Tuesday’s political round-up

December 11, 2007

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* A week after Hillary Clinton’s campaign was embarrassed by an Iowa country chair spreading the ridiculous Obama/Muslim email, it’s happened again. “Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Sunday requested the resignation of a second Iowa volunteer coordinator who forwarded a hoax e-mail saying Barack Obama is a Muslim possibly intent on destroying the United States.” Said Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee, “We’ve made our position on this crystal clear. Our campaign does not tolerate this kind of activity or campaigning.”

* Mitt Romney, slipping further and further behind, has decided to air his first negative ad of the season. The new commercial, which will air in Iowa, targets Mike Huckabee on immigration. “Mitt Romney stood up, and vetoed in-state tuition for illegal aliens, opposed driver’s licenses for illegals,” the ad says. “Mike Huckabee? Supported in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants. Huckabee even supported taxpayer-funded college scholarships for illegal aliens.”

* Speaking of Huckabee, his pardon record is drawing increased scrutiny in the wake of the Wayne Dumond scandal. As Arkansas governor, he was involved in twice as many pardons and commutations as his three predecessors combined. “It seems to be true at least anecdotally that if a minister is involved, (Huckabee) seems likely to grant clemency,” prosecutor Robert Herzfeld said in 2004 after successfully battling the then-governor over the release of a killer.

* A new national CNN/Opinion Research shows the Republican race very close. Rudy Giuliani is now ahead with 24%, followed by Huckabee at 22%, and Romney third at 16%. John McCain is fourth at 12%, followed by Fred Thompson with 10%. The three remaining candidates are in single digits.

* Speaking of national polls, a new NYT/CBS poll shows Clinton leading the pack with 44%, followed by Obama at 27% and Edwards at 11%. The rest of the field was in low single digits. Clinton’s 17-point lead is sizable, but smaller than the 28-point lead she enjoyed in an NYT/CBS poll in October.

* The same poll showed Giuliani leading the Republican field with 22% support, followed very closely by Huckabee at 21%, and Romney at 16%.

* Obama got a boost in New Hampshire yesterday, picking up Rep. Carol Shea-Porter’s (D-N.H.) endorsement. Obama now has the support of both of the Granite State’s House delegation, following Rep. Paul Hodes’ (D-N.H.) endorsment in July.

* Speaking of Obama, Chris Bowers raised the prospect yesterday that the Obama campaign had done some opposition research on progressive bloggers a couple of months ago. Obama aides strongly denied the claim, and Bowers walked back his charge a little bit, noting that his charge included “a bit of speculation on my part.”

* And speaking of opposition research, Bob Nash, Clinton’s deputy campaign manager and a top-notch researcher, sent an email to some supporters yesterday, hoping to gain more background about Obama’s work as a community organizer in Chicago.

* In an interesting contrast, Democrats nationally believe Clinton is running the most positive campaign of the Dems’ field. In early primary states, they believe Clinton is running the least positive campaign.

* A new South Carolina poll from InsiderAdvantage, a Republican pollster, found Obama ahead with 28%, Clinton second with 22%, Edwards third with 14%, and Joe Biden fourth with 10%.

* Clinton is hitting Nevada’s TV airwaves this week, too.

* It looks like Fred Thompson is giving up on New Hampshire.

* And finally, keep a very close eye on today’s special election in Ohio’s 5th congressional district. It was supposed to be an easy win for Republicans, but it’s turned out to be a very competitive contest.

The slandering of Obama is a purely Rovian tactic: put it out there, and when your camp gets discovered as the culprit, deny it and blame it on some lower level rogue and fire him/her. In the meantime, the lie has been put forth, and many who have heard only the lie and not the retraction will go on believing it. I hope in three more weeks time that the Clintons will be finished.

  • I know a few GOPers in the OH-5 who hold some really bizarre ideas about Bob Taft. Terms like “hanging the SOB” are prevalent. If Dems can succeed in tying Bob Latta to Taft, they’ll take the seat.

    And I still can’t stop laughing at the NRCC for pouring a full 10% of their cash resources into retaining one single seat. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess—especially if you’re a “Taft Toady….”

  • keep a very close eye on today’s special election in Ohio’s 5th congressional district. It was supposed to be an easy win for Republicans, but it’s turned out to be a very competitive contest.

    I think the issue of “safe” Republican districts is a lot more important than most people think. If a powerful Republican in a “safe” district feelsthat there’s any chance they’ll lose, they will suck money out of the Republican coffers at a rate which is disproportionate to the actual risk to the party as a whole. In other words, they will let the party go down if that saves their own sorry ass.

    So we all need to pony up early on wherever there’s a chance to unseat a powerful Republican, and then let their own greedy stupidity do the real work of taking the Republicans down.

    Leverage.

  • naschkatze, that is seriously too tin-foil hattish. and it suggests to me you have never worked on a Presidential campaign or probably a US Senate or governor’s campaign.

    the leading candidates will have literally thousands of volunteers, hundreds in each of the early states. volunteers dont get background checks, they are lightly trainined, and often loosely supervised — all out of necessity. they come to the campaign for their own reasons with their own ideas.

    the two in Iowa are from small, more conservative rural counties – far from the campaign’s central supervision, in areas with less investment. out of hundreds of volunteers (or even small county staff) the odds are strong there will be some loose cannons. that just happens. it isn’t some “Rovian conspiracy.” these are just renegade small town volunteers being a little too zealous in the heat of a campaign.

    trust me, this happens. i’ve been on campaigns where we’ve had to disassociate volunteers who got a little far afield. my guess is the top folks in Obama and Edwards camps aren’t saying “those Rovian dirty tricksters!” – they are saying “there but for the grace of God. . .”

  • This business with Democrats in Iowa (the Obama smear) and hearing the Iowa Republicans on NPR yesterday trying to figure out who the “good Christian” is in their race – if you didn’t hear it, you don’t want to know what their definition of that term and standards for support are – make me wonder why in hell we have to give these heartland rustics (on both sides) such an influence all out of proportion to their collective intelligence in choosing a President.

  • Great collection of links today! It is interesting to see so many on the national level think that Clinton is running a positive campaign, while so many in the early states think the opposite. Hopefully the rest of the country will catch on to her negativity before it is too late!

  • From Today’s LA Times – the former chief military prosecutor at Gitmo explains why he resigned:

    I was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until Oct. 4, the day I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system. I resigned on that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly.

    In my view — and I think most lawyers would agree — it is absolutely critical to the legitimacy of the military commissions that they be conducted in an atmosphere of honesty and impartiality. Yet the political appointee known as the “convening authority” — a title with no counterpart in civilian courts — was not living up to that obligation.

    In a nutshell, the convening authority is supposed to be objective — not predisposed for the prosecution or defense — and gets to make important decisions at various stages in the process. The convening authority decides which charges filed by the prosecution go to trial and which are dismissed, chooses who serves on the jury, decides whether to approve requests for experts and reassesses findings of guilt and sentences, among other things.

    Earlier this year, Susan Crawford was appointed by the secretary of Defense to replace Maj. Gen. John Altenburg as the convening authority. Altenburg’s staff had kept its distance from the prosecution to preserve its impartiality. Crawford, on the other hand, had her staff assessing evidence before the filing of charges, directing the prosecution’s pretrial preparation of cases (which began while I was on medical leave), drafting charges against those who were accused and assigning prosecutors to cases, among other things.

    How can you direct someone to do something — use specific evidence to bring specific charges against a specific person at a specific time, for instance — and later make an impartial assessment of whether they behaved properly? Intermingling convening authority and prosecutor roles perpetuates the perception of a rigged process stacked against the accused.

    The second reason I resigned is that I believe even the most perfect trial in history will be viewed with skepticism if it is conducted behind closed doors. Telling the world, “Trust me, you would have been impressed if only you could have seen what we did in the courtroom” will not bolster our standing as defenders of justice. Getting evidence through the classification review process to allow its use in open hearings is time-consuming, but it is time well spent.

    Crawford, however, thought it unnecessary to wait because the rules permit closed proceedings. There is no doubt that some portions of some trials have to be closed to protect classified information, but that should be the last option after exhausting all reasonable alternatives. Transparency is critical.

    Finally, I resigned because of two memos signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England that placed the chief prosecutor — that was me — in a chain of command under Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes. Haynes was a controversial nominee for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but his nomination died in January 2007, in part because of his role in authorizing the use of the aggressive interrogation techniques some call torture.

    I had instructed the prosecutors in September 2005 that we would not offer any evidence derived by waterboarding, one of the aggressive interrogation techniques the administration has sanctioned. Haynes and I have different perspectives and support different agendas, and the decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor’s office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions. I resigned a few hours after I was informed of Haynes’ place in my chain of command.

    The Military Commissions Act provides a foundation for fair trials, but some changes are clearly necessary. I was confident in full, fair and open trials when Gen. Altenburg was the convening authority and Brig. Gen. Tom Hemingway was his legal advisor. Collectively, they spent nearly 65 years in active duty, and they were committed to ensuring the integrity of military law. They acted on principle rather than politics.

    The first step, if these truly are military commissions and not merely a political smoke screen, is to take control out of the hands of political appointees like Haynes and Crawford and give it back to the military.

    The president first authorized military commissions in November 2001, more than six years ago, and the lack of progress is obvious. Only one war-crime case has been completed. It is time for the political appointees who created this quagmire to let go.

    Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham have said that how we treat the enemy says more about us than it does about him. If we want these military commissions to say anything good about us, it’s time to take the politics out of military commissions, give the military control over the process and make the proceedings open and transparent.

    Morris D. Davis is the former chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions. The opinions expressed are his own and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Air Force.

  • It sounds really odd that a Democratic campaign volunteer would be using his or her office time to send out e-mails or make call accusing Barack of being a Muslim and of wanting to destroy out country, against orders to the contrary. Do we have “raiders” in the campaign office now, just like we have primary raiders? Or maybe just big bribes behind the scenes?

    Note comment #8. Not that I agree with it, just note that it’s here.

  • TB – please provide a link and some credible argument. The readers here are pretty sophisticated, so unless you want to come off as some loose-cannon, let’s-ignore-this-asshole troll, do a better job of presentation.
    And first-term abortion is not murder, but forcing some women to take a dangerous pregnancy full term could be called murder.
    Finally, if the government can force women to have children, they can force them to abort pregnancies. Ever consider that line of thinking?

  • TB,

    Ever consider God gave the woman the gift of having that child,

    Ever heard of the first ammendment, you know the Establishment Clause? Let me boil it down for you: church and state are seperate. That means that you can’t ram your religious beliefs down my throat using the government.

  • Cleaver @ 5 – because to this Iowan it still beats the hell out of letting arrogant southern california pricks do it?

  • Pingback: Tuesday’s political round-up · Scholarships

  • TB – thanks for the links. I really didn’t expect to get a site that prominently featured Alan Keyes.
    So, you are against any and all abortions. You are also against using frozen embryos (even ones that are destined to be discarded) for possible research.
    So, does that put you in that group that loves children, all the way up to the point that they are born, and then to Hell with them? Those whose parents may not be able to provide insurance, should they just sicken and die, if that’s God’s will?
    How about those children who have grown to the age of 18, do you support the US sending them out to an occupation overseas where they may get killed or maimed?
    One issue thinking sucks! I saw too many Bush posters around my Mom’s Catholic parish because of abortion.
    Without knowing what you think, TB, I can’t draw any conclusion about you, but fromwhat you have provided, I believe that you are wrong, period.

  • So your willing to kills a baby for medical reserach. I bet your willing to let the government tell you when you can and can’t go to the doctor also, Hillary and Obama. I’m sure the government will do a great job with our health just as they have with our education. I’d rather my education tax dollars go to the educational institution of my choice. Personally, I would rather be taxed on money I spend than money I earned. Wouldn’t you? We have responsibility to provide insurance to the poorest who can’t afford it. The age groupd that is hurting the worst in this country are between the age of 18-25, if they don’t get along with their parents, whom have to sign anything to do with them going to college. Freedom of speech gives me the right to say whatever I want, when I want. The founding fathers intended to keep from passing laws that impletment religion, not forebid it, but to pass laws based on our belief in God. Read the constitution, it’s based on a belief in God.

  • ..and what I said was, the government should not decide if abortion is ok or not, it should be left to the family and their beliefs. I am personally against it completely

  • “abortion period is murder”

    tb, don’t express your opinion as if it were fact. it is not. it is simply your opinion, which is not shared by everyone in this country. as for the rest of your rant……well, what is there to say?

  • It’s murder wether you want to call it that or not. What if you were aborted. What are you in-between being an egg and being a baby? Is an embryo the equivilant of a tumor or something?

  • Besides, you missing the point, my argument is that the government should not be deciding if it is right or wrong.

  • TB – What about the war, from your tone, I would bet that you support it.

    Meanwhile, given that your general attuitude to the rest of the American community is basically, “I’ve got mine, go screw yourself,” and “let the corporations take over, I worship the market,” here’s my message to you:
    Any uninsured American person who could have been saved, but suffered & died because they could not afford insurance, their blood is on your hands. But your cold, heartless attitude is only warmed by your superior attitude of “don’t kill the unborn, let them be born & suffer their God given fate.”

    You appear to me to be an ignorant, selfish pig, puffed up by your own self-righteousness. And you are too self absorbed to see that we are all in this together. So go be assured by your fellow pigs like Hannity & Limbaugh. I think that you are too far gone to even realize what a jerk you are.

  • TB- I’m not sure what your point is but I find it offensive. I found out 17 weeks into my first pregnancy that my baby had a condition known as anencephaly. I terminated the pregnancy at 18 weeks. It was a very emotional and heartwrenching decision between my husband and myself. I don’t remember asking your opinion or needing it. I’m sick of people like you who reduce abortion to murdering babies. Get over it! There are many women like myself who desperately want that baby only to find the the pregnancy not viable. Your blanket condemnation affects more than your narrow view:

    My grandmother who gave birth to a stillborn child because the technology to diagnose wasn’t available then.

    The woman in London I met who discovered at 20 weeks that her baby daughter had severe defects.

    The woman who discovered in her second trimester that her baby had anencephaly.

    Go educate yourself please!

  • So your willing to kills a baby for medical reserach […] I’d rather my education tax dollars go to the educational institution of my choice. — TB, @ 17

    One where they teach you to make three spelling/grammatical mistakes in a single sentence? Just FYI, it should have been: So, you’re (1) willing to kill (2) a baby for medical research (3). Even I know that much, and English isn’t even my first language.

    As for the substance of your argument, you’re precisely right: the government should stay the heck out of my and my doctor’s decision regarding abortion. That means it should not be able to *neither* compel me to have one, nor deny me one if I want it.

  • It is doubtful, my friends, if “TB”—a rather odd online moniker, as it is the abbreviated term for “Tuberculosis”—will ever “educate itself.” It should be fairly clear from the ramblings that this is an individual who wants the government to relinquish its control over you—so that the likes of “TB” can assume that control. After all, it would be so much easier to bully a family into submission, than the government….

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