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

Despite the poll you posted, Nimh, from Iowa's Republicans, I would suspect that 98% of folks who tend towards that party are not really paying attention on June 1st, 2007. Amongst Democrats, maybe 90% are not paying attention.

You might think that, since the voters there are already more tuned in, their reactions might foretell somewhat those of the national electorate when it comes around to paying attention..

Only if you believe their idealogical makeup is representative of other states.

And I firmly do not believe this.

Especially on the Dem side.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Only if you believe their idealogical makeup is representative of other states.

True. But then they're both swing states, that regularly go from Dem to Rep and back, and in the case of Iowa at least, tend to do so pretty much along with national preference.

I mean, Iowa is a true bellweather state - in the past nine presidential elections, it's gone with the winner of the popular vote seven times. Ford and Dukakis were the only presidential candidates who won Iowa and still lost the popular vote.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

And I firmly do not believe this.

Especially on the Dem side.

Tell me more? Because of race you mean?

Kerry sealed his nomination on March 2nd, Super Tuesday, when voters in ten states, accounting for 166 electoral votes, cast their ballots. In November, Kerry won 8 of those ten states, including Democratic bastions like CA, NY, MD and almost all of New England. The only Super Tuesday states he lost in November were Ohio and Georgia. 131 of Kerry's 251 electoral votes came from states that voted on Super Tuesday.

But the nomination battle was really over by that point. Kucinich and Sharpton were still hanging around, but by March 2 Gephardt, Lieberman, Clark and Dean had all dropped out of the contest, with only John Edwards still staggering along in his audition for the VP slot. By Super Tuesday, 19 states and the District of Columbia had already determined how their delegates would be allocated to the candidates at the national convention. Those states accounted for slightly fewer electoral votes than the cumulative total of the Super Tuesday states: 144. But unlike the overwhelmingly Democratic states that voted on Super Tuesday, these states leaned much more Republican. Of the first 9 states to vote (IA, NH, AZ, DE, MO, NM, ND, OK and SC, with a combined 58 EV), 7 went to Bush (51 EV) and only 2 (7EV) went to Kerry. The next three states to vote (MI, WA and ME) were all competitive states won by Kerry. However, each had a caucus rather than a primary, so the number of voters who determined those contests was very small. In fact, if you combine the total vote cast in MI, WA adn ME, and even toss in the total votes cast in the DC caucus, the number of votes cast (207,197) in these states that accounted for 34 of Kerry's EV's was fewer than the votes cast in just the New Hampshire primary (219,787). Prior to Super Tuesday, the only states that were highly competetive in November that conducted Democratic primaries were NH and WI.

Why is the Democratic candidate being chosen by states which are decidedly more Conservative then the average Democrat?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Why is the Democratic candidate being chosen by states which are decidedly more Conservative then the average Democrat?

That one seems simple. Because the Democratic candidate will only actually be elected President if he appeals to the average voter, period, rather than to the avarage Democrat.

IA and NH Dems are more conservative then westcoast Dems, yes, true - and thats why strategically, at least, it's actually a lot smarter for them to have a deciding voice than for, say, the Dems in California, or Massachusetts, or Vermont, to have one. Because if it were up to those, there'd be a much larger chance of getting a Democratic nominee who'd turn out to be unelectable in the general elections.

The DNC tried to, this year, have Iowa, NH, Nevada and South-Carolina to have the first shot. That four-state selection would have been racially and sociologically more diverse and representative than IA and NH by themselves, but it was no coincidence that it would still be three swing states and a conservative state having the first go.

Quote:

[..] The next three states to vote (MI, WA and ME) were all competitive states won by Kerry. However, each had a caucus rather than a primary, so the number of voters who determined those contests was very small.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:

[..] The next three states to vote (MI, WA and ME) were all competitive states won by Kerry. However, each had a caucus rather than a primary, so the number of voters who determined those contests was very small.

Actually - and now I'm going to contradict myself as well.. - but there seems to be a contradiction here.

The notion is that the first primary states are far more conservative than the ones where you'd find your average Democrat - and you singled out Iowa. But then there's this caucus thing. Iowa has a caucus rather than a primary too, of course. But caucuses attract far smaller numbers than primaries - only activists go there.

Wouldnt the much smaller subset of the most aware party supporters who turn out at a caucus be likely to actually be considerably more liberal than the average Democratic voter in the generals?

I think that if the country never has a shot at seeing a Liberal actually run as the candidate, then they will never have a chance to vote such a person in. [..] It also hamstrings the party by keeping the strongest voices out, in favor of someone who can pander to the middle. This is a sure recipie for doom for the Dems unless you have a genius communicator like Clinton - Bill Clinton. Otherwise, it's always the wishy-washies that get the party nod. No thanks.

noone ever expects the moderate Dems to vote with the Liberal. But this cycle? C'mon. You honestly think that the independents are looking to put another Republican in office? No way!

Fred Thompson's Biggest Act
by Devilstower
Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 06:03:34 AM PDT

Mitt Romney has already out-raised his opponents by fulfilling the one true requirement of a Republican candidate -- looking presidential. But Romney is going to have to surrender his prom king crown to the guy who has been literally acting the part for decades.

Fred Thompson has been a general in the Army, an admiral in the Navy, senator, White House chief of staff, head of the FBI, and president three times (hey, doesn't that make him ineligible?). And before all those, he played another role: attorney. Yes, Thompson really is both a lawyer and a Hollywood movie star -- the two things Republicans always claim to hate, until they start drooling over any example of either willing to tack an "R" after their name. But though he's made a career of playing a character whose name might as well be "Tough Butfair," there's one part of Thompson's act that's never quite held up to scrutiny.

Thompson launched his political career as a "pro-choice moderate" in a contest against a conservative Democrat (a Democrat who found out that it was hard to achieve statewide name recognition when running against a guy who was on TV 24/7). Thompson was able to pass himself off as a down-home boy, driving around the state in a pickup truck, while every television station in the state did his work for him. But once elected, though he continued to use the "moderate" script on the air, Thompson's voting record in the Senate showed a very different tone to his performance. He scored a lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union of 86 percent -- one point shy of little Ricky Santorum. Only a handful of Senators (Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms among them) proved to be more more dedicated to pushing the hard right agenda.

And then there's Thompson the author. In his first political position, Thompson was picked by Howard Baker to be chief minority council for the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, otherwise known as the "Watergate Committee." Nixon was barely in that helicopter before Thompson sat down to pound out a book giving his view of the events (you'll excuse me for not providing an Amazon link). The book takes a very interesting approach on Watergate. According to Thompson, Republicans were babes in the woods, believing Nixon to be totally innocent. On the other hand, Democrats were clearly hiding something. They'd made a pact with the traitor, John Dean, and lured Republicans into a trap. In the phrasing and tone of every question, Thompson saw that Democrats were "unfair."

Thompson spends the middle of the book attacking Dean and the Democrats, before going back in time to highlight his investigation of Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt to prove that Watergate was nothing special. He then wanders into a long and convoluted account of how inside information passed to journalist Jack Anderson allowed Democrats to know about Watergate before it happened, turning all of Watergate into the biggest setup in history.

Thompson reprised the role of Republican champion in 1996, when as chairman of the Senate Government Relations Committee he tried to extract vengeance for Watergate by heading up the investigation of "irregularities" in campaign fundraising. Despite a lot of fulminating at the beginning of this investigation, Thompson ended up fuming over his inability to find any fire behind all the Republican-generated smoke. He blamed his lack of success on Democrats who "have very, very little fear of lying" under oath.

No matter what role he plays on TV, Thompson's voting record, and his written record, reveal a man who is a hard-right partisan, a man who actively hates Democrats, a man who thinks Sam Ervin was the real villain of the Watergate story, and a man whose own view of the world includes more conspiracies than any Hollywood plot.

A Nixon apologist who sees the press and Democrats tangled in a scheme to hoodwink innocent Republicans -- Thompson really is the ideal candidate of the 28% crowd. It's little wonder that in his latest on screen role, Thompson was cast to play President Grant in the run up to the Wounded Knee Massacre. Representing the side of corruption and violence comes naturally to him.

Talking about whacked out religion in the Republican race..

As of 20 May, Newt Gingrich was still preparing to ride in as the intellectually superior saviour of the party at the last moment

Falwell's death points to a new reality: The religious vote, for the first time in decades, is up for grabs.

"The plate tectonics are shifting," says Bill Galston, a Brookings Institution fellow and author of Public Matters: Politics, Policy, and Religion in the 21st Century. "Many younger Evangelicals are uncomfortable with what they regard as a narrowing of the religious agenda. They regard some of the older leaders as extreme, embarrassing. Meanwhile, some of the more conservative Evangelicals are rethinking their abandonment of the traditional Protestant mistrust of salvation in the public sphere. I think all this represents a slow shift in the direction of a broader and more centrist discussion."

None of which is to say that Evangelicals aren't still, by and large, "values voters." But, as Galston points out, even among traditionalist Evangelicals, personal values (such as honesty and responsibility) and family values (such as trying to protect kids from sex and violence on TV and the Internet) rank higher in importance than social issues such as abortion and gay rights. This helps explain how, in 2004, foreign policy turned into a values issue for these voters, and why the character assaults on John Kerry were pivotal, especially for traditionalist Catholics, who swung toward Bush dramatically.