Wednesday’s political round-up

February 21, 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:

* The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is sponsoring the first presidential forum of the campaign season in Carson City, Nevada, today, at which eight candidates will appear. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos will moderate and C-SPAN is scheduled to cover the event live. Barack Obama is the only big name to decline the invitation.

* Yet another in a long series of embarrassing Mitt Romney videos was posted to You Tube yesterday, this one a 2002 gubernatorial debate at which Romney explained his firm pro-choice beliefs.

* On a related note, Romney blasted John McCain yesterday as not being pro-life enough.

* The NYT’s Maureen Dowd quoted David Geffen blasting Hillary Clinton and praising Barack Obama. The Clinton campaign responded by criticizing Obama and asking him to disassociate with Geffen. Obama’s campaign responded by saying, “We aren’t going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters.”

* The AP reports that former Rep. John Kasich “is contemplating a run for Ohio governor 2010, prompting him to begin speaking regularly at Republican functions around the state.” Kasich currently hosts his own talk show on Fox News.

* And the Des Moines Register had a fascinating item yesterday about Iowa’s Republican moderates, who feel like they’re being ignored as all the GOP candidates seek support from the right-wing base. “I haven’t been contacted by any of the presidential campaigns,” said Joy Corning, the moderate former two-term lieutenant governor. “They are all trying to appeal to the far right.”

Re: the continuing Republicrook swing to the right…

YeeeHah.

Make sure you encourage them every now and again, they’re making the blowout of 2008 more likely with every inch they more their party to the right. If we blow them out properly, we can trade Lieberman for a pack of gum and begin the work of undoing all the damage they’ve caused in the last decade.

  • After the total disaster of almost-FUBAResque proportions bequeathed the great state of Ohio by the last ReThug who served as governor—may his cojones be doused in high-octane gasoline and ignited with a blowtorch, causing him to burn in the lowest pits of the infernal regions for ten thousand eternities—I doubt Kasich will ever have the chance to hold any statewide office.

    Who? Me, a Taft-hater? Y’think?

  • I wonder if the reason Obama declined the Nevada invitation is because it is sponsored by Fox News. As I recall, Senator Obama said he won’t go on Fox News programs, so this may be the reason why he won’t go to the forum in Nevada.

  • “On a related note, Romney blasted John McCain yesterday as not being pro-life enough.”

    Hah – let McCain see how it feels to be arguing against someone who comes at an issue from both sides now.

  • (Mary Jo – I think there are two different things: Obama’s skipping the AFSCME-hosted forum in Carson City that’s taking place now because he’s in Iowa; the other Nevada-Democratic-’08 thing that’s been in the news is a FNC-sponsored presidential debate that’s slated for August, in Reno)

  • “The NYT’s Maureen Dowd quoted David Geffen blasting Hillary Clinton and praising Barack Obama. The Clinton campaign responded by criticizing Obama and asking him to disassociate with Geffen.”

    How Republican, perhaps even Donohue-ish, of Hillary: “One of your supporters doesn’t like me. Will you disassociate yourself from them?”

    Proper response: “Why the fuck would I? They don’t like you. They like me. Of *COURSE* they’re going to say better things about me than you – when you and I are fighting for the same prize. Dumbass.”

    “Obama’s campaign responded by saying, ‘We aren’t going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters.’”

    Well, I suppose that’s the *polite* way to put it 😉

    And props to whoever on the Obama campaign knows how to turn this kind of stuff around.

  • So what if Mitt Romney was pro-choice as recently as 2002? He’s had a lot of experiences that have changed his mind on the issue. Experiences like: thinking about running for president, declaring that he’s running for president, and actually running for president. Those personal, heartfelt experiences can make one radically reconsider where one stands on reproductive freedom vs. fetal rights.

  • Chris (#4) see what you’ve done? Now I must apologize to Joni Mitchell:

    (sing it with me)

    Gays have rights or maybe not
    I backed Tsongas once, but not a lot
    Womens choice? I gave that shot
    Mitt’s positioned himself that way

    McCain was known as talking straight
    til he hired the scum he used to hate
    and took every side in the Iraq debate
    John’s taken stands that way

    They’ve taken stands on both sides now
    right and more right and still somehow
    Their elusive quests continue to stall
    They’ve no credibility at all

    Rudy was to show the way
    but he’s anti-guns and he’s pro-gay
    and every day’s his wedding day
    with the Right he’ll never play

    That leaves Brownback and Huckabee
    Too right for all with sanity
    Makes me proud to me a “D”
    Can’t wait for Election Day!

    They’ve taken stands on all sides now
    With Bush and not, and still somehow
    The media loves them anyhow
    They’ve no credibility at all. . .

  • To underscore a point, some people may be running who tell you we don’t face a real threat from terrorism, I’m not one of them. We have serious enemies who want to do us serious harm. -Hillary Clinton

    http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/02/hillary-now-using-bush-talking-points.html

    Between using strawman arguments and now demanding candidates disavow their supporters, Hillary has crossed into rethug teritory.

    TAIO, I’m with you, she’s off my list.

  • I have been one of the stronger anti-Hilary voices in my comments here, originally because I felt she was simply unelectable because she would be the only person who couyld draw all the Republicans together behind whatever candidate they nominated, whether it was Giuliani or Duncan Hunter.
    But this is now the fourth thing she has done which has made her impossible to vote for if she should become the nominee.
    1) Terry McAuliffe’s ‘close the borders and deport the aliens already here’ comments on Public Radio
    2) Her use of black stooges to warn that if ‘you nominate a black like Obama, candidates up and down the ballot will lose’ SPECIFICALLY because he is black
    3) The Geffen story
    4) The Americablog story

    HOW do we stop her?

  • Wow, Zeitgeist – great lyrics. Damn, that’s apt 🙂

    I’ll admit the song skipped through my head (I’d initially written “from all sides” and then thought, “I know something that sounds like…” and changed it to “from both sides now”), but I had no idea it could describe the Republican field so neatly…

  • Prup/Jim: I think she stops herself. She’s staking out the Lieberman territory and tactics; that shouldn’t survive the primaries.

    And if that’s not enough, she’s fucking with Obama… who seems to have a solid grasp of how to retaliate. The inversion of her spin on the Geffen thing is brutally efficient: “We’re not going to get into it between you and one of your *former* supporters.”

    Above the fray *and* with a good frame. Someone knows what they’re doing, and it ain’t her.

  • Sadly, the only surefire way to stop Hillary that I see is for Bill to divorce her.

    A large chunk of the party machinery, and a large portion of rank-and-file Democratic primary voters, still retain so much regard (and in the case of the former group, loyalty/obligation) to former President Clinton that they’ll support her through almost any provocation or mis-step.

    The anti-Hillary anger in the precincts of the Left Blogosphere is beginning to remind me uneasily of October 2004, when so many of us felt strongly that Bush couldn’t win because we all hated him so much. Of course, we were almost totally cut off from the bare majority of Americans who were getting ready to re-elect him.

    In theory it should be easier to find the pro-Hillary people; frankly, I’d like to know why they support her, because aside from the first-woman aspect I see nothing at all compelling about her candidacy. But I have yet to read or hear any progressive Democrat I respect make a strong case for supporting the Clinton Restoration.

  • With almost a year to go before the first primary election even takes place there is much that will probably happen foreign/domestic/financial that will challenge the candidates, and info that will probably come out on the candidates. Enough could very well happen within a year to make Hillary a minor contender or even an early withdrawal, and make where her money and supporters will go the big issue. This could be one of the wackiest elections ever with Nader/Perot type candidates and even a “moderate” Republican/”centrist” Democratic third party candidacy. And having the primaries possibly decided in effect as much as 8 months before the November general won’t help. Maybe one thing that will come out of all of this is some much needed real world election reform, i.e. funding, length of campaigns and an end to that most peculiar of American institutions – the Electoral College.

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