Poll Shows McCain Leading GOP Pack

Today's Washington Post, with its poll findings on the presidential nomination horse race, provides the second jab in today's one-two polling knockout for GOP frontrunner John McCain (the New York Times' new presidential poll is also out this morning).

Here's the WaPo story:

The first contests of the 2008 presidential campaign have led to a dramatic shake-up in public opinion nationally, with Sen. John McCain now leading the Republican field and Sen. Barack Obama all but erasing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's once-overwhelming advantage among Democrats, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

As the campaigns head into the next round of voting this week, the competitive contests in both parties have captured the public's attention. Four in five are closely tuned in, and a third are "very closely" following the races, a sharp increase from a month ago, and well higher than the proportions saying so at this stage in 2000 or 2004.

Clinton had dominated in national polls from the outset, holding a 30-point advantage as recently as a month ago, but the competitiveness of the first two contests appears to have reverberated among Democrats across the country.

In the new poll, 42 percent of likely Democratic voters support Clinton (N.Y.), and 37 percent back Obama (Ill.). Clinton's support is down 11 percentage points from a month ago, with Obama's up 14. Former senator John Edwards (N.C.) held third place with 11 percent, followed by Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) at 2 percent.

The big gains by McCain (Ariz.), which come after his victory in the New Hampshire primary, mark the first time he has topped the Republican field in a Post-ABC News national survey. His rise mirrors a dramatic tumble for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who led most national polls throughout 2007.

Giuliani, who finished well back in both Iowa and New Hampshire, ranks fourth in the new poll at 15 percent. McCain, meanwhile, has more than double the support he had a month ago and now stands at 28 percent among likely GOP voters. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who scored a big victory in the Iowa caucuses, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the runner-up in both early contests, sit just above Giuliani, at 20 and 19 percent, respectively.

Former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) registers 8 percent, in single digits for the first time, with only half the support he had in early November. Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), who got 10 percent of the votes in Iowa and 8 percent in New Hampshire, is at 3 percent; Rep. Duncan Hunter (Calif.) is at 2 percent.

The sudden turnaround in national sentiment partly reflects the continued uncertainty among Republican voters about their field of candidates. Although McCain sits atop the GOP field, only a third of his supporters back him "strongly."

And this week's primaries may further unsettle the race. Victories by McCain over Romney in Michigan on Tuesday and in Saturday's South Carolina GOP primary, where his main rival appears to be Huckabee, would stamp McCain as the front-runner, but stumbles in either contest could further disrupt the GOP nomination battle.

First up is Michigan. The Los Angeles Times has the background:

Castigated by the national party for moving their primary ahead in the nominating calendar, Michigan Republicans could inject even more volatility into the 2008 GOP presidential campaign when they go to the polls Tuesday.

Although only half of the state's delegates will be seated at the Republican National Convention as punishment for flouting party rules and jumping ahead of the approved Feb. 5 date, Michigan is a crucial state for all three of the top contenders.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the son of a popular former Michigan governor and auto executive, needs a win to counter growing perceptions that he can't do better than his second-place finishes in the first two significant nominating contests.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, who won here in 2000, needs a win to keep his New Hampshire-born comeback alive.

And a first-place showing by Mike Huckabee could help propel the former Arkansas governor through the South Carolina and Florida primaries heading into the coast-to-coast balloting Feb. 5, on which former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is not campaigning in Michigan, has pinned his hopes for the nomination.

The significance of the vote here can be read in the candidates' schedules. With South Carolina and the Feb. 5 states looming, McCain and Romney focused exclusively on Michigan over the weekend, each arguing in town halls, drop-ins and party dinners that he is better suited to end Michigan's economic slide.

Romney is to address the influential Detroit Economic Club today. Huckabee, who spoke before the club Friday, returned here Sunday night after a whirlwind spin through South Carolina, where he is trying to protect a lead in the polls.

Recent Michigan surveys show a tight contest among Romney, Huckabee and McCain, but a local Detroit Free Press-Local 4 poll released Sunday gave Romney a slight advantage. Conducted by Selzer & Co., the poll found that he had a 27% to 22% lead over McCain, with Huckabee trailing at 16%, tied with "uncommitted."

If the poll holds up and Romney wins, that would mean that three different candidates had won the first three major Republican nomination fights.

With state unemployment at 7.4% -- the highest in the nation -- and an industrial base dominated by the embattled auto industry, the campaign has focused more directly on economic issues than it did in Iowa and New Hampshire.

An added wild card: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is the only major candidate on the Democratic ballot Tuesday -- Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina dropped off after Michigan scheduled its primary for Tuesday.

State rules allow anyone to vote in any party's primary, and it was independents and crossover Democrats who gave McCain the win in 2000. With an uncompetitive Democratic primary Tuesday, they could again be a determining factor.

"McCain needs momentum and crossover. Huckabee needs the young voter turnout, and he needs the evangelical turnout," said Ed Sarpolus, a veteran Lansing pollster. "Romney's really in the best position when you consider he's got the time [campaigning in the state], money and organization."

But Romney also has the most pressure on him to win, said Bill Ballenger, a Lansing-based analyst.

"Romney has got to stop the hemorrhaging," Ballenger said. "His strategy is predicated upon winning in the first three contests, and he's already lost two of them. This is his native state. He's invested an enormous amount of time . . . and he's spent $1.5 million on TV already."

My weekend analysis of the Michigan race is here.

The GOP May Need McCain

The media buzz over John McCain's comeback continues to grow. Check out John Heilemann's article over at New York Magazine, where he argues that Republicans may in fact need the Arizona Senator's leadership and stature:

The McCain resurrection in New Hampshire was, no question, a remarkable thing to behold. Six months ago, the extent of his meltdown was so severe that he was mired in fourth place in the state behind Mitt Romney, Giuliani, and, yes, even Fred Thompson. But by December, McCain, back to waging a guerrilla campaign, had scrapped his way into the lead. In the days before the primary, the sense of nostalgia was palpable: the Straight Talk Express crisscrossing the snow-banked byways, McCain cracking wise and holding forth, the hack pack huddled around him, lapping up every word. His town-hall meetings were jammed to the rafters, his wit, spontaneity, and candor on vivid display. “You’re still in purgatory,” said one independent voter, who questioned McCain’s devotion to fiscal discipline. “Thank you,” replied McCain. “That’s a step up from where I was last summer”....

The concept of McCain as the candidate of the Republican Establishment may cause some minds to reel, but there are already signs that it may become a reality: On the eve of New Hampshire, 100 alumni of the Reagan administration—including George Shultz, Alexander Haig, and Iran/contra pardonee Robert McFarlane—trumpeted their endorsement of McCain. What makes him attractive to such people despite his transgressions against Republican orthodoxy is crystal clear. As McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt put it bluntly in New Hampshire, “He is the most electable of all Republicans.” Though one Democratic strategist licked his chops when I mentioned the prospect of a McCain-Obama matchup—“It would be the future versus the past, change versus more of the same”—the septuagenarian senator would compete fiercely with his younger rival for independent voters, and would be able to play far more effectively the experience card that Clinton has employed against him. And having been carpet-bombed by Bush in 2000 and Romney this time around, he’d be well prepared to handle the brass-knuckle brawl into which a race against Clinton would surely turn.

Read the whole thing.

Heilemann is clear that McCain's far from wrapping up the nomination - surprisingly, he suggests, things could go down to a final Giuliani-McCain showdown.

A McCain win tomorrow in Michigan ought to confirm all the speculation of McCain as unstoppable frontrunner. Mitt Romney's doing well in Wolverine State polls, so the suspense may continue for some time.

The Origins of Neoconservatism

The New York Times is probably the least conducive place to read a review of neoconservatism, but Timothy Noah's review of Jacob Heilbrunn's new book, They Knew They Were Right, is still worth a look.

Here's a bit on the intellectual origins of the movement:

The first half of Heilbrunn’s book relates neoconservatism’s origins and its journey to the brink of political power in the late 1970s. It’s a familiar tale, told better in “The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America’s Politics,” published in 1979 by Peter Steinfels (then the executive editor of Commonweal and now a columnist on religion for The New York Times). Steinfels came at the neocons from farther to the left than Heilbrunn and consequently was more critical. But the Steinfels book was also more rigorously analytic and, strangely, more generous in granting neocons their due as thinkers. Chalk it up to the narcissism of small differences. As best I can make out, Heilbrunn retains most of the foreign-policy views that he held before but applies them with greater judiciousness, and can no longer bear the sight of those who don’t. (The neocons’ domestic policies seem to interest Heilbrunn not at all; he scarcely mentions them.)

From both Steinfels and Heilbrunn, we learn that neoconservatism was the final stop of an ideological journey for a group of New York intellectuals, typically the children of Jewish immigrants, that began during the early 1940s in Alcove 1 of the cafeteria at City College. Alcove 1 was the gathering place for a group of brilliant young Trotskyists that included Irving Kristol, Seymour Martin Lipset, Nathan Glazer and Melvin Lasky. Along with Irving Howe, who would later break with Trotskyism but not with the left, and Daniel Bell, who never accepted Marxist orthodoxies in any form, the Alcove 1 Trotskyists waged intellectual battle with the Stalinists in Alcove 2, who vastly outnumbered them.

Coaxed by a diverse group of thinkers that included Sidney Hook, Reinhold Niebuhr and Samuel M. Levitas, known as Sol, the veterans of Alcove 1 eventually drifted away from Trotskyism, becoming stalwarts of the anti-Communist left, where they were joined by Norman Podhoretz, then a young literary scholar. With the advent of the cold war, the proto-neocons pushed for a hard line against the Soviet Union, sometimes harder than that of anti-Communist liberals like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and George F. Kennan; few if any of them expressed concern when they discovered that Encounter, a magazine that Irving Kristol co-founded in 1952, was secretly underwritten by the Central Intelligence Agency. The student radicalism of the late 1960s disillusioned proto-neocons about the left; George McGovern’s landslide defeat in 1972 disillusioned many of them about mainstream liberalism and the Democratic Party; and after Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981, a number of them stopped resisting the “conservative” label, joined the Republican Party and began to exercise power.

During the presidencies of Reagan and George W. Bush, neocon influence followed parallel arcs, gaining influence in the first term and losing it in the second. In Reagan’s case, the break came with the Iran-contra scandal, which dulled the White House’s enthusiasm for proxy wars against the Soviet Union, and the ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev, in whose glasnost and perestroika many neocons did not believe. (Heilbrunn nicely compares the Soviet Union’s imminent collapse to “a Christmas present handed to a grumpy child who was not in the mood to accept it.”) In the case of Bush, the loss of influence followed the military debacle in Iraq.

The great mystery of George W. Bush’s presidency is why he ever jumped into bed with neoconservatives in the first place. During the presidential primaries in 2000, The Weekly Standard, by then neoconservatism’s pre-eminent publication, had preferred John McCain. Bush had no great fondness for intellectuals, and a disinclination to engage in nation-building. And before 9/11, even Wolfowitz had predicted that the big foreign-policy challenge would not be Iraq, but China. What brought about this unlikely alliance?

It helped that as neoconservatism relocated from the Upper West Side to the Virginia suburbs, it had mostly abandoned the intellectual sphere for politics and journalism, where Bush felt more comfortable. No longer a lively debating society, by the 1990s it had become, Heilbrunn writes, “an echo chamber.” Probably the most significant factor was the presence of Vice President Dick Cheney, who helped Wolfowitz secure his berth with Rumsfeld, which in turn allowed Wolfowitz to install Feith. What transformed Cheney from a mild skeptic about Iraq intervention when he was defense secretary in the early 1990s (one “former colleague” informs Heilbrunn that in those days Cheney was “not in thrall” to Wolfowitz) to the unappeasable hawk he revealed himself to be after 9/11?

On this, Heilbrunn is stumped, just like everyone else. Maybe an evil spirit terrorized Cheney while he slept. The ghost of Hitler, perhaps?

How about September 11, 2001?

I'm picking up a copy of Heilbrunn's book tomorrow, and will likely posts some thoughts on it at some point.

In the meantime, as an antidote to Noah's dismissal of neoconservative ideology, see James Kirchick's "The Anti-Neocon Fervor" or my post, "Preventive Strike? Declaring War on Neoconservative Foreign Policy."

McCain is Favorite Nationwide, Poll Finds

Senator John McCain is favored by 33 percent, nationwide, for the Republican presidential nomination, the latest New York Times poll has found:

Republican voters have sharply altered their views of the party’s presidential candidates following the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, with Senator John McCain, once widely written off, now viewed more favorably than any of his major competitors, according to the latest nationwide New York Times/CBS News Poll.

The findings underscored the extraordinary volatility in the Republican race and suggested that the party was continuing to search for a nominee whom it could rally around. Nearly three quarters of Republican primary voters said it was still too early for them to make up their minds “for sure,” meaning that they could shift their allegiances yet again if one or more of Mr. McCain’s rivals breaks through in the two Republican primaries this week, in Michigan and South Carolina....

The survey was begun one day after the primaries in New Hampshire, where Mr. McCain won, and amounted to a snapshot of a Republican contest that remains remarkably fluid after almost a year of campaigning. While national polls are of limited value in predicting the outcome of primaries in particular states, they capture broad shifts in opinion, in this case a sharp movement for Mr. McCain after a big victory and a wave of media attention. Thirty-three percent of Republican primary voters in the poll named Mr. McCain, of Arizona, as their choice, up from 7 percent a month ago.

Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, whose favorability ratings jumped after he won in Iowa, was the choice of 18 percent of Republican primary voters. Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who is focusing his campaign on later contests, had the most precipitous fall; he was the choice of 10 percent of Republican voters, down from 22 percent last month. Support for other candidates was in single digits.

The poll also had worrisome signs for Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who finished second in both Iowa and New Hampshire and is in a tough three-way battle in Michigan against Mr. McCain and Mr. Huckabee. Not only did support for him among Republican voters plummet over the past month, but he was also viewed much less favorably than a month ago.

Mr. McCain, a longtime maverick in his own party, was named by Republican primary voters in the survey as the candidate most likely to win his party’s nomination. Thirty-nine percent of these primary voters saw Mr. McCain as the likely nominee. Only 11 percent saw Mr. Giuliani prevailing.

Mr. McCain’s image ratings also have soared. More than half of the Republican primary voters (57 percent) — including more half of the conservatives — viewed him favorably in the new poll, compared with 37 percent in December.

“I don’t always agree with him on all the issues,” Jeff Little, a 34-year-old actuary and Republican from Apple Valley, Minn., said in an interview after he participated in the poll. “But I feel he, more than most politicians, tells you what he thinks.”

Patrick Herron, a 61-year-old retired social studies teacher from Syracuse, described Mr. McCain as “more of a moderate.”

“He’s willing to cross the aisles and work with the Democratic Party,” said Mr. Herron, another poll participant.

The poll also includes data on the Democratic Party favorites.

Heading into Tuesday's crucial Michigan GOP primary, voter preferences are unstable, with various polls showing nearly 4 out of 10 voters undecided as they prepare to head to their polling stations. The New York Times graphic below shows the unsettled nature of this weekend's surveys on the Michigan race:

The timing of the poll - out in hardcopy with tomorrow's edition, complete with banner headlines declaring McCain's national stature - is perfect for momentum-building.

See also Memeorandum.

Photo: Detroit News

McCain, Romney See Big Battleground in Michigan

The Michigan Republican primary is shaping up to be a truly crucial contest.

Henry Payne of the Detroit News, in an essay over at the Wall Street Journal, suggests that Michigan's decision to advance its primary earlier in the calendar is not as significant as party officials had hoped, at least on the Democratic side.

With the decline of automobile manufacturing, the Wolverine State's lost political clout, a fact of political life exploited by Chrysler 300-driving Barack Obama, whose hypocritical envirnomental pandering is not lost on Michigan political observers:

As their industrial union base has shrunk, Democrats have forsaken blue collars for green elites....

Most emblematic of the shift is Barack Obama, senator for Archer Daniels Midland, the corporate behemoth from Illinois that turns corn into ethanol. Thanks to the ethanol mandates Mr. Obama supports, ADM has been racking up profits.

In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club last May, Mr. Obama could barely hide his contempt for auto execs in attendance. The "change candidate" -- who had a gas-guzzling, powerful Chrysler 300 in his garage -- lit into the Big Three for producing the very vehicles he uses: "While foreign competitors were investing in more fuel-efficient technology for their vehicles, American auto makers were spending their time investing in bigger, faster cars. The auto industry is on a path that is unacceptable and unsustainable. And America must take action to make it right."

So much for discussing "Michigan issues."

It's the Republican primary, however, that's turning out to be a decisive breakneck affair:

Mike Murphy, a Republican campaign guru who cut his teeth in Michigan, says the state is the candidates' first true test because of its demographics. Michigan is a quilt of inner city blacks, suburban businessmen, Reagan Democrats, religiously conservative reformers and liberal college towns.

The state's unique mix of voters has produced surprises in the past. Eight years ago, Mr. McCain won the state's primary despite George W. Bush's strength nationally. Mr. McCain looks to do well again, but must contend with Mr. Huckabee, who has caught fire with west Michigan's vast grassroots evangelical network. Even without much of an organization in the state, he has made this a three-man race, says veteran Michigan pollster Steve Mitchell. Mr. Huckabee's theme -- "Americans want a president who reminds them of the guy they worked with, not the guy that laid them off" -- resonates here.

John McCain and Mitt Romney will likely refight the 2000 McCain/Bush battle. Like Mr. Bush, who won Republicans by a 2-1 margin, Mr. Romney is pushing to get out the GOP vote, and is trying to exploit the fact that his father was once a popular governor here.

But with an uncompetitive Democratic contest, Mr. Mitchell predicts that, as in New Hampshire, Mr. McCain will reap votes from independents and crossover Democrats, which he carried by respective margins of 2-1 and 3-1 eight years ago.

Mr. Romney's best chance is to go after Mr. McCain for his flip-flops on the Bush tax cuts. Michigan is aflame with anti-tax sentiment at the moment because Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm pushed through a big income tax increase last fall, sparking recall campaigns.

As the country has moved left in recent elections, Michigan too has become more reliably blue and ceased to be a swing state. But after two small, beauty pageant primaries, the Republican survivor of Michigan will deserve the crown of 2008 frontrunner.

Who's going to get that frontrunner crown?

John McCain had pulled ahead of Mitt Romney in midweek polling, but this weekend's survey data is showing a tossup.

A Detroit News poll out today shows a statistical dead-heat for the GOP in Michigan (via Memeorandum):

With just two days left before the primary, Michigan's volatile Republican presidential race is going down to the wire for frontrunners John McCain and Mitt Romney.

And Mike Huckabee is still a factor.

A Detroit News/WXYZ Action News poll shows McCain with 27 percent, Romney at 26 percent; and Huckabee at 19 percent. All three campaigned in Michigan on Saturday. McCain, a senator from Arizona, and Michigan-born Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, are scheduled to continue their sprint drive Sunday. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, is campaigning in South Carolina on Sunday, but is expected to return to Michigan on Monday, election eve.

The poll shows not just a statistical tie, but a full 45 percent of those surveyed remain undecided. Thus, this weekend's campaigning will be a key factor in Tuesday's vote, as well as the ground-game efficacy of the respective campaigns.

Also out today is another survey from the Detroit Free Press:

Republican primary voters whose greatest concern is the economy could give Bloomfield Hills native Mitt Romney his first major state victory in Tuesday’s Michigan presidential primary, according to the Detroit Free Press-Local 4 Michigan Poll.

Romney leads John McCain, 27%-22%, with Mike Huckabee in third at 16%, the poll showed. Romney’s core of support is in metro Detroit, where he has a 2-1 advantage.

Of the 40% who named the economy as their top concern, Romney had a 42%-25% advantage over McCain. McCain wins by about the same margin over Romney among the 24% of Republican voters whose top issue is the Iraq war.

But Romney's lead could evaporate, depending on how tentative, undecided and uncommitted voters lean over the next two days. About 38% of voters who had a favorite said they might change their mind by Tuesday. Another 22% hadn't picked a candidate.

We see again - as with the Detroit News survey - the key role undecideds will play Tuesday.

What may be even more important is the role of Michigan's independents. The state issues non-partisan ballots, and independents may cross-over to vote in either major party primary.

A heavy crossover vote presumably favors McCain, who has polled well among independents. But former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his economic populist message might hit home here as well.

Either way, an independent surge likely damages former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who does best among pure Republicans.

A McClatchy/MSNBC poll vote finds McCain the preference of 38 percent of independents and Democrats, while Huckabee had 22 percent and Romney taking 18 percent.

At this point, the vote appears wide open, and considerable skepticism over the polling trends is warranted.

Watch out for the unexpected, in any case: Michigan's unemployment rate is the highest in the nation at 7.4 percent, and the results Tuesday may again upset all consensus views, given the volatility of economic issues in the sate.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Iraq and the Election

Is Iraq off the political agenda for campaign '08?

Time has an analysis of the issue, with this week's Bush administration shuttle diplomacy to the Mideast the point of departure:

On his grand tour of the Middle East, George Bush was far away from the ground wars of the U.S. presidential campaign. Indeed, thanks to the success of the U.S. military surge, the war he started in Iraq is now a second-tier issue in American politics. But Iraq may become a resurgent factor in the strategies of those who want to succeed him in office. The "good news" of the surge and tentative steps forward in Iraqi internal politics may weigh on how voters view the politicians maneuvering to become the next President of the United States.

On Saturday, the current President stopped at the 3rd Army's Camp Arifjan in Kuwait to get a briefing on the war from Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, and to do some morale-boosting with the troops. He made the most the timing: his visit came just over a year since he announced the troop surge, and he reminded his audience that last year's strategy shift was initially scorned in the U.S. but has turned out to be remarkably effective. At the dusty rally with troops, flanked by an enormous American flag, Bush projected that success out into the future, saying history will judge that "victory was achieved by the U.S. military [in Iraq] for the good of the world."

The event was paralleled in Iraq with a political breakthrough of sorts: the parliament's unanimous passage of a law that allows former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to take government jobs for which they have expertise and experience. The so-called de-Baathification of the Iraqi government after the fall of Saddam contributed significantly to the violent sectarian divisions of the country as well as to a collapse in the way the country was run. The new law is meant heal the rift between the Shi'ites who now dominate the government and the Sunnis who used to. "I come with an upbeat message," Bush said at the news of the passage of the Accountability and Justice law. It is, he said, "an important step towards reconciliation... an important sign that the leaders of that country must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people."

While Bush spoke of history's judgment, the short term may be more important right now for most Americans. If the last year in Iraq has changed the course of the war and the region's future, the next year in that country may determine who will succeed Bush in the White House. Petraeus and Crocker have started an analysis that will determine the troop levels through the heat of the election season from July through November. The success of the surge has diminished the role of Iraq in the U.S. campaign; but the political — and electoral — ramifications of the next decision on troop levels remain an open question. Bush even said Saturday that the current draw down, which is expected to bring troops to pre-surge levels by July, and as low as 100,000 by the end of the year, could be reversed if Petraeus decides he needs to beef back up.

Despite left-wing spin to the contrary, the war will be a political plus for Republicans heading into November.

Certainly, events on the ground - security and stability - will shape political perceptions at home. But there should be no mistake that the Bush administration and GOP backers were right that the war was not lost. The effects of the strategic shift under General Petraeus have been dramatic and were unanticipated by most political actors. The military is currently not rushing to redeploy, and if the continued progress in Iraqi political cooperation holds, we'll see more and more evidence that this war is being won.

Republican candidates can take that to the bank in November.

Photo Credit: Time

Conservative Troubles in '08?

By now it's well established that contemporary conservatism is in disarray. Are the reports of conservatism's death greatly exaggerated?

A couple of today's authors at the Washington Post don't think so, particularly Jonah Goldberg and George Will.

Start with Goldberg:

As pretty much everyone has noticed, the Republican race hasn't exactly followed any of the scripts laid out for it. Mitt Romney has been hacked apart like the Black Knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." John McCain's fortunes -- which had been bouncing up and down like a printout of Dick Cheney's EKG -- have suddenly spiked northward after his victory in New Hampshire. Fred Thompson ran a brilliant "testing the waters" campaign from his front porch, but when he tried to walk on the water, he sank like a basset hound trying to swim. Pushing the poor beast under the waves was Mike Huckabee, whose down-home folksiness makes Thompson look like David Niven.

Huckabee's surprise surge in Iowa has made him this season's pitchfork populist, albeit a much nicer one -- sort of a Disneyland Pat Buchanan. Then there's Ron Paul. He started out as the designated wack job, then became so successful that the Des Moines Register had to cast Alan Keyes in the role of hopeless firebrand wingnut for a brief campaign cameo. And it's a sign of how poorly Rudy Giuliani -- once the indisputable front-runner -- has done that I'm now mentioning him only after Paul.

Of course, this could all change with the next contest.

Much of this chaos is attributable to the fact that this is a very flawed field, or at least one ill-suited for the times we're in. If a camel is a horse designed by committee, then this year's Republican field looks downright dromedarian. This slate of candidates has everything a conservative designer could want -- foreign policy oomph, business acumen, Southern charm, Big Apple chutzpah, religious conviction, outsider zeal, even libertarian ardor -- but all so poorly distributed. As National Review put it in its editorial endorsement of Romney (I am undecided, for the record): "Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything -- all the traits, all the positions -- we are looking for."

But conservatives should contemplate the possibility that the fault lies less in the stars -- or the candidates -- than in ourselves. Conservatism, quite simply, is a mess these days. Conservative attitudes are changing. Or, more accurately, the attitudes of people who call themselves conservatives are changing.

How are they changing?

Well, check Goldberg, but the main point seems to be that "get-government-off-my-back" conservatism isn't currenlty hip in the electorate. Pent-up social demands have put conservatism in a bind: If small-state conservatism is going to work, markets and limited government still need to produce political, socio-economic outcomes in which a majority feel like they have a chance - that their children will have a chance. It's not clear this is case, with the economy, health care, fiscal stress, and international conflict all putting strains on government's ability to stay small and perform effectively.

How will this play out in the election this year, after the drama of the primary season has passed, and the press and politicians get down to offering tangible solutions to a considerably stressed populace? Can conservatives stay vital, be competitive, and offer hope?

George Will, looking beyond the early primaries last week, sees no positive dynamics on the right:

Nov. 4 could be their most disagreeable day since Nov. 3, 1964. Actually, this November could be even worse, because in 1964 Barry Goldwater's loss of 44 states served a purpose, the ideological reorientation and revitalization of the party. Which Republican candidate this year could produce a similarly constructive loss?

Today, all the usual indicators are dismal for Republicans. If that broad assertion seems counterintuitive, produce a counterexample. The adverse indicators include: shifts in voters' identifications with the two parties (Democrats now 50 percent, Republicans 36 percent); the tendency of independents (they favored Democratic candidates by 18 points in 2006); the fact that Democrats hold a majority of congressional seats in states with 303 electoral votes; the Democrats' strength and the Republicans' relative weakness in fundraising; the percentage of Americans who think the country is on the "wrong track"; the Republicans' enthusiasm deficit relative to Democrats' embrace of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, one of whom will be nominated.

Iowa and New Hampshire were two of the three states (New Mexico was the third) that changed partisan alignment between 2000 and 2004 -- Iowa turning red, New Hampshire blue. This month, Democratic participation was twice the Republican participation in Iowa and almost 22 percent higher in New Hampshire. George W. Bush won Iowa by just 0.67 percent of the vote. Whomever the Republicans nominate should assume that he must replace Iowa's seven electoral votes if he is to reach Bush's 2004 total of 286.

Republicans try to take comfort from the fact that 61 Democratic members of Congress represent districts that President Bush carried in 2004. But 37 of those won with at least 55 percent of the vote. Furthermore, 14 Republican representatives won in 2006 by a single percentage point or less.

Granted, in the past 150 years, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter (barely) are the only Democrats to achieve 50 percent of the popular vote. And this year Democrats might still give Republicans the gift of Hillary Clinton, who probably has a popular vote ceiling of 52 percent. A subliminal -- too much so -- subtext of Obama's message is that Clinton cannot receive the big mandate required for big changes: Enactment of Social Security in 1935 followed Franklin Roosevelt's 57.4 percent victory in 1932, and in 1965 Medicare came after Lyndon Johnson's 61 percent victory over Barry Goldwater.

But even if Democrats nominate Clinton, Republicans must remember that Bush's 2.4-point margin of victory in 2004 was unimpressive: In the 12 previous reelections of presidents, the average margin of victory was 12.9 points. Bush's 50.7 percent of the vote in 2004 was the third-smallest for a reelected president (Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton won 49.2 percent in 1916 and 1996, respectively). Kerry's 48.3 percent was the largest ever against a president being reelected. (In the 12 previous reelections, no losing candidate received more than 46.1 percent; nine of the losers received less than 45 percent.)

Tuesday's Republican primary is in one of the nation's worst-governed states. Under a Democratic governor, Michigan has been taxed into a one-state recession. Native son Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate who best understands how wealth is created, might revive his campaign by asking: Whom do you want to be president in 2010 when the Bush tax cuts, which McCain opposed, expire? Can automakers endure more regulations such as the fuel efficiency mandates that climate-fixers such as McCain favor? Do you want a president (Mike Huckabee, proponent of a national sales tax of at least 30 percent) pledged to radically increase the proportion of federal taxes paid by the middle class?

Republicans should try to choose the next president. They cannot avoid choosing how their party will define itself, even if by a loss beneath a worthy banner.

Romney gets a mini-George Will endorsement there. But on the larger analysis, the comparison to keep in mind is Michael Dukakis. The liberal former Massachusetts technocrat was hammered by the Republican Party Machine in 1988. Between outside attack ads and Lee Atwater-style take-no-prisoners political warfare, Dukakis dropped from a 17-point lead in public opinion to a traumatic defeat at the hands of George H.W. Bush.

There's no denying, of course, that '08 is shaping up to be the biggest election year for Democrats in decades. But with Iraq largely off the table as a volatile campaign issue, the Democrats have a huge challenge in presenting an alternative to conservatism that appears both competent and fiscally-prudent.

We're not going back to the New Deal or Great Society. The Democrats would like to...and conservatives need to drive that point home as the election year progresses. Much remains to be seen.

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

Giuliani Campaign On the Ropes

Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign is on the ropes, according to the latest reports.

Here's this morning's Los Angeles Times story:

Rudolph W. Giuliani, once the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, said Friday that some of his staffers had started forgoing their salaries to ease the strain on the campaign's budget.

Giuliani told reporters at an appearance in Florida that the aides volunteered to defer their pay "to stretch the dollars even further." The former New York mayor has $7 million in hand to spend in upcoming primaries -- enough, his campaign said, to compete through the crucial Super Tuesday contests in more than 20 states, including California, Feb. 5.

Still, many political observers said the news signaled a surprising cash squeeze in a campaign that was thought to be managing its finances well. It also underscored Giuliani's sharp decline in recent weeks from front-runner to struggling contender, they said, while renewing questions about the wisdom of his decision to essentially take a pass on the earliest contests. The candidate has staked his prospects on winning in Florida on Jan. 29.

"He's in a tough spot," said John J. Pitney Jr., a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College and a former Republican National Committee staffer. "Up to now, Giuliani's fundraising appeared to be a major advantage, but . . . he's probably burned through a lot of money."

Campaign officials said that the budget situation dovetailed with their strategy of betting heavily on Florida and of using momentum from a primary victory here to galvanize fresh fundraising and support.

Giuliani, speaking to reporters after a stop at a school in the southern Florida community of Coral Gables, playfully said his campaign was using "a strategy of lulling your opponents into a false sense of security."

"Everyone has their own strategy," he said. "We think this is the best strategy, given our assets."

I've noted with increasing frequency of late how disastrous Giuliani's Florida launch pad strategy is looking. It's hard to beat the phenomenon of momentum, especially in with such a tightly frontloaded calendar, and not to mention the hunger in the electorate for change, leadership, or whatever's out there.

Sunday's Times of London fairly well places Giuliani's campaign on the precipice of disaster:

STRUGGLING to regain his former eminence in Republican presidential polls, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, last week announced the formation of a “catastrophe advisory committee” to help him form policies on handling national disasters. Some of his rivals promptly quipped that he should start by investigating his own campaign.

“Either Rudy is a genius, and is about to defy half a century of conventional political wisdom,” noted one leading New York Democrat last week. “Or he has run the most stupid presidential campaign in history.”

As Giuliani set off on a three-day bus trip around Florida yesterday, his once-commanding lead in Republican opinion polls had evaporated, he was trying to save money by not paying aides and his campaign strategy of focusing mainly on big industrial states was threatening to reduce him to also-ran status.

It has been a terrible new year for the former mayor, whose leadership credentials - built on his internationally acclaimed performance in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 - established him as the frontrunner last year.

As recently as early last month, Giuliani was almost 15 points clear of the field in national polls; he was 33 points ahead in his native New York and 15 points up in Florida, which holds its primary on January 29. But a series of embarrassing political setbacks has knocked his legs from under him.

In one national poll last week, he plunged to third place among Republican candidates, with only 16% of the vote. In New York on Friday a Survey USA poll showed that his lead over John McCain, the surging Ari-zona senator who won the New Hampshire primary, had sunk to just three points.

Even Florida, long targeted by Giuliani as his ideal state to launch a winning campaign, is turning into a minefield. In a poll last Friday, he slipped into second place, eight points behind McCain.

Giuliani joked last week that he was lulling his rivals into “a false sense of confidence” and that victory in Florida would catapult him to the front of the race, a week before Super Tuesday on February 5, when 22 states will vote and the Republican nomination may be decided.

Yet his decision to ignore Iowa and to campaign only desultorily in New Hampshire has left him dangerously marginalised and running out of cash as McCain and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who won in Iowa, have grabbed the political momentum and media limelight regarded as crucial to a successful White House campaign.

“Giuliani is done,” claimed Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire’s poll survey centre. “He has run possibly the worst campaign of a leading candidate that I can remember. They made an incredibly bad strategic decision.”

It's not just strategic missteps hurting Giuliani's presidential aspirations:

Yet it is not just poorly conceived campaign strategy that is to blame for Giuliani’s woes. The emergence last year of embarrassing revelations about the costs of providing security for his mistress when he was mayor was followed by a run of negative publicity about his family, his business connections and his health.

At one point he entered hospital after a crippling headache forced him to turn around his campaign jet in mid-air, although tests revealed nothing serious. As the national media began to focus on Iowa and New Hampshire, Giuliani found himself starved of attention.

Suddenly America no longer seems interested in Giuliani’s 9/11 exploits, the cornerstone of his electoral appeal. As the violence in Iraq appears to be subsiding, and with the economy rapidly becoming the issue of most concern to voters, Giuliani has begun to sound like a broken record when he talks of his performance as “America’s mayor”.

The "9/11 theme" has worn thin, no matter how powerful a message underlies its initial appeal.

Still, the strategic mistakes for Giuliani seem monumental, considering how basic the crucial importance of Iowa and New Hampshire are to students of political science. Titles to some of the basic texts in electoral studies - for example, Media and Momentum: The New Hampshire Primary and Nomination Politics - are a pretty clue to importance of the early contests in contemporary nomination politics (a quick Google search turns up more recent titles).

Sure, the journalists could be wrong. The former New York Mayor could pull out a dramatic win in one of the upcoming elections and sweep into contention on February 5. I'm not a betting man, but there'd be good odds against a Guiliani comeback.

Photo Credit: New York Times.

Endorsing McCain in South Carolina

John McCain, who holds a narrow lead in South Carolina polling, received the endorsement of The State newspaper for next week's Republican primary (via Memeorandum):

First Rudy Giuliani, then Mitt Romney looked at political realities and fled the Palmetto State, deciding their priorities lay elsewhere. Fred Thompson seems to be running in this first-in-the-South primary just to say he did. Ron Paul keeps on being Ron Paul, former nominee of the Libertarian Party.

The two remaining contenders here happen to be the two strongest candidates — Mike Huckabee and John McCain. Gov. Huckabee is an exciting newcomer who shows a wonderful ability to connect with voters’ concerns, and Republicans could do far worse than to choose him. But his utter lack of knowledge of foreign affairs is unsettling.

It’s not just about Iraq and Afghanistan. As freshly demonstrated by the incident involving U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz last week and the assassination earlier of the opposition leader in the world’s most volatile democracy (which possesses nuclear weapons, and shelters Osama bin Laden), our commander in chief will need a far broader and deeper understanding of our relationship to the world than on-the-job training can adequately provide.

Clearly, the best Republican candidate to lead our nation at this time is U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona. He has the necessary experience, not just in time served, but in the quality of understanding he exhibits across the board.

The value of his experience is multiplied by his integrity and independence. He is a slave to no ideology or faction. Not only will he work with anyone who wants to do the right thing anytime, he is usually the driving force at the head of coalitions to get the job done — from the Gang of 14 that broke Senate gridlock and paved the way for the confirmation of conservative judges to his principled leadership on campaign finance reform. He knew the political risk he took leading the quest for a comprehensive solution to illegal immigration, but he believed securing our borders was too important a priority not to try.

He is deeply respected by his colleagues in both parties, despite the fact that, as he jokes, he has never sought the “Miss Congeniality” title. No one is as likely as he to fight, expose and defeat waste, fraud or corruption.

Experience, certainly. Integrity, even more so. But John McCain’s most conspicuous virtue is courage. He is a brave and tough man who unlike some candidates has no need to bluster, but is able to speak with humility and generosity to those with whom he disagrees. A McCain presidency would do much to restore confidence in American leadership, at home and abroad.

There is of course the extraordinary physical and moral courage that he displayed as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, where he withstood nightmarish torture for years rather than let his country or his comrades down. But he also possesses the kind of political fortitude that keeps him from giving up on any worthwhile quest. He evinces a wisdom born in pain, a confidence earned in many battles. When others despair, John McCain knows he has seen worse, and keeps striding forward.

For much of the past year, his candidacy was dismissed, his support depleted, his coffers empty. He kept on, and gradually won the doubters back to his cause.

More to the point, consider the wisdom and courage he has displayed with regard to our nation’s struggle in Iraq. For four years, he was nearly alone in his insistent criticism of the Bush administration for sending too few troops to quell the violence. When the president finally adopted the McCain approach a year ago, the senator lent Gen. David Petraeus his unwavering support at a time when so many in both major parties either thought he was wrong, or simply lacked the courage to stand with him. He was right all along.

John McCain has shown more clearly than anyone on the American political scene today that he loves his country, and would never mislead or dishonor it. He is almost unique in his determination to do what is right, whatever the cost. And he usually has a clear vision of what’s right.

So it is that we confidently and enthusiastically endorse John McCain for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.

Rasmussen Reports on Thursday had McCain holding a slight edge over former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, at 27 to 24 percent.

McCain has so far received three major-paper endorsements, in Iowa, New Hampshire, and now South Carolina. The Swamp sees some significance:

"The State," South Carolina's largest newspaper, will endorse John McCain for the upcoming Republican primary in its Sunday editions, saying McCain has "the necessary experience, not just in time served, but in the quality of understanding he exhibits across the board."

Even if the paper's nod helps only a little, it'll be a welcome boost for McCain, who is polling neck-and-neck here for first place with former Ark. Gov. Mike Huckabee. The endorsement called Huckabee an "exciting newcomer" and said "Republicans could do far worse than to choose him. But his utter lack of knowledge of foreign affairs is unsettling."

South Carolina holds its Republican primary a week from today.

McCain's endorsement completes an editorial hat trick for the candidate, who has been selected by the statewide newspapers in the two previous contested locations: Iowa (The Des Moines Register) and New Hampshire (the Union Leader). McCain won in New Hampshire, and finished third in Iowa.

See also my earlier posts on McCain in South Carolina, here and here.

John McCain and the Surge Effect

Fred Barnes, over at the Weekly Standard, offers and interesting analysis of the effect of Iraq progress on American politics:

The match is almost perfect. As the surge in Iraq has succeeded, the presidential campaign of John McCain has risen from the ashes. This is no coincidence, and the message is simple and unmistakable. The surge is now a powerful force in American politics. In the jargon of the 2008 presidential race, it's a game-changer.

The surge effect is the result of gains in Iraq well beyond the most optimistic dreams of the surge's advocates. The American military, led by General David Petraeus, has under-promised and over-delivered. Violence has dropped precipitously. So have attacks on Americans and combat deaths. Baghdad has been virtually secured, al Qaeda crushed, and sectarian bloodshed significantly reduced. Provinces once controlled by insurgents are scheduled to be turned over to well-trained Iraqi forces, starting with Anbar in the spring. The war, in short, is being won.

The media now say that Iraq is a secondary issue. But the voters, so far mostly on the Republican side, disagree. In New Hampshire last week, two-thirds of Republicans who voted in the primary told exit pollsters they support the war in Iraq. Oddly enough, they like the war more than they like President Bush.

For obvious reasons, McCain is the chief beneficiary of the surge effect. He has relentlessly promoted increasing the number of troops in Iraq and adopting a counterinsurgency strategy that stresses the protection and safety of Iraqi citizens. And a year ago, Bush bucked tremendous antiwar pressure, much of it from Republicans, and announced the surge strategy. Like McCain, he emphatically rejected the notion that the war was lost.

Last summer, when his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination was at a low point, McCain was urged by some of his advisers to downplay his support for the war. McCain rejected that advice. He knew how to evaluate a military plan, understood that the counterinsurgency strategy was different from what had been done before in Iraq, and knew what it could accomplish (and has).

Now other Republican candidates are jumping on the surge bandwagon. At last week's debate in South Carolina, Rudy Giuliani said he had endorsed the surge, just like McCain. "Not at the time," McCain responded, referring to the time before Bush's announcement. McCain said he had "called for the change in strategy. That's the difference." It's an important difference politically.

Barnes discusses the Democrats as well. But events on the ground are completely ethereal to the Democratic candidates, as a withdrawal mandate is all they've got to offer - beyond the "willing suspension of disbelief."

Barnes concludes:

Democrats are gambling on two things. One is that the Shia-led Iraqi government won't take steps toward reconciliation with Sunnis. The other is that the withdrawal of the five American surge brigades will lead to a renewal of violence. There's a chance this will happen, just not a very good one. Reconciliation is proceeding rapidly at the provincial level in Iraq. And now that Sunnis have mostly given up their insurgency, violence is unlikely to return to anything like pre-surge levels.

Of course McCain and Bush have gambled, too. McCain has staked his campaign and Bush his presidency on a victory and a free and independent Iraq that promotes America's national security. From the evidence of the growing surge effect, their gamble is paying off.

I know where I'm placing my bets!

Racial Controversy in the New Hampshire Polling Disaster

Andrew Kohut of the Pew polling organization claimed in an essay this week that lower-income whites declined to vote for Barack Obama in last Tuesday's New Hampshire primary on the basis of race.

It's an old hypothesis, often called the "Bradley Effect," a reference to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's loss in the 1982 California gubernatorial election.

John Judis hammers Kohut in a piece over at The New Republic (via Memeorandum):

Kohut is the eminence grise among pollsters. His interpretation [of the New Hampshire fiasco] was published in The New York Times. Suffice it to say, it carried a lot of weight. Kohut's argument goes as follows: Clinton did much better in the final count than Obama among poorer, less educated voters. These voters "have more unfavorable views of blacks" than wealthier, more educated voters. Kohut doesn't accuse these voters of lying. Instead, he argues that the voters who have unfavorable views of blacks tend to be underrepresented in polling samples, because they "do not respond" to pollsters--thus accounting for the inaccurate readings of support for Clinton and Obama.

This is an incendiary argument. Not only does it purport to explain why the pollsters got the results wrong, but it also implies that Clinton's success in New Hampshire can largely be attributed to the racism of low-income, less educated whites. But Kohut's evidence seems flimsy at best.

Kohut provides no data--none at all--to back up his contention that New Hampshire's lower-income, less educated whites have a more unfavorable view of blacks than their wealthier, more educated counterparts. I think he is simply inferring from national studies or studies that were conducted elsewhere, but he doesn't say. Yet New Hampshire is not Georgia or Mississippi, states with long histories of racial problems, nor is it the polarized New York City of 1989, where Kohut claims he encountered the Bradley effect. This kind of explosive claim deserves to have been backed up by some kind of evidence. I certainly don't know of any.

Judis provides his own data, from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, indicating no election-day decline in Obama voting among among those at lower levels of education. He concludes his analysis by suggesting that a gender-based analysis - why did women switch to Hillary? - is likely to provide the most compelling explanation for New Hampshire's muddled polling results:

Some of the polls seem to have significantly underrepresented the women's vote....

That may not be the reason why other polls got the result so wrong, but the under-representation of woman voters, coupled with the volatility of the electorate (as evidenced by the last minute shift of college-educated women voters), is a far more plausible hypothesis than the one that Kohut, Sullivan, and Robinson provide. This is not to say that there weren't people who did not vote for Obama because he is black. But, clearly, a hidden racist vote is neither an explanation for Clinton's victory nor the pollsters' error in predicting it. A closer reading of the evidence also has the benefit of not accusing half of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters of being racists.

The thesis of persistent racism in America is a staple of left-wing political discourse. Here's more on the debate from John Perazzo at FrontPageMagazine:

In the worldview of the American left, there is no article of faith more central than the notion that the United States is today -- and always has been -- infested with racism in every avenue of private and public life. This racism, we are told, makes its influence felt with particular force in the realm of politics, where the left’s conventional wisdom says that African Americans have no hope of ever garnering enough white support to ascend the political ladder to its highest rungs. This of course raises the issue of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who trounced Hillary Clinton in the January 3rd Caucus in Iowa (where the population is 95 percent white), and was defeated only narrowly by Mrs. Clinton five days later in New Hampshire (where the population is 96 percent white). How can Obama’s strong showings in these races, whose purpose is to determine who ultimately will run for the highest elected office in the nation, be reconciled with the leftist paradigm?

Perazzo's piece is excellent, and includes a nice set of references to the outstanding literature in the debate. I especially like this part:

Academia is replete with eminent professors who...view the United States as a nation that is bigoted to its core. Consider University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson, who laments the “miserable plight of black men in America,” and who recently expressed his hope that the “psychic, internal emotional turmoil that black people struggle against will somehow be lessened by seeing the image of a black man [Barack Obama] in charge” of the executive branch of the U.S. government.

Read the rest.

I discussed the issue in a recent post, "Barack Obama: The Hope of Black America?" But see also my post on Lawyers, Guns & Money, where the view that the U.S. "is bigoted to its core" gets a lot of play.

Must America Improve its International Standing?

One of the most common criticism of the Bush administration is that it has damaged America's international reputation.

From renouncing international treaties to the war in Iraq, activists and analysts alike routinely excoriate President Bush's ideology, style, and policies. Can American foreign policy recover?

This is the topic of a symposium over at the January/February issue of Foreign Policy, "What American Must Do?" Here's the introduction:

America’s relationship with the world is in disrepair. Anger, resentment, and fear have replaced the respect the United States once enjoyed. So, we asked a group of the world’s leading thinkers to answer one question: What single policy or gesture can the next president of the United States make to improve America’s standing in the world?

The selection of responses, by a number of prominent public intellectuals and scholars, is not as balanced as it might be. Jorge Domínguez, who is vice provost for international affairs at Harvard University, captures the typical left-wing academic renunciations of the "Bush regime":

The United States was the leading architect of the international laws and organizations sculpted in the wake of World War II. It built this multilateral framework because it was useful and because it was right. Yet, during the last decade, the U.S. government has undermined important multilateral agreements concerning climate change, the international criminal court, and nuclear nonproliferation. It has shredded the Geneva Conventions. It has embraced dictators who should have been rightly treated as international pariahs....

Torture? Waterboarding? It is difficult to accept such dishonorable practices being used by the same country that rightly denounced the horrific abuses that its adversaries employed against U.S. soldiers during wars in Korea and Vietnam. The United States should not torture the prisoners it holds, just as it would not want its citizens to be tortured anywhere in the world.

The next U.S. president must rebuild respect for international rules and organizations, many of which the United States once helped mightily to create.

No surprises there - pretty standard stuff.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Prize winner, takes it a little further, declaring that the U.S. needs to apologize for its actions:

After the September 11 attacks, an amazing outpouring of sympathy, concern, and love for the United States sprang forth from all over the world. It was proof that there is no instinctive or deep-seated hostility to the United States, no automatic anti-Americanism. There is, of course, frequent resentment of particular policies. The Reagan White House, for example, pursued constructive engagement with the apartheid government of South Africa. Many of us in South Africa opposed this course of action vehemently, but it did not make us anti-American.

Today, the negative feelings about the United States have been provoked by the arrogance of unilateralism. The administration of George W. Bush has routinely thumbed its nose at the rest of the world and told it to go jump in the lake. It did so over the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, and the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But nowhere did it do so more spectacularly than in the invasion of Iraq, heaping contempt upon the United Nations and upending international law. That arrogant action has turned out to be a catastrophic disaster on all scores....

More than anything else, the United States is looked upon fondly for its remarkable generosity.... If the world’s superpower has the grace and modesty to say it is sorry, people would rub their eyes in disbelief, pinch themselves, and then smile because a new day had dawned.

Apologize? This is a strangely blinkered demand, and it's too bad, because Archbishop Tutu boasts an esteemed reputation in the fight for justice in Africa.

Indeed, given his humanitarian record, one might think he'd at least credit and praise the Bush administration for its successful African HIV project, now widely recognized as the globe's most important AIDS initiative, which has been vital in combatting the disease on the African continent and around the world. "So far, roughly 1.4 million AIDS patients have received lifesaving medicine paid for with American dollars, up from 50,000 before the initiative," according to Sheryl Gay Stolberg in a recent New York Times report.

Tutu apparently can't see past the Bush Doctrine and our increasingly successful intervention in Iraq. Bush Derangement Syndrome knows no international boundaries.

The symposium boasts an antidote to this anti-Bush sentiment in Fouad Ajami's essay, "Steady as She Goes" :

There is a familiar liberal lament that the United States had the sympathy of the world after September 11, but uselessly squandered it in the years that followed. The man who most vehemently espoused this line of thinking in France, former French President Jacques Chirac, is gone and consigned to oblivion. The French leader who replaced him, Nicolas Sarkozy, stood before a joint session of the U.S. Congress in November and offered a poetic tribute to the land his predecessor mocked. He recalled the young American soldiers buried long ago on French soil: “Fathers took their sons to the beaches where the young men of America so heroically died . . . The children of my generation understood that those young Americans, 20 years old, were true heroes to whom they owed the fact that they were free people and not slaves. France will never forget the sacrifice of your children.” The anti-Americanism that France gave voice to for a generation has given way to a new order. This young leader now wants to fashion France in America’s image.

The man or woman who picks up George W. Bush’s standard in 2009 will inherit an enviable legacy. Europe is at peace with U.S. leadership. India and China export the best of their younger generations to U.S. shores. Violent extremists are on the retreat. Millions have been lifted out of dire poverty. This age belongs to the Pax Americana, an era in which anti-Americanism has always been false and contrived, the pretense of intellectuals and pundits who shelter under American power while bemoaning the sins of the country that provides their protection. When and if a post-American world arrives, it will not be pretty or merciful. If we be Rome, darkness will follow the American imperium.

Ajami argues that no great changes are required for the direction of American foriegn policy under the next administration. Indeed, the U.S. has an interest in the continued and vigorous promotion of America's historic freedom agenda, an international program boosted with ideological and military muscle under Bush 43. The U.S. will be less safe if our next leader abandons that project.

McCain is Clear GOP Frontrunner, Poll Shows

Senator John McCain got a big bump in national public opinion following his New Hampshire comeback, according to a new survey from CNN/Opinion Research:

John McCain's victory in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary appears to be paying off.

Sen. John McCain wins 34 percent of registered Republicans in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll.

The senator from Arizona is the front-runner in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination, according to the first national poll taken after the New Hampshire primary.

McCain has the support of 34 percent of registered Republicans in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey out Friday. That's a 21-point jump from the last CNN/Opinion Research poll, taken in December, well before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary earlier this month.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa Republican caucuses, is in second place in the new survey, with 21 percent of those registered Republicans polled supporting him for the GOP nomination.

Rudy Giuliani follows with 18 percent, a drop of six points from the December poll, when the former New York City mayor was the front-runner.

"Only McCain gained support among Republicans nationally. McCain's now the clear Republican front-runner," said Bill Schneider, CNN senior political analyst.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is in fourth place, with the backing of 14 percent of registered Republicans, with former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee at 6 percent, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas at 5 percent, and Rep. Duncan Hunter of California at 1 percent.

The CNN poll is based on a small sample, and is thus prone to large statistical error.

Still, via Captain Ed, a new SurveyUSA poll in Florida has McCain also pulling ahead of Rudy Giuliani by 8 percentage points.

The new data - nationally and out of Florida - come in tandem with McCain's lead over Mitt Romney in next Tuesday's battleground Michigan primary (see my analysis of the Michigan race here).

The momentum has shifted dramatically, scrambling the entire GOP field. The true test of McCain's frontrunner assets will come in Tuesday's South Carolina primary. Yet considering how volatile the GOP field remains, as well as the direction of the media bump, a McCain loss in any of the upcoming contests is not likely to knock the Arizona Senator out of contention.

February 5 awaits.

Photo Credit: New York Times; see also Memeorandum.

McCain Leads Romney in Michigan Polling

New polling data is starting to trickle-out on next week's Michigan primary.

According to a survey from Strategic Vision, an Atlanta-based public relations agency, John McCain leads Mitt Romney by 9 percentage points in the Wolverine State. Newsmax has the story:

McCain leads Romney 29% To 20% announces Strategic Vision, LLC, an Atlanta-headquartered public relations and public affairs agency - the key result of a three-day poll of 700 likely Michigan Republican primary voters. The poll has a margin of error of ±4 percentage points.

When Republicans were polled on whom they would support in 2008 for the Republican Presidential nomination, Arizona Senator John McCain led with 29%; former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney received 20%; former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee recieved18% former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani received 13%; former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson received 5%; Texas Congressman Ron Paul received 5%; California Congressman Duncan Hunter received 1%; and 9% were undecided.

“Senator McCain polls very well among male voters and also among voters who list the war in Iraq as their number one issue,” said David E. Johnson, CEO of Strategic Vision, LLC. “He fares poorly among social conservatives who at this point are mainly split between Huckabee and Romney. Among those who identify themselves as evangelicals, Huckabee has a clear lead. The race is still volatile with voters indicating that they may change their mind before the primary.

“Romney does best in the central area of the state and among female voters,” continued Johnson. “He needs to make stronger inroads among male voters and also among older voters to overtake McCain. Giuliani appears to be a non-factor although had he made a run for it, could have perhaps positioned himself to finish in the top three.”

Also, in a survey realeased this afternoon by Mitchell Interactive, a reseach and communications firm in Lansing, Michigan, finds McCain holding a 7 percent lead over Romney:

A poll released Friday afternoon by Mitchell Interactive, a research company out of Lansing, says Republican John McCain is ahead of Mitt Romney leading into next week's primary in Michigan.

The Poll gives McCain 23%, Romney 17%, and Mike Huckabee at 11%. The poll has Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul tied at 8%.

Mitchell interactive conducted the poll on January 9th and 10th. The margin of error is about 5%. McCain won the primary in 2000 beating President George W. Bush. Steve Mitchell explains, "8 years ago, John McCain won the Michigan Republican Primary because of strong support from Democrats and independents who voted in the Republican Primary," Mitchell goes on to say, "In 2000, he lost to George W. Bush by 2:1 among Republicans.

This time, McCain narrowly leads with Republicans, but is likely to win the primary because of his continued support from independents and Democrats," Mitchell concluded.

A couple of notes:

First, I'm not familiar with either of these survey research firms, and without access to the polling methodologies surveys, I'm not investing full confidence in the findings at this point. Both survey samples are small. I'd like to see some confirming results on the Michigan race from additional, more widely-established polling organizations.

Second, a McCain win in Michigan could spell the end for the Romney organization. George Romney, Mitt's father, was a popular three-term governor of the state, and Mitt was born there. Michigan is Romney's firewall against McCain's momentum. But the former Massachusetts governor has placed second in the year's first two crucial nominating contests, and this is after Romney staked millions of his own fortune building massive ground organizations and running political advertisements. Considering Romney's mediocre performance in last night's South Carolina debate, it's hard to see much life for the Romney campaign in a Southern primary boosting a huge evangelical vote more favorable to Mike Huckabee's Baptist heritage than Romney's Mormonism.

CNN has more background:

On the heels of two second-place finishes and one overshadowed win, an embattled yet confident Mitt Romney marches into Michigan looking to rebound.

The former Massachusetts governor is predicting a win in Tuesday's Michigan primary, but he said the same of New Hampshire, where he finished 6 points behind Sen. John McCain of Arizona....

Another loss - especially in Michigan - could be a big blow to Romney.

If he does lose, "he's going to have to do some serious reassessment of whether his campaign is viable," said CNN political analyst Bill Schneider.

Romney been greeted by sparse crowds in his campaign appearances today, so we'll see how things go for him over the weekend.

See also MSNBC for a late-breaking update on Romney's Michigan push.

UPDATE: From the New York Times' Caucus blog, Romney's calling the Michigan primary "ground zero" of his White House bid:

Mitt Romney, in what may prove an unfortunate choice of words, has taken to referring to Michigan as “ground zero” for his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

He is referring to the fact that he was born here, went to prep school here and is the son of a former top auto executive and Michigan governor. As he told an audience in Warren, Mich., Friday morning, “My mom and dad are buried here.”

But many – including not a few in the Romney campaign – also believe this state could be the ground zero where his 2008 presidential hopes are reduced to rubble.

This is not the kind of buzz Romney wants. Negative momentum's a killer.

McCain Holds Up in South Carolina

Jonathan Martin over at The Politico argues that John McCain held up well in last night South Carolina debate:

Largely untouched after 90 minutes, John McCain left the stage here Thursday night with the same designation he had upon arrival: front-runner.

For the third debate in less than a week, no candidate not named “Mitt Romney” aggressively went after the ascendant McCain, who leads now in polls taken in both Michigan and South Carolina.

And with Romney apparently not airing negative ads in Michigan, it appears that McCain, whose vulnerabilities in a GOP primary are well documented, now could go into the next two pivotal primary states largely untouched by his intra-party rivals.

Romney took after McCain at the outset of the Fox News-sponsored forum, criticizing the Arizona senator for his statements in Michigan Wednesday that the jobs lost in the economically struggling state were not coming back.

“I disagree,” Romney said. “I'm going to fight for every single job - Michigan, South Carolina, every state in this country.”

But McCain parried the question, citing his willingness to dispense hard truths and adding a sharp reminder that it was this trait that enabled him to defeat Romney in New Hampshire.

It was the only notable exchange where McCain was really forced on the defensive.

Later, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson both offered only the most glancing shots at McCain – Giuliani on the Arizonan not being the only one to support the surge policy in Iraq and Thompson on McCain’s immigration stance. And they did so with a dose of honey, beginning their salvos by describing McCain as their “friend.”

McCain was helped further by the emergence of a feister Thompson. The former Tennessee senator came prepared to go on the attack – but not against McCain.

Rather, it was Mike Huckabee he targeted, underscoring that the two are competing for the same vote share here in what is a must-win state for each.

Portraying Huckabee as soft on foreign policy, immigration and unions and with a weakness for a nanny-state government, Thompson cited a trove of opposition research to declare of the former Arkansas governor’s background: “That's not the model of the Reagan coalition, that's the model of the Democratic Party.”

After the debate, McCain supporters seemed thrilled to have seen Thompson weakening the candidate they believe is shaping up to be their top rival here.

Also helping McCain was the decision by Fox to, after much discussion in previous debates, to downplay the immigration issue. It’s McCain’s most significant vulnerability in the primary, and it only it came up in the last ten minutes of the forum, at nearly 10:30 at night.

With immigration absent from the discussion, McCain was able to press his national security credentials — the other most important issue to the GOP base and one where McCain is on much more solid terrain. When the topic of the incident with Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf this week came up, McCain declined to second-guess the decision of the U.S. Navy boats and reminded voters of his own military background.

"And for those of us who are not in that situation, to second guess is a little bit presumptuous," McCain said. "It's a long, hard process to become the commander of a Navy ship."

South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson said afterward he was surprised that nobody on stage really took after McCain.

“It was very respectful tonight,” Dawson said. “It wasn’t a rough debate.”

Yet South Carolina is known for its bare-knuckled politics and Dawson predicted that McCain would not enjoy a glide path to next week’s primary.

But with Romney moving to pull out of the primary here and Thompson, Giuliani and Huckabee indicating again Thursday that they’re not comfortable attacking McCain in person, he’s on track to enjoy the precise opposite of what he experienced in the South Carolina in 2000.

Fred Thompson's looking for the winner's mantle coming out of the debate (Fred's not dead).

Both the New York Times and ABC News have given him glowing coverage, and the right blogosphere got some amphetamine with the jump start of the "red pickup truck" campaign (see Flopping Aces, for example).

See also my post-debate analysis,"The GOP Debate From Myrtle Beach."