little Havana has become as ubiquitous a part of Repug campaigns as baby-kissing, here are a few suggestions to other pols seeking to get an “in” with the South Florida Cuban-American faction:

1. Don’t hyphenate “Cuban American”; they don’t.
2. Don’t call them Latinos, they prefer Hispanic or Cuban American (no hyphen).
3. If you decide to step onto the slippery slope of incorporating Spanish quotations or expressions in your speech, remember not to use expressions from Mexico, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, the barrios of California or Spanish Harlem.
4. Don’t make wisecracks about Desi Arnaz, José Martí or the movie “Scarface.”
5. Do praise Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Gloria Estefan and Andy Garcia.
6. Don’t try to dance the salsa or the rhumba. You’ll look silly and someone could get hurt.
7. Do try to eat whatever Cuban food they put in front of you, no matter how disgusting it may look or smell.
8. When they serve you cafe con leche, remember to pour the black stuff (coffee) into the white stuff (steamed milk). If you do it the other way, it will explode.
9. Do try to play dominoes for a photo op, but don’t try to win.
10. Never, ever show up for an official function dressed in a guayabera shirt.

Newt’s Going to Run, Says Former Campaign Manager

Trish

He should know. Newt Gingrich’s former campaign chairman, now a Jacksonville-based political columnist, has analyzed the tea leaves and predicted a presidential run by the porcine one.

Matt Towery says Newt’s admission to James Dobson that he was covering up an affair with an aide while voting to impeach Pres. Clinton for trying to cover up an affair with aide was the capper.

Newt’s admission to James Dobson that he was covering up an affair with an aide while voting to impeach Pres. Clinton for trying to cover up an affair with aide was the capper

It’s time for me to say it: I’m 100 percent positive that Gingrich will enter the battle for the GOP nomination.

Timing is everything, Towery explains, and Newt’s time is running out.

The real issue for Team Gingrich on a presidential announcement is not if, but when. Newt’s original strategy was to sit by and watch earlier-announced candidates flounder and waste money. That might have seemed workable before nearly all heavily populated states with ambition decided to move their presidential primaries to early February…

[Newt’s] problem is that too many of the key Republican activists and campaign contributors are already joining other campaigns. A check with one of Gingrich’s most prominent sources of major funding confirmed that they might be close to opting for another Republican candidate if Gingrich doesn’t give the proper signals soon.

So is Towery trying to “help” by giving the signal for him? The pundit says former Tenn. Sen. Fred Thompson’s possible announcement is an important factor, but the candidate to beat is Rudy Guiliani.

…which candidate would most need to fall on his face in order for Gingrich to enter the fray?

Rudy Giuliani. That’s right. Many say otherwise, that Gingrich needs another right-wing darling to stumble. But the real fall guy is the former New York City mayor.

By making his “confession” to James Dobson last week, and by then receiving forgiveness from major religious-right leaders, Gingrich outflanked Giuliani and his own publicly unacknowledged transgressions.

These scenarios all make sense. But I can’t see Newt making it through a year-long national campaign without getting on everyone’s last nerve, even Republicans.

Towery is also CEO of InsiderAdvantage and is developing his 1998 book, “Powerchicks: How Women Will Dominate America” into a weekly show. Can’t wait for that one.

GOP Base Pins Last Hopes on former Sen. Fred Thompson in ’08

Jon Ponder

It sucks to be a Republican right now. The party that foisted George W. Bush on the country twice has fielded the weakest, most problematic slate of presidential candidates in memory. The Christian nationalist wing is unhappy with the three frontrunners, who have all been labled “moderates” — the GOP code word for “liberal” — in the past. Worse, each one has a ding in his bio that the christianists find unappetizing: two of them are admitted adulterers who have been married more than once, and the other is a Mormon.

Republicans, especially the rank and file, yearn for another Ronald Reagan now the way Democrats used to hope for another JFK.

The talibangelists’ restlessness is what prompted former Speaker Newton Leroy Gingrich to float a trial balloon last week, when he confessed to committing adultery while married to his second wife. (Even though Gingrich was sleeping with a much-younger congressional staffer while leading the charge to impeach Pres. Clinton over a sex lie about his affair with a former intern, Newt refused to cop to the additional sin of hypocrisy.)

As a Democrat, I hope Gingrich runs. While he is supposedly a brilliant strategist, and is what passes on the right for a big thinker, he would be abysmal as the face of the Republican Party. For starters, he is very unpopular. As House Speaker, America came to see him as a petty, tyrannical, pontificating stuffed shirt. By the time his party forced him out of office in 1998, Gingrich’s approval was at 28 percent. (Nixon’s was 25 percent when he resigned.) In a recent Fox News poll, 64 percent said they would never vote for him under any circumstances, as did 40 percent of Republicans.

Judging by calls from Republicans this morning on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Newt’s trial balloon has scared the bejesus out of the party’s base. One name that came up repeatedly was that of “Law & Order” star, and former Sen. Fred Thompson.

Thompson gets bonus points out the gate because he has a quality exalted beyond all others in the GOP: He’s “Reaganesque.” Like Reagan, he is an actor — a better actor than Reagan, actually. And like Reagan, he has been married twice. Unlike Reagan, Thompson is a lawyer and he made a name for himself in the political sphere before going Hollywood — he was the Republicans’ co-counsel during Senate Watergate hearings in the 1970s. He has been in the news lately because of his friendship and support of Scooter Libby, the former senior presidential aide who was convicted on multiple counts of perjury last week.

Thompson appears to have less baggage than the current frontrunners. Still, his Senate resume was not stellar, and while he’s been on a few vice presidential short lists, he has never been battle-tested in a national contest. And who knows if he even has the the belly fire to enter the race, especially knowing that when he does all three frontrunners will turn their guns on him.

McCain: Listen to What I Say But Ignore What I Did

Trish

As each of the Republican front runners in the 2008 presidential campaign competes for the favor of evangelicals — and falls short of their harsh, parochial judgement — we hear the same sanctimonious defense: “But my private life doesn’t influence my public service.”

John McCain is the only the latest in a string of GOP hypocrites that includes Rudy Guiliani and Newt Gingrich.

John McCain, who remarried one month after his 1980 divorce, said Friday that the personal lives of White House hopefuls shouldn’t become an issue in the 2008 campaign

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who remarried one month after his 1980 divorce, said Friday that the personal lives of White House hopefuls shouldn’t become an issue in the 2008 campaign.

“I would like to see this campaign conducted on past record and ambition for the future,” McCain told reporters after a fundraising luncheon in Charlotte, N.C. “I would hope that gossip — or, quote, ‘family issues’ — would not enter into this campaign.”

Well golly, straight talkin’ John, that sounds good. Almost as good as you sounded when you voted to convict Pres. Clinton on impeachment charges for attempting to hide an extramarital affair back in 1999.

The President’s offenses were committed to cover up private not public misconduct. Therefore, if he thwarted justice he did so for the perfectly understandable and forgivable purpose of keeping hidden an embarrassing personal shortcoming that, were it discovered, would harm only his family and his reputation, but would not impair our system of government.

This, too, is an appealing rationalization for acquittal. But it is just that, a rationalization…

The President’s defenders want to know how can I be certain that the offenses, even if true, warrant removal from office. They are not expressly mentioned in the Constitution as impeachable offenses. Nor did the founders identify perjury or obstruction as high crimes or high misdemeanors. Were an ordinary citizen accused of perjury in a civil proceeding he or she would in all likelihood not be prosecuted or forced out of political necessity into a perjury trap.

No, an ordinary citizen would not be treated as the President has been treated. But ordinary citizens don’t enforce the laws for the rest of us…

Presidents are not ordinary citizens. They are extraordinary, in that they are vested with so much more authority and power than the rest of us…And accordingly, regretfully, I must vote to convict the President, and urge my colleagues to do the same.’

Gee Johnny, here you’ve been living all ordinary and stuff, and now you want us to elevate you to superhuman perfection with our votes. No wonder cousin Jon calls you — derisively — “St. McCain.”

Rightwinger Gripes over GOP ’08 Candidates: ‘They All Suck’

Jon Ponder

While a lot of Democrats aren’t thrilled with their choice of presidential candidates so far for 2008, hardly any of them could be said to “suck.” By contrast, Republicans have reasons to grouse, based on a recent post by Erick Erickson, the CEO of the blog Redstate:

The main problem with the prospect of a Newt ’08 campaign is that the former speaker is wretchedly unpopular. According to a recent Fox Noise poll — yes, a Fox poll — 64 percent of voters said they wouldn’t vote for Gingrich under any circumstances and 44 percent of Republicans said the same.

All the thus-far declared candidates “suck” [Erickson] recently declared at his website. “Let’s just admit it. Every one of the thus far announced Republican candidates for President sucks. From the lecherous adulterer [Rudy Giuliani] to the egomaniacal nut job [Senator John McCain] to the flip-flopping opportunist with the perfect hair [former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney] to the guy who hates brown people [Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo] to the guy we’ve never heard of [California Congressman Duncan Hunter] to the guy who has a better chance of getting hit by a meteor while being consumed by a blue whale being struck by lightening [Kansas Congressman Sam Brownback].”

So who is out there — who is the rightwing version of Al Gore out there waiting in the wings? Why — the Newster, of course:

Part of me, frankly, wants Newt Gingrich to run. Don’t get me wrong (or divorced; my wife can’t stand the guy). I don’t want the former speaker to actually win. I don’t know that I’d trust him with that much power. He is the most articulate, honest defender of conservatism out there. His ideas are bold, they are conservative, and they are good. I don’t agree with him on everything, but it would really be nice for him to get out there and pull everyone else to the right, to tell them why they are wrong, and why they are cowards for standing on the shoulder of Reagan while acting like the Manneken Pis [Wikipedia: “little man piss” in English; a Brussels landmark — a small bronze fountain sculpture depicting a naked little boy urinating into the fountain’s basin] on his legacy.

Amazingly, except the part about the statue, I agree with all of this. I hope Gingrich enters the race because he just about any Democrat with a pulse could beat him. His negatives in polling are so high as to be all but insurmountable. According to a recent Fox Noise poll — yes, Fox — 64 percent of voters said they wouldn’t vote for Gingrich under any circumstances and 44 percent of Republicans said the same.

Run, Newt, run!