John McCain is moving into position as a close second in New Hampshire as the Mitt Romney collapse begins to show itself in full force…
1. Mitt Romney 29%
2. John McCain 21%
3. Rudy Giuliani 19%
4. Mike Huckabee 7%
5. Ron Paul 4%
6. Fred Thompson 4%
7. Duncan Hunter 1%
8. Tom Tancredo -%
9. (Other) 1%
10. (Don’t know) 14%
The best kept secret in the 2008 presidential race is that the Republican Party’s strongest competitor is not Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney.
It’s John McCain…. click here to find out why!
This item from the National Review Online pretty much sums up my feelings on Senator McCain’s performance. He dominated…
An animated Dick Cheney asks how much power these candidate’s vice president would have. See, CNN, this is why people think the YouTube debate is juvenile. The Cheney cartoon says, “Remember, I’m watching you.”
Thompson: For a second there, I thought that was me.
He talks a bit about the Vice President’s dual role under the Constitution.
I would have preferred a smackdown on CNN for putting a snide anti-Cheney cartoon in its selection. Really, somebody smack around Anderson Cooper, because the Democrats stomped Wolf Blitzer last week like he was a narc at a biker rally.
McCain said that Bush had to rely on Cheney for expertise on national security issues after 9/11. Says he himself would never need to rely on his veep in this area. Ooooh.
Is it just me, or is McCain dominating the debate tonight?
More debate reaction from the National Review Online…
The Booing of McCain on the War is despicable.
“Let us win,” the troops say. God bless John McCain.
Ron Paul should have let it alone. Absurd to say John McCain doesn’t understand this war. He’s communicated our effort in Iraq better than the White House for a very long time. We owe him a debt.
MSNBC’s First Read nails it on one of the most important exchanges of the night…
That Mitt-McCain Torture Exchange… Did that just become the lead of tonight’s debate? It sure looked like McCain triumphed in that exchange. But to be fair, it was a question that McCain — the former POW — was going to win no matter what.
The big CNN/YouTube debate is scheduled for tonight and will include all of the major Republican candidates.
If Senator McCain can keep up his high level of performance, I’m sure he’ll have no trouble winning this debate… and winning over some more voters!
During the debate check out Azamatterofact for a live discussion about the event. Then immediately following the debate, make sure you take part in any online polls or surveys about the winner. Ron Paul supporters always flood them, but if we can finish second in those polls it’s as good as winning… and the results usually get reported on the news.
Yankee Magazine is doing their cookie primary. These kind of recipe contest are a fun campaign tradition. So if you have a few seconds, go here and vote for Mrs. McCain’s delicious three-minute (no bake) cookies…
Race 4 2008 has a great take on the electability issue. Even though the writer is a supporter of Rudy Giuliani, he admits that Senator McCain is in the strongest position to win a general election against Senator Clinton.
Read the whole article here. I picked out what I think is the most important point…
As a Rudy guy, I strongly believe that, at the end of the day, the Mayor has a strong chance of being victorious over Mrs. Clinton. I’m sure Romney, Huckabee, and Thompson supporters feel the same about their candidates. But the simple fact of the matter is that McCain has the numbers on his side. In Rudy’s case, the Mayor is certainly winning his share of new voters for the GOP, and the national head-to-heads between Rudy and Rodham show a race too close to call for that reason. But in the Electoral College, Hillary is creaming the Mayor. The reason appears to be that Rudy is upping GOP numbers primarily in the dark blue Northeast, where his gains don’t actually flip any states. Both Rudy and McCain are holding the Deep South, including Florida, as well as the Plains States. And both are losing border states like Missouri, states that voted for Bill Clinton in the 1990s and that may have only gone Republican in recent years due to a cultural connection with a southern, evangelical president. But McCain makes up for those losses on two fronts. First, McCain increases GOP numbers in the West. This allows the GOP to hold light red states like New Mexico and pick up light blue states like Oregon. Secondly, McCain ups GOP numbers in the Great Lakes region, allowing Republicans to hold Ohio and Iowa and put Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania in play. Rudy, on the other hand, lacks McCain’s regional and temperamental appeal to the West and Midwest. This means that in addition to the border states, Rudy loses Midwestern states like Ohio and Iowa and Western states like New Mexico and Oregon. Rudy’s gains are entirely in the Northeast. He’s down three in Connecticut, two in Pennsylvania, is tied with Hillary in New Hampshire, and is tied in New Jersey. But again, without actually winning any of these states, Rudy is unable to make up for his red state losses elsewhere and loses fairly significantly to Hillary. All of this brings with it shades of 1968, when Hubert Humphrey lost the popular vote to Nixon by less than a single percentage point but lost the Electoral College by a mile.
For Rudy to beat Hillary, he’s going to have to either close the deal with Northeastern voters by doubling down on his own regional brand of Republicanism, or make up ground in the West, Midwest, and border states, or all of those things. For McCain to win, he only has to maintain his current status and convince the good folks of the Granite State to finish the job they started in early 2000. Moreover, if McCain selects Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty as his running mate, such a move would probably close the deal with the Upper Midwest, locking in Minnesota and perhaps Wisconsin for the victory.
All of this begs the question: just how does one explain McCain’s newfound general election strength against Hillary? The answer may lie in the internals of the most recent SurveyUSA poll out of Kansas. In this poll, McCain beats Hillary by 17 percentage points. Rudy, his closest competitor, beats her by only six points. Huckabee and Romney lose the state to Hillary. All of the candidates win similar proportions of Republicans and conservatives, but only McCain wins the Right while simultaneously taking 50% of Independents and 50% of moderates. Rudy takes only 42% of each group, while Romney and Huckabee take only a third. In other words, McCain is the American Sarkozy.
Like Sarko, who was of Chirac’s party but not of Chirac, America’s swing voters have intuited over the years that there is little love lost between McCain and George Bush. Conservatives like McCain not because of any connection with the president, but because his positions on the issues of the day match up with the Right’s priorities fairly well. This was less true seven years ago than it is now. McCain is solid on spending and life issues, has gutted his past support for amnesty prior to enforcement and for Clinton-level tax rates, and is 100 percent behind victory in Iraq and in the broader war against expansionist Islamism. On paper, this shouldn’t be a candidate moderates and Independents are rallying around. But they are, and McCain can probably thank his perennial feud with Bush for his popularity among swing voters. Put simply, centrist voters who hate both Bush and Hillary intuit that McCain feels the same way. As such, anti-Bush, anti-Hillary voters in the middle have a temperamental soulmate in McCain, but one who is also a political soulmate to conservatives. Republicans like the fact that McCain will fight to win in Iraq. Independents like the fact that McCain will fight Iraq in a smarter way than did Bush. Conservatives like McCain’s focus on the separation of powers and federalism when he refuses to issue signing statements or support new constitutional amendments, all things that Bush did. Moderates like the fact that the president isn’t railing about gay marriage or qualifying Congress’ acts with his own interpretation. As such, conservatives and moderates both get the president they want in John McCain, the only candidate left who can win by expanding Red America instead of scrapping it in favor of something new. Which once again brings us back to New Hampshire, and whether Granite State voters are plotting something that they don’t yet plan to tell the pollsters. January 8th will be an interesting day indeed.
Honestly, I don’t know if this is all that great of an ad. I like that it covers points about government waste and such, but it doesn’t give voters an exciting reason to vote for McCain. It sounds still and the piano music is a little odd.
It would also sound better to end with “I love my country enough to do the right thing. Always. Even if it means making some liberals or Washington fatcats angry.” Or something along those lines. Just a generally stronger close would help a lot.
What do you all think of this spot?
The following article from the Des Moines Register covers the McCain campaign and why the staff is still generally upbeat about the Senator’s chances for a good showing. An interesting bit of information is that 200+ precinct captains from the Brownback campaign have joined the McCain team. That’s great news and a big boost!
Reports suggesting that Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign in Iowa is about to sink out of sight are wrong, McCain’s top strategist says.
“Part of it is our fault for not educating some of our people who are telling folks we ought not to be wasting our money and time in Iowa,” Rick Davis, the Arizona Republican senator’s national campaign manager, said this week. “But to be honest, we also are not in the expectation-setting business. All I know that is we have our organization in place and we have continued to add people to it.”
Davis responded to questions about McCain’s chances of success in the Jan. 3 Republican caucuses by discounting what polls show to be a continued slide in McCain’s popularity here down to single digits. He highlighted what those same polls also show - a volatile Republican electorate that could change minds in large numbers.
But Davis said his calculations show that McCain is as much in the race as anyone.
“In a caucus, it is all math and from what I can tell, we are still the math game,” he said. “When only 1,500 caucusgoers separate fifth (place) from third, you can’t cut John McCain out because we do have the ability to deliver votes.”
McCain was scheduled to leave Wednesday to visit troops in Iraq during the Thanksgiving holiday. He will arrive in Iraq at a time when there is strong evidence that the military surge he advocated last summer has reduced violence in many areas of the country, particularly Baghdad.
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