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

We'll see how this goes. If nothing else, it might give us some clear understanding of the capability of money and power to manipulate elections to its benefit.

Do we already have a thread on whether Ron Paul will run as a third-party candidate and if so, what the likely effects will be? I thought we did but if so I couldn't find it.

blatham wrote:

We'll see how this goes. If nothing else, it might give us some clear understanding of the capability of money and power to manipulate elections to its benefit.

Do you think that the Democrat primary might also reveal some of the same? Or are Democrat candidates (and their organized group and media supporters) all loath to indulge in such media persuasion and instead make their appeals to voters who are individually immune to such effects anyway?

I dunno, CNN and Hillary are raising my hackles a bit.

I dunno, CNN and Hillary are raising my hackles a bit.

December 10, 2007
Rove Raise$ For NY Victory Fund (And Rudy)
A reader forwarded an invite he received from someone close to Rudy Giuliani to a $5,000-a-head fundraiser tomorrow morning at The Union League hosted by state GOP Chairman Joe Mondello and featuring former top Bush White House political advsior Karl Rove.

The event purports to be to benefit the New York Victory Fund, a federal campaign committee that will ostensibly help all Republican candidates in 2008 via GOTV and other organizing efforts that are, by law, not supposed to be a collaborative effort between the party and the various GOP hopefuls.

But the reality is that all GOP boats in New York rise and fall on Rudy next year, and so the bulk of the cash will undoubtedly go toward assisting the former mayor (assuming he does, in fact, make it to Feb. 5), as he battles for the state's 31 electoral college votes.

We'll see how this goes. If nothing else, it might give us some clear understanding of the capability of money and power to manipulate elections to its benefit.

blatham wrote:

We'll see how this goes. If nothing else, it might give us some clear understanding of the capability of money and power to manipulate elections to its benefit.

Actually, I was just talking the other day about how so far, at least, developments have been surprisingly reassuring on this count! I wrote,

"On an only tangentially related thought, so far the campaign has been pretty reassuring when it comes to those longstanding fears about how, nowadays, the elections are wholly determined by money, or the media, or the conservative party machine.

In the Republican race, most all of the money, elite support and Fox Newsmaking are on the side of Giuliani or Romney, and yet both are now seeing their fortunes drop.

And who is rapidly making his way up, surging past Romney into first place in Iowa, and past Romney and Fred Thompson into second place nationally? Huckabee - a guy raising less money than any other frontrunner in either race, and little elite and institutional support even in his own evangelical constituency.

Add to this that John McCain - also practically bankrupt, and mostly devoid of conservative party or media support - has just slipped back past Fred Thompson into third place nationally, behind only Rudy and Huckabee, and is set to pass Rudy into second place in New Hampshire.

Thought that was reassuring.."

They do have an annoying habit of not identifying people like Carville and Wes Clark as Hillary strategists - and the same could easily be said of David Gurgen too. But they spend significant amounts of time pumping Obama stories out as well.

Overall, Democrats also have received more positive coverage than Republicans (35% of stories vs. 26%), while Republicans received more negative coverage than Democrats (35% vs. 26%). For both parties, a plurality of stories, 39%, were neutral or balanced.

Most of that difference in tone, however, can be attributed to the friendly coverage of Obama (47% positive) and the critical coverage of McCain (just 12% positive.) When those two candidates are removed from the field, the tone of coverage for the two parties is virtually identical.

[W]hat caught my eye was the reason Democrats got such favorable coverage. Two words: Barack Obama.

The chart [below] shows the results for each of the six leading candidates, and Obama's coverage is almost stratospherically laudatory. [If you remove] Obama from the analysis [..] the positive vs. negative coverage was virtually identical for Democrats and Republicans.

Bottom line: the press isn't in love with Democrats, it's in love with Barack Obama.

Understood. But I'm not ruling it out. This appears to be the most uncertain and volatile republican nomination contest I've seen. That, in combination with the unfathomably huge and pervasive financial and ideological stakes in this election, leads me to conclude that precedent may be out the window, down the street, and into a hot tub near ground zero.

So the latest polls have Mike Huckabee up an implausible nineteen points in Iowa and four points nationally. But he can't win, right? I mean, he's vulnerable on practically every non-social issue, he has a variety of skeletons in his closet, his policy team seems more or less nonexistent, he still doesn't have any money, and he has most of the GOP establishment united against him. He doesn't have a prayer - or maybe that's all he has.

Except, of course, that none of his rivals can win either. If you look at the field, every candidate seems to have near-disqualifying weaknesses [..], which helps explain why nobody seems capable of getting above 30-35 percent in any national or state-level poll. McCain is still poison to a large chunk of the base and probably doesn't have enough money to capitalize even if he wins New Hampshire - and if he loses there, he's cooked. Mitt Romney is running on a record that would have made him a moderate Democrat in any state except hyper-liberal Massachussetts. Rudy Giuliani is running on a record that would have made him a moderate Democrat in any place except hyper-liberal New York City. Fred Thompson is more ideologically appropriate, but he's lived down to his lackluster record as a politician by running a remarkably lousy and (perhaps unremarkably) lazy campaign. Ron Paul is, well, Ron Paul.

Maybe they won't nominate anyone. Then the entire campaign will be about attacking the Democratic nominee, as there won't be a Republican to attack. They sweep to victory, but the country doesn't know who the President is. They will claim that for the duration of the GWOT, revealing the President's name would be an unconscionable security breach. Naturally, the MSM applauds. More wars and fewer freedoms ensue. Congress moves to impeach, but they don't know who to impeach. The precedent having been established, they never tell us who is the new Number One, nor who the nominee is in any subsequent election, all of which are won by the Republicans. Sally Quinn and Tim Russert smile quietly to themselves, and all is well.

Posted by calling all toasters | December 8, 2007 6:57 PM