Stick A Fork In Him

The South Carolina GOP just abandoned Mark Sanford.

The tide of support from his own Republican Party officially turned against disgraced Gov. Mark Sanford Thursday as the South Carolina GOP called for his resignation.

South Carolina Republican Chairman Karen Floyd and the state party’s executive committee held a 5 p.m. conference call before announcing that they had decided it was time for Sanford to go.

SCGOP spokesman Ryan Meerstein said over two-thirds of those voting favored the governor’s resignation. He added that a letter from Floyd to the governor would be released later in the evening.

That's pretty much it. They say that in politics, if you're explaining, you're losing, and I would say this ridiculously long letter from Sanford's website represents a whole lot of explaining, including the measuring of hours logged on state planed by past Governors. He held a companion press conference today, too. The funniest part of all this is that Sanford, the ultimate conservative's conservative, is being taken down for profligate personal spending, and his facts and figured thrown up to defend himself just don't cut it. That's of course because the forced resignation on these uses of state travel expenses are a sideshow, cover for the SC GOP to just dump him because they fear a backlash from their "family values" base.

Buzzards Circle Over Mark Sanford

Despite having some of the best timing in the history of politics, it really appears that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford will be forced into resigning after revealing his walk down the Appalachian Trail with an Argentine woman. The Speaker of the South Carolina House has asked Sanford to resign, and 60 other Republicans in the House hand-delivered Sanford a letter with the same message.

I won't cry for Mark Sanford, who should resign for his disgraceful record as Governor more than anything. But this is starting to feel like a witch hunt to me. There are grounds for dismissal - his abandoning the state for two weeks back in June, for example, or his use of state travel resources for personal business. And surely, given how Jim McGreevey and Eliot Spitzer were run right out of town, it might feel rewarding to a Democrat to see someone like Sanford run out of his office. But personal trysts should not form the basis of an assault on someone's public life. There's a public record that should be sufficient for that.

That said, Sanford does look to have abused his privileges as Governor on numerous occasions, and that ought to be enough for an investigation. I'm happy to have him sit there as a national embarrassment and a walking symbol of Republican hypocrisy on family values, however.

Here's another one.

Sanford's Luck Running Out?

Mark Sanford continues to be the luckiest bastard in the world. Every time another twist and turn comes up in his personal saga, some giant event comes along and knocks him off the front page. When new details came out about his affair, Michael Jackson died. When questions were raised about using state money for his personal travel, Sarah Palin resigned. And when talk of impeachment swirled around South Carolina, with his own Lt. Governor calling for his resignation, Ted Kennedy passes away. The timing is really incredible.

But even this run of luck may not be enough to save Sanford's hide:

South Carolina Republican lawmakers are laying plans for a special session legislative session on whether to impeach and remove embattled Gov. Mark Sanford by the end of the year, several senior state lawmakers have told The Washington Times.

Republican lawmakers in the state House will use a regularly scheduled annual retreat in Myrtle Beach this weekend to discuss the governor's fate and the details on whether to call a special impeachment session of the legislature before its scheduled reconvening in January, Rep. Gary Simrill, a Republican, told The Times on Thursday.

Two bills of impeachment already are being prepared - one by a Republican lawmaker and the other by a Democrat, Mr. Simrill said.

Mr. Simrill, who said he has voted about 80 percent of the time with the Republican governor, met privately with Mr. Sanford on Tuesday and urged him to resign but to no avail.

One thing not discussed throughout this is the economic troubles in South Carolina right now. The legislature wants to get this distraction off the table so they can focus on the skyrocketing unemployment happening there. And this may not be as big an issue if the economy was humming along.

As to whether Sanford should be impeached, you have a better argument basing it on misuse of public funds and abandoning the state for a couple weeks, not a personal issue.

Luckiest Man On Earth

Mark Sanford made his big announcement about walking the Appalachian Trail with a woman not his wife, and the next day Michael Jackson died. He gave maybe the biggest no-no of an interview to the AP, where he called his mistress his "soul-mate," and within a couple days the Quitta from Wasilla stepped up to the mic. At this rate, Sanford will strangle a bear cub live on South Carolina television, and the next day Osama bin Laden and Britney Spears will announce a secret wedding in Vegas. The guy has timing.

But while it's slipped off the radar nationally, locally in South Carolina the story continues. FWIW, Sanford doesn't want to resign.

After spending the holiday weekend with his family in Florida, Mark Sanford is apparently intent on fighting off calls for his resignation and staying in office, according to one South Carolina Republican who spoke with the governor on Monday.

Richard Yow, a member of the South Carolina Republican Party executive committee from Chesterfield County, received a phone call from Sanford on Monday afternoon. Yow said he spoke to the embattled governor for ten minutes, during which Sanford asked Yow for his forgiveness.

Yow said he told Sanford he could forgive him, but he told the governor that he should resign for the sake of the state and his family. Sanford, he said, rejected the idea.

"He said resigning would be the easy way out," Yow told CNN.

There's a conference call for the South Carolina Republican Party to decide on a formal response to the Sanford troubles. That could range anywhere from a show of support to a formal call for resignation. It's really anyone's guess.

Sanford's Peculiar "Honesty"

I heard a lot of liberal commentators react to Mark Sanford's tearful admission of an adulterous affair with admiration that "at least he got everything out there" and told the truth like a stand-up guy. Except, of course, he didn't:

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Tuesday that he saw his Argentine mistress more times than previously disclosed, including what was to be a farewell meeting in New York chaperoned by a spiritual adviser soon after his wife found out about the affair.

In a lengthy and emotional interview with The Associated Press in his Statehouse office, the governor described five meetings with Maria Belen Chapur over the past year, including two romantic, multi-night stays with her in New York before they met there again intending to break up.

He said he met her two other times — their first meeting in 2001 at an open-air dance spot in Uruguay and a coffee date in New York in 2004 during the Republican National Convention. He said neither time was romantic.

It was the first disclosure of any liaisons with Chapur in the United States and contradicted a public confession last week during which Sanford admitted to a total of five encounters over their eight-year relationship.

By next week, we'll learn that he created a backdrop of Charleston somewhere in Buenos Aires and lived there all last winter.

The guy's obviously in love with this Argentine woman, and he should probably just follow his heart and go off with her. I don't think that, at this point, the people of South Carolina will miss him.

...Now there are multiple women.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford says he "crossed lines" with a handful of women other than his mistress — but never had sex with them.

The governor says he "never crossed the ultimate line" with anyone but Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine at the center of a scandal that has derailed Sanford's once-promising political career.

During an emotional interview at his Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he's trying to fall back in love with his wife.

He says that during the other encounters he "let his guard down" with some physical contact but "didn't cross the sex line." He wouldn't go into detail.

So honest and forthright!

What're You In For? Adultery?

The fact that Mark Sanford's adultery may be criminal under South Carolina law isn't a black mark on Sanford, but on SOUTH CAROLINA. While as Governor, Sanford probably should have known the relevant statute, I cannot believe that adultery would be punishable by fine or imprisonment. That's kind of appalling, yet unsurprising in a "The Ten Commandments should be the basis of our legal system" kind of way.

Of slightly more importance is the report that some of Sanford's trips to Argentina were taxpayer-funded. That does strike me as serious, although there's no specific causality that's been revealed yet.

Anything Happen While I Was Away?

I was out this morning until now, anything up?

Anything at all?

After going AWOL for seven days, Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday that he had secretly flown to Argentina to visit a woman with whom he was having an affair. Wiping away tears, he apologized to his wife and four sons and said he will resign as head of the Republican Governors Association.

"I've been unfaithful to my wife," he said in a bombshell news conference in which the 49-year-old governor ruminated aloud with remarkable frankness on God's law, moral absolutes and following one's heart. He said he spent the last five days "crying in Argentina."

Sanford, who in recent months had been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, ignored questions about whether he would step down as governor.

At least one state lawmaker called for his resignation. As a congressman, Sanford voted in favor of three of four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, citing the need for "moral legitimacy."

Oh, that. Anything else? Slow news day.

OK, a few things. First, powerful men thinking they're invulnerable? Go figure. These things are actually not widespread; despite the anecdotal evidence, a small percentage of politicians have affairs on their spouses. But to the extent that they are, they are internal matters between these people and their families. Nobody really knows what goes on in someone else's marriage, and I really don't care about my representatives' faithfulness. In fact, none of us should. But where this breaks down is when these sanctimonious "family values" types want to police personal behavior of their constituents when they cannot keep it in their pants themselves.

That's the usual disclaimer. But this Sanford case is much, much different. He left his state, in fact he left the country, for seven days without telling anybody. Setting aside the fact that going to Argentina to "say goodbye" for seven days doesn't make any kind of sense, and if he got away with this I'm sure there would be additional hikes on the Appalachian trail, so to speak, in the future, leaving the country with no proper explanation is a severe dereliction of duty. He apparently lied to his own staff, lied to the Lieutenant Governor, and left his state in the lurch, despite the unpredictability of events (aren't we in hurricane season?). That's probably a firing offense. If I was a South Carolinian, it would be to me, regardless of party.

The larger story is the complete ineptitude of this crop of Republicans to capitalize on what could actually be a treacherous road for Barack Obama in 2012. Sanford has an affair. John Ensign has an affair. Bobby Jindal does an impression of Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock in his coming-out party. Newt Gingrich calls Sonia Sotomayor a racist. And on and on and on. If the economy fails to improve, and if health care fails to pass, Obama is actually vulnerable. That is, if there was a second political party in this country.

Somewhere, A Village Was Missing Its Idiot

This is weird:

The whereabouts of Gov. Mark Sanford was unknown for nearly four days, and some state leaders question who was in charge of the executive office.

But Sanford’s office told the lieutenant governor’s office Monday afternoon that Sanford has been reached and he is fine, said Frank Adams, head of Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer’s office on aging.

Neither the governor’s office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford after he left the mansion Thursday in a black SLED Suburban SUV, said Sen. Jake Knotts and three others familiar with the situation but declined to be identified.

First lady Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press earlier Monday her husband has been gone for several days and she did not know where.

She said she was not concerned [...] Jenny Sanford said the governor said he needed time away from their children to write something.

So great. He was off typing his awesome campaign book, The Audacity of Nope. But when you're a Governor of a state, can you just go walkabout for four days and not identify anyone of your whereabouts? South Carolina doesn't operate on auto-pilot. There could be a fire, a flood, all sorts of matters requiring executive attention.

Irresponsible selfishness from the chief neo-Hooverist in the GOP.

Only Astroturf Front Groups Deserve Handouts

Mark Sanford's getting a lot of heat in his home state. People have set up a tent city in front of the Capitol and called it "Sanfordville," bearing an eerie resemblance to the Bonus Marcher's tent city that bedeviled Herbert Hoover. Maybe Sanford will call in the National Guard to shoot them, too.

For now, he's put up a TV ad explaining himself.

A nonprofit group with close ties to Gov. Mark Sanford will spend $230,000 on television ads defending Sanford’s opposition to some federal stimulus money.

Sanford will appear in the ads, sponsored by Carolinians for Reform. The group was founded by a handful of Sanford campaign donors and aims to educate the public about the governor’s positions. Sanford frequently has appeared in ads by similar groups that support his agenda.

Sanford said the ads, which begin airing today, are meant to clear up “confusion” about his position. Opponents, including lawmakers and the Democratic National Committee, have tried “to frighten a lot of teachers and law enforcement,” Sanford said.

How has this group, Carolinians for Reform, raised the money to put up ads in the past?

The group that is paying for the ads has been the subject of controversy.

Sanford directed more than $100,000 left over from a 2006 national governor’s conference, held in Charleston, to Carolinians for Reform. The convention had received a $150,000 state grant.

After state Sen. Jake Knotts, R-Lexington, discovered the transfer, Carolinians for Reform returned the money to the state. Sanford said there was nothing illegal or wrong about sending the money to the group though it did create an image problem.

In other words, Sanford has vowed for months not to give state money to help build schools or increase unemployment insurance, but he has no problem giving state money to a wingnut welfare front group that glorifies him in TV ads. Unbelievable.

What A Putz

After all that sturm und drang, all the speeches about values, all the high-minded talk of massive debts and staying true to conservative principles, Mark Sanford chickened out.

Gov. Mark Sanford will comply with a midnight Friday stimulus deadline and become the last governor in the nation to seek millions of dollars in federal economic-recovery funds for his state, aides said late Thursday.

Sanford will continue contesting $700 million in education and law enforcement money for South Carolina, but his 11th-hour move to meet the deadline buys time for schools fearing mass teacher layoffs and draconian cuts.

Sanford's month-long fight over stimulus money placed South Carolina in the national spotlight and put him at loggerheads with President Barack Obama.

"Tomorrow the governor is going to send the (Section) 1607 certification for everything except the stabilization funds," Sanford's spokesman, Joel Sawyer, said Thursday evening. "The governor will apply for that (additional) money if the General Assembly is willing to compromise and pay down some debt with it."

They are all a bunch of frauds. And great work by the Obama Administration to force this confrontation. Now every time Sanford tries to contest this or that provision of funds, lawmakers in his state can point to this decision. And laugh.

A Liberal Is A Conservative Who Needs A Bailout

One of the 50 "mini-Hoovers" in the states finally got religion when he couldn't fix the problem of poor people not having enough to eat with another round of tax cuts. The episode is instructive.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Just hours before the unemployment benefits fund was to run out in South Carolina, the state with the nation’s third-highest jobless rate, Gov. Mark Sanford relented Wednesday and agreed to apply for a $146 million federal loan to shore it up, after weeks of refusing to do so.

The governor’s position had drawn rebukes even from fellow Republicans in the Legislature, one of whom denounced Mr. Sanford as “heartless,” and from newspaper editorial pages. On Wednesday, The State, the daily newspaper here in Columbia, accused the governor of playing “chicken with the lives of the 77,000” who are unemployed in South Carolina.

For weeks, Mr. Sanford, newly elected as head of the Republican Governors Association and known for being a fierce free-market foe of government spending, stuck to his stand, questioning the probity of the South Carolina Employment Security Commission and demanding a new audit of the agency.

It just couldn't be that the state had so many jobless that the fund was broke. There had to be some big gubmint mismanagement, or they were lying about their bookkeeping. He kept asking for a strict audit of the unemployment office to "cut the fat," although they have received a clean bill of health every year. But some freeloader at the agency had to be ruining it for everyone. The fact that the economy is in the shitter and South Carolina in particular has had their industrial base shipped overseas for the last 30 years had nothing to do with it.

I think Sanford's problem with the unemployment agency is that poor people get money for not working. Their running out of cash wasn't a bug, but a feature. But the inevitable outcome of conservative "ideas" in a crisis is people collapsing of starvation in the streets, and for some reason the public won't tolerate that. These lily-livered cowards must have never heard of something called "work ethic." And those rat-bastard bleeding heart reporters just ruin it for everybody.

Mildly rebuking the news media here, he said that “you can find any number of people, particularly around the holiday season, who have the most unfortunate circumstances, they’ve lost their job, and those are compelling personal stories.”

How dare they have an ounce of concern for their fellow man. Can't they let Governor Scrooge a moment's peace?

It goes without saying that Sanford is considered a leading candidate for the Republicans in 2012. But after this weak-kneed capitulation, he's obviously hurt his chances as a paragon of freedom and liberty. It really mucks up his campaign slogan "Sanford: No To Lucky Duckies!"

The Kennedys And The Clintons

Ted Kennedy is apparently not just endorsing Barack Obama today, he's going on the road for him, appearing in California, New York, New Jersey, Arizona and New Mexico. The Western states are notable. Kennedy has endeared himself to the Hispanic community with his work on comprehensive immigration reform. We saw in Nevada the split between Latinos and African-Americans, and if Kennedy can walk that back, it's very helpful for Obama's campaign.

But there's another component to the Kennedy endorsement. Over the last week, we have seen a former President turn himself into the attack-dog-in-chief, and while I don't think there was a racial component during the race, there ABSOLUTELY was one after the race, when he referred to Jesse Jackson's wins in South Carolina for virtually no reason. First of all, the Jackson wins were in caucuses that were lightly contested. Second, it was an explicit racial distinction, even if Jackson himself was not offended by it. And finally, it just put Clinton in the forefront, as if he was running for a third term. Part of this is the fact that the media is mesmerized by the Clenis and will put a microphone in front of Clinton no matter where he is or what he says. But he's certainly doing himself no favors, either. Here's Anonymous Liberal:

Which is why it is so disillusioning to see him engaged in what is obviously an attempt to marginalize his wife's chief rival as "the black candidate." Just today, he was trying to spin away Obama's overwhelming victory in South Carolina by going out of his way to compare Obama to Jesse Jackson. There has clearly been an attempt by the Clinton campaign over the last week or so, led chiefly by Bill Clinton, to dismiss Obama's success in South Carolina as being all about race. The goal has been to transport us back in time 20 years, to turn what had begun as an almost post-racial election into a replay of 1988. As Clinton knows, if Americans come to see Obama as the candidate of African-Americans--like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson in prior presidential races--his support among whites, hispanics, and other ethnic groups will plummet.

If this strategy is successful, it will all but ensure that Hillary Clinton wins the nomination. In that sense, it's smart and crafty politics. But it will only accomplish this at the expense of progressive ideals and the well-being of the country generally. It will take a moment in history that could have marked a huge step forward for the country and turn it into a huge step backward. It will take a moment that could have gone a long way toward smoothing over long-simmering racial tensions and instead only further inflame them.

Clinton is sullying his reputation, harming the Democratic coalition, and setting back race relations in this country, and he's doing all of this solely to advance his wife's near-term political prospects. It's as if he's become so focused on winning this primary battle that he's completely lost sight of all larger considerations.

It's hard to argue with any of that. And it's hard to argue with the statement that Clinton is doing whatever he can to pull his wife across the finish line, including the slippery slope of challenging established DNC rules just days before they are to be enacted.

It was said that Ted Kennedy would stay out of this race in order to bring the party together and heal it after a bitter primary fight. Actually, I think he's ENTERING the race to do the same thing. By taking aside against the tactics of former President Clinton and his wife, he's directing where he would like the Democratic Party to go. This is a central part of Kennedy's reasoning in all the stories today.

Kennedy's decision came after weeks of his rising frustration with the Clintons over campaign tactics, particularly comments by the couple and their surrogates in South Carolina that seemed to carry racial overtones. Kennedy expressed his frustrations directly to the former president, but to no avail. He came to his endorsement decision over the past week, after speaking to numerous family members, especially younger ones, and gave Obama the word on Thursday, people familiar with the endorsement said.

This is more of a rebuke than an endorsement. And it's one that is well-deserved. Honestly, I don't support Hillary Clinton but I think she deserves better than the campaign she's running, although clearly she supports it at some level.

We'll see if the rest of the Democratic Party delivers the same rebuke on February 5.

UPDATE: I'm seeing the same pattern. People I know who aren't deep observers of politics are fed up with Bill Clinton's tactics and are moving to Obama. From the standpoint of actual states Obama has an uphill battle on February 5. But when I see more anecdotal information like this, part of me wonders if we're heading for a landslide. Seriously.

Post-South Carolina Thoughts

• The turnout was ridiculous. 100,000 more voters participated in the Democratic primary than in the Republican primary in SOUTH CAROLINA. The youth turnout tripled, too. This is what you have to look at when determining the horse race in the general election. I'm not saying South Carolina is in play, but I think a 35-state sweep for the Democrats is not out of the question given these numbers. Of course, it's very early.

• Obama's speech was pretty amazing, and the "past versus future" frame is very significant. I think Obama has a real chance to narrow the gap in the February 5 states. I think you may see a real surge to him now.

• Not only did Obama get a moving endorsement from Caroline Kennedy today ("A President Like My Father"), but Ted Kennedy will endorse as well. This does have the feeling of a snowball moving downhill.

• Um, media? The polls, which you lambasted for being so "off" in New Hampshire, were actually just as off in South Carolina. They just were in the direction of Obama instead of Clinton. If you're going to go off the rails when Clinton wins, seems to me you have to do the same thing here.

My point, actually, is that primary polls are very, very hard to pinpoint, and the media needs to stop relying on them.

• People are grumbling about Clinton wanting to seat the delegates in Michigan and Florida. I think that's wrong, but remember, uncommitted got 40% of the vote in MI. And everyone's on the ballot in Florida. The difference between Hillary and Uncommitted in Michigan is 18 delegates. Given Obama's big win I don't expect the
Florida spread to be much more than that.

This is not that big a deal. If it's that close then Edwards' delegates will be far more decisive.

• This is what caught me in Obama's speech:

When I hear that we’ll never overcome the racial divide in our politics, I think about that Republican woman who used to work for Strom Thurmond, who’s now devoted to educating inner-city children and who went out onto the streets of South Carolina and knocked on doors for this campaign. Don’t tell me we can’t change.

I want to hear more about that.

Well That Was Quick

So NBC News immediately reports that Obama will win by a substantial margin.

They're harping on the fact that voters "recoiled" at the racial politics displayed by the Clinton campaign. Have I missed something? Aren't those things a few weeks old? How did they play in South Carolina? Was there a whisper campaign? Is it just that this is the first state with a substantial black population?

A little distasteful, too, that David Gregory said they had to wade into the internal numbers to see if this was a "meaningful" victory. Uhh, why? Obama just won the biggest state that has voted by the biggest margin. Isn't that enough?

Like I've said, this just isn't that tough a primary. I think that the media turned it into a far bigger political football than it actually is.

UPDATE: Tim Russert basically just tipped the exit polls, calling it a "30 point" victory.

Specifically, he said "if the numbers match the exit polls and obama has a 30-point victory..."

Wow.

UPDATE II: Obama really, really needed a big victory. He's actually not doing all that well in the February 5 states, and he needed a kick-start, something that could change the game a bit.

Meanwhile, what is up with Bill Clinton answering the charge of him and his wife "teaming up" on Obama by saying that Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice? Jackson won caucuses, which are vastly different. But that's besides the point. What the hell does that have to do with anything?

UPDATE III: So Bill Clinton just essentially gave the concession speech for his wife. That just looks TERRIBLE. Someone needs to put him in a box. He's making himself a target for the media, who loves to obsess on the Clenis.

The California Field Poll

I guess it's worth looking at the California Field Poll on the Presidential primary, as it will likely be the last before the February 5 election. Clinton gets 39%, Obama 27%, Edwards 10%, with 20% undecided and a margin of error of 5%. This appears to track with national polls, once again, since we're still getting a mostly national campaign out here. Clinton's vote-by-mail lead is only 5 points - I would have expected much higher. So Obama still has a chance in California, but he'll need to do better among women and Latinos than he did in Nevada.

Obama is doing worse among 18-29 year-olds in the poll, so I don't think it's fully captured the electorate.

Dan Walters thinks it's over in California. I think what this shows is that Obama will pick up a significant amount of delegates, enough to keep him afloat. As Frank Russo notes:

The statewide winner has bragging rights and should get the most delegates, but the bulk of the action here takes place locally in each of our state’s 53 Congressional Districts. A full 241 of California’s 441 delegates are elected based on the share of the vote the candidates for President receive in these districts for candidates with over 15% of the vote. Both of the two leading candidates will surely be competitive in all or virtually all of these districts. Only 81 delegates are elected “at-large” and go to the winner of the statewide vote.

Obama is likely to win South Carolina, as evidenced by Clinton limiting her time there. If she picks up some delegates thanks to dirty push-polling and the like, so be it (but it's unlikely, because there are crap robocalls on both sides), but it's very likely that Obama will have the lead in delegates through voter preferences going into February 5. And as poblano noted last week, the delegate split from Super Duper Tuesday may be no more than 50 or so between the two candidates. Edwards' strong showing in the debate yesterday may have put him back in the race for delegates, too, getting us closer to the 40-40-20 split that offers him the best chance to play kingmaker. It's very interesting that Clinton and Edwards had a secret post-debate meeting last night.

Point being, the overall race is still fluid, though Clinton is favored.

On To The Republicans

With me being in Nevada covering the Dems all weekend, I kind of neglected the twists and turns of the Republican race. I'm not talking about fringe candidates like Rudy Giuliani (even his money men in New York are jumping ship), but the ones who actually still have a chance of winning the thing. And I think it's coming down to a two-person race.

Rasmussen is showing Romney opening up a lead today. But he's been up with ads, while McCain starts them today. So that's subject to change as we get a week-plus of pretty intense campaigning down there, which will only be on the Republican side since the Democrats are forbidden from doing so as part of the state breaking DNC rules with their primary.

Romney or McCain will be the nominee. Huckabee's loss in South Carolina, aided by Thompson going all-out there and taking away some of his votes, seems to me decisive. If he can't win in a Southern Baptist state, after throwing every bit of dirt he could and associating homosexuality with bestiality and trying to make the frickin' Confederate flag an issue, then there's not much hope for him replicating the Iowa victory, where he was basically squeaky clean.

Florida is unique to all the states that have voted so far, in that it's a) a closed primary and b) winner take all for delegates. I don't think Romney has lost to McCain among Republicans in any state where he's actually competed. And Giuliani, who will get some votes, probably hurts McCain, in the same way that Thompson hurt Huckabee.

Romney would, obviously, be a great general election candidate for Democrats to face, simply by virtue of the fact that the media hates him so, and that he's been so successfully defined as a flip-flopper. But electability aside, I think he has a shot in Florida because the top issue in these primaries is starting to be the economy, and even though Romney actually does better among brainwashed Republicans who think the economy is doing great, at least he has an argument to make that he knows what he's talking about. McCain actually doesn't have a clue. After admitting that he doesn't know much about the economy at all, he's tried to catch up and take on these conservative ideas which are ill-fitting to him.

John McCain recently acknowledged, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” He added, however, “I’ve got Greenspan’s book.”

I’m quite certain The Maestro isn’t helping. In South Carolina, McCain told an audience a couple of days ago, “Every time in history we have raised taxes it has cut revenues.” As a matter of reality, McCain was talking gibberish.

A few days prior, at a Republican debate, McCain said, “I don’t believe we’re headed into a recession. I believe the fundamentals of this economy are strong and I believe they will remain strong.”

Now, McCain, who presumably would have learned something about economics after serving in Congress for the last quarter-century, blamed government spending for creating an economic decline that he didn’t believe existed less than a week ago.

Government spending simply isn't a factor for a destroyed subprime mortgage market, the credit crunch, and sluggish consumer spending. He literally has no idea what he's talking about; the same with saying that tax raises cut revenues, which is from the planet Not True. I know the media covers for McCain as much as they cover for Brett Favre, but seriously, this is going to seep out.

But we shall see. Patrick Ruffini, a conservative, has an excellent roundup of the race. A quote:

Mitt Romney is fast becoming the candidate of conservatives in the suburbs and the exurbs. In Michigan, he dominated Oakland and Macomb counties with 46% of the vote in a multi-candidate field. In Nevada, he won most convincingly in Clark County. In Iowa, he did better in Des Moines than elsewhere in the state.

The Romney and McCain coalitions also overlap. They represent two different sides of the establishment coin, with McCain representing an older, mainline establishment — the Republican Party of Gerry Ford, Howard Baker, and Bob Dole — and Romney representing the brasher, post-Reagan establishment that was built on the tax issue and whose alliance with modern-day Huckabee voters allowed them to take control of the party in 1994 [...]

The trouble for McCain is although he has probably secured the moderate berth in the finals (sorry, Rudy), he hasn’t made many inroads with the base and his vote still looks decidedly unlike what that of a GOP nominee should look like. To say that conservative South Carolinians somehow embraced McCain is to ignore the fact that McCain lost conservatives, pro-lifers, and Evangelicals, and eeked it out against the most divided field to date.

With Romney’s suburban base secure, for McCain to start racking up victory margins in the 40s — which he’ll need as candidates fade or drop out — he’d need to add votes from the Christian conservative base — from supporters of walking wounded like Huck and Fred. Because of their candidates’ personal animosities towards Romney, that is a distinct possibility that such an alliance could be forged — but it would be an alliance of opposites — of pro-life and pro-choice, of liberal and conservative, of secular and evangelical. I don’t know if conservatives are going to overlook that fact.

In the traditional middle of this fight is Mitt Romney, who strives to represent a sort of Goldilocks conservatism. The question is if center is big enough to hold this year.

I think it's really anybody's guess. I wouldn't be surprised with Romney or McCain as the nominee.

South Carolina Nastiness

It's unquestionably true that the same South Carolina dirty tricksters who stopped John McCain's Presidential bid in 2000 are out this year. The latest revelation is that Mike Huckabee's army of robo-callers and push-pollers are spreading that McCain supports experiments on unborn children. Actually, Huckabee's outfit is push-polling all his Republican rivals in the state. There is one charge specific to McCain, however: a mailer from a group called "Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain. It's pretty weak stuff, accusing McCain of collaborating with his captors. Only thing is, the mailer wasn't mailed anywhere.

Recently, the group sent a mailer to approximately 80 newspaper editors in South Carolina accusing McCain of selling out his fellow POWs in Vietnam. On Tuesday, the McCain campaign (which is working hard to appeal to vet voters) made one of McCain's former fellow POWs available to the media to respond to the smear. The story, picked up by the AP and Wall Street Journal among others, got national play -- undoubtedly more play than the group would have been able to get on its own.

I spoke to the founder of Vietnam Veterans against John McCain, Jerry Kiley, yesterday. He told me that the group hasn't "actively sought donations at this point," and that the next step for the group will be mailings "going out to our network," with the intention that the mailing would then be forwarded on to local media there. The group just doesn't have the funds to send mailings directly to voters -- nor, as they declared they would in their statement of purpose, to run radio and TV ads. Things "could change," he told me, "if we received a sizable donation," but he wasn't holding out much hope.

Instead, they're planning "an email campaign." Groups of like-minded vets throughout the country will get the email chain started, he said, "so it will spread very quickly throughout the country."

So, this is an unfunded group trying to get some media attention. The McCain campaign went nuclear on it, to "prove" that groups are out to get him in South Carolina. I have to say that this is NOTHING compared to what Rove and the boys did to McCain in South Carolina last time. That was an establishment attack. These are a few guys with a flyer and some time on their hands. The question is, does McCain run the risk of over-publicizing this smear to the extent of it actually rebounding back on him?

Good For The Teachers

A group of Nevada teachers are calling on their leadership to stop trying to disenfranchise union hotel workers and stop their lawsuit challenging the at-large precincts at Vegas casinos.

As teachers in Nevada, and members of the Nevada State Education Association, we are deeply dismayed that our union is trying to stop our students’ parents from caucusing on Saturday. We urge them in the strongest terms to drop this lawsuit immediately.

Many of our students are Hispanic Americans and come from low-income families. Their parents are construction workers, McDonald’s employees, and other shift workers on the strip, who work around the clock, and won’t have time to travel to their caucus locations on Saturday. That’s why the state Democratic committee set up nine at-large precinct locations on the strip – to provide nearby caucus locations for Nevadans who otherwise wouldn’t be able to caucus.

Hillary Clinton could put a stop to this with one phone call.

(And in the interest of balance, let me praise Senator Clinton for saying that no woman is illegal, which is absolutely correct. Calling people illegal is giving in to right-wing language and makes it easier to demonize.)

UPDATE: Voter suppression in South Carolina, too, though it's coming directly from the state and not a particular campaign.

The Huckster Advantage

I do think that this Wayne Dumond ad, which will likely be brutal in a Republican primary, could significantly impact what I'm about to say. But I do think Mike Huckabee has the clearest path to the nomination as anyone.

The road to the GOP nomination will certainly not be based on issues; antiwar Republicans went for John McCain in New Hampshire (though you have to wonder what "antiwar Republican" really means; maybe it's someone who wants to get out the most honorable way possible, in which case they consider McCain the most experienced option). It's going to fall on identity issues, much as the Democratic race is falling along identity lines in kind of an ugly way. And there's no doubt in my mind that Southern conservatives, who will end up deciding this nomination, will end up rejecting John McCain, whose fundamentals in New Hampshire were weaker than in 2000, and who still has no love from mainstream conservatives. McCain has problems with tax-cutters, too, and while Huckabee doesn't inspire confidence on this front, his embrace of the FairTax has blunted that criticism to a degree. And if Huckabee were smart, he would attack McCain at his strength, pointing out all of the earmarks he has received for his constituents in Arizona.

Money is a non-factor, in my view. The guy with the most is in a do-or-die situation in Michigan, and the only other candidate with even a little money is hanging out in Florida trying to gin up "security" events to get attention. And I maintain that Huckabee has more money on hand right now and eligible to spend than McCain; that's why they're going the 527 route to beat him.

But like I said, this is about identity. And I think it will be hard to wave base voters off of Huckabee. He still has the national lead, and is the only candidate at or near the lead in all the big states to come (Michigan, South Carolina, Florida). Michigan would be a pipe dream for him but would clearly put him on a path to the nomination; if he loses, I believe South Carolina will come through. Plus there's this analysis:

If Huck exceeds expectations--even marginally--then he can probably knock Mitt out of the race. Huck has a real possibility of bumping Mitt to third place in his Daddy's state, which I gotta believe would chase him from the race.

And then we'd be left with Huck versus McCain. A Baptist preacher who will chase away the corporatists versus a war-monger who will chase away the nativists and evangelicals. While I think either Huck or McCain may do well in the General election (I'd rather be running against Mitt), I think a two-way contest between Huck and McCain has the real potential to cause the GOP a while lot of angst between now and whenever they do get to the General.

I gotta believe that Huck looked at this polling and realized he had the ability to hit Mitt with a real body blow, taking out the one other guy who can appeal to the values voters. Which makes this very interesting indeed.

Knocking out Mitt would be fatal for the guy who doesn't connect with base Republican voters, McCain. And South Carolina is a closed primary.

I truly believe Huckabee is the front-runner right now, such as it is. And only a really gut-level smear campaign can derail him.

The Obama Comeback

I actually think Barack Obama is in a pretty decent position. He has to earn the nomination instead of being handed it, and that's a good thing for the general election. He had the entire dump truck thrown at him in New Hampshire, and so he can trick out where to fight back; I'd say that calling out Hillary for that bullshit "Obama won't protect choice" mailer would be a good place to start. He got two union endorsements in Nevada, where the media will be paying attention (MSNBC has a big Nevada debate the same day as the Michigan beauty contest, which will blunt the impact of that report. Hillary is the only major candidate still on the ballot in that Michigan race, but a victory will not be easily spun.)

Obama's apparently raising lots of money online in the past several days, INCLUDING today.

In the 4th Quarter of 2007, our campaign raised $23.5 million – over $22.5 million of which is for the primary election. In that quarter, we added 111,000 new donors for a total of 475,000 donors in 2007.

In the first 8 days of 2008, we raised over $8 million and gained 35,000 new donors. Since midnight last night, we have raised another $500,000 online. We continue to build a grassroots movement that makes us best-positioned to compete financially in the primaries and caucuses coming up.

South Carolina looked REALLY good for Obama before the New Hampshire totals, with double-digit leads in the polls. Edwards is not surging, but the fact that he'll compete in South Carolina, where he's likely to get at least some of the "beer track" vote, pulling it from Clinton.

Also, this appears to be a race where there won't be just one "swing," and if Obama does win South Carolina he'll have the momentum heading into Feb. 5.

Now, the horse-race is out of my system.