Obama '08?

What I don't understand is this:

Bush swore upon confirmation to become president that he will uphold the laws and Constitution of the US.

He has broken our laws (illegal wiretaps) and the Constituion - in addition to UN and Geneva Conventions; why aren't any charges made against him?

Does this set a precedence for future presidents? Can they also break our laws and the Constitution without fear of criminal charges?

An impeachment proceeding would have turned into a circus and accomplished nothing. The Bum will be out of office in one more year. At that point perhaps the world court will try him as a war criminal.

Johann Hari: The American right is dazed and confused
Published: 03 January 2008

Tonight, the caucus-goers of Iowa will trudge through the snow and drizzle and gently, calmly tear the Republican Party into a dozen different shreds. The Republicans will vote for men with wildly conflicting visions to be their candidate for President: the plastic Mormon-marketeering of Mitt Romney, the theocratic fever of Mike Huckabee, the near-anarchism of Ron Paul. After seven years of Bush, American conservatism is coming apart at the seams, dazed and foggy about where to go now.

Ever since Ronald Reagan, the Republicans have managed to glue together a conflicting, contradictory coalition of interests. They took Christian fundamentalists and market fundamentalists, swollen Empire-builders and lean small-staters, and squeezed them all into one option in the polling booth. But in the run-up to Iowa, we have seen these different components turn on each other with an angry snarl. Look, for example, at the Christian evangelicals. The Republican leadership has fed and watered this base by offering ever-more pious words, and ever-more anti-abortion judges. In return, they expect the evangelicals to support everything else they do - vast tax-cuts for the rich, pissing on the poor, bombing The Bad Guys. Bush's former senior advisors David Kuo and John Dilulio have described how Bush and his confidants would often invite evangelical leaders into the Oval Office, make reams of promises to them, and then mock them the moment they left as fools.

But something fascinating has happened this year: the evangelicals have grown angry at being kept in this judges-and-bromides cage. They have smashed through the bars, and the man who helped them do it is Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee. He is a syrup-voiced Baptist minister from a town called Hope (yes, the same one that gave us Bill Clinton). And he is way off the establishment-Republican script.

Huckabee defines himself against "big corporations," complaining that most hard-working families have not seen the benefits of the Bush boom because it has all trickled up to "Wall Street, not Main Street." He dismisses the tax-cutting Club for Growth as "the Club for Greed". As governor, he increased taxes by 47 per cent to rebuild the state's collapsing infrastructure, and gave scholarships to the children of illegal immigrants. In Huckabee's hokey breast, the old-style evangelical populism of William Jennings Bryan -the perennial Democratic candidate for President at the turn of the last century - has been reborn. And, like Bryan, he is a barking theocrat. He insists the world was created 6,000 years ago, and he ain't descended from no monkey. He drawls, "Science changes with every generation with new discoveries, and God doesn't. So I'll stick with God." In the 1990s he suggested quarantining HIV victims, and he openly compares homosexuality to necrophilia and bestiality. Both halves of this message resonated in the Republican heartlands: Huckabee was ahead in the polls for the nomination just a few weeks ago.

The panicked corporate Republican establishment spent decades inciting the evangelicals to ever-higher heights of rhetorical fancy - only to find the monster they created is now turning on them, demanding their theocratic words be taken seriously.

At the opposite end of the Republican spectrum, there is a parallel and opposing rebellion - of the small-state conservatives. The Republicans have always claimed they are committed to peeling back both taxes and spending, and (the old cliché) "getting the state off your back". But under Bush they have done the opposite. Spending has exploded - primarily because of the one-trillion-dollar war in Iraq, and the vast government hand-outs Bush signed into law for his corporate donors. True, there have been huge tax cuts for the wealthy - but they have been put on America's Visa card, paid for with massive loans from China.

So now the small-staters are kicking back. Their magi is Ron Paul, a soft-spoken doctor and Congressman from Texas who openly describes the United States as "an empire" he wants to "abolish" overnight. He would bring all US troops home on his first night as President and he says this would end Islamic fundamentalism because "they don't hate us because we're free, they hate us because we're over there".

Ron Paul wants to shrink the US state back to the size it was when the constitution was written in the 18th- century. He would abolish healthcare, pensions, anti-poverty programmes - almost everything. He would end the war on drugs and the "war on terror", and pull the US out of the United Nations. This is a revival of the old isolationist America First! message that dominated the American right until relatively recently - the 1940s. His campaign has found extraordinary resonance with one chunk of the Republican base: Paul has received more individual donations than any other candidate, even though he has no chance of winning. It shows how far the Republican coalition has been stretched that Paul and Huckabee are in the same party: Paul called one of Huckabee's adverts "fascist".

Yet the Republican establishment has found it hard to demolish these tendencies because they have no obvious candidate to unite behind. Rudi Giuliani is a hardline imperialist and instinctive authoritarian, but he is soft on gays and guns. John McCain believes the US should be the successor to the brutal British Empire and wants to criminalise abortion, but he also believes in capping corporate power over politics and doing something (but not enough) about global warming. This Teddy Roosevelt Republicanism is too much for them today. The Party's corporate paymasters have tried to manufacture a candidate who can keep the old Reagan coalition together: the mega-rich businessman and former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney. He is handsome, wholesome and wholly false. He has taken a tick-list of all the things a Republican candidate has to be, and carefully contorted himself to fit them all.

Just a few years ago, Romney was a pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-gun governor who bragged he wasn't a successor to Reagan. But, like his Mormon Church, whenever politics requires it, he has a convenient divine revelation telling him God wants him to get with the focus groups.

Just before it became illegal in the 1970s, God "told" the Mormon elders their ban on black people was wrong all along.

Just before running for the Republican nomination, Romney realised he was an anti-abortion, anti-gay and pro-gun Reaganite all along. He is now trying to gloss over the cracks by defining himself against (boo! hiss!) "secularists", and insisting that "freedom requires religion".

It is now plausible there will be no obvious winner from the Republican primaries. If that happens, we will be in a situation unseen since 1948: the delegates at the convention in September will have to huddle together and pick a representative of Republicanism. It won't be easy. They will be frantically trying to glue together scraps of bacon, long after the pig has been slaughtered.

January 1, 2008

DES MOINES - Poll numbers released last night showed Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee leading their rivals with three days remaining before the Iowa caucuses. The poll by the Des Moines Register showed Obama, an Illinois senator, with the support of 32 percent of those surveyed, compared with 25 percent for Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and 24 percent for former senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

au1929 wrote:

blatham
The question" whether he is or isn't a Moslem still persists with many. Those who have any doubt what so ever will be reluctant to vote for Obama.

What will it take to convince people that they are incorrect?

Richardson Set to Send Obama Second-Choice Support
by: Chase Martyn
Wednesday (01/02) at 23:30 PM
[Exclusive] Gov. Bill Richardson's campaign is expected to direct their supporters to caucus for Sen. Barack Obama in the second round of voting at Thursday's caucuses in precincts where he is not viable. Two sources familiar with the plan told Iowa Independent that the New Mexico Governor's organizers have been instructed to direct supporters to Obama in the places where they fail to reach the 15% threshold for viability.
Richardson, whose poll numbers in Iowa have hovered near 10% since June, may need a solid fourth-place finish in the caucuses to continue his campaign. And he is best served by directing support away from former Sen. John Edwards, who consistently polls between him and the two national front-runners, Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton, in national and early state polls.

But Richardson's modest gains from diverting second-choice support away from Edwards may be eclipsed by Obama's potential success on caucus night, should everything go as planned. If Richardson's field organization manages to direct a significant number of supporters to Obama, it could be enough to win him the Iowa Caucuses.

And if Edwards loses a large block of second-round voters, a group he seems to be relying on to break in his direction, it could irreparably damage his campaign.

Richardson would prefer an Obama victory over Clinton because a Clinton victory could end the campaign before New Hampshire voters even head to the polls. And if Edwards's numbers look weak, Richardson could head to New Hampshire as the best alternative to the top two contenders for the Democratic nomination.

Still, sources caution that plans can always change, and once the doors lock Thursday evening, anything can happen. Whether the Richardson campaign's strategy is implemented on the ground remains an open question, and, because this directive is not expected to be confirmed publicly, it will be difficult to prove.

Remarks by Clinton in a recent debate, in which she joked about an experienced governor making a good vice president, touched off speculation that Richardson may seek a pact with Clinton in hopes of securing a spot as her running mate. Both campaigns deny a deal is in the offing.

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Obama On Track To Win Caucus 2nd Tier Support
Posted January 2, 2008 | 03:45 PM (EST)


Des Moines--Barack Obama has already begun shoring up support among the lower-tier candidates who lack the money or poll numbers to be serious contenders in the early primary states, such as Iowa, and Offthebus hears that "agreements" with these candidates may be announced soon.

Dennis Kucinich started what may add up to the critical mass Obama needs for a win or strong second-place showing in the Iowa caucuses, when Kucinich encouraged his supporters - few though there are in this frozen state - to join the Obama forces on caucus night, if Kucinich doesn't have enough voters to be viable.

The Kucinich endorsement flooded the blogoshpere and the main-street-media and handed Obama a mini-bounce at a critical time in this campaign for the most privileged voters in America - Iowa's caucus attendees.

For days, the rumors have been flying between the campaigns about which of the top three candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination will benefit from the second tier non-viable candidates - Joe Biden and Bill Richardson - to be specific.

The Biden national and state campaign honchos met at 4 p.m. Monday in a Des Moines attorney's office to discuss their strategy and decide if they would encourage their non-viable voters to choose either Obama, Edwards, or Hillary Clinton's caucus contingents.

At a crowded and noisy Star Bar on Ingersoll Avenue, where the Biden campaign staffers were sipping champagne - or harder stuff - and waiting for their candidate, his wife, and the Biden Family to arrive for a New Year's Eve informal gathering, Offthebus chatted with one of the Biden's national consultants who wanted to remain anonymous:

"A decision will be made tomorrow about who we'll encourage our supporters to stand behind if we aren't viable in a precinct. Right now, I'd guess Obama gets our support because we're more inline with his vision of foreign policy than any of the other candidates, and besides, we like him and how he's run his campaign."

"Is Biden angling for a Secretary of State position in an Obama Administration?"

The Biden consultant told Offthebus, "Well, Joe would make a great Secretary of State, wouldn't he?"

Biden's son, Joseph R. Biden, III is the current Attorney General for Delaware. Should Joe Biden resign his seat and accept a major post in the next Democratic Administration in Washington, his son is positioned to replace him in the U.S. Senate.

After attending the press party at the Temple for the Performing Arts, I headed over to Dos Rios, to pick up any additional bar talk conversations and dangle the Biden scoop.

Off-the-bus spoke with a national Obama staffer who confirmed, "We've heard that Richardson may also be telling his supporters to caucus for Barack if they aren't viable. Nothing definitive but there's a trend going on," she added with a smile. Ah, that's an understatement.

All of this off-the-record conversation and backroom pol talk could be nothing or something.

But the fact that the rumors are flying and top aides are willing to discuss their thinking with Offthebus, albeit without disclosing their names, is still enough smoke to detect yet another spark that could ignite a fire under the Obama campaign's fortunes in the Iowa caucuses.

This trend, along with the latest polls showing Obama ahead of Clinton or within the margin of error to win this first all-important national test, bodes well for Obama and puts additional pressure on the Clintonites to outdistance Obama in the next 48 hours.

Time is running out for Clinton, but may be the best of all possible worlds for Obama should his campaign continue to build support with the lower tier candidates open to a conversation about where their voters should land on caucus night - if they aren't viable.

None of the campaigns I spoke with - on or off the record - are prone to hand their support over to John Edwards, who is busy today flying around the state for his final push to win - and therefore, survive until New Hampshire, where his poll numbers continue to fall far behind either Clinton or Obama.

A Word on Obama [Rich Lowry]

I've been an Obama skeptic, but I have to say at the end of his event in Iowa I attended Saturday night, I got out of my chair in the back and stood up and craned my neck to get a good look at him as he finished his speech. He's an electrifying performer and there was a sense in the room that maybe, just maybe you were witnessing the beginning of something historic. If he wins tonight, get ready for adulatory press coverage of the sort you haven't seen for any political candidate in a long time...

But if you ask me -- hey, why take chances?"

Quote:

The Kucinich endorsement flooded the blogoshpere and the main-street-media and handed Obama a mini-bounce at a critical time in this campaign [..]

She was spotted today at an Edwards house party; last night she dabbled in Richardson. "In [Obama and Clinton] I didn't see the experience that I'd like to see and kind of the groundedness that I'd like to see," she told NBC, "so I'm really looking at Edwards, and I'm still really looking at Richardson."

Of course, Richardson sent out a press release about it ... leaving out the part about Edwards.

Money quote from Klopfer: "[My Obama Youtube] got more hits than Paris Hilton and Britney Spears." Aw. I guess she misses that.