Game On

Ten days ago, in the midst of the debate over the stimulus, Peggy Noonan -- the poet laureate of the GOP-in-exile -- wrote: "[Obama's] political mistake, which in retrospect we will see as huge, is that he remoralized the Republicans. He let them back in the game."

With the perspective of just a few days' time, Noonan's words ring true, but for a different reason. It's still a game. And GOP is still treating it as such.

Continuing a pattern that put the final bullet in McCain's presidential campaign in the fall, Republicans sense the fiscal crisis, and jump in with a gimmick. McCain himself suspending his campaign to rush to Washington on the eve of the first debate, then reversing his course. John Thune's stack of dollar bills. Eric Cantor's use of Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle" (subsequently revoked by the band.)

And finally, a roll call on the stimulus that found just three Republican Senators -- moderates all -- against 176 Members of Congress and 38 Senators all voting "No."

The result: a GOP that is in favor, at least institutionally, of continued bad news on the economy. Newly-elected RNC Chair Michale Steele said:

“I’m telling the party leadership around the country, don’t believe the hype,” he said. “There will be a slight uptick, it will flat-line, and it will continue to go down.”

That's great, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to the Great Depression II.

And to think that Pres. Obama was criticized for talking down the economy last week.

But once upon a time, the GOP was all for supporting the U.S.A., right or wrong. In 2007 (and perhaps unfairly), then-candidate John McCain did not pull any punches when he criticized those Democrats who opposed the Surge:

"I watched with regret as the House of Representatives voted to deny our troops the support necessary to carry out their new mission. Democratic leaders smiled and cheered as the last votes were counted. What were they celebrating? Defeat? Surrender? In Iraq, only our enemies were cheering. A defeat for the United States is a cause for mourning not celebrating."

Unless, of course, GOP seats are at risk.

And the Game Goes On.

'Peace with Honor'

With the unraveling of the McCain campaign almost complete (Intrade currently gives Obama a 77% likelihood of becoming the next President), it may be time for the final act of McCain's political life: peace with honor.

McCain's bounce over the summer was attributed to the addition of Steve Schmidt and other veterans of the Bush White House. But last week, after focusing much of their time and energy targeting Obama's associations with former 1960s terrorist William Ayers, McCain did not bring up Ayers' name at the town-hall debate in St. Louis, causing many to question its relevance.(*)

Schmidt's rise came at the apparent expense of long-time McCain advisor Rick Davis; others cast aside who had been with the Arizona during the dark days of the summer of 2007, when he was broke and left for dead by the GOP, include Mark Salter.

Salter has been McCain chief writer (of speeches) and ghost-writer (of books) for a number of years. He helped McCain develop the effective narrative of his life -- that he learned to love his country while a prisoner overseas -- and has been said to "'channel John McCain's voice.'"

Salter, more than anyone except perhaps Cindy McCain, has helped create John McCain's maverick -- and bi-partisan -- brand, which has been lost in the fall campaign. And it may fall to Salter to discuss quietly with McCain that the last few weeks of the campaign may be best spent trying to rehabilitate an image that the national press, at least, has spent much of the last few weeks criticizing at length.

A positive 'close' may allow McCain to claw back a few of the swing states -- all of which appear to be tipping Democratic -- and help the bottom of the Republican ticket that now fears an overwhelming, and filibuster-proof majority in both Houses.

Mark Salter, tell John McCain: it's time.


(*-Note that McCain claimed today that it is "probably ensured" that McCain will raise the name in this week's debate. But with the nation focusing on economic issues, it is still not clear what relevance -- or resonance -- Ayers will have with undecided voters.)

Here's What Mitt Thinks...

We wondered a few days ago what Mitt Romney would think of the current McCain/Palin Campaign efforts to distort Obama's record (and for that matter, to obfuscate some of the weaker points of Palin's record).

[Apparently clip was from earlier in the year; we still don't know what Mitt thinks...apologies for any confusion]

A Week in Politics

A week ago today, Sarah Palin had yet to speak to the GOP Convention, and the markets were predicting that there was a 15% chance that she would not make it on the ticket through November.



A week later, there's few who thinks she's coming off the ticket, and the market for Obama winning the Presidency has dropped from about 60% likelihood to 49.

A week can be a long time in politics.

Inside Mitt's Mind

The news this morning is that the McCain/Palin campaign has apparently released a new ad accusing Barack Obama as having a single educational legislative accomplishment: that of passing "legislation to teach 'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners. Learning about sex before learning to read?"

The Obama campaign reacted swiftly, and accused the McCain campaign of being dishonorable:

It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls - a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn't define what honor was. Now we know why.

Smearing an opponent is not honorable, but it's not the first time that McCain has done so in this cycle.

In late January, with his campaign in trouble, Romney was buried in Florida when McCain took a Romney quote about setting timetables in Iraq and twisted its meaning by changing the context. Here's the Romney quote:

[T]he president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about. But those shouldn’t be for public pronouncement. You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re going to be gone. You want to have a series of things you want to see accomplished in terms of the strength of the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police, and the leadership of the Iraqi government.

But during the primary season, McCain seized on the single word "timetable" and claimed that by discussing 'timetables', even in private (with Iraq PM Maliki), Romney was part of the defeatist crowd that was against the Surge:

Governor Romney obviously said there had to be, “timetables,” although they had to be secret because we weren’t going to tell the enemy when we were leaving. I mean, that’s — that’s just a fact. And if we’d have done that, as the Democrats and some Republicans wanted to do, we would’ve lost that surge and al-Qaeda would be celebrating a victory over the United States of America.

To be sure, Romney was in trouble already, having lost Iowa and New Hampshire; but a win in Florida would have put him back on the map, and McCain's distortions helped seal his fate.

At the time, the mainstream media didn't pay much attention to what McCain was engaged in; after all, as George W. Bush famously told McCain himself in 2000 (when McCain was being smeared for his adopted daughter from Bangladesh), it's just 'politics.'

McCain's 2000 experience may have changed him, like Richard Nixon's experience in Illinois and Texas did in 1960. When the "new Nixon" got another change -- in 1968 and 1972 -- he left nothing to chance.

Wonder what Mitt thinks.

Condi on the Rise?

After watching Mitt Romney audition for the role of putative Vice President a few weeks ago, this weekend marked the floating of Condi Rice's name into the VP waters.

While McCain has plenty of reasons to distance himself from the Bush White House, it's interesting that with the President himself at 28%, and Cheney hitting single-digits, Condi's approval rating are at 56% in a recent Pew poll.

You never know...

The Big Winner

The undisputed winner last night was John McCain.

McCain wrapped up the nomination last night. He will receive the formal endorsement of the President this morning at the White House.

Meanwhile, the Democratic race will now go on for at least six more weeks. And the possibility that the single most unifying figure for the GOP -- Hillary Clinton -- may be his fall opponent has significantly increased.

And yet the speech McCain gave was a pivot to the...right.

McCain gave his conservative audience red-meat, from his discussion of the two-front war, to his promise to lower taxes, to this remarkable paragraph about the health care cost crisis:

I will leave it to my opponent to propose returning to the failed, big government mandates of the sixties and seventies to address problems such as the lack of health care insurance for some Americans. [Note: emphasis as delivered, see 9:13 of clip] I will campaign to make health care more accessible to more Americans with reforms that will bring down costs in the health care industry down without ruining the quality of the world's best medical care.

But with at least six more weeks -- and a Democratic race that will likely get uglier -- McCain may have time to repair his image with moderates and independents.

Hillary for...Majority Leader?

Somewhere in the warren of the Clinton campaign offices in Arlington, Virginia, a small office should be working on a contingency plan for Hillary's future -- one that does not involve the White House.

(For Hillary's sake, this office should be different than the one in charge of post-Super-Tuesday strategy, which has been disastrous, and allowed Obama to win 10 contests in a row. Symbolically, Hillary failed to seat a full delegate slate in the potentially key state of Pennsylvania, although that gaffe will be corrected thanks to the PA Governor (a Clinton supporter) extending the deadline. Oh, and her campaign was out of money after Super Tuesday.)

Hillary now has a choice to make. She ran the first negative television ads in Wisconsin (attacking Obama for failing to debate for the 19th time - a somewhat silly argument), raised specious 'plagiarism' charges, and opened herself up to a tough counterattack on "going negative.". Then she got thumped, both in Wisconsin and Hawaii.

In her "concession" speech, for the second week in a row, Hillary failed to congratulate Obama, or acknowledge her own supporters in the states that had voted. The former omission allowed Obama to step on her speech by walking out into the Toyota Center in Houston just 15 minutes after Hillary started - her retooled speech (complete with teleprompters for the first time this primary season) was lost to all of those who were not sitting in the Youngstown (OH) high school gym with her. (Obama's 44-minute stemwinder was the first rhetorical clunker of the campaign; however the net effect was to prevent any of the cable networks from covering Hillary.)

Tomorrow night's debate puts Hillary in a box: either sharpen the rhetoric, attack Obama directly, and drive her negatives up, which will accelerate the trend of male voters abandoning her for Obama. Or have a repeat of the Los Angeles debate, which helped Obama by muting the differences on health care and allowing an extended discussion of Hillarys Iraq War vote.

The Clinton campaign is still spinning a Hail Mary strategy of winning both Ohio and Texas, decisively, to turn the momentum around. The reality is that she is now fighting a two-front war, and her pre-Super Tuesday advantages -- name recognition generally, especially among early and absentee voters (who helped her hold off Obama in CA) -- is rapidly evaporating. (Early voting in Texas, for instance, began only this week.)

Another sign of a campaign on the brink: unauthorized leaks, like yesterday's one that Hillary was considering targeting 'pledged' (rather than super) delegates to close the gap with Obama. It was bad politics, reeked of desperation, and allowed Obama to again raise the theme of 'whomever-wins-the-most-pledged- delegates-is-the-rightful-nominee' that works to his advantage.

And if you doubt all of that evidence, the final piece to the puzzle was John McCain's victory speech last night: despite his own need to unify the Republican party (Mike Huckabee, with 36.9% of the Wisconsin vote, did almost as well as Hillary's 40.7%), McCain did not take the opportunity to mention Clinton's name; rather he referred to "an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history."

The truth is that Hillary was by all accounts, and will be, an effective Senator. She pays attention to details, gets along with colleagues, and understands the legislative process. Current Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid is 68 years old; current Majority Whip Dick Durbin has been a stalwart Obama supporter and could move up to an Administration.

She may not be the first woman President, but being first female Majority Leader would also be making history.

"Quality" Wins

The latest Mark Penn spin -- namely that Obama doesn't have (to use a phrase that we will be hearing in a few weeks on Selection Sunday) any "quality wins" -- has gone over about as well as would be expected in the blogosphere.

But the MSM is making a mistake in thinking about attributing value to anything other than what matters at this point: namely, pledged (or earned) delegates.

Who won which state, or who is doing better with which Democrat voting bloc, or whether caucuses or primaries are a better test of voting, are all flawed. Take the last point, for instance.

Caucuses exist because they are cheap for the states. No polling places, no contested results, no mess. The local parties pay for their own facilities (caucus places) and they decide the rules.

Caucuses, from a campaign point of view, are expensive. They require relentless organization and effort. They are hard-to-predict. They usually (especially in Iowa) reward experience party operatives, and those people are heavily courted by presidential campaigns.

Sometimes, like John McCain did in 2000, and to a lesser extent this year, campaigns will make a strategic decision to write off the (Iowa) caucuses as being too "costly" both in terms of candidate time and money, but that means that the campaign has decided to invest in other locales. Or can't afford to play. Or both.

But it is usually the insurgent candidate that makes the decision to write off caucuses. The argument that the Clinton camp is currently making, saying that caucuses shouldn't count because they disadvantage Clinton supporters, should laugh-out-loud funny because it is Hillary, not Obama, who is the candidate of "institutional" support.

The fact that Obama has rung up wins in most of the caucuses following Iowa (where he won a truly contested caucus) is not an argument for discounting them; rather, the mismanagement of Clinton campaign resources (both organizational time and money) has allowed Obama to dominate the caucuses, which has been the real source of his current (and perhaps unsurmountable) delegate lead.

At the end of the day, to paraphrase another Democratic nominee, there is only one valid test for being the Democratic nominee: to accumulate more delegates than the other candidates.

The Ghost of Ronald Reagan

Elections, we are told, are about the future. But so far, the 2008 Presidential election has been very much about the past -- and the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

John McCain, fighting to get control of the fractious Republican party, will later this week dust off old black-and-white photos with the then-Governor Reagan taken shortly after he was released from captivity in Hanoi:



Mitt Romney has spent much of the past month attempting to lay claim to the mantle of "the Reagan legacy" himself, albeit without much success. (It should be noted that neither McCain nor Romney has observed Reagan's 11th Commandment.)

On the Democratic side, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama famously engaged in a squabble during the South Carolina primary about whether Obama supported Reagan's politics, and whether Reagan was "transformative" political figure.

But the real parallel may be with Reagan's 1976 campaign for the nomination. Like Obama, Reagan was running against a virtual incumbent (Gerald Ford), at least in the eyes of the party, but one who had never been elected. Like 1976, the field was a two-person race (Reagan was actually almost knocked out of the running in the early primaries, rallying in North Carolina.) And like 1976, it appears that Obama will chase Hillary all the way to the convention, where Reagan gave one of the most famous concession speeches in modern political history.

And a speech that pointed the way to the Reagan sweep in 1980.

The Super Bowl of Politics

With two major American spectator sports -- pro football and Presidential politics -- colliding on television this January, it is worth a closer observation.

In football, the rhythm of the regular season gives way to Wild Card Weekend, followed by the Divisional Playoffs and (this upcoming weekend), the Conference Championships. All of that excitement, with TV bringing us a new game from a new location each weekend, leads up to the preeminent sporting event in professional sports: the Super Bowl.

With locations picked years in advance (get your plane tickets for Supe XLV, to be held in the Dallas Metroplex), the location becomes -- for the week leading up to the game -- the sports and entertainment capital of the world. The telecast itself is the ultimate marketing spot for consumer advertisers. Anyone out there remember Bud Bowl?



Presidential politics, in contrast, begins (at least on TV) with the "Super Bowl": Iowa, and to a greater extent, the New Hampshire Primary. While Iowa is dispersed and the caucus system is archaic, New Hampshire (especially this year) provided everything a political junkie could want: two competitive races, a navigable city (Manchester), and a primary that ended up with a surprise ending.

Fox and CNN come up weeks in advance to build elaborate sets and backdrops. You can't drive for 5 minutes in Manchester on the weekend before the Primary without running into a candidate or a national political journalist -- or both. The campaigns themselves, having been in the states for well over a year before Election Day, secure the best venues for their election night speeches. The whole week becomes an elaborate set-piece that culminated with John McCain reprising his NH win in the very same hotel room where he claimed victory in 2000.



But now that the political Super Bowl is over, its off to the equivalent of Wild Card Weekend. The locations move each night, and the campaigns are put together with tape and baling wire. Instead of elaborately staged victory parties, even Mitt Romney looked spontaneous last night with his sleeves rolled up and his hair (or at least 3 strands) slightly askew:



The wildness will continue for at least three more weeks, to February 5th. At that point, perhaps the writers' strike will have been resolved.

Predictions: New Hampshire

Picking up where we left off in Iowa:

GOP:
1. McCain - reminiscing
2. Romney - energized
3. Giuliani - hopeful
4. Huckabee - bad track
5. Thompson - wondering

Dems:
1. Obama - ran away
2. Clinton - losing touch
3. Edwards - angrily
4. Richardson - heading West

Update:
Obviously, the combination of independent women moving towards Hillary, and independent men (many of whom surely felt that Obama's apparent growing lead was safe) moving towards McCain -- as they did in 2000 -- was instrumental.

However, it's clear that Hillary's margin was obtained in the urban wards in Manchester, Berlin, and Nashua; a quick analysis would indicate that the race will be a traditional city/suburban split. But New Hampshire's cities -- like the state itself -- are overwhelmingly white. As the race moves south and west, cities will be much more diverse, and therefore more amenable to an Obama appeal.

It is worth noting that while New Hampshire has a huge "Independent" bloc, many are Independent because there are no penalties for being so -- the actual independents are probably in the 10% range, not the reported 40%. In other states, most NH Independents will stay in their respective parties.

Predictions: Iowa

Yes, yes, it's impossible to predict the Iowa caucuses, and the polls (especially those released in the last few days) are more likely to be wrong than right, but for just-for-the-heck of it, here's one view how the caucusing will go tonight, with one- or two-words of analysis (with kudos to the Daily Racing Form):

Republicans:
1. Romney - Muddy win
2. Huckabee - Bad homestretch
3. McCain - Closing
4. Giuliani - Went wide
5. Thompson - Broke down

Democrats:
1. Obama - Closed
2. Edwards - Holding on
3. Clinton - Faded
4. Biden - Classy, consistent
5. Dodd - Slow start


Post-Iowa Update:

Here's what the analysis should have been, with the apparent results at 12am:

GOP:
1. Huckabee - resolute
2. Romney - desperate
3. Thompson - uncertain
4. McCain - restarted
5. Giuliani - out-of-touch

Dems:
1. Obama - impressive kick
2. Edwards - clinging
3. Clinton - shaken
4. Richardson - surprising
5. Biden - distant
6. Dodd - quietly

Romney vs. Giuliani

Having engaged and (seemingly) dispatched of Arizona Senator John McCain from the GOP primary on primarily the immigration issue, Gov. Mitt Romney has now seemingly turned his attention to Rudy Giuliani; and he's going to use the same issue -- immigration -- to hurt the former New York Mayor. (In fairness, McCain put the immigration ball on a tee for Romney; talk radio and the blogosphere did the rest.)

Romney's new radio ad (YouTubed above) cites cities like Newark (NJ), San Francisco, and New York, that are effectively "sanctuary cities" that essentially attract immigrants -- illegal and legal. (Romney's ad fails to cite a more local city -- Cambridge -- that does the same, as the Globe's blog points out; of course, running against The People's Republic may not be bad politics in a GOP primary.)

Giuliani, meanwhile, has emerged as a front-runner in the GOP field, much to the chagrin of those who watched him closely in New York. From this weeks' New Yorker profile by Pete Boyer:

When Giuliani’s tenure as mayor ended, in 2002, he left behind a city that was grateful, and more than a little relieved to see him go. He had achieved much of his program of radical reform, and he performed well on September 11th, but it had felt like an eight-year fistfight. Giuliani had fought with teachers and with Yasir Arafat, with the Brooklyn Museum and with Fidel Castro, with squeegee men, tennis fans, street venders, taxi-drivers, his own police chief, and, of course, his wife. He had repeatedly chastised New Yorkers for their incorrigible jaywalking and careless bicycling. (“All of these things are part of making the city safer. There’s been a lot of ridicule about it, which is unfortunate.”) Many Manhattanites felt that when the rest of the country experienced the Rudy Giuliani they knew—the flashes of pique, the slashing remark—the celebrity glow would quickly fade.

It hasn’t happened yet. The Giuliani whom New Yorkers recall isn’t campaigning. With some exceptions, like the debate dustup with Ron Paul, the Presidential contender is all smiles, and holds his tongue even when confronted by the occasional town-hall needler. He has taken to fence-mending as well, initiating a rapprochement with his former police chief, William Bratton, who is now running the L.A.P.D. A few days after they conferred, Giuliani told me that he could even imagine working with Bratton again some day. “I mean, I don’t know if it’s the effect of having been the mayor for eight years, of going through prostate cancer, or having a personal life that’s much happier, or if it’s September 11th—maybe it’s a combination of all those things, and just getting older and wiser,” he said. “But you sort of look back on some of the things and say, that was an extraordinarily productive relationship. . . . I mean, we took a city that nobody believed could be turned around with regard to crime, and really did turn it around. That’s not like a political slogan. We really did it. Now that I look back on it, I really appreciate the relationship.

Looks like it will be an interesting fall.

McCain's Meltdown Continues

The on-going highway accident that is the McCain 2008 campaign continued yesterday, with departure of two more senior aides, on the heels of a not-so-flattering WSJ story earlier in the week about the campaign contracts held by Rick Davis' private company. Mr. Davis is also acting campaign manager.

Unlike previous presidential campaigns (Gore 2000 and Kerry 2004), where staff changes signaled a new direction (and better performance from the respective campaigns), these changes appear to be the sign of despair and disorganization (like Dean post-Iowa in 2004), rather than a candidate making tough choices. At this point, it's hard to see McCain -- who was considered to be the front-runner less than 6 months ago -- righting the ship.

Money Troubles

The McCain campaign has borne the brunt of the press maelstrom this week, as disappointing 2nd quarter numbers were followed by a mass-exodus of senior staff. Unlike the John Kerry staff shake-up in 2003 (ahead of the early 2004 primaries), the McCain changes have the ring of a rats-off-a-sinking-ship, rather than Kerry's calculated -- albeit callous (he was heard eating his dinner while informing the remaining staff of the decision) -- dismissal of Jim Jordan.

McCain is not the only GOP candidate with money trouble however. Romney's financial reports, released Friday, showed that he spent virtually every dollar he took in during the 2nd quarter, but that includes a $6.5M loan the candidate wrote to the campaign. Without that loan (and the resources to make it), Romney's senior campaign staff might also be in hot water.

The GOP and Iraq: More Dripping

Following in the footsteps of Dick Lugar, New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici (who coincidentally -- or not -- is up for re-election next year), moved away from his previous support of the President's policy in Iraq yesterday. And the quotes from Maine's Susan Collins indicate that others may soon follow -- or go further.

And the Senator perhaps most vocal in support of the war, John McCain, has his own election next year -- and there has been no indication that his loyalty to the President on the single most important foreign policy issue of the day has earned his any points, either in the White House or with GOP primary voters.

Good New for Romney in Iowa

Latest Des Moines Register poll has good news for former Governor Mitt Romney -- he leads convincingly:

Romney 30%
McCain 18%
Giuliani 17%

(Likely GOP caucus participants, May 12-16)

Dems were polled on Favorable/Unfavorable impressions:

Edwards 79%F/18%U/3% unsure
Obama 74%F/22%U/3% unsure
Clinton 66%F/31%U/3% unsure

Among the less well-known candidates:

Richardson 48%F/25%U/27% unsure
Biden 40%F/36%U/24% unsure
Kucininch 29%F/37%U/34% unsure
Dodd 24%F/29%U/47% unsure

Jack Bauer for President?

The Republican debate was interesting political theater. The format was surprisingly good, with a series of somewhat related questions asked in sequence to the candidates. The Fox reporters were able to induce some back-and-forth, some follow-up, and even some criticism of 'fellow Republicans.'

In the end, you got the sense that McCain felt that the night seemed to go badly. While his opponents were busy trying to spin unworkable fantasies about who would cut taxes the sharpest, and who could act more Reagan-like, McCain was left trying to justify his votes -- and bills -- that passed Congress and became the law of the land.

But the crux of the debate was in the last 15 minutes. Fox's Brit Hume spun a scenario where the US was already the victim of one terrorist incident, and yet had captured an operative who seemed to have information about a forthcoming attack. Virtually each of the candidates was falling all over themselves to prove that they would be tough enough -- "tell the CIA: whatever it takes"..."I will take the heat"..."I'd approve enhanced interrogation techniques." At one point Tom Tancredo stated the obvious subtext: he'd get Jack Bauer in the room, and let him work over the terrorist. After all, it works every Monday night on Fox.

Yet the man who has actually seen shots fired in anger -- and indeed has been the victim of torture himself -- stuck to his guns: no to torture, because it doesn't work, and because the consequences of such action on our captured troops is so grave.

"We could never gain as much we would gain from that torture as we lose in world opinion. We do not torture people," he said. "It's not about the terrorists, it's about us. It's about what kind of country we are. And a fact: The more physical pain you inflict on someone, the more they're going to tell you what they think you want to know."

Yet when the debate was over, even McCain seemed to move away from his moral position. No to waterboarding (invented, he noted, by the Spanish Inquisition), he said on the spin session with Hannity and Colmes, but 'you have to do what is necessary.'

Giuliani, speaking on the same post-debate session, was even more interesting. During the debate, he staked out his bona fides on security, claiming that 'no one on the stage knew more about it' than he did. (Which begs the questions of, among others, why the City's disaster center was located where it was, in the shadow of the World Trade Center, or how he came to hire Bernie Kerik.) During the discussion on 'enhanced interrogation', no one was more enthusiastic about giving the CIA (or whomever, as Rudy seemed unsure) 'the tools' they need.

In the post-debate spin, Giuliani defended his position (along with his attack on Congressman Ron Paul's claim that the 9/11 attacks were caused by US bombing of Iraq, among other places). Giuliani said: "When you raise you right hand, and take the oath of office as President, you swear to preserve and defend, um, the United States of America."

Well, not exactly, Rudy.

Romney on the Radio

Although there appear to be a dearth of references to it in the blogosphere, Mitt Romney had a positive/bio radio ad this morning on the Imus in the Morning Show on WTKK (96.9 FM). The station does have some reach into southern New Hampshire, and perhaps Romney's advisers are trying to counteract this recent NH poll:

McCain - 28 percent of likely New Hampshire voters
Giuliani - 27 percent.
Romney - 13 percent.

Source: WMUR/CNN