Takin' McCain on CNN about an hour ago with Wolf Blitzer:

From CNN's The Situation Room Wednesday afternoon:



A few highlights:

I never, ever heard a word of public complaint when Mr. Obama said Hillary was not truthful, and how character was poll driven, when he had more pollsters than she did. When he put out a hit job on me, at the same time, he called her the Senator from Punjab, I never said a word. And I don’t care about it today. I’m not upset about it.

No, of course he's not upset about it.  'In fact, let me describe everything they did to me that I didn't like, just to show you how not upset about it I am.'  I'm not a psychologist, but Bill appears to be a little upset about it.

The only thing I pointed out was that there was substantially no difference in her record than his on Iraq, and that he had said in 2004 there was no difference between his position and President Bush. And he said that was somehow dishonest, but he never answers how it’s not accurate. So this is crazy. This rhetoric is getting a little carried away here.

Wasn't it Bill Clinton that said, "Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen," in describing Barack Obama and his supposed stance on the war in 2004?  Who made Bill Clinton the rhetoric judge, especially when it's usually Bill who initiates the ramping up of the rhetoric in the first place?  

And let me remind you, my ultimate answer is this. There are still two people around her who marched with Martin Luther King, and risked their lives – John Lewis and Reverend Andrew Young. They both said that Hillary was right, and the people who attacked her were wrong, and that she did not play the race card, but they did. So I don’t have to defend myself from Dick Harpootlian.

This is classic Bill Clinton.  He's being accused of playing the race card, a la Lee Atwater, by Dick Harpootlian.  So Bill responds with appropriate disdain by playing the race card, citing John Lewis and Andrew Young, two high profile African-American civil rights activists and Congressmen, as if to say those from the Obama camp who have attacked Hillary of playing the race card were wrong, so says my two African-American friends who would know.  

I’ll just refer you to John Lewis and Andrew Young, and let him go get in an argument with them about it. Let him go get in an argument with Dolores Huerta, one of the founders of the Farm Workers, against what happened in Nevada.

Bill is not just playing a race card, he's playing several.  In fact, he's working on an inside straight.  Not only should you go talk to my two African-American friends who say we're not playing the race card, but go talk to my Latino migrant farmworker union friend, Dolores Huerta. 

And the final thing I’d like to say is you’re asking me about this, and you sat through this whole meeting. Not one, single, solitary soul asked about any of this, and they never do. They’re feeding you this because they know this is what you want to cover. This is what you live for.

Ah, well, the resurrection of the vast right wing conspiracy, the Bill and Hillary Clinton Borg, which has now taken hold with ultra-liberal Barack Obama, and is sucking in the gullibly secretive, conservative news outlet, CNN.  If people knew of Richard Nixon's level of paranoia going in, it's hard to imagine him getting elected in the first place, let alone being re-elected.  Bill and Hillary have put paranoia on display several times from within the White House in the 90's, during her Senatorial career, and on the current campaign trail.  Why in the world would we want another four years of this? 

But this hurts the people of South Carolina, because the people of South Carolina are coming to these meetings, and asking questions about what they care about. And what they care about is not going to be in the news coverage tonight, because you don’t care about it. What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this, and you happily go along. The people don’t care about this. They never ask about it. And you are determined to take this election away from them, and that’s not right. That is not right. This election ought to belong to those people who are out here asking questions about their lives.

Alas, he lied again.  It wasn't his final word.  He shifted seamlessly into the 'I feel your pain' section.  It's hard to remember a bigger narcissist that ever occupied the Oval Office.  Is there seriously anyone out there who believes that Bill Clinton cares one whit about what South Carolinians care about?  He doesn't.  He's expertly trying to manipulate the media by accusing them of allowing themselves to be manipulated by his opponent.  And make no mistake about it.  Barack Obama is his opponent every bit as much as Hillary's.  

Harpootlian calls me Lee Atwater? I spent all my life fighting those people? And he wasn’t in Nevada. So he’s having a fight not with me, but with Dolores Huerta, who founded the Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. He should ask her. She was there. He doesn’t care what happened. He just knows he can call you a name, and you guys’ll cover it. They did not ask about this, and you don’t care what your own people care about. They care about what happens to the American people. That’s one thing John Edwards was right about in the debate.

So I'm confused. Bill is either saying he spent all his life fighting Lee Atwater, or people who play the race card as political dirty tricks.  In either case, he's wrong.  Lee Atwater's biggest claim to fame had nothing to do with Bill Clinton's Arkansas career, or his eight years in the White House.  In fact,  Atwater was ill and repented of his political actions in 1990, almost two years before he would become president.

He could also be implying that all Republican politicos and Lee Atwater are one and the same, that they all use dirty tricks, which is another dangerous thing for Clinton to say, especially with people like Harold Ickes, Bob Shrum, James Carville and Paul Begala around.  

As Christopher Hitchens said so well on Hugh's show Wednesday, 

And it’s interesting, too, because it shows he is completely out of control. In other words, he has a lot of good friends who keep telling him, ‘Bill, you must stop with this. You can’t just ramble and rant on in this mad way like some tenth rate huckster instead of behaving like a former president and chief executive of the United States.’ And he knows that they’re right, but he can’t not help himself. And it’s the same with everything else.  

He’s just a prisoner of his terrible appetites and his egomania. 

Kudos to CNN for airing this exchange.  Bill Clinton continues to prove himself to be a beacon of hope to the Republican Party that despite a bruising primary on our side, the Clintons will remain one of, if not the, single biggest unifying factor in American politics, leading to continued Republican control of the White House for the foreseeable future.

John Edwards on the Late Show last night with David Letterman, waiting for rigor mortis to set in on his presidential campaign.




Letterman: Could I just mess up your hair a little bit?

JE: You want to? Go ahead.

DL: You don't mind?

JE: I don't mind.



Uh, something tells me he minded. Suppose Letterman would try to muss up the hair of Hillary or Barack?  Nope.  Edwards is polling roughly half of the numbers Hillary is in South Carolina, his native state.  And that's the battle for second place.  Edwards is polling roughly a third of what Obama is.  In Monty Python terms, his campaign is the dead parrot.

From this morning's Morning Joe on MSNBC with Mika Brzezinski.



I'm not going to use the word conspiracy, but I think there's a conspiracy out to get me.

I'm calling this press conference to say I'm not going to run any negative ads, but if I were to run negative ads, this is what they would look like. 

I wonder if South Carolinians are going to see a pattern here with Governor Huckabee.  And by the way, conspiracies are usually done in secret.  The attacks are not on Governor Huckabee himself but on his non-conservative record as governor in Arkansas, and his very disturbing views on foreign policy.  And the attacks are very public.  There's no conspiracy about it, and it frankly makes Huckabee look a little thin-skinned in seeing criticisms as conspiracies.

As many of you might remember, I have a predisposition to following NASCAR every year.  Many, including John Podhoretz, would say that's a character flaw. But nevertheless, there are some parallels between the NASCAR season and the presidential primary race, especially in this first month of the long campaign.

At the end of the season, NASCAR awards the championship not to the driver who wins the most races.  Each race awards points, more for first place down to a few for last.  But at the end of the year, there is a ten race playoff for the top twelve drivers who've amassed the most points. 

The path to the final twelve, and then to become the NASCAR champion, is relatively simple - don't crash.  If you finish each race, win a few, have some top five finishes, a bunch of top ten finishes, and you can avoid wrecking the car week in and week out, you're going to have enough points to compete for the big prize at the end of the year.

If the exit polls hold, Mitt Romney is going to win Michigan by somewhere around six points, giving him two wins and two second place wins in the first four states.  In NASCAR terms, he's easily leading in the chase to the Cup, although early in the season.

When we start getting to winner take all states, where only the winner statewide walks away with delegates, the NASCAR analogy doesn't quite fit as well, but so far, in states like New Hampshire, Iowa, Michigan and South Carolina, delegates are awarded proportionately to how well each candidate places.  The NASCAR model holds true there. 

Again, if the exit polling holds, you'd have to conclude that two wins and two seconds makes you the frontrunner going into Florida and Super Tuesday. How are the other GOP candidates doing?

Mike Huckabee has one win, one distant third, and in Michigan, we're hearing he'll take 15% of the vote, which is a very distant third.  In fact, in NASCAR terms, a 15% showing in Michigan tonight for Huckabee will be equivalent to hitting the wall and finishing a lap behind the leaders.

John McCain had engine problems that led to a poor showing in Iowa, won New Hampshire, and left the race in Michigan before the checkered flag waived. 

Mitt Romney has the money equivalent of being a NASCAR organization like Hendrick or Roush Racing, meaning he's going to be able to compete through the long season with a quality car built by a quality team.  Huckabee and McCain are running cars in the equivalent of a single-car owner, meaning not heavily financed. These individual teams in NASCAR will win a race here and there, but over the course of a 31 week season, the lack of money and investment takes its toll, and the teams with more financing always rise to the top.

At the end of the night, all the people who thought it was time for Romney to give up after the loss in New Hampshire have to think again about the coronation of John McCain as the GOP nominee.  McCain was supposed to win Michigan because of the independent and Democratic meddling in this open primary state.  But a funny thing happened along the way.  Mitt Romney became a much better candidate.

John McCain spent some time pandering in Michigan today at a town hall meeting.  Among his opening remarks was this little gem about Michigan's fight to keep their water resources.



Attention all Super Tuesday California primary voters - President John McCain will work to make sure Arizona successfully outsteals California in stealing Colorado's water. 

Arizona and California's border is the Colorado River, not the Arizona River.  It's not his water.

Just a little bit later, McCain spoke out on the most important issue for conservative Republicans, climate change.




So if McCain's wrong, we've got nothing to lose in embracing the whole climate change package...that is, nothing to lose except overtaxed and overregulated businesses and jobs.  But then again, this is Michigan.  What's another anvil dropped on the economy there among friends?

About 60 minutes into the debate, fresh from a commercial break, Chris Wallace T-boned Mike Huckabee, calling him on the fact that taxes were higher in Arkansas when Huckabee left office than when he first became Governor, and why did that happen.  Huckabee gave a minute and a half answer, and did not deny the Wallace assertion. Instead, he gave a laundry list of what he spent the money on, everything from schools to roads, and how much better the state was for it.

 But what really frosted me was the fact that he threw a little jab at my Minnesota brethren in there, saying, looking at my record in Arkansas, with the roads we had to build, “no bridges fell in Arkansas.”  As soon as the video hits YouTube, I’ll find it and post it. 

 If you look at any Electoral College map, you know that whoever the Republican nominee is, he will have to expand the map to cover the upcoming loss of Ohio to the Democrats.  The greatest possibility of a Republican pick-up is in the Upper Midwest, most likely Minnesota, Wisconsin or Iowa.  How in the world does Mike Huckabee expect to help flip Minnesota when a Democrat operative finds that soundbyte and uses it to alienate the Minnesota voters? 

 It was a cheap shot, and an ill-advised one, especially for a candidate who should have at least a marginal understanding of what he’s going to need to do to win the White House in November.

Earlier Thursday afternoon, comes this video from CNN's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.




"So I am the anti-racist, becuase I am the only candidate, Republican or Democrat, who would protect the minority against these vicious drug laws."

Very nice. Ron Paul is saying see how not bigoted I am, because I would legalize drugs, freeing all the imprisoned black people.  Uh, Congressman Paul, see that hook coming in from stage right?  It's coming for you.

Very quietly, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is meddling in the GOP primary field.  A couple of weeks ago, there was a press release that indicated Rick Tyler, long time communications director for Gingrich, was taking a leave of absence from his day job, and helping out the communications effort for Mike Huckabee.

Mark Levin over on The Corner writes today that Newt and Dick Morris are both helping the Arkansas populist former governor, Newt behind the scenes, Morris publicly.  The question is why is Newt doing this?

When the Tyler move became public, the theory developed that Newt still envisions himself running for the presidency, but didn't think this cycle was the right time to run because of the aura of invincibility of Hillary Clinton.  Newt would then benefit by helping out the perceived weakest of the GOP candidates, ensuring that come January '09, the Republicans would begin their four year wandering through the desert.  This would set up Newt as the White Knight in 2012, riding to the rescue after President Hillary screwed things up in her first term. 

But after Iowa last night, another theory is beginning to develop.  Hillary's aura of invincibility is no longer there.  Barack Obama is now the frontrunner, and although very charismatic, he's an empty suit, especially when it comes to foreign policy.  Newt may now be thinking that there's a window of opportunity this cycle.  All that needs to take place is for Huckabee to take a couple of the early states, Rudy take a couple of the big states, McCain maybe taking a state here or there, and Romney to take a couple, and you have yourself a brokered convention.  If the Republicans can't decide on a clear frontrunner by the convention, could we potentially see the White Knight riding in a little earlier than expected into Minneapolis/St. Paul this September? 

Lost in the Mike Huckabee hysteria that is sweeping the land...at least the land of Iowa, is just how odd Huckabee senior advisor Ed Rollins has become.  Here is the video of his victory celebration with Fox News' Chris Wallace, who asked him about the now-famous lunch he had in Iowa, discussing the presidential field as he saw it. 



In case you missed the initial controversy, here is the Amanda Carpenter column on Townhall.com.

After the column went viral, she appeared on Hugh's show and added this little bit.  

HH: Tell me, what did he say about Ann Romney, if anything. 

AC: He did mention…I’ve got to say, I didn’t hear all of it. There was some talk about her condition, and it was in the context of they were really feeling that they were getting too much negative spin thrown at them, and then there were comments about how they felt righteous and entitled to the presidency. So that’s how that all went together.  

HH: But did they actually bring up Ann Romney’s MS? 

AC: That was talked about briefly.  

HH: And did he characterize it…how? 

AC: It just seemed to be in the context of unfairness, and why were they talking about this. Like I say, I didn’t hear all that specifically. I just know that they were talking about Ann Romney, and her condition was mentioned.  

HH: Did he threaten to go negative in South Carolina? 

AC: There was talk about doing negative ads. There was a weird joke that was being told about running the confederate flag up on the Capitol steps of South Carolina. I don’t know what that joke was about. They both laughed. Like I said, I was just listening. I wasn’t sure it was Ed Rollins until he identified himself as Ed Rollins when he called Lou Dobbs, and then I could run a picture check to make sure. So otherwise, I would have gone up and talked to him, but I wasn’t sure it was him until he identified himself. Then, I could look up his picture.  

HH: Well, Amanda, that’s a big scoop on Drudge, and I can’t imagine them mocking Ann Romney for her MS, or bringing it up in any context. But Ed Rollins is what he is. He’s Mike Huckabee’s senior campaign advisor.

Nice guy, that Ed Rollins.  Kind of makes Karl Rove look warm and fuzzy, doesn't he?Keep in mind, all you Hucksters out there, that Ed Rollins gave us Bill Clinton when he fell for another populist with character, H. Ross Perot, and managed that campaign just well enough to ciphon off enough George H. W. Bush voters in '92 to give Bill Clinton the White House with a stunning 43% of the popular vote.  Granted, Rollins didn't stay with that campaign all the way to November, but he definitely did his part to suck the life out of the Bush reelection effort. 

After watching the candidates give their post-mortem speeches Thursday night, Hillary Clinton was still able to manage a smile here and there, even though she probably suffered the worst damage of any top tier candidate in either party.  Why? Because Ed Rollins is still out there unwittingly blocking and tackling for the Clintons.

And unless Republican voters don't figure out populism isn't the wave of the future for the GOP, Rollins could go down in history as the man who in large part helped to usher in two President Clintons.

It's Caucus Eve, and after a seemingly endless period of campaigning, punditry, debates, analysis, counter-analysis, polling, conventional wisdom and spin, Iowans will finally have their say as to who they want to be the nominees from the two parties Thursday night. 

Conventional wisdom at the beginning of December said that Hillary would probably eke out a victory over a surging Barack Obama, and Mike Huckabee might beat previous frontrunner Mitt Romney by double digits, so impressive was the Huckasurge.  But here we are, 30 days and several holidays later, and conditions on the ground are lending themselves to a double victory for Mitt Romney in Iowa on the 2nd.

A literal plethora of gaffes by Governor Huckabee, many on foreign policy, an issue that the Republican nominee, whoever it ends up being, simply cannot afford to get wrong when the country is at war, have led to a decline in support in the same polls that led to Huckabee's rise to frontrunner status.  In addition, once closer scrutiny followed his rise to the top, Huckabee commited several unforced political errors that made several political watchers scratch their heads, wondering how Huckabee would ever handle the pressures of the presidency if he couldn't handle the pressures of his Iowa primary campaign.

The net result is that Iowa is now a dead heat, which means that whoever has the best statewide organization or ground game, whoever turns out the most Caucus-goers on a sub-freezing, windy night in Iowa, is going to win.  From Ron Fournier's AP analysis piece yesterday, 

—He has a paltry political organization in a state that values the ground game, according to an informal survey of GOP county chairs and co-chairs. "I haven't seen much of a sign of him or his people," said Jim Conklin, chairman of the Linn County GOP.

—He can also be disarmingly honest. Asked whether Romney should stop running negative ads, Huckabee said, "I'm not going to try to run his campaign."

"I'm having enough trouble running mine."

Romney has many more resources in Iowa, and he's running a smarter campaign than Huckabee.  Advantage: Romney.

Barack Obama has opened up a lead in Iowa outside the margin of error, and the Hillary camp has begun to downplay the importance of a victory in Iowa.  If Obama does go on to pick up the win Thursday night, it's another win for Mitt Romney.

Next week in the New Hampshire basket, the one in which John McCain has put his boomlet eggs, Mitt Romney is in a statistical dead heat with the feisty Arizona Senator.  But when you actually look at the numbers, Romney's support has remained around 30%.  McCain has come from out of nowhere to within the margin of error because of perceived weakness in the other GOP candidates, but also because New Hampshire is an open primary state, where independents can come crashing the GOP's primary party.  In fact, McCain's numbers nationwide tend to be highest in the states where there is an open primary.  In closed primary states, McCain is nowhere, statistically. 

Obama's popularity also comes largely from independent voters. Again, going back to conventional wisdom from a few weeks ago, the thought was that McCain possibly sneaks a win in New Hampshire if Hillary holds on in Iowa and beats Obama, thereby depressing Obama's independent support in New Hampshire, causing them to drift over into the Republican primary to meddle there.

But if recent polling in Iowa holds, and Obama wins Iowa going away, independents may take another look next Tuesday and see New Hampshire as the state in which they could continue to drive the stake into the heart of the Hillary Clinton campaign.  If the independents stay with the Obama wave, it's going to be very hard to McCain to keep up his momentum in New Hampshire.  

But in the words of our good friend, Mark Steyn, "Who knows, huh?"