Suddenly an Obama advantage over Clinton:
In hypothetical matchups for the general presidential election, Clinton and Obama each led Giuliani, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Romney, although at times narrowly.
Obama was somewhat stronger, besting Giuliani by 6 points, Huckabee by 11 and Romney by 18. Clinton had an edge of 1 point over Giuliani, 9 points over Huckabee and 6 points over Romney.
Lee Stranahan channels the Clintons’ amazement that anyone could be so uppity as to stand in the way of Hillary Clinton’s manifest destiny. Enjoy:
He leaves the option open:
If you don’t win, will you support the GOP nominee and promise not to run on the Libertarian or any other ticket?
I’m not promising any of those things. If we have a Republican nominee that has convinced me they have come around on foreign policy … I would consider it. As far as running on a third-party ticket, or [as an] independent, or Libertarian, I have no plans to do that.
Well, "no plans" doesn’t mean you won’t.
The best way I can state it is: I have no plans. I can’t conceive of it. But I guess in life there aren’t that many absolutes.
The combination of a more prudent foreign policy – including withdrawal from Iraq – and a dismantling of the police/torture/surveillance state could be potent in a general election, if Paul loses the GOP race. Who would run with him?
Hat tip: Corner.
Here’s a really helpful and deeply chilling open-source recreation of the chronology that led the United States both to legalize and authorize torture and to destroy the most glaring evidence – the CIA torture tapes. Imagine if the same people had been successful and destroyed the Abu Ghraib photographs. Bush would still be denying that any abuses had taken place at all.
I’m struck by the lack of animus among even very partisan Republicans toward Obama. There are many reasons for Republicans to oppose his candidacy – especially those who still believe that the war on terror can be won by more war and more occupation and more torture. But even those with principled objections are oddly lacking in loathing for him. David Brooks is not alone in seeing a certain temperamental strength in the guy, a cool-headedness under fire. I keep getting emails like this one:
I was shocked by a phone conversation I had with my Dad last Friday evening. My Dad is a doctor who reads the Wall Street Journal every day and certainly falls much more into the small government rump wing of the Republican party. He has probably voted Republican in the last 5 or 6 presidential elections. In 2000 and 2004 I desperately tried to convince him to consider Gore and Kerry – to no success. I was taking a more passive approach this time around. Completely unprompted, my father said that Obama was the only candidate worth getting excited about, and that all the others were a bunch of losers. Even more surprising, he seems to have finally detected the perversion of conservatism created by the Christianist wing (I recommended your book a while back). I think my Dad probably finds the prospect of a creationist president almost as horrifying as the prospect of Hillary as president.
Which to my mind is the crux of the Obama candidacy. Obama, it seems, is a bit like Regan, in that he actually has the possibility of stealing all of those moderate republicans like my Dad to a democratic ticket. Now if the Democrats would just realize the huge opportunity they’ve got to destroy the republicans next fall.
Also, the latest spin from the Clinton campaign is truly shocking to me. The whole line about there not being any “surprises” with her. That she is tested. I can’t think of anything further from the truth. I live in NYC, and we all know that Bill hasn’t suddenly turned into a saint in the last 8 years. We all know that on any day some new rumor (or truth!) could surface about him. I think what I dread most about the prospect of another Clinton Presidency, beyond that it will do nothing to heal the rift in this country between red and blue, is that we’ll have to relive their familial psychodrama. For me personally, none of that really matters, but we lived through this before with the media and the republicans. As a democrat, I honestly can’t believe we want to go through it again.
Last, the latest sleaze coming out of the Clinton campaign re Obama being a muslim and using drugs…. It is truly revolting. People think she’s a phony because she is a phony. I was neutral on her up until that point. Now I loathe her. She’s shown her true colors again…much as I tried to repress the memory. I’d vote for McCain over her in a heartbeat.
One thing Romney and Bush apparently have in common.
One blogger reacts to Bob Muslim Kerrey’s Cocaine response Muslim to Barack cocaine Muslim Obama’s Muslim candidacy:
I don’t care if Obama wins, as long as this campaign knocks liberals off their pedestal with regards to race. After 50 years of taking the black vote for granted, the Democratic Party responds to its first viable black candidate for president by doing everything it can to smear him as a cultural and ethnic "other" while decrying Republican intolerance.
I said it before, this shit is a really bad idea. The last thing the Clinton campaign wants to do is remind black voters that no matter how high you get in society, you’re still just another nigger. That kind of campaign tactic will grant Obama O.J. Verdict-like solidarity among black voters.
Even I didn’t think the Clintons would stoop this low. But sometimes you forget who they really are.
The f-word unleashed:
Which candidate has evoked the most adamant hostility, the largest number of people who say they would always vote against him or her? You know the answer. 53 percent of men under 40 would cast their vote against Clinton rather than in favor of anyone else. I know how they feel.
David Brooks on Obama:
Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.
