John McCain is Back!

John McCain's has comeback in New Hampshire, although Saturday's debate performance leaves a little room for doubt, according to Ron Claiborne from ABC News:

These are suddenly very good times for John McCain.

A WMUR poll taken over the weekend put him six percentage points up on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in New Hampshire. He is drawing large, enthusiastic crowds at almost every campaign stop.

And that was before the ABC News/Facebook debate where Romney appeared to be rattled by a barrage of attacks from McCain and his other opponents. That was before the storyline of Sunday's coverage of the Republicans became Romney's denial in the debate that he was running television ads saying McCain favored "amnesty" for illegal immigrants when, in fact, he has two such ads.

McCain had been cautious about saying how he will do in the New Hampshire primary, but he has tossed more and more of that caution aside in recent days. Talking to reporters after the event in Peterborough, he allowed that "maybe we've caught some lightening in a bottle ... Maybe a sparkle."

By Sunday, he'd become even bolder.

"Frankly," he said in Salem, N.H., "we're winning this campaign."

That's probably because the McCain camp thinks he got the better of Romney in the debate Saturday.

For days, McCain aides had been viewing the debate as a chance to retaliate against Romney for the ads attacking McCain on immigration, an issue on which he is considered vulnerable. McCain had considered launching his own ads in response, but decided to hold fire.

His camp was concerned he would get dragged into a mud-slinging air war that could tarnish him as much as help. His team figured the debate and a candidate forum on Sunday would drive the news cycle anyway right up until primary day on Tuesday.

So, instead, he decided he would respond during the debate if given an opening. That opening came when he was asked if he still supported the legislation that he sponsored earlier this year that would have created a path for most of the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to become citizens. The McCain-Kennedy bill died in Congress.

McCain replied, "Sure, but..." and then gave his now standard line about how he would secure the borders first, and then deal with those illegal immigrants now in the country.

Romney pounced. "I disagree fundamentally that the 12 million people who come here illegally should be allowed to stay here permanently," he said. "I think that is a form of amnesty and that's not appropriate."

McCain said his plan did not provide for "amnesty."

"You can spend your whole fortune on attack ads and it still won't be true," he said.

During the tense exchange that followed, Romney said, "I don't describe your plan as amnesty in my ad. I don't call it amnesty."

McCain missed the opportunity then to point out that that's exactly what Romney's ads were saying, albeit coming out of the mouths of what Romney's campaign said were New Hampshire citizens. But McCain's spinners in the post-debate spin room were all over it. One of his closest advisors, Mark Salter, usually a pretty unflappable guy, was red-faced with outrage.

This "missed opportunity" has created doubts for a McCain slam-dunk tomorrow. "Has John McCain’s window closed as quickly as it opened?," asks the New York Times.

Joe Klein thinks so, but check out Ross Douthat's take on things:

I still expect McCain to win New Hampshire; I can't imagine that four days of campaigning, even with two debates crammed in, will be enough time for Romney to shift the polls back into his favor. But I think McCain had an opportunity, with Romney hurt by Iowa, Huckabee hurt by being Huckabee, and Thompson and Rudy seemingly out of the running, to seize the mantle of GOP frontrunner this week, and consign Romney's campaign to near-oblivion. After watching the debates, which highlighted McCain's weaknesses as a candidate for the Republican nomination rather than his strengths, I don't think that's going to happen. Even if McCain takes New Hampshire, I don't think this race will be any less wide-open going into Michigan and South Carolina than it is today.

I think it's simply time to lay back and let events unfold.

Perhaps McCain missed an opportunity during the debates. The truth is the momentum coming out of Iowa accrued to McCain, not Huckabee, the GOP's winner, and not Romney, who had campaigned in the Hawkeye State for a year.

McCain pulled something from providence to alight his campaign at the last minute. An 11th-hour Romney counter-surge in New Hampshire is probably a little late to shift the tide back in his favor.

One thing's for sure: If McCain doesn't win tomorrow, he's as good as done. He's staked his campaign's viability on a win in New Hampshire. A loss would be a traumatic let-down. He could continue to campaign until February 5, but the bright lights will have faded, and the Straight Talk Express will have seen better days.

McCain backers can bolster their hopes with the latest FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll, which shows the Arizona Senator holding a substantial lead over Mitt Romney as of Sunday.

Can the dynamics change in one day? We'll see. Check back in the morning for updates on the latest buzz out of New Hampshire!

Photo Credit: Time

Bill Kristol at New York Times

William Kristol's first NewYork Times commentary piece appears today (see the reaction at Memeorandum) .

I wasn't all the impressed with it, considering he's basically endorsing Mike Huckabee for the GOP nomination. Maybe he's trying to downplay his more, let's say, forward orientation toward foreign affairs by saying a few nice words about the least prepared Republican in the field.

I posted a few words about Kristol's NYT gig here. What got me interested in Kristol this afternoon is Harry Stein's essay on the left-wing reaction to Kristol's appointment over at City Journal. It's a kicker:

Here is just a tiny, tiny sample of the reaction on the Huffington Post to the announcement that William Kristol will be writing a weekly column in the New York Times:

* “William ‘the Bloody’ Kristol is a beady eyed warmonger.”

* “Worthless suck up Kristol should be cleaning toilets in public restrooms for his GOP ‘friends.’”

* “I will never, ever, buy another issue of the newspaper, I will never again be a subscriber to your newspaper and I will do my level best to avoid any purchases from any NY Times advertiser.”

* “If the New York Times is going to hire a liar and a racist like Bill Kristol then they might as well hire Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly, and Ari Fleischer.”

* “Kristol is an arrogant warmongering prick. I can’t stand the sight of him.”

* “Listening to Kristol, that war mongering crater face, is worse than listening to Bush, Cheney, and Richard Pearle all rolled up in one . . . I hate that decision and I will do everything I can to discredit this decision until they finally flush him down the toilet like the turd he is.”

And so it went, on this and dozens of other left-of-center sites. Sputtering fury. Vicious name-calling. Denunciations of the Times for this unspeakable act. Threats to cancel subscriptions and otherwise exact revenge.

For conservatives, long accustomed to self-serving liberal pieties about tolerance, the orgy of outrage at having to face an alien point of view was wonderful to behold, and no one enjoyed it more than the man at the storm’s center. As Kristol put it to Politico.com, with the obvious relish of the skinny guy on the beach who gets the girl in the fourth panel, “I was flattered watching blogosphere heads explode.” (This provoked a new round of outrage: “Lawd, this is one son of a bitch I detest,” a typical posting hissed. “Smarmy prick. I’m sure that amuses him even more.”)

In fact, about the only one seemingly surprised that Times readers would respond with such vehemence was the man most responsible for the appointment: editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal. Noting that he had trouble understanding “this weird fear of opposing views,” Rosenthal observed in an interview that Kristol “is a serious, respected conservative intellectual—and somehow that’s a bad thing. How intolerant is that?” There’s something almost touching in the naivety behind those words. Can Rosenthal truly be so unaware of the character of his own core readership? Does he actually believe that they’re open to challenge, or even reasonable back-and-forth? Doesn’t he read his own paper’s letters page? “David Brooks can write the mildest column in the world,” Bernard Goldberg observes, “and the letters to the editor act like he’s Hitler.” Now, to their horror, letter-writers face the prospect of regularly waking up to a leading exemplar of a far more aggressive conservatism—a muscular supporter of the war who has characterized the Times itself as “irredeemable.”

According to The Nation’s Katha Pollitt, “What this hire demonstrates is how successfully the right has intimidated the mainstream media. Their constant demonizing of the New York Times as the tool of the liberal elite worked.” What the appointment really suggests, however, is a degree of desperation at the Times that only its worst enemies have wished on that venerable institution. Always remarkable for the arrogance with which it brushed aside criticism, the paper has long cast itself as the unimpeachable arbiter of reality; and no one has proven less inclined to admit error (or give conservatives a fair shake) than that determinedly leftist child of the sixties, publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger. Yet after plummeting ad sales and circulation cut the stock price steeply enough to put even a family-controlled board on edge, Sulzberger was moved to do the hitherto unthinkable in a belated effort to broaden the paper’s appeal and reclaim its once-vaunted reputation for balance.

I love that phrase, "illiberal liberals," from the article's introduction. It's so true!

Still, I hope Kristol picks up steam a little bit. That debut's far from the juiciest red-meat neocon commentary Kristol could pump out!

The Hour is Late for Hillary Clinton

We've only had the Iowa caucuses, and already the buzz is that Hillary Clinton's through.

Matt Drudge provides online tabloid speculation that H.R.C. is ready to withdraw from the race.

I don't believe it for a second, as bad as things are.

Bob Shrum's got a more compelling argument over at the New York Daily News. He suggests Hillary won't be making an acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Will Barack Obama give her a prime time speaking slot?

If (although I strongly suspect the right word is "when") Hillary Clinton loses tomorrow's New Hampshire primary, there will be a few proto-obituaries for her campaign and many more stories about how it will be "shaken up" or "relaunched." Scapegoats will be found and exiled: Mark Penn, the pollster and strategist, foremost among them. After all, the candidate can't very well dispense with the überstrategist who also happens to be her husband and who was fully complicit in designing and driving her message.

The flaw wasn't just the attempt to go back to the future, to the 1990s, but that the Clintons picked the wrong year in that decade. Instead of 1992, when Bill was the personification of change, their model was 1996. So Hillary ran as a pseudo-incumbent, with a selection of bite-size proposals and an abundance of caution and transparent calculation. Why would any campaign ever explicitly announce a tour to make the candidate "likable"? Or, as happened when the beleaguered Clinton machine sputtered into New Hampshire, that they now had a plan for her to be spontaneous and actually answer audience questions?

The Clinton industry, encrusted with the beneficiaries and acolytes of the first and probably only Clinton presidency, has turned Hillary into a product whose sell-by date has passed. In a year of change, she has been positioned as the establishment candidate. The relentless appeal to "experience" reinforces that - and too often elides into a dubious attempt to take credit for some of Bill's accomplishments.

More fundamentally, Hillary seems to be making an argument about herself, not the future or the voters. No wonder she is losing to a young senator who comes across as the leader of a revolution in our politics.

There could still be a Clinton miracle, but by tomorrow night she is more likely to be the KOd Kid than the Comeback Kid.

I like the analysis, but note Shrum's got a notoriously lousy record. He's failed miserably as a top campaign strategist for numerous unsuccessful presidential races. Yep, he's 0-7 in presidential elections, with the last being John Kerry's disastrous presidential run in 2004.

He could be right in this case, but don't bet on it.

Hillary probably will lose tomorrow. But there's still "Giga-Tuesday" on February 5, when 22 states will hold their primary contests. Even with an Obama sweep of Iowa and New Hampshire, there's still a race to be won, around the country, where voters are very different from the narrow constituencies of Des Moines or Concord.

Of course, talk of a Hillary slide is reasonable (and Clinton's tearful television interviews aren't helping her case for leadership), but look to other voices besides Shrum's for more credible analysis (and Matt Drudge is just chumming the blogging waters).

John McCain's Promise

Dorothy Rabinowitz clarifies the picture surrounding the McCain comeback, at the Wall Street Journal :

In the midst of all the gloomy prognostications that John McCain was as good as gone, one encountered person after unexpected person - people, that is, who don't vote Republican - who announced themselves McCain enthusiasts. They are an old story, these Americans who discovered Mr. McCain in 2000, but it is a story with new meaning today.

All those New York editors sitting in publishing houses, those teachers and publicists and medical professionals, remained solid McCainites. Whatever their political views, whatever shift in their opinions, they seemed, those I knew, to have lost none of their feeling for this candidate. For all his politically incorrect positions - his support of the war, and George Bush - or perhaps because of them, this core army of his admirers remains as certain as they ever were, if not more, that he's the man to lead the nation.

In the primary campaign of 2000, people stood for hours in the freezing cold. In upstate towns they waited for Mr. McCain, home-made signs in their hands, their messages so brief, so charged with the emotions of the men and women holding them - "AMERICAN HERO" - it took your breath away to see it. The transportation for the candidate and reporters traveling with him had been named, only half-mischievously, the Straight Talk Express.

Now, these hard years later, the meaning of that name takes on larger dimensions, and the straight talk in question -about the war, about his support for the president, his stand on immigration, all so costly to him, and so unhesitatingly given - has also been the making of him. It is this, first of all, that people recognize in him.

Almost as in the old days, he's begun to get plenty of respect from the media. Though the word "old" keeps showing up in regular, not always innocent and invariably hammy tributes - as when his name is attached to terms like "the old warrior" or simply "old soldier." There's indeed something suitable in the word as regards Mr. McCain, but it is nothing having to do with his age.

That ingrained pride of his that forbids pandering for political gain--that would be shamed by lying about his deeply held views - is what is old about him. Old in the sense that honor of this kind is sufficiently rare, now, that it's a subject of wonderment to people when they find it in someone, as they have in John McCain.

Also, don't miss the Boston Herald's comparison of McCain and Romney's relative experience.

I made the case for McCain on Sunday: "Can McCain Win the Conservative Vote?"

Check back for more updates (and see also Memeorandum).

McCain is Rejuvenated in New Hampshire

John McCain, who has surged to the front of the GOP pack coming out of Iowa, feels rejuvenated in New Hampshire. The New York Times reports:

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign wheeled out a confetti gun on Saturday in Peterborough to boom a festive end to his 100th town-hall-style meeting. It was the same place he began his New Hampshire primary campaign of 2000.

Mr. McCain, a Republican, is methodically returning in these last days before the New Hampshire primary to the same venues he visited in that campaign, in which he defeated George W. Bush by 18 percentage points. He is surrounded by many of the same New Hampshire aides, telling many of the same jokes, appealing to the same voters and promising what seems like unlimited access to the state’s residents and reporters.

“It’s superstition,” Mr. McCain said Sunday. “And a bit of nostalgia.”

Yet there are crucial differences between this campaign and the one of 2000, and they reflect how Mr. McCain is in many ways a different candidate running a very different campaign in a very different time.

Mr. McCain, 71, is now more likely to wear a suit and tie as he paces his circles before audiences of voters, microphone in hand, head lowered as he waits for the next question.

The issues that he used to define his iconoclastic form of Republicanism have changed with the times. Talk of government reform, overhauling campaign finance and fixing Social Security has given way to national security and terrorism, scolding discussions of wasteful Republican spending, and global warming, an issue he said voters in this state placed on his agenda.

“It’s mostly the same old team on board, but it’s a different set of circumstances,” he said. “We’re in two wars. And we face the threat of radical Islamic extremism. We are in a little bit of a different environment.”

Mr. McCain has nowhere near the resources he did in 2000. His once gold-plated campaign organization collapsed last summer, unable to raise the money needed to sustain it. Mark McKinnon, his media adviser, is putting together advertisements for Mr. McCain at cost — allowing him to at least hold his own with his main opponent, Mitt Romney, on the air in the final hours of the campaign here.

Eight years ago, Mr. McCain would send invitations to 20,000 voters to try to ensure a good turnout for an event; this time, his aides said, they could typically afford just 5,000 mailers. Some of his closest aides — Mark Salter and Charles Black — say they are forgoing paychecks for now.

And the tone of Mr. McCain’s advertisements — and his attacks on opponents, arrows sheathed in jokes — have grown more acerbic. That, his aides said, reflected the lessons he learned in 2000 after an embittering defeat by Mr. Bush in South Carolina; in that showdown, which pretty much ended his presidential hopes for that campaign, Mr. McCain refused to run attack advertisements responding to Mr. Bush.

In New Hampshire in 2000, Mr. Bush took issue when Mr. McCain ran an advertisement saying, there is “only one man running for president who knows the military and understands the world.”

This time, to make the same point about Mr. Romney, also a governor with no foreign experience, Mr. McCain has run advertisements on the Internet that show jarring images of terrorists in masks holding guns. One of his main television ads spotlights Mr. Romney’s changing positions on some issues, and highlights an editorial in The Concord Monitor calling him “a phony.”

And Mr. McCain’s post-New Hampshire prospects, should he win on Tuesday, are if anything less certain than they were in 2000, when he left this state confident that he would beat Mr. Bush. He has barely any organization in Michigan, the next state to vote, said Saul Anuzis, the state Republican chairman there. Mr. McCain was forced to lay off all but one of his staff members because of his financial difficulties.

A win tomorrow will replenish the McCain warchest, however, as the victory momentum carries over into an uptick in financial contributions.

McCain's looking ahead to November, in any case, declaring Sunday that he'd beat Barack Obama in the general election (via Memeorandum).

See also Betsy Newmark on McCain's bipartisan appeal.

GOP Looking at Decisive New Hampshire Vote

Jackie Calmes argues the New Hampshire Republican vote is decisive, from the Wall Street Journal:

The outcome of tomorrow's close U.S. presidential primary vote in New Hampshire could be decisive for the Republicans: A loss for either John McCain or Mitt Romney may prove to be a mortal blow.

Mr. McCain, the Arizona senator, has made New Hampshire his make-or-break comeback state after his front-running campaign all but collapsed last summer. Yesterday he continued to gain in state polls and endorsements on Mr. Romney. But with no money and little organization elsewhere, even supporters concede tomorrow's vote is do or die.

"We gotta win in New Hampshire, we need to win in New Hampshire, I think we're gonna win in New Hampshire," said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, campaigning up north for his Senate friend.

For Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, to lose the state next door would be humiliating -- all the more so after last week's upset loss to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Iowa's kickoff caucuses.

Mr. Romney had based his strategy on winning the first two states. Even before the Iowa defeat, he had lost his New Hampshire polling lead to a revived Mr. McCain. Now, with little time to brake Mr. McCain's momentum, he has been thrown on the defensive by all of his rivals, who sense blood.

Whatever happens in New Hampshire, the final McCain-Romney showdown could come next week in Michigan -- the state where Mr. Romney's father was governor, and which Mr. McCain won in his 2000 nomination fight against George W. Bush.

"Whoever loses" in New Hampshire "is mortally wounded and will probably be finished off in Michigan," predicts John Weaver, the chief strategist to Mr. McCain until the campaign ran aground last summer.

The Democrats' primary tomorrow also will be critical. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is trying to recover from her Iowa loss and winner Barack Obama, the Illinois senator, has erased her longtime polling lead here.

Yet uncommitted Democrats insist that Mrs. Clinton, with a machine co-piloted by former President Clinton and deep support nationally, could lose here on top of Iowa, lose the Democrats' Jan. 26 primary in South Carolina, and still win the nomination. She would do so on the strength of victories Feb. 5, "Super Tuesday," when more than 20 states hold contests. Mr. Clinton is reminding one and all that he lost five states in 1992 before winning one, yet went on to be president.

Complicating calculations, Democrat Obama and Republican McCain are competing across party lines for independents, who comprise the biggest voting bloc and can cast ballots in either primary. But unlike 2000, when Mr. McCain's maverick candidacy won their votes to pad his 19-point win over Mr. Bush, this year many independents are antiwar. Mr. McCain is perhaps the highest-profile supporter of the effort in Iraq. Polls show many leaning to Mr. Obama.

Romney backers hope Mr. Obama takes those votes. "Then the Republican primary will be very Republican, and that's good" for Mr. Romney, says Tom Rath, a prominent New Hampshire Republican who is a senior strategist for the campaign.

A second defeat for Mr. Romney "would be tough, but a strong second would mean that he could go on," says adviser Ben Ginsberg. He predicts a Romney win in Michigan and then "surprises" in South Carolina's Jan. 19 Republican primary, the first where he'll benefit from low expectations. Mr. Romney has struggled for support in South Carolina because he is suspect among many of the Christian conservatives so influential there, due to his support in Massachusetts for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control -- positions he has reversed -- and because of his Mormon faith.

Unlike Mr. McCain, whose campaign operates on credit and volunteer strategists, the wealthy Mr. Romney can continue to supplement his well-greased organization from his bankroll as contributions slack off. But without victories, he will find it hard to justify going on.

Also, the Republican establishment, long favorably inclined to Mr. Romney, now frets that the candidates' battle to date -- by highlighting his many policy flip-flops -- has damaged him as a potential nominee against the Democrats. If Mr. McCain were to make a comeback, Republicans say, he would regain his standing as the Republican most likely to beat a Democrat. That "electability" argument would power his candidacy in a field that many Republican voters view as flawed.

I'm feeling confident on McCain's chances, although I understand he's going to be a hard sell for a lot of conservatives.

Perhaps it's McCain's compromise on immigration reform; maybe it's the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation; or maybe it's the Arizona Senator's vote against the Bush tax cuts (which weren't matched with spending discipline). Who knows exactly? McCain stirs a lot of resentment, in any case (here and here, for example).

Yet, as I've noted, some conservatives are coming around to McCain's banner, and, of course, New Hampshire voters are backing the Arizona Senator in poll after poll, with USA Today's new survey showing McCain surging ahead of the pack on the eve of the New Hampshire vote.

I'm convinced that conservatives will see the light on McCain soon enough.

Can McCain Win the Conservative Vote?

At a town hall meeting in Bedford, N.H., a man vied for the attention of Senator John McCain.

************

With John McCain on a hot streak coming out of the Iowa caucuses, speculation is turning to McCain's chances as the Republican standard-bearer. Will conservatives who long ago wrote McCain off as old news - or hopelessly liberal - give the Arizona Senator a second look?

Can McCain win the backing of conservatives in a general election matchup against the Democratic nominee (who's looking to be Barack Obama, if the Iowa results serve as a decisive harbinger of change)?

Jim Addison over at Wizbang offers a concise endorsement for a shift to McCain among conservatives (via Memeorandum):

My long lamented friend Jesse Burke, a man who lived in excruciating pain from the most severe and crippling form of rheumatoid arthritis, inspired many people to overcome their challenges. His motto was, "A winner never quits - and a quitter never wins!" He never met John McCain, that I know of, but they share kindred spirits.

I, with many others, wrote off the McCain campaign earlier last year after they had squandered their early money for little result, and the candidate moved in to "restructure" the effort. Normally in politics that is an early sign of a quick exit from a race. McCain vowed to fight on, and most of us in the chattering classes yawned and turned our attention elsewhere.

Award points for perseverance: McCain slogged on with his streamlined campaign. His return to viability consisted of equal parts of his own recovery and of the gradual diffusion of support for his rivals. The Republican nomination race is once again a wide-open contest, and guess who is in the thick of it?

As most conservatives do, I have grave reservations on McCain's past positions on Campaign Finance Reform, the "Gang of 14," and the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. I have on more than one occasion vowed I would stay home rather than vote for him for President, but I must admit that if the choice presented is McCain or Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama/John Edwards, I could not, in good conscience, not vote for him.

For conservatives, holding one's nose with one hand as the other pulls a lever is nothing new. We've been doing it for decades, with the sole reprieve of Ronald Reagan (who violated enough conservative principles himself to earn our ire).

If it's McCain, or Hillary, what say you? If not voting is your choice, do you not at least admit you would endanger the country thereby?

See a also RightwingSparkle, "Why McCain?"

The choice hasn't been hard for me. See my earlier posts on the McCain campaign, and his comeback, here, here, here, here , here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Why McCain? Why should McCain be the pick for conservatives in 2008?

I made the case for McCain throughout 2007.

I've heard all the criticisms: He's too old; he's too liberal; he's selling out our First Amendment rights with his liberal alliance on campaign finance; he's in bed with Kennedy on immigration...and so on.

But McCain has been right on the war in Iraq, which should be a decisive issue for conservatives. His recent debate performances have been steely; and throughout it all, thick and thin, McCain has stood strong on his values, not jumping ship on all the issues when facing heat or when the political wind is turning.

McCain's also "the one" on issues besides the war and terrorism. He's firm on spending, and he'll work to reform earmarks. He's pro-life as well. On immigration, he's learned his lessons and will stick with border security first before worrying about the other pressing elements of comprehensive reform.

The conservative opposition to McCain doesn't serve the GOP well. Thompson waited way too long to enter the race, and Giuliani's primary strategy is flawed. Huckabee is a good guy, but he's way out of his league on foreign policy, and his record on crime and fiscal policy leaves a lot to be desired.

McCain will pull Republicans together with his ability to promote compromise and accomodation. Partisanship's vital, of course, but the country's obviously seeking change, and tweaking some conservative positions might work to coopt some of the demands for a new direction.

I suggest readers take a few minutes to review McCain's commencement address at the New School University in New York from May 2006.

McCain's address is a magnificent statement of America's enduring principles and values. It is also a fair and humble speech, placing America's faults within the context of our historic opportunities. These are the words of a true patriot, of a true leader.

I hope conservatives will recognize McCain - like any man - has made mistakes, but he doesn't compromise his values, and he's right for America in 2008.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Post-Iowa Polls Show McCain Pulling Out Lead

A Concord Monitor/Research 2000 poll, following up New Hampshire voter preferences after the Iowa caucuses, shows John McCain pulling out 6-point lead over Mitt Romney (via Memeorandum):

John McCain has doubled his support since mid-December and leads Mitt Romney, 35 percent to 29 percent, according to a Concord Monitor/Research 2000 post-Iowa survey of likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire. Mike Huckabee was the choice of 13 percent of those surveyed, followed by Rudy Giuliani at 8 percent, Ron Paul at 7 percent, Fred Thompson at 3 percent and Duncan Hunter at 1 percent.

Also, a new CNN/WMUR New Hampshire presidential primary poll has McCain holding a solid lead over Romney in the Granite State:

The new poll suggests McCain is now the front-runner in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination in New Hampshire.

Thirty-three percent of likely GOP Granite State primary voters support the senator from Arizona, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney six points back at 27 percent.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's in third place at 14 percent, with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in fourth place at 11 percent.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas follows with 9 percent, and Rep. Duncan Hunter of California and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee are tied at 1 percent.

Huckabee won the Republican Iowa caucuses, with Romney coming in second, even though Romney's campaign vastly outspent Huckabee's organization in Iowa.

Romney was the front-runner in most New Hampshire polls until last month, when McCain pulled even in many surveys.

"It looks like Huckabee's victory among Iowa Republicans helped John McCain more than Mike Huckabee. Huckabee gained one point among New Hampshire Republicans. McCain gained four. A week ago, McCain and Mitt Romney were tied in New Hampshire. Now McCain now leads Romney by 6 points," said [CNN senior political analyst Bill] Schneider.

With two days to go, and with what sounds like a solid debate performance Saturday night (see here, here and here), the Arizona Senator looks poised to reprise his 2000 New Hampshire primary win.

Clinton Campaign On the Ropes

Hillary Clinton's campaign has been shaken to the core by its third place showing in Iowa. Karen Tumulty over at Time as an analysis:

The scope of Barack Obama's victory in Iowa has shaken the Clinton machine down to its bolts. Donors are panicking. The campaign has been making a round of calls to reassure notoriously fickle "superdelegates" — elected officials and party regulars who are awarded convention spots by virtue of their titles and positions — who might be reconsidering their decisions to back the candidate who formerly looked like a sure winner. And internally, a round of recriminations is being aimed at her chief strategist, Mark Penn, as the representative of everything about her pseudo-incumbent campaign that has been too cautious, too arrogant, too conventional and too clueless as to how much the political landscape has shifted since the last Clinton reign. One adviser summed up the biggest challenge that faces the campaign in two words: "Fresh thinking."

Specifically, those inside the campaign and outside advisers fault Penn for failing to see the Iowa defeat coming. They say he was assuring Clinton and her allies right up until the caucuses that they would win it. Says one: "He did not predict in any way, shape or form the tidal wave we saw." In particular, he had assured them that Clinton's support among women would carry her through. Yet she managed to win only 30% of the women's vote, while 35% of them went for Obama.

A modest rise in Iowa turnout from traditional levels — say by about 20,000 or 30,000 — might have been easy to write off as merely the result of superior tactics on the part of the well-funded Obama operation. But the fact that voters flooded the caucuses, and that Obama swept just about every demographic group, speaks to something larger that is going on in the electorate, Clinton strategists now acknowledge.

That leaves them facing problems on two levels. The first, and easier one to grapple with, is how to deal with Obama. Even as the results in Iowa were still coming in, the Clinton campaign was mobilizing onto an attack footing. But it's possible that the most difficult problem is not Obama; it could be Clinton. How can she retool her message — and her identity as a virtual incumbent — to resonate with an electorate that seems to yearn more for change than any other quality? Says one longtime Democratic strategist, who is close to the Clintons: "Fundamentally, she is who she is; she can't change who she is, and maybe this is not her time."

Actually, I didn't see Obama winning Iowa until the last few days. Clinton's inevitability seemed just that, inevitable. Her bumps on the road to Iowa - for example, in her flip-flopping debate performances - didn't seem to derail her prospects. Nationally, Clinton still held dramatic leads over her rivals in public opinion. Things looked like they were going as planned.

But in the last couple of days before Iowa we saw local polling presaging an Obama upset. It's always good to take survey results with a grain of salt, but these polls nailed it.

What's it going to take for Hillary to pull it together? New polling shows that race has tightened. While Clinton's campaign continues to hammer Obama on inexperience, it's fairly clear that experience is the last thing voters in Iowa were looking for.

Sure, New Hampshire voters are less volatile, they're less inclined to the politics of experiential repudiation, right? Perhaps not. The Clinton campaign is faced with the monumental short-term task of transmogrifying the candidate into an agent of change. This is after hammering for months the rock-solid credentials of Hillary's six years in the Senate and "decades of experience" fighting for the empowerment of the disenfranchised.

How will it all turn out? Clinton's still in the game, for sure. She could lose New Hampshire, but still have a strong opportunity to take a majority of the upcoming primaries and caucuses. It does look, however, that 2008 is shaping up to be one of those monumental election years of fundamental transformation, as seen in the Iowa results from both parties.

It's still early, but momentum is a powerful thing. This year's multi-format mass-media saturation has magnified momentum intensely. Tuesday in New Hampshire might be the most important first-in-the-nation primary we've seen since the 1970s.

(Note also that Clinton was booed at a New Hamphire campaign stop today. That can't augur well for her chances on Tuesday.)

Photo Credit: Time

Barack Obama: The Hope of Black America?

Barack Obama's stunning win in the Iowa caucuses has some black Americans reflecting on the Obama campaign's meaning for America's enduring racial dilemma, from the New York Times:

For Sadou Brown in a Los Angeles suburb, the decisive victory of Senator Barack Obama in Iowa was a moment to show his 14-year-old son what is possible.

For Mike Duncan in Maryland, it was a sign that Americans were moving beyond rigid thinking about race.

For Milton Washington in Harlem, it looked like the beginning of something he never thought that he would see. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re on the cusp of something big about to happen,’ ” Mr. Washington said.

How Mr. Obama’s early triumph will play out in the presidential contest remains to be seen, and his support among blacks is hardly monolithic.

But in dozens of interviews on Friday from suburbs of Houston to towns outside Chicago and rural byways near Birmingham, Ala., African-Americans voiced pride and amazement over his victory on Thursday and the message it sent, even if they were not planning to vote for him or were skeptical that he could win in November.

“My goodness, has it ever happened before, a black man, in our life, in our country?” asked Edith Lambert, 60, a graduate student in theology who was having lunch at the Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston.

“It makes me feel proud that at a time when so many things are going wrong in the world that people can rise above past errors,” added Ms. Lambert, who said she had not decided whom to vote for. “It shows that people aren’t thinking small. They’re thinking large, outside the box.”

Other black presidential candidates, like Shirley A. Chisholm and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have excited voters in the past. Mr. Jackson won primaries in 1984 and 1988.

Over and over, blacks said Mr. Obama’s achievement in Iowa, an overwhelmingly white state, made him seem a viable crossover candidate, a fresh face with the first real shot at capturing a major party nomination.

“People across America, even in Iowa of all places, can look across the color line and see the person,” said Mr. Brown, 35, who was working at the reception desk at DK’s Hair Design near Ladera Heights, a wealthy Los Angeles suburb.

Describing himself as a “huge, huge supporter,” of Mr. Obama, Mr. Brown added: “So many times, our young people only have sports stars or musicians to look up to. But now, when we tell them to go to school, to aim high in life, they have a face to put with the ambition.”

I'm leery of such talk. Obama's not a traditional black candidate. Some of the other interviewee's touch more closely on why Obama's not going over with black traditionalists, who are still grounded in the politics of racial recrimination (rather than Obama's politics of hope):

Some voters said Mr. Obama’s heritage as the son of a white mother and an African father meant that he was not exactly black, but added that it allowed him to appeal to more people.

“He’s demonstrated that a mixed-race guy with a Muslim name can get far,” said Tony Clayton, 43, as he had his shoes shined at the Metro station at L’Enfant Plaza in Washington. Mr. Clayton was referring to Mr. Obama’s middle name, Hussein.

These comments represent large numbers of African-Americans:

Even amid the joy over the dawning sense that Mr. Obama could indeed become president there were hesitancy and doubt.

“Right now, it’s too good to be true, and I think most of us don’t want to get our hopes up too high,” said Eboni Anthony, 28, manager of Carol’s Daughter, which sells scented candles, soaps and moisturizers across the street from Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. “I think racism is as alive as it was 30 years ago.

“I would love to believe in a fairy tale of having a black president. But I don’t believe the whole United States would agree to it.”In Harlem, Mr. Washington, a 37-year-old manager of business development for a medical health research company, expressed similar skepticism.

“Listen, I’ve lived in the sticks, so I know how this country is,” said Mr. [Milton] Washington, who is half Korean and has lived in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Indiana and Virginia. “In the beginning, it was like, ‘I’d love a black dude, especially a black dude like that in the office.’ But I didn’t think it was possible.”

At the Bessemer Flea Market near Birmingham, Jasper V. Hall, 69, said: “I was hoping he didn’t win. I didn’t want him to get shot.”

We'll have to see how things turn out in other states, but Obama's support is going to be especially strong among Americans who see the Illinois Senator as bridging the racial divide, particularly liberal whites.

Recall early in 2007 Obama's rising popularity triggered a backlash amongst black traditionalists, those who argue the historic civil rights agenda of overturning enduring, systemic racism.

See, for example, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, "Why Blacks Won't Necessarily Back Obama," or Time's "Can Obama Count On the Black Vote?"

What is likely to happen is the traditional black leadership - Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, etc. - will rally around Obama if he wins the nomination (notice how little traditional civil rights groups have mobilized for Obama so far).

The trick for Obama - if he becomes the Democratic standard-bearer - is whether his mantra of change includes burying the interest group politics of victimization that the old-line civil rights organizations uphold. This is the real promise of Obama's campaign for black America. An Obama presidency might truly break with the stale redistributionist politics of traditional Democratic constituencies. He might really press for hope in a politics of entrepreneurship and private opportunity, a politics of personal and family responsibility, and politics of educational achievement and professional aspirations for historically disadvantaged communities.

If Obama sticks to his talk of transracial progress, this would be the promise of real modern-day equal opportunity America, an agenda of real change.

Will the black community embrace it? I'm not betting on it.

McCain May Benefit From Huckabee’s Iowa Jolt

This morning's New York Times has an analysis of how John McCain can benefit from Mike Huckabee's win in the Iowa caucuses:

Mike Huckabee’s defeat of Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses jolted a Republican Party establishment already distressed about the state of its presidential field.

But out of the turmoil may rise yet another opportunity for Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose candidacy all but collapsed last year.

If only by default, Mr. McCain is getting yet another look and appears to be in a strong position competing against a weakened Mr. Romney in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

Mr. McCain is the latest beneficiary of the continuing upheaval in the Republican field that has seen nearly all of the candidates rising at various points. Among them were Mr. McCain, former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee and Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York.

Mr. Romney’s defeat in Iowa only underlined concerns that many Republicans had expressed about him, while the success of Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, gave rise to new worries among the Republican establishment.

“Among the intelligentsia of the party, there is definitely a deep concern about Huckabee getting the nomination because a lot of them think he can’t win,” said John Feehery, a former senior House Republican aide and party operative. “Part of it is self-interested panic since they have their own horses in the race, and none of them are riding Huckabee.”

Mr. McCain, then — after a year in which his campaign nearly collapsed, the Iraq war and a controversial immigration bill eroded his popularity, and he was forced to continue his candidacy on a bare-bones budget — may be in the right place at the right time....

Even before the Iowa vote, polls suggested that New Hampshire voters were embracing Mr. McCain and his slightly iconoclastic message the way they did in 2000. At the same time, they were moving away from Mr. Romney.

Advisers to Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney said they believed that Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, was already weakened before Iowa and was now even more vulnerable. Evidence of that could be seen in a furious exchange of attack advertisements between the two men Friday.

Complicating Mr. Romney’s life even more, Mr. Huckabee’s campaign manager, Ed Rollins, suggested he was entering something of a temporary alliance of interest with Mr. McCain against Mr. Romney. Mr. Rollins said Mr. Huckabee would be using the next several days to present what he said would be an unfavorable comparison of their records as governor.

“We’re going to see if we can’t take Romney out,” Mr. Rollins said. “We like John. Nobody likes Romney.”

Perhaps the Huckabee forces are angling for the vice-presidential slot on a potential McCain-Huckabee ticket in the fall.

Rich Lowry suggests McCain's got advantages:

McCain’s comeback has been fueled by the success of the infusion of troops into Iraq that he was supporting long before anyone had thought to call it “the surge.” In his early and fierce advocacy of the surge, McCain did far more to advance the war on terror than any other candidate. It showed keen strategic intuition and put in the best possible light characteristic McCain qualities, especially a cussed willingness to forge his own path.

But Lowry argues McCain's used his firm prescience on Iraq to push a number of other policy apostasies on the party that may weaken him in his quest to recapture the frontrunner's perch.

How that question gets resolved may depend more on how the campaign plays out over the next days and weeks, and less so on the candidates' policy resumes.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Republican Race is Wide Open

Doyle McManus over at the Los Angeles Times argues that the Republican primary race is wide-open:

The resounding victory of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Iowa's Republican caucuses means the race for the GOP's presidential nomination remains up for grabs among at least four candidates and may not be resolved until 24 states vote in a climactic Super Tuesday next month, Republican political analysts said Thursday.

"This keeps the race completely wide open," said pollster Whit Ayres. "This is still the most open race for a Republican nomination in modern memory -- no question about it."

Huckabee, a Baptist minister-turned-politician who was almost unknown outside his home state as recently as last summer, drew the votes of thousands of self-described evangelical Christians to score a decisive victory over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

But the race for the Republican nomination moves next to New Hampshire, where Christian conservatives are a much smaller share of the electorate -- and where polls suggest Huckabee stands virtually no chance of winning. Instead, the race there is principally between Romney and Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

After New Hampshire, the campaign moves to Michigan and South Carolina, where Huckabee, Romney and McCain all appear competitive, and then to Florida, where former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is spending millions of dollars on a risky late-state strategy to seize control of the race.

"This is a big win for Huckabee. . . . But it's also a victory for McCain," said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who is unaligned in the presidential race. "It's a victory for McCain in that the race is now broken up, and it's coming into a part of the calendar that's favorable to McCain: New Hampshire and Michigan."

McCain, who spent little time or money campaigning in Iowa, finished in a virtual tie for third place with former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee. In New Hampshire, though, recent polls have shown McCain closing in on Romney.

If Romney had won in Iowa, he would have gained a boost for his New Hampshire campaign -- and a chance to score wins in the first two contests of the nomination campaign. Instead, he risks two losses in a row, and suffering "two black eyes in the first two events is going to be very difficult to overcome," Reed said.

"This race is going to extend to Feb. 5," he predicted, citing the date when 15 states, including California, will hold primary elections and nine more will hold caucuses. "It's too fragmented to finish before then. And there are too many delegates on Feb. 5 for candidates to pass up."

The prospect of such a contested nomination battle is unsettling to some Republicans. In recent years, the party has most often entered an election year with a leading candidate who, while challenged by upstarts, most often went on to win.

"This year, there's no heir apparent," Ayres said.

The issue is about more than tradition. Since 1968, the party that has chosen its nominee first -- and thus gained more time to heal the divisions of the primary campaign -- has won the White House eight of 10 times.

I've warned a couple of times about the dangers of a prolonged nomination battle. The intraparty primary fight creates tremendous animosity among the top-tier contenders - the wounds take time to heal, often not until after the convention, leaving the party in a fissiparous state and vulnerable to the opposition.

Perhaps the indecisive nature of the contest this year is good for the voting electorate, and as McManus notes, the February 5 primaries will provide a wider opportunity for more states to make a difference in the nomination.

New Hampshire's next, though, and this New York Times story indicates how Senator John McCain's well positioned there to capitalize on his momentum:

Mr. McCain has been the greatest presence here, often having the state to himself. Seizing on his clean sweep of endorsements from 26 newspapers in the area, he has been able to reinvigorate a campaign that six months ago was largely written off.

New Hampshire, whose voters pride themselves on their independence from party orthodoxy and who are interested in an array of issues not on the agenda in Iowa, is friendly territory for Mr. McCain — a point he is making in a new advertisement released Thursday recalling his victory here in 2000.

A remaining unknown factor will be what role independent voters, who make up nearly half of all registered voters in the state and were critical in Mr. McCain’s victory last time, will play in this election. Voters frequently say they are trying to decide between Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, which seems striking, given their wide differences on issues, particularly the war in Iraq. But Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa showed his strength in drawing independent voters to his campaign.

Mr. McCain is also focusing on issues important to many independent voters, like climate change and improving the United States’ image abroad by taking such steps as closing the prison at the American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Scott Lehigh at the Boston Globe says this is McCain's second chance to make a mark in the Granite State.

Photo Credit: New York Times

John McCain Looking to New Hampshire!

John McCain met expectations in Iowa by taking 13 percent in the caucuses, and now the focus is on New Hampshire's primary next Tuesday.

James Carney over at Time looks at what's ahead for the McCain campaign:

John McCain took home a modest fourth place finish in the Iowa caucuses, garnering 13% of the Republican vote. But he may be as big a winner as Mike Huckabee. Huckabee's knockout of Mitt Romney in the caucuses was exactly what the McCain campaign, which spent little time or money in Iowa, needed from the state. McCain decided several months ago to stake his entire campaign on New Hampshire, where he is ahead of Romney (who governed next door in Massachusetts) in the most recent polls. Now that Romney has been severely wounded in Iowa, and with New Hampshire's Republicans historically cool toward Christian conservatives, McCain is suddenly poised to win big on Jan. 8 — and, perhaps, beyond.

Read the whole thing.

McCain's looking to be the Comeback Kid of '08.

The Arizona Senator was leading national polls heading into Iowa (Pew Reseach had McCain up by a couple of points in a January 2 survey), and while some late polls show Mitt Romney getting a last-minute boost of support in the Granite State, the full-impact of the Romney Iowa debacle remains to be seen.

Of course Romney sees McCain as the big threat in New Hampshire, not Huckabee, so that might be a little clue as to the real campaign action forthcoming this weekend!

Photo Credit: New York Times

**********

UPDATE: Zogby's got a new poll, with new survey data through January 3 (via Memeorandum):

Republican John McCain has leapt into first place in the GOP primary race in New Hampshire, while Clinton holds on to a six–point edge in the first three–day Reuters/C–SPAN/Zogby telephone tracking poll of likely voters shows.

McCain’s lead is based on strength of support among moderates and independents, while Romney holds his own in what is, like Iowa, a two–man contest at this point in the GOP contest. Among moderates, McCain wins 53% support compared to 24% for Romney – and little significant support for anyone else on the GOP side. Among mainline conservatives, the two are evenly matched with Romney winning 32% and McCain winning 31%. Among self–described “very conservative” likely primary voters, Romney leads by a wide margin with 38%. Mike Huckabee is in second among the demographic group, with 21%. McCain is third with 19%.

Among men, McCain leads Romney, 35% to 30%, and among women, McCain has 32% support to Romney’s 30%. Huckabee is third and Giuliani a close fourth in both gender demographics.

I'll have more updates on the New Hampshire race over the weekend.

Clinton's Collapse of Inevitability

I noted in my election night post that Hillary Clinton's third-place showing in Iowa has really put the lie to the inevitability thesis we've seen all 2007. Clinton campaigned as the inevitable Democratic nominee, the media played it up, and her rivals fought it.

But as Fred Barnes notes at the Weekly Standard, the Iowa results have nuked Hillary's odds-on aura:

SO MUCH FOR THE inevitability of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee. The biggest story in the world today is the defeat of Clinton and the entire Clinton political machine, led by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in the Iowa caucuses. Iowa has the first contest in the 2008 presidential race, but it's not always a critically important event. This year it was.

The second biggest story is the Iowa victory of Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois who has just finished his third year in office. He is an African-American with remarkable appeal across racial and cultural lines. Obama is now not only the favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, he's the candidate in either party with the best chance of becoming the next president.

Mike Huckabee's defeat of Mitt Romney here in the Republican caucuses was extraordinary. But beating a former one-term Massachusetts governor is hardly as historically significant as Obama's triumph over Clinton. Until recently Huckabee, a Baptist preacher and the ex-governor of Arkansas, wasn't taken seriously by the media and political communities, including by me. But in Iowa he proved to have impressive campaign skills that may allow him to reach beyond the conservative Christian base responsible for his victory here. To win the Republican nomination, he'll need to.

Barnes follows up this analysis with his projections for the upcoming primaries.

See more analysis at Memeorandum, as well as this piece over at The Politico:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) heads out of Iowa as the biggest news story in the world and a force that strategists for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) are uncertain how to stop.

With the New Hampshire primary just four days away, Clinton and her team now must convince voters that choosing Obama would be risky for the party and the country — but they must do it in a way that doesn’t make her look small or desperate.

“Everyone underestimated this conflagration,” said a former Clinton administration official.

“If people think he’s electable, they’ll vote with their hearts and not their minds.”

For Obama, a key challenge is to absorb the new scrutiny that comes as people wrap their heads around a new idea — President Obama — and as Clinton supporters do their best to raise doubts about him.

Clinton’s camp had felt she had a better chance of winning New Hampshire than Iowa, and her press in the Granite State has generally been good.

But with the vicious media coverage she now seems likely to face, she could well go 0 for 2 heading into the South Carolina primary, where a strong black vote provides an inviting environment for Obama.

I'm not jumping on the pessimism bandwagon. If anyone can come back from a third-place Iowa showing, it's Hillary Clinton. The challenge is steep though, and the whole country's on the edge of its seat until Tuesday.

The other big winner coming out of Iowa is John McCain, and New Hampshire's looking even better for him with Romney's collapse in Iowa.

Huckabee and Obama Take Iowa by Storm!

Today's results in Iowa shouldn't be surprising, at least not if one trusts public opinion tracking polls.

Still, the victories for Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama are startling, given the come-from-behind triumph for the former Arkansas governor, and the taking-on-Goliath feel to Obama's win over Hillary Clinton.

Adam Nagourney, over at the New York Times, takes a look at the Iowa results from this perspective:

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a first-term Democratic senator trying to become the nation’s first African-American president, rolled to victory in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night, lifted by a record turnout of voters who embraced his promise of change.

The victory by Mr. Obama, 46, amounted to a startling setback for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 60, of New York, who just months ago appeared to be the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The result left uncertain the prospects for John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, who had staked his second bid for the White House on winning Iowa.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards, who appeared to edge her out for second place, both vowed to stay in the race.

“They said this day would never come,” Mr. Obama said as he claimed his victory.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who was barely a blip on the national scene just two months ago, defeated Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, delivering a serious setback to Mr. Romney’s high-spending campaign and putting pressure on Mr. Romney to win in New Hampshire next Tuesday.

Mr. Huckabee, a Baptist minister, was carried in large part by evangelical voters, who helped him withstand extensive spending by Mr. Romney on television advertising and a get-out-the-vote effort.

“Tonight we proved that American politics is still in the hands of ordinary folks like you,” said Mr. Huckabee, who ran on a platform that combined economic populism with an appeal to social conservatives.

Mr. Huckabee won with 34.4 percent of the delegate support, after 86 percent of precincts had reported. Mr. Romney had 25.4 percent, former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee had 13.4 percent and Senator John McCain of Arizona had 13.2 percent.

On the Democratic side, with 99 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Obama had 37.5 percent of the delegate support, Mr. Edwards 29.8 percent and Mrs. Clinton had 29.5 percent. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico was fourth, at 2.1 percent.

Two Democrats, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, dropped out of the race after winning only tiny percentages of the vote.

The first thing that strikes me when reading this account is how Nagourney notes how both Edwards and Clinton "vowed to stay in the race."

Hello!

Iowa helps build momentum, sure, but this election's still wide open by any definition of the phrase.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads in public opinion polls in New Hampshire and nationally (by a 22 point margin). Of course, Obama's win and the resulting "big mo" this weekend will certainly change some of these numbers, but it's way too early to call it a day for any of the top tier candidates. New Hampshire will be a real test for Clinton - if she doesn't win there I'd definitely argue her frontrunner inevitability throughout 2007 was the biggest campaign ruse since Howard Dean's screaming collapse in 2004.

On the Republican side, while the Huckabee win is pretty amazing - considering how recent his rise to the top tier has been - it's Romney's collapse that's probably the most astonishing development. Even more so than with Clinton, Romney's got to win New Hampshire next Tuesday (a neighboring state to Massachusetts, where Romney held the governor's mansion).

I think Fred Thompson's got to be relieved a bit by a third place showing, and for McCain to take over 13 percent of the vote nary an effort in the Hawkeye State may be one of the best performances of the night.

I'll have more analysis over the next couple of days.

Photo Credit: New York Times

War is Taking Back Seat on Campaign Trail

Candidates will be making their last pitches today in Iowa, before caucus-goers weigh-in with their picks for the major-party nominees.

Yet it turns out that the war in Iraq has receded in importance for many voters, as domestic issues are seeing greater salience in the electorate. The New York Times has the story:

The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are navigating a far different set of issues as they approach the Iowa caucuses on Thursday than when they first started campaigning here a year ago, and that is likely to change even more as the campaigns move to New Hampshire and across the country.

Even though polls show that Iowa Democrats still consider the war in Iraq the top issue facing the country, the war is becoming a less defining issue among Democrats nationally, and it has moved to the back of the stage in the rush of campaign rallies, town hall meetings and speeches that are bringing the caucus competition to an end. Instead, candidates are being asked about, and are increasingly talking about, the mortgage crisis, rising gas costs, health care, immigration, the environment and taxes.

The shift suggests that economic anxiety may be at least matching national security as a factor driving the 2008 presidential contest as the voting begins.

The campaigns are moving to recalibrate what they are saying amid signs of this changing backdrop; gone are the days when debates and television advertisements were filled with references to Iraq.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York recently produced a television advertisement that attacked the Bush administration for failing to deal with “America’s housing crisis.” Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts Republican, has begun talking about expanding health care coverage, an issue of particular concern in New Hampshire.

“People say that health care is a Democratic issue,” he said. “Baloney.”

John Edwards of North Carolina has a ready answer when asked about immigration at rallies here — a subject that rarely if ever came up at Democratic gatherings a year ago. He drew cheers at a New Year’s Day rally in Ames when he said that while he would support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, he would insist that none could become naturalized “until they learned to speak English.”

Part of the shift appears to stem from the reduction in violence in Iraq after President Bush’s decision to send more troops there last year. Mrs. Clinton, who once faced intense opposition from her party’s left over her vote to authorize the war, now is rarely pressed on it, though Democrats say it continues be a drag on her in this state. Senator John McCain, a strong proponent of increased troop levels, is off of the defensive and now positions himself as having been prescient about what would work to quell the violence.

Frankly, it's hard to be more antiseptic analytically than this. The war will remain a key issue troughout the year, and it's likely that success on the ground in Iraq threw the Democrats off of their game, since we saw troop withdrawals as the party's main priority in 2007.

John McCain deserves his rocket boost back to the front of the pack, for he's been consistent in his support for the war, and his strategic theory - announced before the troop surge - has been vindicated by events. (McCain's even thinking ahead, suggesting he's not against the idea of serving only one term as president.)

Rudy Giuliani's seen the political results from the change in Iraq, and he's hoping to create a similar political dynamic with his focus on a troop build-up for Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney's just trying to hang in the race, and Fred Thomspon's already contemplating his exit, which may come as early as tonight if he fares badly in today's caucuses.

The Epochal Battle of Campaign '08

Today's Wall Street Journal's got one of my favorite types of political news articles: the big picture analysis. The Journal's Gerald Seib argues that we're seeing in 2008 the end of the Reagan-Bush political era in American politics (a Reagan or a Bush was on the top of the ticket in every election since 1980).

Here's the introduction:

When Iowa voters walk into their state's caucuses tomorrow night, they will be kicking off a milestone campaign year that promises a new political course for America.

For the first time in 80 years, no incumbent president or vice president from either party is seeking the White House, creating an unusually unsettled campaign with no obvious front-runner. Power in Congress is divided so evenly between the two parties that neither has really been in control since the 2006 elections. Now, in the wide-open 2008 general election, voters will declare whom they want to run the executive and legislative branches.

Americans will make that choice at a time when they are distinctly uneasy. Record numbers of voters are choosing to declare themselves politically independent -- and thus open to moving either left or right. Both the Republican president and the Democratic Congress are receiving historically low public-approval ratings, another sign of voter unease. More broadly, the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has in recent months found the nation to be in the midst of the most prolonged period of public dissatisfaction in 15 years, as measured by the share of voters who say the country is "on the wrong track."

In one sense change is inevitable. This year marks the end of what can be considered the Reagan-Bush era in American politics that began when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. In six of the last seven general elections, a candidate named Reagan or Bush has appeared atop a national ticket, defining a brand of internationally engaged conservatism that has been the dominant strain in American politics for more than a generation.

Now the stage is set for an ideological rethinking in both parties. "The mood for change is more than one of small incremental adjustments," write Republican pollster Bill McInturff and Democrat Peter Hart, who conduct the Journal/NBC News poll. "It is concern for the next generation as well as widespread unhappiness with both President Bush and the Congress."

The question is: Change to what? At the outset of the year, Democrats, having been out of the White House for the past seven years and in the minority of Congress for six of those years, stand the best chance of benefiting from the mood for change.

So far, it appears that presidential candidates Barack Obama among the Democrats and Mike Huckabee among the Republicans have benefited most from the public desire to shake things up. They are fresh faces who seem to represent departures from the establishment.

Seib points to the war in Iraq, the economy, and immigration as three top issues facing the electorate in 2008. Underlying the issues is the pent-up demands for government to do something. Polling data finds the lowest number of Americans seeing the country moving in the right direction since the 1992 election.

Will 2008 be one of those earthquake-style elections of earlier eras, a realignment toward decades of Democratic Party political dominance?

I don't think so. Sure, this is an extremely different political cycle, with new faces and demographics being represented in the political system like never before.

But I don't see some kind of new governing philosophy emerging, and I don't see the making for some dramatic systemic political change (Republicans have been doing well at the state level, which doesn't augur well for a broader, long-term national Democratic movement).

The Democrats so far have been unable to pick up the best elements of the old Bill Clinton-New Democrat governing style, especially on trade and markets.

I wouldn't be surprised if a Democratic administration even sought to turn back from the Clinton administration's biggest domestic achievement - welfare reform - although I don't think the electorate's so disenchanted with politics that people would welcome a return to mass welfare dependency. I hope I'm wrong of course, which I mention because we are seeing public support for Democratic social-welfare proposals on health care - mandated programs which are looking to stifle competition, reduce choice, and ration care. As Seib notes:

Anxiety over the economy, and particularly worries about health care, could prompt a return to classic big-government liberalism. In this scenario, voters would turn to government to provide health care and bail out homeowners thrown on the street by the escalating payments on their adjustable-rate mortgages. Democrat Hillary Clinton has been aggressively pushing the message that the government should ensure health coverage for all Americans.

I'm more optimistic on the GOP side. All the major candidates are committed to America's mission in Iraq, with just moderate differences in how they'd approach the broader war on terror (Mike Huckabee's a bit of an outlier, but even he'd keep up the troop deployment in Iraq). It's less clear what a GOP president will offer in 2009, but I'm convinced that grassroots forces will push a Republican White House to the right on the top issues on the agenda.

Read the whole article, in any case.

I have some doubts about some of the other hypotheticals raised, for example, that the election might produce some type of post-partisan electoral synthesis. No, I think the country's not geared toward moderate renaissance, if we ever had such a time.

GOP's Rival Camps May Pose Problems in November

This morning's Los Angeles Times suggests the Republican Party's divisions in the primaries could spell trouble come November. Here's the introduction:

The long-standing coalition of social, economic and national security conservatives that elevated the Republican Party to political dominance has become so splintered by the presidential primary campaign that some party leaders fear a protracted nomination fight that could hobble the eventual nominee.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney aspires to build a conservative coalition in the mold of Ronald Reagan, but his past support of abortion rights gives many social conservatives pause. Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister, is a purist on social issues but has angered economic conservatives because he raised taxes while he was governor of Arkansas.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sen. John McCain of Arizona have tough-guy images and hawkish records, but many Republicans are wary of them because of their immigration and other policies.

The breach within the party was evident here Tuesday, two days before Iowa holds the first nominating contests of the presidential race, as Huckabee and Romney each sought to show he could reach across the conservative spectrum and unite Republicans, as did Reagan and George W. Bush in prior elections.

I've written previously about the GOP divide (see here and here, for example).

The problem's not just that no new Reagan has emerged to energize a broad, rejuvenated conservative movement. The GOP's at war with itself - it's a collection of narrow constituencies unmindful of Reaganesque big-tent politics.

Pro-life forces can't stand Rudy Giuliani. Tough-on-immigration activists feel betrayed by John McCain, who's seen as backing the Bush administration's alleged pro-amnesty alliance with liberals such as Teddy Kennedy. Fiscal conservatives and law-and-order hawks have hammered Mike Huckabee. Opposition to Huckabee's so intense that some conservatives are saying they'd rather vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election!

My hope, as I've stated before, is that the primary process isn't so divisive as to create irreparable damage to the nominee. That's wishful thinking, I guess, if early indicators on the eve of Iowa are any clue.

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Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times