The Dish

Against the GOP, Obama is the best bet in the Zogby poll:

His margins of advantage range from a 4 percent edge over Arizona Sen. John McCain and a 5 percent edge over Arkansas’ Mike Huckabee to an 18 percentage point lead over Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, the survey shows. Against New York’s Rudy Giuliani he leads by 9%, and against Fred Thompson of Tennessee he holds a 16 point edge.

Clinton loses to Huckabee, Giuliani and McCain. Perhaps just as interesting: Huckabee and McCain are the most viable general election candidates.

Ramesh Ponnuru admits that the theocon position on gay couples is not about marriage as such:

Giuliani opposes a federal marriage amendment, as do McCain and Thompson. He also, like those two, says he opposes same-sex marriage. Giuliani’s campaign has also backtracked from his previous support for civil unions. He no longer supports civil unions that are too close to marriage—and in his view all existing civil-union laws are too close.

He seems to be well within party orthodoxy on marriage law, in other words.

I can understand – even though I don’t agree – why some people want to keep the m-word for heterosexual couples. I don’t understand why it’s also important to deny gay couples the responsibilities even of "civil unions." What does "too close to marriage" possibly mean? "Too close" to being publicly acknowledged and accepted? Or too supportive of the relationship itself? I wonder if Ramesh understands how insulting it is to gay couples when we read this kind of sentence. It is as if we have the civic cooties.

Ambers talks about the orange among the apples – and Marc knows his fruit from his vegetables. Mark Blumenthal dissects the methodology. It really is an exciting prospect if McCain somehow wins.

Derb and me, together at last:

From Kimberley Strassel’s piece in the Dec. 14 Opinion Journal:

Paul rallies heave with voters waving placards and shouting “Liberty! Liberty!”

Are those supporters crazy, as some colleagues tell me?

Perhaps they are, to be shouting for liberty in 2007, after decades of swelling federal power and arrogance, of proliferating taxes, rules, and interests, of gushing transfers of wealth to politically connected elites from working- and middle-class grunts, of the college and teacher-union scams, of the metastasizing tort-law rackets, of ever more numerous yet ever more clueless intelligence agencies, of open borders and visas for people who hate us, of widening cracks in our sense of nationhood (“Press one for English …”), of speech codes and race lobbies and judicial impositions.

If those people are crazy, though, I want to be crazy with them. I’m for liberty, too. That’s why I’m for Ron Paul. And why do we have 75,000 soldiers in Germany?

I just lost my breakfast.

Pretty riveting and persuasive:

So, two weeks out from Iowa, here are the odds.

Rudy and Thompson each 20-1. John McCain 6-1. He has to win New Hampshire, and even if he wins there, he would be an underdog. Grass-roots conservatives do not like him and would prefer Huckabee.

Mitt Romney 3-2. If he wins Iowa, he is almost unstoppable. If he loses Iowa, he has to come back and beat McCain in New Hampshire. Then it would a Mitt-Mike race through Feb. 5.

And Huckabee? He has to win Iowa. If he does, he will be the favorite in South Carolina and for the nomination, as well.