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Monday, November 27, 2006
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Political Wire: "Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) 'has sought the advice of top campaign workers in Iowa and has established a seedling support network in this state as he prepares to decide whether to seek the 2008 presidential nomination,' the Des Moines Register reports. 'The first-term Illinois senator has surrounded himself with advisers rich in experience in Iowa, the leadoff caucus state... The Iowa connections of Obama's campaign advisers and the senator's behind-the-scenes inquiry into the Iowa caucuses are hardly an announcement that he is running for president. But they show he is visualizing the presidential campaign process, in the event he decides to run.'"
"2008 pres"
6:29:51 AM 
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Political Wire: "Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) said 'he has poured thought and prayer into a forthcoming decision whether to seek the presidency in 2008,' the AP reports."
"2008 pres"
6:28:46 AM
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TPM Cafe: "Congratulations to the LAT's Matt Welch for this morning's penetrating column on John McCain. No, it's not exactly pioneering to write about the ever camera-ready Arizonan now saddling up to gallop in from the West to rescue the rotten hulk of the Republican Party. But Welch has the audacity to write about...McCain's views! Imagine, the Senator has notions about the country! He's not just a straight shooter with an adorable face! Welch writes rightly: 'You can read 1,000 profiles of GOP presidential front-runner John McCain without encountering a single paragraph examining his core ideological philosophy....'
"It flies in the face of mainstream horse-race and handicapping stories, but McCain is not just a rugged man in a white bus. He's carrying baggage. 'Sifting through McCain's four bestselling books and nearly three decades of work on Capitol Hill, a distinct approach toward governance begins to emerge. And it's one that the electorate ought to be particularly worried about right now. McCain, it turns out, wants to restore your faith in the U.S. government by any means necessary, even if that requires thousands of more military deaths, national service for civilians and federal micromanaging of innumerable private transactions. He'll kick down the doors of boardroom and bedroom, mixing Democrats' nanny-state regulations with the GOP's red-meat paternalism in a dangerous brew of government activism.'"
"2008 pres"
6:25:29 AM
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Andrew Sullivan: "And so the religious right didn't just lose an election they lost all their candidates for 2008 as well. They have to contemplate a pro-choice, pro-gay Rudy Giuliani or a John McCain, who once called Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster, an 'agent of intolerance' and likened his movement to the Nation of Islam. Politics, of course, abhors a vacuum and with so many primary voters without a candidate a new favourite has emerged. Mitt Romney is the Republican governor of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the nation...
"And Romney's record is impressive in many ways: he inherited a fiscal disaster and navigated a way to surpluses the Gordon Brown way, by closing tax loopholes, increasing government fees but leaving basic tax rates unchanged. A big capital gains tax windfall also helped him turn a $3 billion deficit to a $500m surplus in three years. On healthcare, with the Democratic legislature, he helped innovate a fascinating experiment. While keeping the bulk of provision private Massachusetts mandated that every citizen have health insurance. It became something like car insurance - with punitive fees if you try to avoid it. The state then provided subsidies to help the working poor afford a policy; made premiums adjustable with income; and allowed anyone to buy it independently of their employer. The idea was to provide a guarantee of universal healthcare without constructing a statist behemoth like the National Health Service. It has yet to go into effect, and so it's impossible to judge its impact. But it remains one of the most innovative policy initiatives in the country. All of this gives Romney well-deserved mainstream cred. His fiscal conservatism comes as a relief after the insanity of the Bush years. His engagement with healthcare has forged a centrist path that could serve him well in a general election.
"But to appeal to the Republican base he has allied these positions with support for a federal amendment to ban gay unions, and for laws that would criminalise all abortion, except in cases of rape or incest. This is a shift from 2002 when he promised the voters of liberal Massachusetts that, as governor, he would 'preserve and protect a woman's right to choose'. On gay rights Romney is governor of the only state in America to grant gay couples the right to marry. But he strongly opposed it, and also opposed civil unions. In the last year or so he has made a huge effort to reach out to the evangelical base. Instead of being embarrassed by being a governor of liberal Massachusetts, he has shrewdly turned it to his advantage, routinely lambasting his own state as he tours the south. Not seeking re-election in Massachusetts, he can afford to do this (even though his approval ratings in his home state have plunged and his Republican successor lost badly this month). So where's the catch? Romney has proven himself a competent executive, he is a red governor from a blue state, he's a fiscal conservative, a health policy innovator - and he's good looking in a generic all-American way. The one problem is that he is now, and always has been, a Mormon. This would and should be irrelevant, except that his primary campaign must necessarily appeal to the Republican base on evangelical Christian grounds. When a political party has become a religious organisation, as the Republicans have under Bush and Rove, it's hard to nominate a heretic as leader. Mormons insist they are Christians but not many other Christians easily agree."
"2008 pres"
6:18:10 AM
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Daily Kos: "The New York Times is reporting this morning that a draft report of the Baker Commission, aka the Iraq Study Group, makes exactly the recommendations that most analysts have expected for months: more diplomacy, particularly with Iran and Syria; and no timetables for withdrawal of U.S. troops. The latter, according to reporter David Sanger, citing unnamed commission members and outsiders, is likely to prove divisive when the ISG meets today to begin debating the contents of the final report."
"2008 pres"
6:04:37 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 12:13:37 PM.
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