Redstate

Posted at 2:30am on May 13, 2008 ELECTION PROJECTION- 5/13: Mac 301 Obummer 237 (with bonus!)

By theoneandonlyfinn

First the projections, and then...what EXACTLY are the swing states?

SCENERIO ONE- McCAIN V OBAMA

SCENERIO TWO- McCAIN V CLINTON

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Posted at 1:55am on May 13, 2008 This is my stop Johnny Mac, y'all go on without me...Rebuilding the Movement and the New Contract for America

By BlackRepub

So today, we learned that John McCain does not intend to pander to full blooded conservatives; rather he intends to continue to harness his Maverick, BiPartisan, NewTone image to convince his friends in the media that he's really not one of "those" Republicans. The effect of this of course may be that he does indeed get elected to the White House, but by distancing himself from mainstream Republicans as he intends to do, he is going to kill the GOP's prospects downticket. Where has he strayed off of the reservation this time, you ask? What has he done to warrant an entire blog? What he has done today is saw off another leg of the already shaky stool he was one. Today McCain's violations were threefold. The first two go hand in hand: McCain decided to bury his credentials as a conservative, by supporting signing the Kyoto treaty as well as supporting a carbon cap and trade deal. Now here's the problem with this, other than the fact that it is taking money out of American's pockets and allowing Europe to police the American economy. We know McCain is not a full blooded conservative, but unlike Rudy Giuliani, who sought to downplay his differences with full spectrum conservatives, McCain seems anxious to run to his friends in the New York Times and give them more evidence of how he's not such a bad guy, after all, he worships at Al Gore's church of Global Warming, which has about as much credibility as Ron L Hubbard's Church of Scientology. This decision by the McCain campaign to once again run to the media to beef up his Maverick credentials is another move by McCain to show off his great BiPartisan power, because this of course is legislation that he sponsored with the only sensible Democrat, Joe Lieberman, the last of the Scoop Jackson Democrats who is right on the GWOT and wrong on everything else. Unfortunately, Joe isn't running for President, McCain is, and this was another middle finger to the base and to the American people who in a time of economic distress, don't need politicians making up more regulations and taxes to hit them in the pocketbook. However, it did bolster McCain's earlier statement that he doesn't really know anything about the economy. Further boosting that claim was McCain's third faux pas in today's NewTone trio, that sources have leaked America's Snake Oil Pastor, Mike Huckabee is in line to hitch his trailer onto the back of the Straight Talk Express. I don't need to go into every single reason why Mike Huckabee is bad for this job, I think I've been pretty clear in the past. Suffice it to say that McCain achieved the one two knockout punch for flushing his economic credentials down the toilet as well as his pledge to pick someone who knows national security. Huckabee wouldn't know national security if it appeared personified, sat down in his double wide and ate a plate of fried squirrel with him. The vice President is poised to be the future leader of the party, a heartbeat away from the Presidency. McCain was supposed to assure his party and the American people that they can trust that America will survive if something happens-with his Huckalove, the only thing that we can be assured of is that there will be plenty of class warfare and Kool-Aid to go around. And this is only the beginning-if you liked McCain-Feingold, McCain-Lieberman, and McCain-Kennedy, wait until you see what he gets going when he has an even weaker GOP minority in the fall. Thusly, I have decided to get off the Straight Talk Express, and I am no longer voting for John McCain, nor will I treat him with the kid gloves I had been as a good little Republican, getting in line no matter how I had to grit me teeth through the knives he put in the heart of every conservative.

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Posted at 12:51am on May 13, 2008 I'm naive, so clue me in....

By kowalski

Tonight I'm clicking through and reading about a half-dozen pages on the Internet and one of them was the story about the woman who inadvertently showed up for an Obama rally and after being jilted, ran smack dab into Hillary Clinton: [h/t: Drudge]

Disappointed, she decided instead to go for breakfast - and walked right into Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign stop.

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Posted at 10:19pm on May 12, 2008 Open Season on Obama Advisers

Watch Your Own Backs, You’ve Got no Support from the Top

By Mark I

Moe Lane points to a Jake Tapper Piece detailing the numerous times Sen. Barack Obama has placed blame on his advisers for his radical policy positions. Less noticed is the growing tendency for Obama to drop those advisers like hot rocks the minute that their comments explaining Obama’s positions become known.

It all started with the case of Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago professor and Obama economics adviser who was caught telling Canadian officials, no doubt in English and French, that Sen. Obama didn’t really think that NAFTA needed to be renegotiated. It was all just campaign rhetoric, Goolsbee helpfully explained. The following week, Samantha Power, Harvard professor (Obama apparently collects university professors) and Obama campaign foreign policy adviser told the BBC that Obama had no intention of following the plan he had campaigned on for close to a year for getting U.S. troops out of Iraq. “He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator,” she said. But of course; and pardon me, but would you have any Grey Poupon?

Power resigned from the campaign, allegedly because in the same interview she referred to Sen. Hillary!™ Clinton as a “monster.” But Clinton’s negatives are so high that it would have been hard for most of America to find fault with that statement. No, the more damaging comments, and the ones she was kicked to the curb over, were the ones that exposed Obama’s real position on Iraq, and exposed him as a typical politician saying one thing to get elected while planning to do something else entirely.

Last week, another Obama adviser was unceremoniously dismissed for doing his job. Only this time, Sen. John McCain’s campaign deserves credit for forcing Obama to reduce his adviser corps by one. McCain pushed back hard on the question of Obama’s relationship with the Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, and forced Obama’s hand. The incident is revealed the thin-skinned nature of the Obama campaign, and provided a model that McCain should follow for the remainder of the election.

Read on…

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hamas | John McCain | Liberals | Obama campaign | Obamafiles — Comments (0)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:05pm on May 12, 2008 Hey, a flag pin!

I hope none of his supporters are bitter at him for having it on.

By Moe Lane

The Senator's wearing it in West Virginia - like Allahpundit notes, can't imagine what he's doing there in the first place - which will no doubt allow him to be truly inspiring to the quaint inhabitants thereof. Or at least give him a shot to be not beaten by 40 points (yes, that bad).

Of course, it does sort of shoot down as nonsensical blathering all that stuff before about his resolute refusal to pander by wearing a flag pin. On the other hand, you can argue that it looks more like he was pandering by not wearing a flag pin, which says quite a bit about a large fraction of his base. On the gripping hand, this change back to a flag pin - now that he's assuming that he's both safe and the nominee - actually gives me a small bit of hope: it suggests that he has almost as low an opinion of the collective brain and spine of progressives as I do.

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Posted at 5:21pm on May 12, 2008 For Obama, what is a "wound" and a "sore" that "infects" our foreign policy?

By Soren Dayton

Why, our policy with respect to Israel, of course:

JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that, and some of the tensions that might arise between me and some of the more hawkish elements in the Jewish community in the United States might stem from the fact that I’m not going to blindly adhere to whatever the most hawkish position is just because that’s the safest ground politically.

What kind of solution would that be? As I noted earlier, some of his allies seem to think, to quote the LA Times:

And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

You don't say.

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Posted at 5:13pm on May 12, 2008 Another Reply To Newsweak

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Regarding this story discussed here, we have this reply, which lists the salient objections in short and sweet fashion. In addition, the McCain campaign has taken action against the smear and you can find a reply to Newsweek's Jon Meacham from Mark Salter of the McCain camp underneath the fold.

Read on . . .

Posted in 2008 | In The Tank for Barack Obama — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:22pm on May 12, 2008 Jake Tapper defends Senator Barack Obama's staff.

Oddly, he's defending them from Senator Barack Obama.

By Moe Lane

[Whoops! H/T Instapundit]

This will do for quote of the day: it's the culmination of an entertaining little post about the number of times that the junior Senator from Illinois has courageously explained how a particular gaffe, mistake, lie, oopsie, and/or omission was clearly the responsibility of a staff member* (he counts 14, and the primary's not even over yet). Tapper can't help but speak truth to power, here:

And for the record, yet again, let me state that I find Sen. Obama's staff unfailingly competent and polite, courteous and efficient, and I once again express my regret that Sen. Obama does apparently not feel the same way.

I'm not going to even try to beat that one, Jake.

Moe Lane

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Posted at 4:11pm on May 12, 2008 Voter, Come to Massachusetts before November

By Nikitas3

With most of the Democrat primaries in the rear-view mirror and Hillary Clinton trailing by 167 delgates as of May 11, calls are coming for her to quit the presidential race. She also is behind in the popular vote and cannot make that gap up unless she wins big in the remaining primaries, which is unlikely.

So where does this leave us?

Unless Clinton can convince Democrat superdelegates that Obama is incapable of winning white vote in numbers sufficient to win the general election – which she is attempting to do, much to the anger of blacks and many liberal whites who are charging racism -- we are going to see the Clintons and their cabal out of power, at least temporarily, and we will see Angry Bill taking out his frustrations in more ways than we can imagine.

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Posted at 3:38pm on May 12, 2008 McCain v. Obama Electoral Map - With Battleground States

By patriotroom

I am not sure I agree with all of these predictions, especially some of the "leaning" states. For example, as between these two guys, Virginia would be solid red. It may also be more accurate that leaning blue states, like Pennsylvania, are really, leaning red. McCain could potentially blow him out. From the New York Times

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Posted at 2:35pm on May 12, 2008 Are we about to see a McCain / Huckabee ticket?

By mikefisk

If US News' source is to be believed, then yes.

I see this positioning as a bit of a "lesser of two evils" expand-the-electoral-base strategy... McCain's trying to get the Evangelical base to not sit at home on Election Day while hoping that he doesn't drive off business and free-market-oriented voters, who could very well vote for Bob Barr, Wayne Allyn Root, or whoever ends up winning a wide-open Libertarian Party race (or, like the aforementioned Evangelicals, they might stay home as well).

Overall, this proposed ticket has several advantages, as well as several drawbacks.

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Posted at 1:40pm on May 12, 2008 Yes, Experience Matters

The Green Candidate

By Dan McLaughlin

Does Barack Obama's inexperience matter - and should it?

Who ya gonna call?

I. Experience Matters In The Presidency

The presidency is an enormous, complex and dangerous job. The president's first and foremost responsibility is as the Commander-in-Chief, with responsibility for reacting, sometimes without time to exhaustively gather and sift the best possible information and explore all the alternatives, and with the need at times to rally the nation to do difficult and painful things. The president is also the head of the vast, sprawling executive branch, the nation's chief law enforcement officer, the head of his or her party, the appointer of life-tenured federal judges and scores of influential bureaucrats, the submitter of budgets and proposer of legislation. No president comes to the job fully prepared for all its demands. But the more of those demands the president comes truly unprepared for, the more difficulty he or she will have in mastering them all at once.

While there are a variety of life experiences that are useful for a president to have, to my mind there are five types of experience that are particularly important:

Read On...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | John McCain | Obamafiles — Comments (30)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:06pm on May 12, 2008 Novak ginning up controversy with a couple of idiot evangelicals

By Charles Bird

Robert Novak prides himself on wearing two journalist hats. He's a columnist and he dabbles in original reporting, displaying both attributes when he outed Valerie Plame almost five years ago. Given all those years on Crossfire, we also know that Novak does not back down from controversy, and sometimes he'll gin it up. Lastly, we know that Bob Novak is a big-time Ron Paul supporter, and there are indications that elements of the Ron Paul campaign are seeking to undermine the McCain campaign at the Republican convention.

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Posted at 11:40am on May 12, 2008 Sun-Times: To Heck With Clinton, Obama 'Our First Woman President'

By Warner Todd Huston

We can all painfully recall when back in 1998 New Yorker columnist Toni Morrison obsequiously called Bill Clinton our "first black president," can't we? I suppose it isn't surprising that Morrison is now supporting Barack Obama since she is all about race, of course. It should be noted Obama is a tad blacker than Bill Clinton so the race mongers of the left are finally streaming to him after a slow start. Yes, the racemongers are a block sewn up by the Obama campaign at last. But this leaves the identity politics folks with a problem. What of the purported but fading "first woman president," Hillary Clinton? Well, the Chicago Sun-Times is here to help us out with that, pulling a Morrison by calling Barack Obama "our first woman president."

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