November 2007 Archives

From CNN Political Ticker

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Chief National Correspondent John King reports Republican presidential candidate John McCain will go to Iraq to have Thanksgiving dinner with U.S. troops. A McCain adviser said the Arizona Senator would be part of a small Congressional delegation. No details of the visit are being disclosed for security reasons.

With McCain, doing the right thing and campaigning for President are usually the same thing.

From RedState.com: McCain's Excellent Adventure

Sen. McCain has slowly fallen in national polls throughout 2007 as other candidates entered the race. After firing a chunk of his staff and downsizing, many media outlets were ready to write off his campaign because of his support of the Iraq War, comprehensive immigration reform, and the "surge."

In the past week, McCain seems to have found his groove, mollified some of his detractors, won new friends, and began a possible surge of his own.

About a week ago, Sen. Brownback endorsed McCain, Charles Bird and Jerry Zandstra announced their support for McCain here on RedState, and I asked the question whether this surge was for real.

A week later, Sen. McCain has seen CNN attack him unfairly, a Curt Shilling endorsement, a David Brooks column running around the country extolling McCain as a unique example of character in politics, and a new poll showing him up 2 points on Hillary (which helps answer this lady's question).

That is the first polls with any Republican ahead of Hillary in a few weeks. The trends now show McCain, not Rudy, as the most electable Republican in a head-to-head match-up with Hillary.

From Veterans Day 2007: Victory in Iraq?, by Tony Blankley

It has become obligatory for both pro- and anti-war commentators never to mention the possibility of victory in Iraq. The most that anti-war people will admit is that the surge has gained a temporary military advantage in a war that cannot be won militarily. The most pro-war commentators will claim is that they see the possibility of success, perhaps, maybe, someday, somehow.

But as of Veterans Day 2007, I think one can claim a very real expectation that next year, the world may see a genuine, old-fashioned victory in the Iraq war. In five years, we will have overturned Saddam Hussein's government, killed, captured or driven out almost all al-Qaida terrorists, suppressed the violent Shiite militias, induced the Sunni tribal leaders and their people to shun resistance and send their sons into the army and police and seek peaceful resolution of disputes -- and we will have stood up a multisectarian, tribally inclusive army capable of maintaining the peace that our troops established.

[...]

...on Thursday, The New York Times noted: "American forces have routed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi militant network, from every neighborhood in Baghdad, a top American general said today, allowing American troops involved in the 'surge' to depart as planned." Investor's Business Daily assessed: "Many military analysts -- including some who don't support the war -- have concluded that the U.S. and its allies are on the verge of winning."

McCain and his salty supporters!  They serve a lot of alcohol at these events, it's really not her fault.

Solid interview from FNS with Chris Wallace on November 11, 2007, in case you missed it.

Part 1:



Part 2:

from SecureandProsperous.com

McCain beats Hillary by 2% in latest general election matchup from Rasmussen.  That would likely grow as her negatives, and McCain's positives, become far more pronounced moving forward.  The good story in Iraq is starting to be told, and even if it gets worse between now and Nov '08, we are sticking with these people.  There are many people in Iraq who want us to succeed.  We're staying for them.

Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney all lose to Clinton by 5-6% in the latest poll.

McCain wins by 2%. 

Giuliani and Thompson are dropping against Clinton even when things are going badly for her.  They are the perfect targets for her twisted snarky pandering poll-slicing gender politics routine.  Rudy has this corruption thing that is growing.  Is Kerik even the bottom of it?  Hmmm....

McCain, on the other hand, benefits off the backlash to this archetypal Clinton family behavior.  He is Clinton Kryptonite.  He has a similar effect on phony Romney.  Romney is not Kryptonite to Hillary.  His existence symbolizes and justifies shady, unprincipled behavior, and shifts the landscape back to one that favors Hillary. 

I don't know about Thompson.  I like him.  But it just doesn't seem to be working.  I don't think he communicates across the middle.  Actor comes up too big in mind when you think of him, and though his history is surprisingly strong, it is not well-known.  This makes it harder to break out of the boxes the Clinton's are building.  Look through the magazine section at Border's.  It's all anti-war, left wing, pro-Clinton.  Big Bill Clinton interview coming up in GQ, even after they canceled the mildly anti-Hillary report several weeks back. 

They own the media.   They have sweet-talked these pencilnecks into throwing all their anti-establishment street cred out the window.  It is a monolithic wall of stupidity out there.  How do you break through?

Thompson doesn't shine often enough, and isn't far enough off script to beat the powerful Clinton national dialogue warping machine.  Giuliani's corruption connections create a very bad media landscape through next year, where Bernard Kerik is likely to be in trial on federal corruption charges.  It neutralizes the Clinton's shady connections, and the Clinton machine beats him.  His steady performance on 9/11 won't pull through.  It puts too much weight on those moments when he'll have to prove that he's in charge at disasters we all should be working most days to prevent anyway.  He did a good job on 9/11, but being steady and in-charge when called is sort of an American thing, not a Giuliani thing.  Many Americans can do it just as well.

McCain certainly can, and would lead and inspire in a different and better way, should circumstances require.

These connections to corruption are really bad for Giuliani.  It ruins the glistening New York City image, which is BS anyway.  New York smells worse than ever.  The criminal links won't play well when people tune into the debates in those final weeks when things get intense at the end of October '08.  And he has zero record on foreign policy or military matters.  At moments like that, the trend is going to be even more strongly in McCain's favor than it is now.

McCain is now an insurgent campaign within the Republican Party.  There are a lot of similarities to Reagan.  But McCain is better than Reagan in many respects, too, which we'll get to later.

McCain's story is breaking through, and goes to something real and deep. 

Through McCain, America can confirm our support for time-tested principles.

[RCP]

Brad at Azamatterofact maps the contours of where we are:

There are a myriad of reasons for the McCain Comeback.

1) He was never really the front runner. He had the highest name recognition among Republican Candidates.
2) He was never really gone.
3) People are just now starting to focus on the election campaigns and as they do McCain gains.
4) Over the summer and early fall many people were saying "If I thought McCain could win, I would vote for him." Now that he is showing he can, those are McCain voters.

I don't believe in polls. I don't know who is first in the nation or in Iowa. I believe in trends and as we used to say on Wall Street "The trend is your friend." The trend is definitely the friend of John McCain.

Read the whole post, and the articles/posts he links to.  Many seem to be reaching this conclusion.  If money buys the election, Romney takes the nomination with advertising-intoxicated hoards.  If Giuliani wins, it defines a new Republican party. If the voters decide to stand on principle, the man who provided a consistent voice of wartime leadership from 2001-2007 was John McCain.  His real leadership had a material effect that kept us from abandoning the Iraqis who need our help to secure a free future.

Hillary proved herself not to be America's Thatcherite tough broad.  She bent like a rubber tree during this period, and on matters of war and peace that's not acceptable.  That a Democrat reversal of American policy might be only a single US election away gave and gives confidence to terrorists and bomb-makers over there, and affects their actions the next day.  Hillary and the Democrats must know this too, so the political calculations involved in saying the things their flock wants to hear are pretty ugly.

Thompson, time and again, gives off the feeling that he is playing McCain.  And why vote for that when you can have the real deal?

Novak comes to logic for McCain nomination:

Fred Thompson was well into a prolonged dialogue about abortion with interviewer Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday when he said something stunning for social conservatives: "I do not think it is a wise thing to criminalize young girls and perhaps their parents as aiders and abettors." He then went further: "You can't have a [federal] law" that "would take young, young girls . . . and say, basically, we're going to put them in jail."

[...]

Jailing women is a spurious issue raised by abortion rights activists. Russert did not bring it up in his questioning. What Thompson said could be expected from NARAL.

[...]

After Thompson's unannounced candidacy got off to a shaky start, I checked again with Miss Jones shortly after Labor Day to see whether she had changed her mind. No, she still supported Thompson, though she seemed less enthusiastic than she had been five months earlier. But Sunday's "Meet the Press" changed everything. "It was the last straw," Miss Jones told me. "I'm outraged and so are a lot of other people."

[...]

Miss Jones told me she switched off "Meet the Press" after Thompson's talk about jailing women. If she had continued, she would have heard him reiterate positions that previously had disturbed social conservatives: opposition to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and opposition to congressional intervention to save the life of Terri Schiavo.

Thompson's performance coincided with Republican perception of weakness in Sen. Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate. But where will Miss Jones go? Giuliani still defends a woman's right to choose. Romney has made the switch from pro-choice, ending previous opposition to a human life amendment. Huckabee is described by one national conservative leader as a member of the "Christian left." That leaves McCain, no favorite of the right, but the major candidate with the clearest longtime position against abortion.

[source: Washington Post]

In case you missed it, McCain is scheduled to appear on Hardball with Matthews this Friday, November 9.

[source: RCP]

From NYTimes.com: Behind Brownback’s McCain Endorsement

Senator Sam Brownback, who met with both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani before deciding the endorse Mr. McCain, said that it was the Arizona Senator’s long record of consistent support of issues important to
Christian voters  - particularly on abortion - that ultimately led to his decision.

He also sought to undercut the idea that Mr. Giuliani was the best candidate to beat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. McCain, he said during a press conference this morning in Dubuque, is “the best pro-life candidate to beat Hillary Clinton.”

Another sign the breeze is lining up behind McCain's back.  Could be a key moment.