Rick Santorum. Now? Seriously? This is ridiculous. How are prognosticators supposed to do our jobs if we get a break so late it makes Mike Huckabee look like an early frontrunner? Seriously, Iowa, simmer down now. All I know is Ron Paul isn’t winning. Beyond that, anything’s possible.
Remember 2004? Insurgent Democrat Howard Dean uses a rash of young people online to raise surprising sums of money and gather incredible “buzz” for his candidacy. And yet he drops to third in Iowa, then second in New Hampshire. He would not go on to California, and Texas, and New York, nor would he take the White House. Now between the PPP poll I covered | Read More »
I’ve been telling people PPP’s polling Iowa was making nonsense predictions. The pollster has doubled down. I’m going way out on a limb here, and if the actual results refudiate what I’m saying then I’m going to have to take some taunting, but I just don’t see how this poll remotely reflects reality, and I’m flatly saying it’s not predictive of the caucus results.
I talked with several folks from Heritage and AEI after the debate, in order to get their reactions to how the debate went, how it came off, and how they felt the debate came across to watchers. As you can see, spin rooms are kind of noisy; they’re also pretty focused places. Everybody in there – including probably you – needs a specific piece of | Read More »
My post-debate take, which is of course made vastly more relevant by the fact that… I followed it onsite rather than online. Well, online at onsite. Generally, these events are a bit different from the inside, including (surprisingly) less chances to schmooze with the candidates than you’d expect. A ‘spin room’ is there primarily to get access to raw material for the article that you | Read More »
Once Newt Gingrich finally gained some genuine attention after months of praise of his debate performances, the Republican presidential race became a mess. We didn’t know who was leading. It could have been Gingrich, Mitt Romney, or Herman Cain. For now though it’s settled: Newt Gingrich leads. And as I’ve said in the past, watch his favorability ratings to know whether it’ll last.
Republican presidential candidates turn their attention to foreign policy and national security tonight at a debate hosted by The Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute. It airs on CNN at 8 p.m. ET. Over the past few days, workers transformed an empty auditorium at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., into a full-scale television set. As the final preparations were made, Heritage got a behind-the-scenes look | Read More »
Chaos: Mathematically, we see it when small changes to the inputs of a function produce large, wild changes to the outputs. I believe we’re seeing that now in the GOP primary race, as a weakened Herman Cain and a strengthened Newt Gingrich, combined with a steady Mitt Romney and a resilient Rick Perry, turn it into a four cornered brawl.
My quick thoughts before I get back on radio (you can listen and call in): 1. Where has this Rick Perry been? Finally, the guy showed up with unscripted, from the gut answers. The few scripted answers fell flat (see e.g. Jeffres). The rest were good. He’s not the best debater. But he certainly did not lose that debate. 2. Rick Santorum is too angry | Read More »
A couple of debates ago we looked at where the Republican Presidential primary stood nationally. Since then we’ve seen Mitt Romney surge, presumably as the anti-Rick Perry candidate. But will Perry himself tumble after widely criticized debate efforts? Let’s check the new CNN poll.
I’ve got up a post at CNN.com right now on Mitt Romney and what the media is missing in its 2012 analysis. When the bulk of the Republican pundits and prognosticators support one candidate, the reporters and political analysts who rely on those Republicans tend to act as if that candidate is the one everybody supports. The media, in effect, have become film critic Pauline | Read More »
Last night CNN hosted a key Republican Presidential debate, in which Rick Perry took a variety of attacks. This is critical because going into Rick Perry’s first debate, his favorability ratings were great, and his unfavorables were miniscule compared with the field. Let’s see where CNN had the state of the race going into last night.
From 5pm to 7pm tonight I’ll be on WSB providing a pre-game show for the CNN Tea Party Express debate. You can listen live at http://wsbradio.com and call in to discuss the debate at 1-800-WSB-TALK. From 7pm to 8pm I’ll be on John King USA for CNN’s pre-debate coverage. From 8pm to 10pm, we’ll all be tuned to the debate and I’ll be following #CNNTeaParty | Read More »
Note: This is an updated version of my original post on Naser Abdo and the Fort Hood terrorist plot which was prevented last week. The updates have been made in-text due to an increase in the amount of information available on the case. A second terrorist attack on soldiers stationed at Fort Hood, Texas in under two years was discovered last week, and its plotter, | Read More »
The headline of the day is that a second terrorist attack on Fort Hood, Texas in under two years was discovered this week, and its plotter, Private First Class Nasser Jason Abdo, arrested before the attack could be carried out. The latter fact, of course, differentiates this plot from the successful attack carried out by Major Nidal Hasan in November 2009, when the Army officer | Read More »
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