August 13, 2007

8/13: Ames' Big Winner

Is it possible the real winner at 8/11'a Ames, IA, straw poll was not even on the ballot (and we do not mean Fred Thompson)? Mitt Romney finished first with 31% and Sam Brownback finished a disappointing third (15%) considering the resources he poured into the event, while Mike Huckabee surprised many with his 18% showing. So where did Huckabee's invisible army come from. Soren Dayton suggests the single issue group FairTax.org may have supplied the ground troops that fueled Huckabee's victory. Huckabee is the only candidate in the field to endorse the group's consumption tax plan (which also reimburses all households for "basic necessities") and the group produced 20-30 busses of supporters to the straw poll. Dayton even suggests the Huckabee campaign was directing supporters in need of transportation to contact the FairTax campaign.

Atlantic's Marc Ambinder has been impressed with the group's showings along the campaign trail, and the group has already tripped up Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson at campaign events. GOPers looking for a populist bread and butter issue might want to consider ending Huckabee's monopoly of support from this group.

BROWNBACK: There's No Place Like Home, There's No Place Like Home

If conservative bloggers have any say in the matter, Sam Brownback will swiftly join Tommy Thompson on the exit ramp off of the road to the WH. After his third place finish in the straw poll, The Corner's Kathryn Jean Lopez blogs: "I think Sam Brownback ought to consider returning to the Senate."

The diagnosis for Brownback's disappointing finish after pouring in $600K into the poll was also unanimous: his dirty campaign tactics backfired. Townhall's Patrick Ruffini blogs: "This aggressiveness also led them into running the most overtly mean-spirited campaign of the cycle. They haven't been shy about trashing Romney, and unlike McCain, always having their name plastered all over the attack. ... They even questioned Baptist minister Mike Huckabee's Christian bona-fides."

The IA Voice adds: "I've been getting a lot of emails from these guys trashing the other candidates. They ran a very negative campaign, and I thought they were flailing about ... I don't like to see that kind of infighting among Republicans. They can make their case without attacking each other."

HUCKABEE: Mikey Likes It!

Mike Huckabee's surprise second place straw poll showing had many conservatives labeling him the "real winner" of 8/11's contest. Reactions include:

• Captain's Quarters: "the real winner may be the man who spent nothing but time and effort in hopes of breaking out of the second tier. Mike Huckabee showed surprising strength in Iowa ... his strength, and the relative strength of the nonentities that have been Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo in this primary campaign show a real problem for Romney in Iowa."
• Townhall's Patrick Ruffini: "The surprise here has to be Huckabee, who reportedly did not bus many people in, and did not have the amenities of Romney or Brownback (air conditioned tent!!)."
• The Corner's Rich Lowry: "I can't shake off how canned all his stories are. But if you're a conservative who doesn't buy Romney and/or resents the slickness and wealth of the Romney operation, there are worse places to park a vote."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Huckabee is dazzling. I've said all along that Huckabee has been the stand out guy in all the debates. He's won several of the debates, even though the media would rather fixate on McCain.
• The Brody File: "We're about to find out if Huckabee can start raising some major cash. What he really needs is for some prominent Evangelical leaders to come out in support of him. That will help him even more with social conservatives looking for a 'sure thing" and one they can count on when it comes to the social issues. If a James Dobson gives him the OK, watch out. That could be game changing in the primaries."

Soren Dayton pieces together some facts (Huckabee had no buses, FairTax had 20-30; Huckabee had little staff and a terrible location; FairTax has tons of people and a good spot; Huckabee is the only candidate to endorse the FairTax) and offers the following hypothesis: "Mike Huckabee's coalition included the FairTax, and they turned out bodies for him." Dayton backs up the story with sn anecdote. A reader in IA contacted the Huckabee campaign to ask how she could get to Ames and was told: "Well, the FairTax bus pick up is such and such. That's how I'm getting there."

PAUL: Not Ready For Prime Time

Despite tickling The Corner's Kathryn Jean Lopez's "inner idealistic late 80s/90s conservative" with his small government rhetoric, most conservatives were not impressed with Ron Paul's straw poll showing. New York Sun's Ryan Sager was initially impressed with the number of Paul's supporters, but quickly determined that almost all of them were from out of state.

RedState's Erick Erickson was the most unkind, calling Paul supporters "Mostly Anti-War Lefty Hippies" after some Paul supporterssolicited federal intervention to block the voting earlier in the week. Erickson blogs: "Ron Paul has only about 3,000 real supporters nationwide. He's got another 5,000 or so who are just damn dirty liberal hippies in need of real jobs. It's only a matter of time before Cindy Sheehan endorses him."

ROMNEY: Three Yards And A Cloud Of Dust

Conservative reaction to Mitt Romney's straw poll win was split: one camp sought to discredit the entire straw poll; the other portrayed the win as just another step in Romney's deliberate WH '08 strategy. Rudy Giuliani supporter John Podhoretz has a typical Romney-hater reaction at The Corner: "I hate to be nasty, but anybody who takes the Ames Straw Poll results seriously is an idiot. ... The two leaders in the Ames straw poll received a combined total of 7,103 ballots. ... If it's supposed to represent superior organization, then the idea that Romney "did what he had to do" is laughable. I've heard reports that Romney has dropped as much as $4 million in Iowa already. And getting 4,500 people on a bus is all he has to show for it? What am I missing?"

More Romney-friendly reactions include:

• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Mitt Romney laid out a plan for winning the GOP nomination months ago, and it included, raising the most money, winning some or all of the debates, and winning the Ames straw poll as the key steps to setting up strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, which would at a minimum keep him in the race through the big February 2 showdown, and which might allow him to land a knock-out blow in South Carolina or Florida. ... Over and over again in Romney's professional life you see the goal identified, then the analysis followed by the plan followed by implementation in a disciplined and ultimately successful fashion."
• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "Where Romney deserves credit is that he has managed to do all the right things to keep himself in the top tier. That's not the faint praise it at first sounds like. ... So his early state strategy has produced leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, along with a win in the Ames straw poll."
• The Brody File: "What this victory says to me is that from day one, the Romney campaign has been extremely organized and active. ... Just like the successful CEO he is, Romney laid the groundwork early for this Straw Poll victory. The Romney campaign is like a fine oiled machine."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "It would have been a disaster had Mitt lost. In a pay to play straw poll, the guy with the most money should win. He out organized and out funded the field and he deserves the credit. Romney is a winner and a real candidate."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "This event will receive much more attention than it deserves, but, for what it's worth, Romney can be said to have achieved the first in a long series of goals."

HRC/LOGO DEBATE: Gays Are Concerned About Issues Other Than Marriage

Whether if it is because few watched the Human Rights Campaign/LOGO debate, or because few of the Dem candidates acquitted themselves well on an important issue to the netroots (gay marriage), debate blogging was light. No candidate won the debate, although Bill Richardson definitely lost. Reactions include:

• The Plank's James Kirchick: "Richardson lost for the simple reason that he's a buffoon and an opportunist--this is nothing new to anyone who's even been remotely watching the race--and his performance on Thursday once again conjured how appalling it was for this man to have represented the United States at the United Nations for nearly two years."
• TPM Cafe's Eric Kleefeld subbing for Andrew Sullivan: "To understand just how bad Richardson's performance last night was ... it's important to realize this: the event was likely never planned around the possibility of a candidate truly losing. ... The way he stumbled over the question of whether homosexuality is a choice was nothing short of disastrous. If any activists were still looking at his resume and feeling tempted, this should just about end it."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "I don't understand why our Presidential candidates don't just say 'Yes, I'm for gay marriage'. It's stupid. ... Obama just criticized Clinton for refusing to call for a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, calling it a 'symbolic insult' to gays. Well, Obama, how about your actual insult to gays in not supporting their right to get married? And you, Senator Clinton? How DARE you call your non-support of gay marriage a 'personal choice'? You're running for President! ... And just to make everyone mad, Edwards sucks on this too."
• firedoglake's TeddySanFran: "I've been asked why I wrote that I wish the questions had been less centered on marriage ... I think, is pretty simple: to be treated the same as everybody else is treated. ...Sure - marriage equality would be great. And while you are at it, America, could we please have job protection, fair housing protection, and legal rights for our families, too?"

DEM FIELD: White Flight

Open Left's Chris Bowers looks at recent Pew and RT Strategies/Cook Political Report polling and concludes: "[John] Edwards and [Barack] Obama are losing the white creative class, leading to Hillary Clinton's recent gains." Nuggets supporting this conclusion include:

• according to Pew, Clinton has gained twelve points on Obama among whites in their polls in March and April (moving from a 30%-22% advantage to a 37%-17% advantage), but only three point among African-Americans (moving from a 46%-36% advantage to a 47%-34% advantage).
• However, among non-whites, Clinton's lead actually dropped slightly from April-July to August, moving from 37%-32% to 40%-36%.
• Clinton's base of support is no longer women, and no longer conservatives. Basically, she has eliminated the "creative class gap" she faced against Obama. At this point, her support only skews heavily among Baby Boomers, those who never went to college, and lower income voters. It is entirely unclear to me what about her message causes this shift.
• Obama's base of support remains the young, the secular, the college educated, and African-American women, but not to the same degrees it once was. Among other things, this actually throws the "history" narrative out the window, or at least allows Obama to strangely corner the market on it. Why are African-American women more supportive of Obama than African-American men?
• Edwards shows virtually no significant demographic skews in his coalition, except that he is less popular among non-whites, and more popular in the Midwest than any other region. This makes me think that it isn't so much that Edwards's poverty message isn't resonating with African-Americans and non-whites per say, but rather than it is mainly resonating with rural and rust-belt voters. His message is connecting to the experience of a certain type of poverty, but not to the widespread urban poverty that is the more common in America.
• For one reason or another, Edwards and Obama are not sealing the deal with the white, urban creative class, and Clinton is using their failure in that regard to further solidify her position in the polls.

EDWARDS: Papa Don't Preach

Speaking of college educated white men skeptical of John Edwards, Blue Hampshire's Mike Caulfield and Open Left's Matt Stoller both describe what bothers them about Edwards poverty message. First Caulfield:

So why pull all these problems under a poverty umbrella? It's pretty simple really. The "poverty problem" is a middle class construction with Christian overtones -- by pulling these together in a poverty platform Edwards gains the right to talk about these in moral terms. It's difficult to talk about the skyrocketing price of milk as a moral issue, but tied to poverty, you can do that. Same with health care, education, childcare, and labor.

This, of course, has been the dream of the Democratic consulting class for a while -- that we on the left can counter the empty moralism of the right with a rousing indictment of our nation's true moral failure: the failure to provide those that fall through the cracks of our economy with enough to live decently.
But it's flawed. It's a pipe dream. ... I think Edwards has some of the smartest policy proposals I've seen. ... Drop the poverty frame, and there's a powerful message to the "bottom 99%" of us that we are more similar than we think, and we should throw our lot in together, not out of charity, but out of common interest.

Stoller adds: "John Edwards is talking about poverty, but he's not talking to poor people. He may say that women's rights are related to economic issues, but Clinton is actually framing her arguments around language women use. Edwards is talking as a college educated white guy to other college educated white guys. It's the white man's burden, and while well-meaning, it's a little racist and annoying."

OBAMA: Chicks Dig Inclusion

An exclusive blogger sit down with bloggers "in the tank" for Barack Obama, is becoming a symbol for why Obama is doing so poorly among non-black women. TAPPED's Garance Franke-Ruta, who was not invited to the session, has the most definitive report on the event at her personal blog and concludes that only one of the 13-14 bloggers in attendance was a woman.

Franke-Ruta blogs: "Is it that the Obama internet whizzes (and they are whizzes) wandering the halls here are young men who just invite others like themselves to come and meet their candidate? That's often how these things work, alas." MyDD's Melissa Ryan adds: "Women have told me that they're to intimidated to comment and post diaries on political blogs. I think that reluctance comes from a society that discourages women from participating in politics. That's a much larger problem, one that traditional media and political organizations aren't about to tackle."

Open Left's Matt Stoller identifies who is tackling these issues: "Obama's operation is - though ethnically diverse - extremely male ... There is one organization that is willing to tackle these problems, though perhaps not in the way that progressives might especially like. It's called the Hillary Clinton campaign. And right now, it's beating the crap out of all the others."

In more positive Obama blogging, Jack and Jill Politics' rikyrah attended a Women for Obama Event with Michelle Obama, who wowed the "multi-generational Black Beauty" audience dressed in their "Sunday Best."

BLOGGERS VS BELTWAY: Just As John McCain Shouldn't Be Calling Conservatives Racists, Harold Ford Really Shouldn't Be Calling Kossacks Anti-Semites

Crooks and Liars has full video of DailyKos' founder Markos Moulitsas Meet the Press appearance with DLC chair Harold Ford. After Markos defended the 'passion' of his commenters, Ford said: "But, but, Markos, in all fairness, your site has posted awful things about Jewish-Americans." Netroots reactions include:

• a Daily Kos commenter: "Are some individuals here anti-Semites? Sure. I defy you to find any diverse group of 130,000-plus individuals anywhere in the United States that doesn't have some anti-Semitic members. But calling us a blog of anti-Semites based on a handful of bad apples is like calling all Christians bloodthirsty psychopaths because of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Interesting, isn't it? When called out for his Lieberman-like habit of trashing Democrats, he responds with talking points straight from the mouth of Bill O'Reilly. Pitiful."
• Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat: "The theme of the program was much more unites the DLC and the Netroots than separates them. I think that is true. So what are the differences? Kos laid them out eloquently - it is a question of not being afraid to tout Democratic values. Kos argues for contrast with Republicans. The DLC has in the past argued for blurring distinctions. Today, Ford appeared to be abandoning his objection to contrast with Republicans."
• Open Left's Glenn Smith: "For three decades the DLC and other "centrist" advocates used their money to monopolize the Democratic message. And leave the progressive base out in the cold, not spoken to. ... The progressive movement has not just threatened this message monopoly -- it is undoing it. ... Hence the DLC's vicious attempts to discredit the movement. And that's what they want. They don't seek to win an argument over policy. They seek to destroy the credibility of their opponents and restore their message monopoly."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Competence Dodge Applies To More Than Iraq

Responding to Matthew Yglesias commentary on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, Atrios blogs:

Opposition to the war in Afghanistan, to the extent that it existed, was premised on the notion that we'd go kill a bunch of people, not help the country afterwards, and ultimately not achieve any strategic goals. Perhaps no one predicted that it would be Iraq that would be the shiny new object which would divert resources, but it certainly wasn't unreasonable to imagine that for a variety of reasons the Bush administration's commitment to reconstruction and aid in Afghanistan would be less than complete.

As has been the case for some many things these past years the choices were never "nothing" or "Pony plan." The choices were always "nothing" or "George Bush's plan." The failure to comprehend that simple fact has prevented members of our very serious crowd of pundits from listening to or admitting to the validity of criticism of so many things. ... For years it's been a verbal tic of many Iraq war opponents to assert "I supported the war in Afghanistan..." as a necessary prophylactic to charges of "unserious peacenik dirty f**king hippie!" The question is dangling, however... "should you have?" At the very least, shouldn't you have tried to open the door to critics who were less than supportive, not because they hate America, but because they were concerned that George Bush would f**k the whole thing up? Because it was hard to imagine that they'd actually go in and rebuild the place?

LEST WE FORGET: Why We Love Jane Hamsher

In a post attacking Bonnie Erbe for writing "Maybe women bloggers should adopt a more 'male' attitude to achieve equality in the blogosphere," firedoglake's Jane Hamsher posts a blurb she received promoting Erbe's PBS show "To The Contrary" on women in blogosphere. Noting that Erbe hosted "a media panel on women in the blogosphere with no actual woman bloggers" Hamsher quips: "People who live in glass houses should f**k in the basement."

Posted by Conn Carroll at August 13, 2007 12:49 PM