John McCain admitted to us in an interview, as he has to others, that if he lost the nomination, immigration would be the reason. Now he might have won the nomination on that very issue. He won South Carolina and now Florida, two states where immigrants are plentiful and immigration is a big issue among Republican voters. Romney’s tough talk on immigration helped him among very conservative voters but hurt him otherwise, probably sinking him in Florida.
New Hampshire and Iowa no longer look so vulnerable in 2012. Sure, Carl Levin and others will try again to take them down. But any potential 2012 candidates, and their advisers, have to be looking at this race and thinking that it is wiser to fight it out in the early states than wait for big wins in big states that come later. Rudy and Fred had national celebrity status and were at the top in national polling, but that is no substitute for actually campaigning or for the status and momentum early state victories or close seconds confer.
Mitt Romney’s speech was so good, and delivered so well, I wonder where this guy was before the last week. His concession speeches have all been gracious and well-written. But this one seemed to flow forth with real passion, something he has lacked, or appeared to lack, so far. He spoke like a man who really believes in changing Washington in conservative ways. The segment in which he listed Washington’s failures worked because he seemed genuinely upset about it and eager to fix the problem. Maybe he was just upset about losing — I thought he choked up a few times during the speech. But for once his emotions came through, and he appeared to be not a technocrat with little political conviction but a Washington outsider who passionately desires to make Americans’ lives better.
McCain delivered another very well-written speech that touched all the conservative bases. He mentioned Reagan twice, talked about why he is a Republican, and sought to reassure economic and social conservatives that he is one of them, too. (I had no idea he discussed Reagan via tapcodes with other prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton.) He was gracious in victory, but in saying kind things about his rivals he forgot Ron Paul.
Did you notice former NH GOP chairman Wayne Semprini on the stage with Rudy?
Clinton’s slimy strategy of campaigning in Florida after pledging not to paid off. No delegates. Yet. But she will do everything she can to get them seated. She not only played New Hampshire voters for suckers, but she played the other Democratic candidates, too. Once her main rivals were sidelined by the pledge, she slipped in and took those two states. Now she’s trying to get the delegates the other candidates all believed would not be awarded. There’s a word for that. It’s called stealing. If she gets this nomination by seating the Florida and Michigan delegates at the convention, she will have stolen it.
McCain, obviously, is now the man to beat on Feb. 5. I won’t rule Romney out, but his challenge is finding a persona that wins. In each primary state he has presented a different image of himself. None has worked. Is he the social conservative he was in Iowa, the economic conservative in New Hampshire and Florida, or the protectionist in Michigan? I think his strongest bet is what it always has been: playing up his economic message, telling the stories of his management successes, and presenting an agenda for shrinking the leviathan and winning the War on Terror. But he has focused so much on trying to appeal to all the GOP subgroups that his incredible career has been lost in the competing messages and he has not made a convincing case that he is the best choice for voters who want to shrink the federal government and change the way Washington does business. There’s probably not enough time for him to find that voice, as Hillary might say, at this point.
I just got a press release from the White House with this boastful headline:
“President Bush Takes Unprecedented Steps To Advance Earmark Reform”
So, in the EIGHTH YEAR of his term, Bush “takes unprecedented steps to advance earmark reform.”
Where was he the other seven years?
Oh, yeah. Signing bills containing unprecedented amounts of earmarks.
So after years of unprecedented earmarking, led by Republicans, Bush finally takes unprecedented steps to advance earmark reform — but only after Democrats take control of Congress, and thus the earmarking process.
Way to control those earmarks, George.
Conservative Blogger has found a way.
Frank Rich doesn’t see how. I never thought I’d find a Frank Rich column as engrossing as this one. He’s largely right, I suspect, and that ought to trouble Democrats. His analysis is very similar to those made by some Republican commentators.
On The Exchange this morning, Gov. John Lynch again refused to rule out tax increases to balance the budget this year.
Laura Knoy asked him twice if he would rule out tax increases, and he twice answered by saying he was not focused on taxes, but on spending.
By passing up the opportunity not just to pledge not to raise taxes but to discourage tax hikes, Lynch sends the clear signal to legislators that tax increases are OK with him.
Does anyone think legislators won’t run with that and choose to raise some taxes (and maybe fees) to balance the budget this year?
By again refusing to rule out tax hikes, Lynch is almost guaranteeing another tax increase, or set of tax increases, this year.
Comment from Pete Versais in Concord: Time to throw the do nothing Gov out of Concord. Oh, and he can take his fellow cronies with him.
Once you’ve got your bomb-filled suicide vest on, be sure you don’t fall down the stairs.
I’ve seen it suggested that the Hillary Clinton machine stole the 2008 New Hampshire Democratic primary. A hand recount of the ballots has not revealed that.
Clinton’s win was driven by big victories in Manchester and Nashua, where she beat Barack Obama by more than 5,000 votes. The recount has shown that her votes in New Hampshire’s largest cities were slightly overcounted, but the overcounts happened only in Manchester’s Ward 5 and Nashua’s Ward 5.
In Manchester’s Ward 5, Clinton was credited with 64 votes when she actually got 48. In Nashua’s Ward 5, she was credited with 76 when she actually got 34. The Secretary of State’s office says in both cases votes for vice-president were accidentally counted as votes for president.
In every other Manchester and Nashua ward, the recount found that Clinton got the same number of votes as originally tallied, or she was originally credited with fewer — not more — than she actually got.
The next thing to do? Verify the same-day registrations. Flooding precincts with non-residents who registered to vote on primary day is the only other way for Clinton to have stolen the election.
Rep. David Campbell, D-Nashua, has introduced a bill to outlaw text messaging while driving. (Here’s the bill.) But texting while driving is already illegal in New Hampshire.
It’s covered under our negligent driving statute, which reads:
“Whoever upon any way drives a vehicle negligently or causes a vehicle to be driven negligently, as defined in RSA 626:2, I(d), or in a manner that endangers or is likely to endanger any person or property shall be guilty of a violation and shall be fined not less than $250 nor more than $500 for a first offense and not less than $500 nor more than $1,000 for a second or subsequent offense.”
The state’s legal definition of “negligently” is: “A person acts negligently with respect to a material element of an offense when he fails to become aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that his failure to become aware of it constitutes a gross deviation from the conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.”
The fine under existing law is 2.5 times larger than the fine Campbell included in his bill.
Why is this bill necessary in any way?
Comment from David L. in Surry: In the article Mr. Campbell’s math seems to be as bad as his knowledge of existing laws. He says that at 65 mph a driver is traveling 88 feet per second down the highway, well he should check his math because at 65 mph the driver would be traveling at 95.3 feet per second down the highway.
Asked by Laura Knoy to respond to the fact that conditions in Iraq have improved dramatically, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter said on NHPR today that we still should get out now.
“It makes me think of the thing, that saying, this road’s well-plowed and everybody’s praising one another about how well-plowed the road is and how easy it is to travel down that road. But the qustion is, if you’re going the wrong direction from your destination, what difference does it make. It’s not how the war is going, but if the war should be going on. The question is, should we be there. . .
“Things aren’t really going as well in Iraq as they would have you think. We just finished another Armed Services Committee hearing this week. They’re talking about Iraq not being able to take care of their own security until 2018…
“We’re saying, OK, we’ve tamped down the violence. Yes, we did. We have terrific soldiers, and they are on the streets of Baghdad. If you put cops on every corner in this country, in every city, you’d see the violence go down as well. But when they talk about the Iraqi volunteers, neighborhood volunteers that are helping to chase out the bad guys, we’re paying them. And the reason that we’re paying, the United States is paying them, is because they’re Sunni, and the Shia don’t want the Sunni to work with them. They won’t put them on the payroll. That does not indicate reconciliation.
“The President went from saying national reconciliation to local reconciliation. The majority of the Iraqi parliament asked us last summer to go home. . . When you talk about these sheiks coming on board with the United States, we’re paying them. We’re paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars now to try to take al-Qaida out in southern Iraq.
“So, have we won their hearts and minds, or is this simply more of American investment in this place? And that’s what it really is. It’s the American dollar. Ten to twelve billion dollars a month. We can’t build a bridge in our country because of Iraq. We can’t provide health care for our children because of Iraq. We have to borrow money because of Iraq. And the final insult, if you think the Iraqis are with us, is the fact that when they bought small weapons, when they bought them, they went and bought them from China! Not from us. They said that our system for foreign military sales was too slow.
“So I would say to people, have another look. The violence is down. I’m very, very happy about that. That is because our brave troops are working very hard. But we do not have national reconciliation. We do not have local reconciliation. We do not have any plans to exit.”
Knoy asked if we just pull out, which is what she clearly implied, and Shea-Porter said, no, we can’t do that. We have to use diplomacy to “win the hearts and minds” of the Iraqi government (NOT the people, but the government!)
She said we should get out regardless of the conditions on the ground, then said we couldn’t get out right away because the conditions on the ground aren’t good enough. She said the surge has improved conditions on the ground, but said we should still get out because conditions haven’t improved enough. She contradicted herself I don’t know how many times.
I think the bottom line for her, as she said at the start, is that we shouldn’t be there because we should be spending our money on social services here at home. That is, I think, a horrifyingly callous and cold-hearted argument. She knows full well that a U.S. withdrawal would return some parts of Iraq to the ethnic cleansing nightmare they were before the surge. She’s willing to accept that so the federal government can offer subsidized health care for middle-class children. Let the brave Iraqis who helped us subdue al-Qaida and Batthist death squads be slaughtered in the streets because people who make three times the federal poverty level can get a little help buying health insurance for their kids. That’s what her argument ultimately boils down to.
The editorial cartoon we ran today features Fred Thompson floating upside down in a swimming pool, a bystander saying, “He looked a lot better when he only had his toe in.”
I’ve been saving that cartoon for four months, waiting for just the right time to run it. Boy, did I get lucky.
Fred Thompson’s campaign sent an e-mail minutes ago announcing that Thompson has dropped out of the Republican presidential race. To which one might respond, “Fred Thompson had a presidential campaign?”
“Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States,” Fred said. “I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people.”
Rudy Giuliani has to be thankful that Fred Thompson was in the race because otherwise Rudy’s campaign would be the most ill-conceived of the lot. Fred saved him that humiliation.
Whereas Rudy had a Feb. 5 strategy, then a New Hampshire strategy, then a Florida strategy again, then an Iowa strategy, then a Florida strategy again, Thompson had. . . hmmm. . . well, Thompson thought it would be nice to run for President. He didn’t seem to think very much about how to do that; he just wanted to do it. So he did. Now he’s not doing it anymore.
It is fair to say that Dennis Kucinich had a better-planned campaign than Thompson did. No one I talked to, either in Thompson’s campaign or close to it, really had much of an idea exactly what was going on. They liked Fred, he was really conservative, they all said. But how was he going to win the nomination? Oh, well, people will see that he’s the most conservative candidate and they’ll be drawn to him like kids to candy. But Fred was no box of Milk Duds, it turned out. As a candidate, he was not nearly as attractive as he thought he was. And for Republican voters to be drawn to you, they first have to be exposed to you. He just wasn’t very concerned about that part. He seemed to think his celebrity status would do the work for him. It didn’t. And now he’s out, less than five months after he got in, insisting at the time that it wasn’t too late and he had plenty of time to make his case to the American people.
Time he might’ve had — IF he’d spent it making his case. Which, mysteriously, he didn’t.
It wasn’t all bad for Fred, though. He did get to hang out at Chez Vachon for a few minutes, grab a burger to go from Jillian’s and drive around in a big bus with his face painted on it. That’s pretty fun.
Speaking of the proposed economic stimulus package, Sen. Judd Gregg told reporters today, “We’re about six months behind this economy… We’re going to be so far behind this economy that it’ll have little effect.”
Yep, that’s about right.
