A first(?) thread on 2008: McCain,Giuliani & the Republicans

Can you imagine a guy named Huckabee versus a guy named Obama?

HE'S GOOD PEOPLE, THAT BERNIE.

Let's say you want to renovate your house, but you don't have the quarter million dollars it's going to cost lying around. What do you do? Get a home equity loan? Pshaw - that's for little people. Me, I get an Israeli billionaire defense contractor to give the money to a Brooklyn marble salesman, who then cuts me a check. That's what I do.

Or at least that's what you do if you're Bernie Kerik. Lots of people probably missed this latest revelation in the saga of Kerik, Rudy Giuliani's erstwhile right hand man, coming as it did over the holiday. But as the New York Times reported on Saturday, the money started with one Eitan Wertheimer, an Israeli industrialist "whose family's vast holdings include companies with United States Defense Department contracts." Wertheimer gave the money to Shimon Cohen, described by the Times as "a marble and stone merchant who has been a friend of Mr. Kerik's for several years."

This all happened in 2003. Then two years ago, city investigators looking into Kerik's finances find out about the money and interview Cohen, who tells them "that in handing the money over, he had not discussed any interest with Mr. Kerik nor set any timetable for repayment." What's a quarter mil between friends? You pay it back, you don't pay it back, whatever. Then nine days after the investigators interview Cohen, by an amazing coincidence, Kerik gives him back the money, with interest.

I've noticed that when he's questioned about Kerik, Giuliani tends to wax philosophical. How much do you really know people, he'll say. Everyone has some good and some bad in them, and Bernie did a lot of good. And so on. It's a very clever technique to shift the discussion away from the specifics, as in, exactly what about Kerik made you think that he would be a good pick to run the Department of Homeland Security?

Let me make a bold prediction: this won't be the last bit of Kerik's corruption we hear about.

Posted by Paul Waldman on November 26, 2007 10:50 AM

Iran report? What Iran report?

It speaks volumes about the fluidity (and quality) of the Republican race that the hottest candidate in the pack is a guy who (a) doesn't believe in evolution, and (b) doesn't have a shred of foreign policy expertise - nor, apparently, the antennae to monitor key foreign policy developments. [..]

Last night, Huckabee had dinner with some reporters in Des Moines. Here's what transpired.



OK, I understand that Huckabee has been very busy this week - for instance, lining up an endorsement from biblical values maven Tim LaHaye, author of novels about the coming end of the world - and I understand that he is still operating his campaign on a shoestring and therefore probably doesn't have foreign policy briefers at his elbow.

But still. Imagine the laughter on the right if a Democratic candidate had confessed to being clueless about this development.

The NIE report is, shall we say, kind of a big story. Sixteen intelligence agencies conclude that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, and signaled the Bush administration over the summer that this conclusion was likely....that story was on every front page and it dominated the TV news. Yesterday, President Bush had held a morning press conference about it. The Democratic candidates had talked about it during an afternoon PBS debate. It's the kind of story that a presidential candidate tends to notice.

Huckabee hadn't noticed. But it didn't stop him from trying to react to the story:

"I don't know where the intelligence is coming from that says they have suspended the program or how credible that is versus the view that they actually are expanding it...And I've heard, the last two weeks, supposed reports that they are accelerating it and it could be having a reactor in a much shorter period of time than originally been thought."

Again, if Huckabee had tracked the news reports at all, he would have learned "where the intelligence is coming from." For starters, spy agencies reportedly intercepted a conversation in which a senior Iranian military official complained about the shuttering of the program; and news reports indicate that the classified version of the report was footnoted with more than 1,000 pieces of fresh information. If Huckabee had known any of this, [..] perhaps he would've been able to more thoughtfully assess the validity of the "supposed reports" that he says he has "heard." [..]

ottom line, it's hard to imagine that Republican voters [..] would ultimately entrust the '08 nomination to a guy who has no national security creds [and] had to be clued into the contents of the season's biggest national security story. [..]

At a recent Republican presidential debate in Michigan, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was asked what he thought was the biggest long-term threat to the U.S. economy.

"Our sense of optimism," he replied. "America has to be optimistic and recognize that there's nothing we can't overcome."

Forget the trade deficit, the collapsing real estate market or the lack of credit. Forget that during the Bush years the federal debt has increased by half, from $6 trillion to $9 trillion - about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. Apparently, none of these deficits matters as much as the "optimism deficit."

realjohnboy wrote:

So when the media reports that Hillary-Obama are virtually tied, as are Romney-Huckabee, they are only looking at the first round.

Is my understanding of the process in Iowa correct?

Right. People who in the first round at their district's caucusing support a candidate that gets less than 15% are then asked to switch to another candidate in the next round.

In 2004 this helped Edwards, who got a lot of switch-overs from Kucinich (after having diligently established links with that constituency beforehand). Now, too, Edwards could stand to benefit especially: the Edwards camp was touting a poll this week (or might have been last week) that showed that while Hillary and Obama only had about 20% of second-choice preferences (Obama doing only marginally better than Hillary), Edwards had about 40% [correction: about 30%].

An earlier poll I remember that asked about second choices, a month or two ago, also had Edwards at the top of second choices, but with Obama narrowly trailing - and again, Hillary in last place, at a sizable distance. [..]

However, it's not that simple. If the race keeps shaping up as it has so far, with Hillary, Obama and Edwards making a three-way race of it and each grabbing a comparable, sizable chunk of the vote, it is unlikely that any of them will fail to reach the 15% mark in many places. So all three of them are likely to go on to the second round of voting in each district's caucus, and the only voters who will be having to switch to another candidate are supporters of the second-tier candidates, mainly Richardson and Biden. So only their second choices are really relevant.

And what is their second preference, specifically? Probably not a question that can be really answered - I remember looking through the data of one poll that asked about second choices, but when it came to breaking them down by candidate (second choices of Obama voters, Edwards voters, etc) they didnt give the numbers for Biden, Kucinich etc voters because the sample sizes were too small. And rightly so; even if there are other polls that do give the data, you'd still be talking about extremely small samples, that would only give the foggiest of indications.

Also, if Iowa voters end up gravitating to the three main candidates en massively enough - and do so evenly spread enough through the state - it may not matter all that much. The more those candidacies suck the air out of the second-tier campaigns, the fewer people we're actually talking about who end up voting for someone who fails to get 15% in their district's caucus and then have to switch.

realjohnboy wrote:

Is my understanding of the process in Iowa correct?

Right. People who in the first round at their district's caucusing support a candidate that gets less than 15% are then asked to switch to another candidate in the next round.

In 2004 this helped Edwards, who got a lot of switch-overs from Kucinich (after having diligently established links with that constituency beforehand). Now, too, Edwards could stand to benefit especially: the Edwards camp was touting a poll this week (or might have been last week) that showed that while Hillary and Obama only had about 20% of second-choice preferences (Obama doing only marginally better than Hillary), Edwards had about 40% [correction: about 30%].

An earlier poll I remember that asked about second choices, a month or two ago, also had Edwards at the top of second choices, but with Obama narrowly trailing - and again, Hillary in last place, at a sizable distance.

From the Newsweek release: "Likely Republican caucus-goers are 16% of all Iowa adults 18+ (weighted cases). Likely Democratic caucus-goers are 24% of all Iowa adults 18+ (weighted cases)."

Compare to comparable statistics for the October Des Moines Register poll (12% and 10% respectively) as well as the actual turnout for the 2004 Democratic caucuses (5.5%) and the Republican caucuses in 2000 (3.9%) and 1988 (5.3%).

There's some degree of pundit consensus that Huckabee's rise will damage Romney which will then allow Giuliani to do a leapfrog in later primaries.