January 2008 – Page 120

Hillary Giuliani

Their strategies are converging – because they can’t win any of the early votes:

The [Clinton] adviser added that the campaign has come to accept another reality of the early process, which is that African-American voters are convinced that Obama is viable and are shifting rapidly in his direction.

"We’re going to lose South Carolina," he said.

Clinton is hoping to do better in primaries closed off to independents. Because, after all, you don’t want a general election candidate to be appealing outside the party base, do you?

The Black Vote In South Carolina

Clinton once had a lead. Now, it’s 69 to 23 for Obama in the Survey USA poll. Obama is at 50 percent in total. Huckabee has twice the support of his next closest rival in the same poll among all voters. He leads among self-described conservatives and liberals. Giuliani has all but disappeared from view.

A Big Bounce

Not much post-Iowa impact for the Republicans. Major mo for Obama:

Clinton’s National Lead

Over. And Obama now has a twelve point lead in South Carolina, according to Rasmussen. It’s hard to see how she can recover if he beats her well tomorrow.

First Column, Major Error

Kristol’s off to a great start, quoting Michelle Malkin when it was Michael Medved.

Changing The Paradigm

Jedediah Purdy on Obama’s "sweet spot":

This is what Obama’s critics on the left fail to understand, notably the usually invaluable Paul Krugman. Talk of unity and bridge-building may be a sign of weakness in the zero-sum game of ordinary politics. In the politics of realignment, when you can make the words do something, it is the mark of strength.

“What fresh hell is this?”

David Boaz:

So . . . Republicans looking for a presidential candidate to inspire them are now faced with a tax-and-spend religious rightist who would have the federal government regulate everything from restaurant menus to local schools.

And Kristol brings up Obama’s nanny-statism.

Fired Up, Ready To Bore!

Dana Milbank visits the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire. You kinda don’t want your audience to be leaving in droves halfway through your Q and A:

Obama and the Right IV

A reader writes:

I was shocked to hear my father, a dyed in the wool Republican, say he’d vote for Obama before he voted for Hillary or Giuliani (he’s still a Romney guy). He said, "I’d rather vote for the young guy (Obama) than these two (Giuliani or Clinton)." By that he meant the cynical, machine candidates.

I said, "Dad, this (Obama) is like Bobby Kennedy running." He said, "I know."

My dad is a 75 year old Korean War vet, an Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan Republican. He said he understands my excitement about Obama and that he would vote for "Hillary or Obama" even over Giuliani, because "Giuliani is such a scumbag."

Andrew, you can’t believe the shock I feel that my father would even consider a Democrat. He says his favorite Dem is Richardson. If anyone wanted to know how scattered the Republican party is, consider my father. The man has an "R" floating through his bloodstream, yet he is seriously considering Dems.

Frum’s Conservative Soul

Ross likes David’s new book. I haven’t read it, but the reviews suggest it has many proposals that seem eminently sensible to me. Frum explains:

My big concern at the moment is precisely that the radical rise in American economic inequality since 1980 – and the serious slowdown of midde-class income growth that has set in since 2000 – will tempt America to adopt quack economic ideas that will impoverish this country and do radical damage to the world economy.
…
My prescription for that – for raising middle-class incomes – involves universal (private-sector) health insurance, curtailment of unskilled immigration, greater subsidies to lower-middle-income saving, and tax reforms aimed at lightening the burden of the payroll tax rather than the income tax – and a bunch of other ideas that will alas cause my old colleagues at the Wall Street Journal editorial page to sputter and cough.