THE ’08 DEBATES: PLAYING NICE
Published in the New York Post on June 11, 2007.
Something new is going on in the 2008 presidential primaries. Call it an outbreak of nice.
In past contests, attacks and negatives played a key role in the primaries. Voting records, lists of campaign contributors and issue differences all highlighted the debate among the candidates as they vied for their party’s nomination. This year, though, the gloves never seem to come off.
FRED THOMPSON WILL DRAIN ALL BUT RUDY
Polls show that a big part of the vote that John McCain and Mitt Romney are getting in the Republican primaries, to say nothing of the vote that Newt Gingrich could get if he runs, comes from people who are turned off by Giuliani’s social liberalism rather than turned on by any specific attraction to one of the candidates. Now this vote is split four ways among McCain, Romney, Fred Thompson, and Gingrich. If Fred Thompson gets into the race next month, it will drift to him and concentrate in his corner.
BILL CLINTON AND NANCY PELOSI’S SON GET PAID BIG BUCKS BY INFOUSA
Published on FoxNews.com on June 8, 2007.
The son of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert moved to Washington when his father became speaker and landed a lush lobbying contract for Google.
When Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, she promised to change things – to enact serious, and long overdue, ethical reforms – to stop the growing trend of legislators and their families accepting gifts, trips, and jobs from lobbyists and corporations.
Well, some things never change.
DELAY DOES NOT HELP FRED THOMPSON
Fred Thompson was the missing figure at the Republican debate in New Hampshire. The race is happening without him. I think that his delay in running will hurt him in two ways: First, he looks weak and disinterested and his delay just fuels speculation that he lacks the fire in the belly. The longer he stays out, the more people will question his work ethic and his heart for the race. Second, the more he lets suspense build, the more he will disappoint when he actually runs. He raises expectations and he will probably fall short of them when he has to appear, unscripted and without the stage makup and camera angles he gets on Law and Order.
IRAQ WILL BECOME HILLARY’S WAR
Published on TheHill.com on June 6, 2007.
It’s a good time to read Robert Dallek’s new book, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, an agonizing presentation of the difficulty the two men had in figuring out how to pull out of Vietnam and end the war “honorably.” Their problem was familiar to anyone who has been following the war in Iraq: We were losing. Any move to pull out American troops would inevitably be followed (as it was) by a collapse of the South Vietnamese military resistance. Impaled on the horns of their own indecision, Nixon and Kissinger kept troops in Vietnam for the administration’s entire first term and only pulled them out five years after inheriting the war from Lyndon Johnson.
ROMNEY, RUDY WIN DEBATE; MCCAIN LOSES
Mitt Romney looked good and sounded good in the debate last night. Image is a key part of politics and Romney did very well at projecting a very good image. His answers were articulate and on target. I haven’t thought very highly of Romney in this contest, but he did very well last night. He exuded charisma.
SCANDALS FADE AS ISSUE IN 2008
Voters were galvanized by the corruption issue in 2006 and their anger led them to expel the Republicans from control in Congress. But that was then and this is now. The limited ethics reforms of the new Democratic Congress — and the very fact that the Democrats threw the Republicans out — have largely appeased the electorate and Congressional corruption does not loom large as an issue with 2008 approaching.
DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY ANALYSIS Vol 1, #12
Dick Morris’ ’08 Play-By-Play Analysis
Volume 1, #12
June 4, 2007
A PLAN FOR REPUBLICAN VICTORY
A Republican candidate can win in 2008 by triangulating- criticizing the Bush Administration and putting distance between himself and the increasingly unpopular president, while at the same time embracing the Bush anti-terrorism strategy and other core Republican issues promoted by Bush. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich pointed the way last week when he criticized the president’s handling of the war in Iraq and drew the metaphor between the US and the recent French presidential races.
