Exclusive: Presidential Watch – Daily – Saturday, February 2


Author: The Editors

Date Published: 2008-02-01


 

Presidential Watch – Daily – Saturday, February 2

 

Latest polls show Hillary crashing in California.

 

Romney Says McCain Used Nixon-Like Tactic

Glen Johnson, Breitbart.com

 

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused his rival John McCain of adopting underhanded tactics from Richard Nixon, the GOP president who resigned in disgrace.

"I don't think I want to see our party go back to that kind of campaigning," Romney said in his most pointed rebuttal yet to front- runner McCain's claim that the former Massachusetts governor favors a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Romney denies this charge and most media analyses have disputed it.

 

McCain's decision to level the timetable charge during the Florida primary before Romney could rebut it "was reminiscent of the Nixon era," Romney said. McCain ended up winning the Florida contest Tuesday.

 

Despite the incendiary reference to Nixon, Romney said of McCain: "I think he's a man of character." But he added: "I think he took a sharp detour off the `Straight Talk Express,'"—the name of the Arizona senator's campaign bus.

 

A prominent Romney surrogate, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois, also chimed in Thursday with a reference to McCain's own scandal history. Hastert told reporters that he had worked with McCain on legislation early in his congressional career but "after the Keating Five scandal, he changed." By contrast, Hastert said Romney has "never been involved in scandal."

Read article.

 

It's the Economy? Stupid?

James Taranto, Online.WSJ.com

 

There is a school of thought that this year's election will end up turning on economic anxiety rather than national security, especially with the threat of terrorism seeming less immediate than a few years ago, and the situation in Iraq having improved considerably. If this is so, then the leading campaigns in each party are not exactly inspiring great confidence.

 

The economy is not John McCain's strong suit, by his own admission. You would think this would inspire a bit of humility, but humility is not what comes across from reading the transcript of last night's CNN debate at the Reagan Library.

 

Two of McCain's comments--"I did it out of patriotism, not for profit" and "sometimes people lost their jobs"--lead us to think that McCain's problem with economics goes beyond mere indifference. He seems to view the making of money--that is to say, the production of goods and services that people want, and the act of supplying them through voluntary exchange in a free market--as a less than honorable pursuit. Read article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fool Me Thrice - It should be no surprise that the Clintons are playing the race card.

Christopher Hitchens, Slate.com

 

How can one equal Bill Clinton for thuggery and opportunism when it comes to the so-called "race card"? And where does one even start with the breathtaking nastiness of his own conduct, and that of his supporters, in the last week? Barack Obama carries South Carolina having made no sectarian appeal to any specific kind of voter, and the best Clinton can say is that this is no better than Jesse Jackson managed to do. Really? Did Jackson come south having already got himself elected the senator from Illinois? And, come to think of it, was Jackson so much to be despised and sneered at when he was needed as Clinton's "confessor," along with Billy Graham, during the squalor of impeachment?

 

This calculated willingness to shop on both sides of the street of racial politics was actually analyzed quite shrewdly by Dick Morris, the former consigliere of the gruesome twosome, in conversation with Sean Hannity last week. The Clintons, he thought, would be quite happy to lose big to the "black vote" in South Carolina. It would enable them to signal that they were the ones to stem the flow of the color tide. Morris' host protested that this seemed a touch cynical. Morris jovially assured him that he knew the people he was talking about.

 

As indeed he did. Read article.

 

Barack Hussein Reagan?

Gary Bauer, Human Events.com

 

Now that the presidential campaign’s most Reaganesque candidate, Fred Thompson, has exited stage right, you’ll never guess who’s embraced the Gipper’s mantle:  Barack Obama. 

Perhaps “embraced” is a bit too strong.  But it’s notable that Obama, the field’s most liberal candidate, has begun invoking the memory of America’s most revered conservative icon.  Obama, who understands the power of words, has used the following in his praise of Reagan:  “very successful,” “changed the trajectory of America,” “clarity,” “optimism,” “dynamism” and “entrepreneurship.”  Obama also says Reagan “put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.” 

 

It’s little wonder that Obama invokes Reagan.  According to Gallup, Reagan’s approval rating is, at 73 percent, one of the highest of any past U.S. president, about equal to those of Presidents Kennedy and Lincoln.  And last July, Rasmussen Reports polling firm conducted a survey of political labels and found that the term “like Reagan” was the most popular label for presidential hopefuls to have, while terms like “conservative,” “moderate,” “progressive” and “liberal” were viewed with less approval. 

 

On the surface there are similarities between the two men from Illinois. Read article.

 

Hillary's Latino Firewall

Robert Novak, RCP.com

 

Sen. Hillary Clinton is relying on the big Latino vote as her firewall to prevent losing the California Democratic primary Feb. 5, the most important of 22 states contested on Mega Tuesday. But that reliance, say both pro-Clinton and anti-Clinton Democrats, is fraught with peril for the Democratic Party's coalition by threatening to alienate its essential African-American component.

 

Clinton's double-digit lead in California polls over Sen. Barack Obama is misleading. Subtract a Latino voting bloc whose dependability to show up Election Day always has been shaky, and Clinton is no better than even in the state, with Obama gaining. To encourage this brown firewall, the Clinton campaign may be drifting into encouragement of brown vs. black racial conflict by condoning Latino racial hostility to the first African-American with a chance to become president.

 

Implications transcend California. The pugnacious campaign strategy of Bill and Hillary Clinton in forcefully identifying Obama as a black candidate spreads concern that they could be risking continued massive, unconditional support for Democrats by African-Americans. The long-range situation is so disturbing that some Clinton supporters talk about an outcome they rejected not long ago: a Clinton-Obama ticket. Read article.

 

Why Obama is no JFK

Red Widmer, Washington Monthly.com

 

John F. Kennedy is not running for anything in 2008, but you’d never know it. A front-page photo in the New York Times recently showed his electability in Serbia, of all places, where local candidates are vying to establish their credentials as the latest citizens of the New Frontier. Back in the U.S., no candidate has captured the reflected glory of JFK more than Barack Obama, thanks to his youth, eloquence, and message of change.

 

The Kennedy-Obama parallel has been played up by the press, and Obama’s campaign has not discouraged those comparisons—indeed, it has brought in Ted Sorensen, JFK’s talented speechwriter, to make speeches and render the judgment of history.

 

But the comparison falls short when voters consider the key question for 2008: foreign policy experience. It’s true that Obama, like Kennedy, is a youngish senator (at 46, three years older than Kennedy when he ran for president), but the parallel falters after that. The more one looks into Kennedy’s lifelong preparation for the job, the more one realizes how misleading it was, then and now, to describe him as inexperienced.

 

Everyone who has stressed Kennedy’s youth, from Dan Quayle in 1988 to Obama today, has bumped up against the uncomfortable fact that JFK was an extremely well-informed statesman in 1960. As Lloyd Bentsen reminded us in the zinger that pole-axed Quayle, the truth was a lot more complicated than the myth.  Read article.

 

Obama for the Democrats

NY Post Editorial, NY Post.com

 

Democrats in 22 states across America go to the polls next Tuesday to pick between two presidential prospects: Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

 

We urge them to choose Obama - an untried candidate, to be sure, but preferable to the junior senator from New York.

 

Obama represents a fresh start.

 

His opponent, and her husband, stand for déjà vu all over again - a return to the opportunistic, scandal-scarred, morally muddled years of the almost infinitely self-indulgent Clinton co-presidency.

 

Does America really want to go through all that once again? It will - if Sen. Clinton becomes president.

 

That much has become painfully apparent. Read article.

 

Meet Obama's 'Tenacious,' 'Take Charge' Dr. Rice

Russell Berman, NY Sun.com

 

Our Dr. Rice" is the friendly moniker Democrats in the foreign policy community often bestow on Susan Rice.

 

The reference to the Secretary Rice now running the State Department is usually made in jest, but the comparison could carry significantly more weight if Senator Obama, who on Saturday won the South Carolina primary and today is poised to win the endorsement of Senator Kennedy, becomes America's next president.

 

As a senior foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama, Susan Rice, 43, has taken a leading role in helping to shape the freshman Illinois senator's vision for the world, building on a bond forged in part by their shared — and outspoken — opposition to the war in Iraq.

 

An assistant secretary of state under President Clinton, Ms. Rice also served as a senior adviser on the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004, and she is likely to be on the short list for a top position in an Obama administration, perhaps in the same role Condoleezza Rice served during President Bush's first term: national security adviser.

 

The Rices are not related, but as two prominent African American women in a field long dominated by white men, the comparison is as natural as it is superficial.

 

"We thought our Dr. Rice was a lot more sensible than their Dr. Rice," quipped James Rubin, a former State department spokesman who worked with Susan Rice on the Kerry campaign but who is now an informal adviser to Senator Clinton. Susan Rice said she has seen Secretary Rice occasionally over the years but does not know her well. They share a link to Stanford University — Susan Rice studied there as an undergraduate in the 1980s while Condoleezza Rice taught as a professor. Like Mr. Obama, Ms. Rice has long been a fierce critic of the Bush administration's foreign policy, and she does not look to Secretary Rice as a role model. Read article.

 

Pastor Got Earmark Money Before Clinton Endorsement

Fred Lucas, NewsMax.com

 

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) secured more than $1 million in federal funding last year for a Harlem-based non-profit whose leader gave her presidential campaign a major endorsement last weekend.

 

Clinton -- who is aggressively competing for the black vote with her chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) -- touted the endorsement of Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, a prominent black leader and pastor of one of the oldest black churches in America, the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem.

 

The $555-billion FY 2008 omnibus spending bill approved last month by Congress included 11 appropriations bills with almost 1,000 earmarks. Clinton teamed with senior New York Sen. Charles Schumer and New York Rep. Charles Rangel, both Democrats, to provide three earmarks for the Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC). Read article.

 

Conservatives shouldn't choose between Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Awful

Don Feder, GrasstopsUSA.com

 

This may just be the year when conscientious conservatives decide to sit out the election.

 

It's a step not to be taken lightly.

 

The idea of a perfect conservative candidate is a dangerous illusion. As an old Irish Democratic ward heeler once told me: "When you're running for public office and look at yourself in the mirror, that's when you'll see a candidate you agree with completely."

 

Most of us are willing to compromise. I voted for Bush in 2000, knowing full well that his "compassionate conservatism" wasn't conservative at all, but big government with a smiley face. In the expectation that he would disappoint me, I was not disappointed.

 

As Barry Goldwater said at the 1960 Republican convention, in urging the right to unite behind Richard Nixon, "Grow up conservatives!" It is immature, to the point of petulance, to demand purity as the price of party loyalty.

 

Still, many conservatives -- who've held their noses and supported the Republican nominee, in election after bloody election -- are now literally gagging. http://www.grasstopsusa.com/df012808.html

 

Ralph Nader Kicks off Exploratory for Presidential Bid

You Decide '08, Fox News.com

 

Ralph Nader is seeking the presidency — again.

 

The consumer activist and political gadfly kicked off an exploratory presidential campaign Wednesday with the launch of a new Web site that promises he’ll fight “corporate greed, corporate power, corporate control” and asks people to donate $300 each. Read article.

 

 

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