Giuliani

MSNBC just broke into McCain’s victory speech, to announce that the news wires report that Giuliani will withdraw and endorse McCain tomorrow.

Tomorrow night’s debate might not look like another herd meeting after all.

I’m listening to the GOP debate on MSNBC, currently in the candidates-ask-each-other-questions phase, and unsurprisingly Giuliani posed a question on the concept of a national cat pool to to Romney (with McCain jumping in as his name was taken in vain).  Giuliani  posed his question to Romney,

A few thoughts:

• We just had more discussion on the concept than most MSNBC viewers have likely ever have been exposed to previously.
    
• Romney expressed “familiarity” with the problem via Massachusetts snowbirds.  I’m sure that folks living on Cape Cod and the Islands are feelin’ the love.  (Of course, considering what they think of the relative lack of capacity in that corner of Massachusetts…maybe he doesn’t want to associate with them.)
   
• I’m a little disappointed that the discussion didn’t acknowledge the magnitude of the expense involved (although McCain, in his rebuttal, at least raised the concern about lack of funding of current proposals).
   
• At least Romney did make a key point (looking beyond the Florida primaries) — that he didn’t want folks in Iowa to subsidize Florida risk.
   
• Interesting transition to the question of global warming at the tail of the insurance question (using threat to beach property as a segue).  Probably not a question that Republicans like to hear…but a big hat-tip to McCain for his observation on his cap-and-trade plan — “if global warming isn’t real, we leave the world cleaner for our children” (paraphrase).

So much for the wisdom of the polls.  From MSNBC:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won New Hampshire’s Democratic primary Tuesday night, pulling out a stunning victory over Sen. Barack Obama in a contest that she had been forecast to lose.

On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain defeated former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and climbed back into contention for their party’s presidential nomination.

My wife’s been in control of the TiVo remote tonight, so I’ve had to suffice with web updates

Naturally the GOP story of the night is that Romney’s hurting (although I would have expected him to do worse, from all the hoopla) but the GOP race remains entertaining at least until we see if Giuliani can salvage Florida.

Meanwhile, the Dems have shown not to take excessive polling too seriously.  The hype would have had you believe that tonight would be an Obama blowout.   Nevertheless, I think we’re safely down to a two donkey race.

The two most interesting comments I saw in random blog-surfing waiting for the declaration to be made are:

• Rumors of Clinton supporters forming a 527 to swift-boat Obama; and
• Speculation that Obama’s big lead may actually have depressed turnout a little.  (Although I wonder if it might be that some independents shifted parties to vote for a GOP candidate of their choice.)

Super Tuesday could prove to be most entertaining.

Others will need to offer detailed dissections, since I have an early morning tomorrow:

• I think Huckabee won.  Front-runners Giuliani and Romney at various times came off as childish, hardcore politicians, or as dancing around uncomfortable questions.  Thompson, Hunter, and Tancredo didn’t strike me as being particularly memorable.   Ron Paul gets credit for sounding not too much like a nut, and doing carrying the banner for his netroots; those ranks may expand a little, but I doubt that he gained support with Joe Average Mainstream Republican.
    
  At least Huckabee held true to being likeable, and on the surface seeming fairly straight-talking.  Although he didn’t do much to dispel my reservations about him…I do like the guy.
    
• I had hoped that this debate would redeem the concept of the YouTube debate.  I’ll give CNN credit for doing a better job in question selection (no snowmen, and the silliness was kept to a minimum), and I do like how using citizen-submitted questions seemed to cover a broader range of topics than we’ve seen in other debate formats.   However, the overall effect seemed spoiled by the crowd.  (I’d be interested in hearing if there’s a back story there.)
    
• Giuliani gets credit for being the only GOPer that really got the idea of a YouTube-style campaign ad.  The others were all just regular ads…save the strategic attack ad from Thompson.

Well, we’re only eleven-and-a-half months away from the 2008 elections, and as we’ve come to expect, the political news and blogs are becoming awash in polling numbers.

Via Donklephant, I came across a Rasmussen poll notable because of it’s inclusion of potential third-party candidates:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found Hillary Clinton leading Rudy Giuliani by three percentage points in a four-way race that includes Ron Paul running as a Libertarian candidate and Ralph Nader representing the Green Party. The poll shows Clinton earning 42% of the vote while Giuliani attracts 39%. Ron Paul is the choice for 8%, Ralph Nader is preferred by 4% and 7% are not sure[...].

A recent Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that comedian Stephen Colbert attracted 13% support as a third-party candidate.

I’d be interested on what the polling would indicate if Bloomberg were thrown into the mix. (I realize that he’s been pretty adamant about not running, but still it would be interesting to see the numbers.)

And, the idea of Colbert potentially being a kingmaker or a spoiler in a Presidential campaign both amuses and disturbs me greatly. Perhaps Colbert loyalists could be convinced to get Colbert cleared at least as a legitimate write-in candidate in a few states, just to add to the expected circus atmosphere of the political arena next year?

With the deadline for adjusting party affiliation for the Super-Duper-Tuesday primary approaching, I had been getting curious about polling numbers in Connecticut, to see if my vote would be more useful in either the D’s or the R’s primary.

(Annoyingly, to vote in a primary in CT, you have to predeclare a party affiliation, despite the fact that our tax dollars pay for every party’s primary. The deadline to switch parties in Connecticut for the February primary is 7 November, and you can use the regular voter registration form to make the change.)

Quinnipiac University appears to have addressed my curiosity with one of their recent releases:

Clinton dominates a Connecticut Democratic primary with 43 percent, followed by Obama with 16 percent and Edwards with 8 percent. Sen. Christopher Dodd gets 7 percent.

Giuliani rules the Republican race with 42 percent, trailed by McCain with 14 percent, Thompson with 10 percent and Romney with 9 percent.

In the presidential face-off, Clinton gets 44 percent to Giuliani’s 42 percent.

The passage quoted doesn’t mention that Obama and McCain are running third in their respective races, behind “don’t know”.

With Connecticut looking “safe” for Clinton and Giuliani, I don’t think I need to hold my nose and vote for a viable candidate for either party. Instead, I’m thinking I might re-affiliate with the pachyderms in order to cast a Ron Paul vote, in the hopes of helping some libertarian…or at least fiscally conservative…ideas get a bit more mainstream attention.

Oh, and you’d think that with Dodd drawing only 7% of the vote in his home state, he might get the message that perhaps it’s time to help thin the Democratic candidate field?

The Q Poll also provides information on polling in New York and New Jersey:

• New York:
  • Dems: Clinton 49%, Don’t Know 16%, Obama 12%, Edwards 11%
  • Reps: Giuliani 45%, Don’t Know 15%, Thompson 12%, McCain 9%
  • Prez: Clinton 50%, Giuliani 36%, Don’t Know 9%
• New Jersey:
  • Dems: Clinton 46%, Obama 20%, Don’t Know 14%, Edwards 9%, Romney 7%
  • Reps: Giuliani 48%, Don’t Know 13%, Thompson 12%, McCain 12%, Romney 7%
  • Prez: Giuliani 44%, Clinton 44%

In other words, I foresee a potentially sleepy primary up in this corner of the country…but the presidential race could actually be competitive in Connecticut, for a change, if Giuliani gets the nod.

The New York Times has an article which ponders whether the shenanigans behind the California electoral vote initiative portends a particularly “entertaining” presidential campaign next year.

The Giuliani link on the pro-initiative side has already been discussed in several places. However, the Clinton link on the anti-initiative side, while not surprising, is something I haven’t seen get much play at least in the blogs and media outlets I peruse.

The bulk of the $200,000 in costs for the Democratic side, including television advertisements, was paid for by Thomas F. Steyer, a California hedge fund executive who has raised at least $100,000 for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. The money for the effort against the ballot measure was donated to a committee, Californians for Fair Election Reform, created by Mr. Lehane and Mr. Steyer.[...]

The group initiated a complaint with the Federal Election Commission questioning the ties of the measure’s supporters to Mr. Giuliani, largely because Mr. Singer did not immediately reveal himself to be the donor behind the effort. The Democratic group even dug up a charge from a 17-year-old lawsuit against one official backing the initiative, a charge involving the biting of a woman’s bottom, and disseminated that as well.[...]

“Lehane did a good job of rallying the entire Democratic establishment to be vocal and aggressively against this,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. “And the gang that couldn’t shoot straight proved their worth.”

Seen in the New York Times blog, “The Caucus”:

An effort to change the way electoral votes are apportioned in California has been stunningly abandoned and left for dead, even though most voters didn’t even know this patient was sick.

The prominent Republican lawyer who authored the initiative – one that proposed altering the system so that electoral votes would be apportioned by Congressional district, giving a local leg up to otherwise disadvantaged Republicans running for president – has resigned from his own campaign. His spokesman has bailed out, too. [...]

But what caused the initiative’s creator, Tom Hiltachk, and its spokesman, Kevin Eckery, to resign, was their dispute with the effort’s largest donor, an organization called “Take Initiative America.” The group was created by Charles A. Hurth III, a Missouri lawyer and a Giuliani donor, just one day before Mr. Hiltachk received a $175,000 check from the group to help finance the cause.

But when Mr. Hiltachk could not learn the names of the individual donors to the organization, he declared the effort more or less undermined, and quit.

You know, this tactic to deflate California’s electoral importance was sneaky. And, considering the implications if it succeeded, it wouldn’t be surprising to see an interesting cast of characters drawn into funding the campaign.

Of course, then there’s this little addendum to the post:

postscript: The New York Daily News reported on its political blog that Mr. Giuliani’s top fundraiser, Paul Singer, told the paper that he was the sole financial backer of the initiative. Mr. Singer is a member of the national finance committee on the Giuliani campaign.

Very interesting indeed.