November 08, 2007

11/8: A Pat On The Head

Reading over conservative reactions to Pat Robertson's Rudy Giuliani endorsement, we are convinced the nod will help Giuliani more among GOP primary voters concerned about Giuliani's general election chances than it will with social conservatives. Nobody seems to believe Robertson still carries much weight among rank and file evangelicals (the names James Dobson and Rick Warren keep coming up in that regard), but what the endorsement does show is that Giuliani can win over socon leaders with his promise to appoint only constructionist judges. If Giuliani can show that it is unlikely any social conservative leaders will mount a campaign to keep their supporters at home 11/08, the stronger he establishes himself as the most likely to beat Hillary Clinton.

GIULIANI: Which Body Builder Will Endorse Rudy Next?

Rudy Giuliani won mixed reviews from conservatives for his Pat Robertson endorsement. First the good:

• The Corner's Rich Lowry: "Just talked to a top social conservative. He says, hinting that more prominent social cons will end up going with Rudy, "There's plenty more where this comes from." ... On conservative evangelical voters and Giuliani: "If Rudy is the nominee, they're going to vote for him-period."
• Hot Air: "If anything, the Robertson endorsement is more significant than the [Paul] Weyrich endorsement that the Romney camp won earlier in the week. Both endorsements strike me as wiser than the threat to either sit home or support a third party bid if Giuliani is the nominee."
• The Corner's John Miller: "The Robertson endorsement of Giuliani is a reminder that the Evangelical interest in politics and public policy goes beyond abortion - for many, the war on Islamofascism has a religious dimension. ... Many secular Republicans believe that Giuliani is the best anti-terror, national-security presidential candidate. That some Evangelicals agree with them, and are willing to forgive differences on domestic matters, is less of a shock than it may seem at first."

The bad:

• Captain's Quarters: "While I'm certain it will help Giuliani make the sale to some social conservatives, it strikes me as rather bizarre. After all, Robertson inhabited the lunatic-fringe Right for quite some time before he suggested assassinating Hugo Chavez in 2005. It's not exactly the kind of statement that lends itself to an image of practical, tough leadership that Rudy normally projects."
• Riehl World View: "I'm not an evangelical Christian and have never cared much about who Robertson endorses. If anything, I'd rather see him out of politics than at the side of a perspective Republican nominee. And while I realize Rudy needed the help with the Christian Right, Robertson abandoned his principles to support Rudy. That's a fact and not surprising to me. The surprise could be that this hurts Rudy more with Independents than he might think."
• The Corner's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "From one D.C. vet: "opportunism in the pursuit of power trumps principle." ... UPDATE: Said D.C. vet e-mails: "Google Charles Taylor Pat Robertson."
• Laura Ingraham via NRO's Jim Geraghty: "I like all the Republicans running, I really do ... but get out! ... Here's my view: get ready to be thrown off that train at 65 miles an hour because that's what's going to happen to Pat Robertson. That's my view."
• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "Is Pat Robertson A Sell-Out? Robertson, the son of a senator, has always been more of a political operator than James Dobson. ... The religious right has for years been split between idealists and those who favor a frontrunner strategy in the GOP nomination race to ensure a place at the table."

And the ambivalent:

• Campaign Standard's Richelieu: "Pat Robertson has taken some time off from claiming to set astounding weight-lifting records and decided to shoulder what could become an even heavier burden: convincing Christian conservatives that Rudy Giuliani shares their values on social issues. ... I think in the long run a Robertson endorsement will prove a very mixed blessing. First, it will put Rudy and abortion in the spotlight. ... Second, the more pro-life-centric candidates will see this endorsement as a blatant attempt at a daylight robbery of "their voters" by Rudy and his New York heist crew. ... Third, Robertson is at heart a carny and a flake. Rudy will now have to wear him like a hat, gathering unwelcome media attention."
• The Corner's Yuval Levin: "It's worth noting that Robertson has actually been praising Giuliani for a long time, and saying he should be president since at least 2005. That doesn't make it any less weird, though."
• AmSpec Blog's Jennifer Rubin: "I would question the impact of any one person's endorsement. If Paul Weyrich lines up for Romney and Robertson for Rudy and Right to Life folks for Thompson is it all a wash? And after all, when real voters get to see the candidates live(granted, most don't) as they did at the FRC's Value Forum, sometimes they just choose who they like, in that case Huckabee."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Here a call from a Christian publishing executive to yesterday's show matters. The exec coolly noted that when trying to sell books in the Christian market, the key "influencers" in terms of importance are (1)the Southern Baptist Convention, (2)James Dobson, (3)The Willow Creek network, (4)Rick Warren and his network of 450,000 pastors, and (5)Pat Robertson. With the top four on the sidelines, Robertson clearly has to help Giuliani in the primaries, right? Well, it can't hurt, but neither do I think it helps very much."

The Corner's Byron York scored a post-endorsement Giuliani interview. When asked if social conservatives would believe in his pledge to appoint strict conservatives to the court Giuliani replied: "If I was going to try to fool them, I would just change my positions."

NRO's Jim Geraghty tracked down Gary Bauer for his reaction: "Those leaders who are endorsing are going through the same thought process that a lot of conservatives around the country are wrestling with ... it's clear to everybody that a Hillary Clinton presidency with Democratic control of the House and Senate would be a disaster no matter what kind of conservative you are."

Bauer on whether socons will turn out for Giuliani: "He's the toughest candidate to do that on. It would require a sell job that goes beyond anything he's done up until now. It probably would mean very specific assurances on a handful of key things that people that would want to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt. But I think it can be done."

MCCAIN: We Didn't Even Know Brownback Still Existed

Bill Kristol "writes from the road" with his reaction to both the Pat Robertson/Rudy Giuliani and Sam Brownback/John McCain endorsements: "McCain got the better of this one. Brownback is a human-rights-supporting representative of much that is admirable about religious conservatism. Robertson is a currying-favor-with-dictators voice from the past. Does Rudy really want his support?"

Townhall's Matt Lewis comments on McCain's score: "But regardless of why Brownback endorsed McCain, his endorsement could help McCain with social conservatives in places like Iowa -- and also help provide an actual Iowa organization for him to use. If McCain finishes second or third in Iowa, and then first in New Hampshire (which is not beyond the realm of possibility), who knows what happens?"

IA Independent's Jay Wagner reports, however, that "Brownback Supporters Say They Won't Automatically Support McCain." More Wagner: "Iowans who supported Brownback's bid seemed content with the decision to endorse McCain, but none of the activists interviewed by Iowa Independent said it would immediately translate to support from them."

At RedState, Adam C tries to explain McCain's recent resurgence: 1) McCain polls better against Clinton than any other Republican, including Rudy. ... 2) McCain staunch support of the mission of our troops in Iraq has rekindled some love (and muted some of the hate) that conservatives have felt toward the Senator. ... 3) McCain's heroic story still lends him unrivaled credibility on military affairs and unequaled respect among those who disagree with him on some issues. ... 4) As the Republican candidates all seem to be flawed in some respects, Republicans seem to be reevaluating McCain. ... 5) Sen. McCain is increasingly and surprisingly likely to be a candidate that doesn't cause a chunk of Republican voters to run to a third party. ... On immigration, McCain always supported increased border security and a path to legalization for current illegal immigrants."

THOMPSON: Tourniquet Needed

RedState's Erick Erickson admits he's a "Fred guy" and then goes on to advise the Fred Thompson campaign: "First, Fred needs to stop the bleeding of social cons from his ranks based on his Meet the Press appearance and his comments. It's not what he said so much as how he said it. ... What I take issue with Fred on is focusing on the girl getting arrested for the abortion. That plays in to every anti-life stereotype ever made about the pro-life community. He should know better. His record reflects that he does. So, again, first Fred needs to stop the bleeding and firm up social conservative support. ... Second, Fred needs to beat Huckabee down in Iowa."

GOP FIELD: The Corner Is Not In Anyone's Corner

Responding to an emailers accusation that The Corner shows "barely covert support" for Rudy Giuliani, another Corner reader emails Jonah Goldberg: "Lemme see. K-Lo's for Romney (as am I-full disclosure). Ramesh is for McCain. You're still neutral, as is Rich Lowry, as is Mark Steyn (I believe). Derb (in his less lucid moments) seems to be a Paulistinian."

Goldberg adds: "I agree, though this does leave out John Pod (now sadly departed from the Corner), Rick Brookhiser and Andy McCarthy, all of whom have put their chips on Rudy. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. I could live with a Giuliani win, perhaps (time will tell) happily. But, the idea that NR or even the Corner is monolithically behind Rudy is simply not true and certainly runs counter to many of the complaints we've gotten from other readers."

Over at RedState, Erick Erickson explains why he sees WH '08 as a Mitt Romney/Rudy Giuliani competition only: "Mike [Huckabee] and Fred [Thompson] are going to be fighting each other for the serious social conservatives. Fred did himself no favors on Sunday in a discussion I actually thought was very good. Evangelicals who were readily committing to Fred are now breaking up with him and flocking to Mike. What Fred could have solidified, he's not going to have to fight for with Mike. That means Mike and Fred are going to spend their time fighting each other for a set of voters who may get so fed up that they stay home.

CLINTON: What The MSM Giveth...

First establishing that Hillary Clinton's "decline" in recent polling began before 10/30's MSNBC debate, Open Left's Chris Bowers blogs: "In short, Clinton is now down a bit because the press told everyone for several days that, because of the attacks, poor debate performance and by "playing the gender card," she should be down. And so, they can move on from the boring, played-out inevitability narrative. .... I imagine most people reading this blog are either happy that Clinton is somewhat down. ... However, they should be careful what they wish for. In this case, what appears to be a Clinton drop in the polls was largely fueled by the same media machine that, most of the time, happily reinforces Republican narratives as conventional wisdom.

Matthew Yglesias agrees: "Readers are probably aware that I'm not exactly heartbroken over the apparent tightening of the Democratic primary race in the polls, but I agree with Chris Bowers that the main causal mechanism here appears to be a fundamentally unfair media narrative."

Pushing back against the MSM narrative, TPM's Greg Sargent makes the case that the AP mischaracterized Bill Clinton's "Swiftboat" defense of HRC.

CLINTON II: If Ever There Was A Love Hate Relationship

Author David Mizner posts a diary at Daily Kos asking: "Why has the Blogosphere Accepted Hillary?" Mizner asserts: "Bad but true: the blogosphere has not, and will not, oppose Hillary Clinton."

Singled out in the diary, Chris Bowersfires back : "However, in this case, I felt the need to speak out because of the hilarity of the argument presented. I mean, seriously, using Matt Stoller as an example of someone who has accepted Clinton, and isn't sufficiently speaking out against her flaws? Seriously? Matt has actually appeared in a television commercial attacking Hillary Clinton, something which I think can be said of about ten people in the entire country this cycle."

Mentioned in Mizner's diary as a reliable anti-Hillary voice, David Sirota blogs on HRC and trade: "My guess is that Clinton will vote against the first part of the NAFTA expansion -- the Peru Free Trade Agreement. ... my guess is that what's going on is that she has told the lobbyists, corporate executives and other Big Money interests financing her presidential run that she'll stay quiet in the lead up to the vote ... Then, when its clear the deal is going to sail through because folks like her haven't stepped up and been leaders, she'll quietly cast her vote against it ... what this really is is Triangulation 2.0. And, as I said, it's unprincipled and smarmy -- the opposite of, ya know, leadership."

EDWARDS: Trippi As ABC Mastermind?

John Edwards stepped up anti-Hillary Clinton rhetoric is beginning to inspire some conspiracy theories. The Left Coaster's Jeff Dinelli blogs: "Only six months ago advisor Joe Trippi joined the Edwards campaign, and the argument could be made this new pitbull strategy for Edwards has at least a little to do with Trippi's presence. ... Here's the catch: Trippi is close friends with Obama advisor David Axlerod. The theory goes something like this: Axlerod and Trippi decide Edwards can't possibly win, so Axlerod sends Trippi to Edwards' campaign to put on a full-blown attack, and like a suicide bomber, Edwards blows up his own campaign, dragging Hillary down in the process with a rallying cry of 'Hillary Must Not Win.' ... Hey, stranger things have happened."

OBAMA: Let The Boomer Battles Begin

The Brody File has video his interview with Barack Obama in Bettendorf, Iowa. Subtitles include: Obama on Gay Marriage, Abortion; Obama on Hillary; Obama on Importance of Iowa; Obama on Controversial Muslim Email; Obama on Gay Marriage, Abortion; and Obama on Romney and the Republicans.

Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat praises Obama's consistency on immigration and licenses: "The one candidate who spoke clearly and correctly on this issue was Barack Obama. He explained very well why offering drivers licenses to undocumented aliens is good policy. He refused to pander to the xenophobia still present in the Democratic Party. Good for Obama. I hope he sticks to it in the face of this ugly side of the Democratic Party."

Andrew Sullivan notes that Obama has adopted "the central thrust" of Sullivan's Obama slurp-a-thon. Sullivan quotes from a 11/7 Obama speech: "I think there's no doubt that we represent the kind of change that Senator Clinton can't deliver on and part of it is generational. Senator Clinton and others, they've been fighting some of the same fights since the '60's and it makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done."

Oh, and Andrew still really, really hates Hillary.

11/6: Immigration Matters Except When It Doesn't

Looking at results from VA KY ME OH NJ NY MS and PA DailyKos' founder Markos Moulitsas blogs: "Republicans have Louisiana and Indianapolis. We've got the rest of the country." Judging from the critical nature of most conservative blogging, Markos appears to be right. Robert Bluey responds to the RNC's post-11/6 memo touting victories in LA Gov., MS Gov., and defeats of Dem sponsored ballot initiatives and responds:

It certainly sounds impressive. But aside from Jindal's win and the upset victory in Indianapolis, I'm not exactly seeing how these results translate into a good things for the GOP in 2008. After all, the RNC glossed over the two major setbacks on Tuesday - the loss of the governor's mansion in Kentucky and the Virginia Senate. ... Instead of gloating, I'd rather see the RNC use its resources to recruit candidates and raise money - two areas where Democrats are significantly outpacing the GOP.

Patrick Ruffini was also highly critical of GOP efforts, focussing on NoVA: "First: It's time to fire the consultants who ran the same ImmigrationTaxesImmigrationTaxes cookie cutter race in every district, using the same message that killed Jerry Kilgore in Northern Virginia two years ago. Second: Cutting and running from the GOP is even worse. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis' anti-gun ad flopped, leading to the most lopsided unseating of the night. Didn't 2006 teach us that there is no refuge for the Chafees and DeWines of the world when the GOP fails to advance an aggressive agenda? ... It's time to say what needs to be said. Whether they were running to the right (Cuccinelli) or to the left (Devolites Davis), Republican Senate incumbents were running campaigns out of touch with the Northern Virginia electorate, whose bugaboos right now are traffic congestion and education."

Moving to more specific issues, Fire Dog Lake's Pachacutec links to WaPo and NYT stories downplaying the impact immigration had on the election and blogs: "Sorry, but until I see real data that says voters in NY were actually moved to vote based on immigration or opposition to Spitzer's plan, I'll remain of the opinion, confirmed by results all over and from the past, that the scary brown people code language moves votes among the racist fringe and not among Democrats, nor among liberal/progressives. These are not votes we're ever going to get and trying to pretend we should want them is political malpractice and moral suicide."

Also reading the NYT, Mickey Kaus quotes from the article: "In most of those areas where Mr. Spitzer's licensing proposal moved to the forefront of the campaign, Democrats were able to cauterize the issue by publicly breaking with the governor, harshly criticizing the plan and in some cases threatening to join lawsuits challenging it." Kaus comments: "Similarly, immigration semi-amnesty didn't stop Dems from taking control of the U.S. House in 2006 partly because many Democrats distanced themselves from the proposal."

Also parsing the results for immigration nuggets, NRO's Jim Geraghty reports: "A Virginia Campaign Spot reader noted that even the Democratic ads made their candidates sound tough on illegal immigration. The issue requires contrast to be electorally powerful; maybe voters aren't convinced that local Democrats will be any different on the issue than local Republicans."

The Corner's Mark Krikorian adds: "The center of the contest for the senate was Fairfax County ... Immigration just wasn't all that salient there, but where it was salient, it worked: the chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, for instance, who led the high-profile effort to pass a tough anti-illegal immigration ordinance, easily won reelection ... Message for 2008 candidates: immigration is a political winner when it's highly salient, but it can't compensate for a lackluster campaign."

On the left, TAPPED's Ezra Klein reports: "Was just on a conference call about yesterday's elections in Virginia, and the consensus, at least among the assembled Democratic pollsters, was that the immigration issue had really flopped for the Republicans, and actually harmed them. The pollsters said that the election became a contest between, on the Republican side, an issue, and on the Democratic side, a leadership style. So the Republicans ran on a crackdown and the Democrats ran on problem solving, technocratic governance, etc. The latter won out."

DailyKos' founder Markos Moulitsas links to WaPo's right of NoVA and comments: "Here we have evidence that the issue wasn't a killer -- traditional Democratic issues trumped immigration -- while Republican demonization of those scary brown people will kill their long-term electoral prospects by alienating key, fast-growing, immigrant communities. In other words, while the issue is a certain long-term loser, it doesn't even have short term benefits for the GOP.

MD 04: They Did It For Nancy

The Color of Change, MyDD, Swing State Project, Americablog, Dailykos, Digby, Firedoglake, Atrios, Crooks and Liars, DownwithTyranny and Openleft coalition reached their $100K goal for Donna Edwards 11/7. Fire Dog Lake's Jane Hamsher writes: "I would also like to give special thanks to Nancy Pelosi for turning her back on Matt Stoller. Way to go. Really, without that brittle, frosty smile and rude dismissal of someone who really is just trying to take part in the democratic process, it just would not have been so easy. This one's for you, Madame Speaker!"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Where Would The Writers Be With Out Them?

Commenting on a law suit filed by five conservative authors against Eagle Publishing over book sales, Atrios comments: "[I]t's hard to perceive Regnery's basic operating model as being anything other than beneficial for the authors involved. It's basically what crazy people like me used to point out until we stopped bothering, that they use, uh, interesting practices to force their books onto the bestseller lists so as to give them maximum publicity/free advertising and promotion. And now the authors are upset. Funny."

LEST WE FORGET: Now That's A Gender Card

Reuters asks Borat who he favors for WH '08: "I cannot believe that it possible a woman can become Premier of US and A - in Kazakhstan, we say that to give a woman power, is like to give a monkey a gun - very dangerous. We do not give monkeys guns any more in Kazakhstan ever since the Astana Zoo massacre of 2003 when Torkin the orang-utan shoot 17 schoolchildrens. I personal would like the basketball player, Barak Obamas to be Premier."

Posted by Conn Carroll at November 8, 2007 12:43 PM