DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY

Volume 1, #22

November 21, 2007

Dear Friends,

Have a very happy Thanksgiving! With all of the political fighting going on, let’s take a minute to give thanks for this wonderful country.

Dick

WHAT’S HAPPENING TO HILLARY?

Has Hillary’s candidacy just hit a bump in the road or is she seriously decomposing? It’s
still too early to tell, but there’s definitely something big going on.

She’s lost her lead in Iowa.

According to The Washington Post/ABC poll, she’s down 4 points, with Obama in first place. (It’s
Obama 30%, Hillary 26%, Edwards 21%).

And in New Hampshire, CNN reports that she has lost the commanding 23 point lead she had in
September and has crashed down to an 11 point lead today.

This is not good news for Hillary.

And there are signs that her slippage has seeped through to her base. While national polls
show that she still leads among women by twenty points, in Iowa, she is actually only tied with Obama among female Democrats!

This is a big change.

What happened? How could her debate performance cause such unraveling?

To grasp what is happening to her, one needs to explore the various levels of reaction to her bad
debate three weeks ago and her tepid performance last week.

Level One: She Won’t Answer Questions

The first and most obvious reaction of voters to Hillary’s dodging and weaving in the debates is that she is trying to take both sides of various key issues. Like Bill Clinton during the early years of his presidency, she is trying to have it both ways.

She’s tapping into a collective memory of just how unattractive and ‘clever’ the Clintons can be.

She has a specific plan for saving Social Security…but she won’t discuss it until we achieve -fiscal responsibility.”

She understands why governors are moving to give illegal immigrants drivers licenses – and thinks it’s a good idea. It makes sense — but she’s against it.

We need to pull troops out of Iraq, she says, but still need to leave them there to stop Iranian infiltration, hunt al Qaeda, and provide support to the Iraq Army.

And so forth…

Caught in the brazen contradictions of her own positions, she has floundered during the debates.

In the debate on October 30^th, Obama, Edwards, Dodd and questioner Tim Russert were alert to her dodges and had no hesitation in pouncing on her doublespeak. “I believe Mrs. Clinton just gave too two different positions in the space of about two minutes,” Edwards jabbed. “You just said you were for it,” Dodd noted as Hillary was trying to worm out of endorsing drivers licenses for illegals.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was much kinder to her in the Nevada debate last week, but it appears not to have done her much good.

A lot of voters, particularly recent converts to Hillary, were shocked by her equivocations and double talk.

But many Democrats didn’t mind her dance around the issues because they are so determined to defeat the GOP that they don’t want their candidate to be pinned down to commitments which would make her easier to beat in the general election. For these voters, victory is the goal at any cost and a good dancer is a good candidate.

Is She Too Weak to be the Democratic Candidate?

Then Hillary compounded the problems raised by her debate flaws by implying that the men were ganging up on her. She flew to her old college, Wellesley, and complained that the all-male club of debaters and journalists had treated her harshly, drawing a contrast to the environment that had prevailed at the all-woman school she had attended.

Then she brought in her husband to fight for her. Bill Clinton openly attacked Russert for biased questioning and said Hillary’s rivals had “swift-boated” her during the debate. After much criticism, Clinton later claimed he was talking about the largely silent Republicans.

All his self-defense and self-pity roused concerns about Hillary’s strength as a president, but, more important to Democrats, as a candidate. For months, Hillary has been basing her campaign on her ability to defeat “the vast right wing conspiracy” and the “Republican attack machine.” She said she would “deck them.” While posturing about her White House experience, it was really her campaign experience that she was touting. The woman who had helped lead the battle to win in 1992, win in 1996, prevail in the impeachment battle, and win the Senate seat in New York, was the experienced warrior the Party needed.

But now, as she ran for cover, hiding behind her gender and her husband, she did not look so tough or formidable.

For the Democrats, the primary is a play within a play – a contest between potential presidents to be sure but also a mock election to see who would do best at the real thing come November of next year.

Hillary’s excuses for her debate weakness looked, themselves, weak and further eroded her support.

Obama and Edwards are Empowered

After one of the early Democratic debates, pollster Frank Luntz, monitoring his focus group’s reactions to the contest, said that Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment (“Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of a Fellow Republican”) was now applying to the Democratic contest. This Party, reputed to form firing squads in circles, was suddenly so focused on defeating the Republicans, that they reacted badly to attacks by one Democratic candidate on another, particularly against any criticism of the likely nominee-Hillary.

But after scorching her in the debate, Edwards and Obama both saw their poll numbers rise. Some polls had Edwards moving up by about three points and Obama by five. Their gains, which rewarded rather than punished their aggressive debate strategy, brought with them an impunity which is letting them continue the attacks on Hillary.

Can Hillary Win?

With victory in the general election the only goal of most Democratic primary voters, Hillary’s sag in the polls is creating its own question: Is she really a winner? Willing to overlook a host of faults in order to choose someone to take the Republicans down, they are not willing to forgive the one cardinal sin: losing.

So with each drop in the polls, Hillary’s reputation as a winner, vital to her standing in the Party, has gotten weaker and her hold on the voters loosened.

And the questions her debate performance raised are, themselves, raising new questions, particularly as John Edwards – the more aggressive of Hillary’s two main rivals – zeroes in on her contradictory statements about Iraq. Pressing her to say how many troops she’d leave there and what they’d do and how long they’d be there, Edwards is backing Hillary into a corner. And her old dodge – I won’t negotiate against myself – holds less and less credence as the chances of her winning decline.

What About Iowa?

All these developments are being played out on the stage of a tiny state – Iowa – whose caucuses on January 3^rd are the first real forum for the contest. The importance of the Iowa race is heightened by the fact that the Democratic and Republican nominees are likely to be chosen by February 5^th, just thirty-three days later.

While Hillary has a big financial advantage over Edwards and a bit of a lead over Obama, Iowa is too small for money to be a decisive advantage. A heavy week of advertising costs only about $200,000 there. Spending on field organization can rack up the cost, but no candidate is too poor to run in Iowa.

Also, the very format of a caucus, where voters must attend meetings rather than just nip around the corner to their polling place, encourages only the committed to vote. Rather than just ducking into the voting booth and pulling a lever, voters must spend hours at a meeting, often casting tactical votes to help their candidate.

So the marginal primary voters don’t show up. And the most committed element of the Democratic Party is, of course, its left wing, now increasingly disenchanted with Hillary’s squishy and inconsistent position on the war.

Indeed, the Washington Post/ABC poll showed that only half of Hillary’s voters have attended caucuses previously in Iowa. By contrast, 57% of Obama’s have and 76% of Edwards’ supporters have been to a caucus in earlier years. If we assume that only those who have already attended a caucus will show up this time, Hillary plunges to third place with Obama and Edwards tied for first.

If Hillary can pull out a victory in Iowa, it will so reinforce the view of her inevitability that voters in the remaining primaries that follow Iowa will be reluctant to weaken their future nominee by voting against her. The perception will harden that Hillary is the winner, both adding to her vote share, and cutting into support for her opponents.

But, what if she loses?

What If Hillary Loses Iowa?

If Hillary fails in Iowa, does she have the hardened support the next contest — in New Hampshire – to prevail in the face of an Iowa upset? Already, with her bad debate performance, Hillary has lost half of her lead in New Hampshire.

It is not so much that Hillary would falter after an Iowa defeat, but that Obama would surge after a victory. Suddenly, the potential of a black president, which has seemed to fade as Hillary’s lead continued to grow, will galvanize the nation and capture its imagination. Obama, attractive and compelling, will develop huge momentum from an Iowa win and probably will carry New Hampshire as well.

And What then?

Hillary’s national strength is such that she can’t be knocked out by one or two caucus or primary loses. To defeat her, a candidate must battle in all fifty states, taking her on delegate by delegate, winning in the big states. Symbolic defeats in Iowa or New Hampshire with only a handful of delegates at stake won’t derail Hillary. But they will make it harder.

But Obama does have the financial resources to fight a fifty state battle with Hillary, and, with his Internet based fund raising, has the ability to reload his coffers rapidly after a victory.

If Hillary loses Iowa and New Hampshire, the nominating contest could go either way. Obama’s chances at winning would rise, but only to 50-50. Suddenly, women would grow concerned about having the presidency snatched from their grasp and loyal Democrats would wonder if they can win a general election behind an African-American candidate. The Party establishment would not let go of Hillary easily and her IOUs from Democratic office holders and party officials – for whom she has raised boatloads of money – would hold many of her super-delegate votes in place.

But if Hillary loses in Iowa and then loses New Hampshire too it would become a contest.

REPUBLICANS: THE BATTLES WITHIN

On the Republican side of the fence, the Iowa battle is even more interesting. After leading for seven months, Romney suddenly has a problem on his hands. It’s not the problem he thought he’d have – Giuliani or Thompson. It’s Mike Huckabee. From nowhere, Huckabee is now hot on Romney’s tail. The average of the past five polls (always available on www.realclearpolitics.com) shows Romney at 28%, Huckabee at 20%, Giuliani languishing behind at 14%, Thompson crashing at 11%, and McCain at 7%.

So what happens if Rudy loses Iowa?

It depends on four questions:

If Rudy is wiped out in Iowa, as the polls currently suggest, he is in for a long hard battle to get the nomination. His consistent lead in the national polls means that if he won in Iowa, he could end the contest right there (just as Hillary could).

But if Rudy is humiliated in Iowa, it opens the door to the argument that the base just won’t buy his social liberalism and may lead for many to hunt around for an alternative.

Which raises the second question: Who does he lose to? If he loses to Romney, it is a disaster. Romney has a built in advantage in the next two states on the calendar – New Hampshire and Michigan.

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney was on Boston television virtually every night and 2/3 of New Hampshire voters watch Boston TV. New Hampshire television reaches only about 1/3 of the state. So New Hampshire is virtually Romney’s home state. The average of the last five polls has him ahead there by a lot. Its Romney 33%, Giuliani 18%, McCain 16%, Huckabee 7%, Thompson 5%.

And in Michigan, Mitt’s father George was the Governor (he ran for president against Nixon in 1968 but was wiped out when he said he was “brainwashed” in Vietnam). A Detroit News poll from earlier this month has Romney at 28%, Giuliani at 25%, Thompson at 13%, McCain at 12% and Huckabee at 9%.

Rudy could overcome Romney’s lead in both New Hampshire and Michigan, but not if Romney wins in Iowa. The momentum he would get from the first caucuses would be so huge that he would likely win both states.

And, in South Carolina, a conservative bastion, it would be wishful thinking to believe that Giuliani could come back if Romney built up a head of steam. Realclearpolitics.com has Romney and Rudy tied at 21 there.

So, if Romney wins Iowa, he’ll likely do a sweep, winning New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina. Then, the question will be whether Rudy can stage a comeback in Florida where he now enjoys a solid lead. It will be tough but it is possible.

But the silver lining for Rudy is that Huckabee, who has surged in Iowa, could beat Romney. Mike has gone from invisibility to second place through dogged, one-on-one campaigning in Iowa and now has enough money to do some paid television advertising.

Can Huckabee beat Romney in Iowa? Maybe yes. After all, most of Romney’s support is really fear of Rudy and his social liberalism. If you are going to vote for a social conservative, why not vote for the real thing rather than a recent convert?

If Huckabee beats Romney, it sets up a three way race in New Hampshire and Rudy’s chances may depend on the third question: How did Hillary do in Iowa?

If Hillary wins in Iowa, the Democratic race is functionally over. That will free independents to enter the Republican primary and will give Rudy or McCain a big boost.

But if Hillary loses in Iowa, you can bet that Independents will stay in the Democratic primary, turning the GOP contest in New Hampshire into a confrere of the party faithful who will support Romney or Huckabee.

Remember that in 2000, it was Independents entering the Republican primary that boosted McCain to victory over Bush. And note also that in the current polling, 80% of the independents are voting in the Democratic primary – to elect or defeat Hillary. But if she is not in play by New Hampshire, having won Iowa and the nomination, then they may enter the Republican primary and deliver it to Rudy.

If Rudy is the moderate at that point. And that leads to the fourth question: How will McCain do?

Rudy appeared to have knocked McCain out of the race when he entered the Republican contest in January of 2007. Before that, McCain was trailing Rudy only slightly, but when Giuliani entered the race, he immediately racked up a big lead over McCain. And when the immigration debate heated up, McCain paid a heavy price for his support of the Bush reform plan which conservatives attacked as amnesty.

But lately, McCain has been doing well. Nationally, he is sluggish. The realclearpolitics.com average has him at 13% in fourth place behind Rudy (28%), Thompson (15%), and Romney (13%). But in New Hampshire, McCain is hot on Rudy’s trail. Romney leads at 33% but Rudy is in second at 18% and McCain third at 16%.

It depends on Iowa. Right now, Rudy is at 14% in Iowa and McCain is down at 7%. But if McCain could come up – and he is working Iowa very hard – passing Rudy there, combined with a strong base in New Hampshire left over from his 2000 triumph there, could give McCain an edge over Giuliani reversing the pattern of the past year.

So….on the right, its either Romney or Huckabee. Our bet is that Huckabee wins in Iowa and sets up a tough three way fight in New Hampshire.

And…on the left, its Giuliani or McCain, more likely Rudy. But how damaged with Rudy be after Iowa. He better hope that either he does better or that Huckabee wins.

DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY-BY-PLAY

Volume 1, #21

October 26, 2007

WHAT SHE’D DO: HILLARY’S HIDDEN AGENDA AND HOW MUCH MORE IT WILL COST YOU

When a major presidential candidate refuses to reveal the specifics of her campaign program, taking the position that she “won’t answer hypothetical questions,” how are we to gauge her candidacy and intentions?

There’s only one way: We must become detectives, reading her statements – particularly between the lines – to figure out her ideas and likely governing philosophy. And we also need to examine the agenda being formulated in Congress by the left wing of the Democratic Party to help us to fill in the blanks in assessing Hillary’s true intentions.

She’ll never tell us.

The headline to this article is intentionally conditional (“what she’d do”, not “what she’ll do”) because, despite her front runner status, she is, thankfully, not inevitable. But we can’t ignore her commanding lead in the Democratic Primary (Rasmussen has her at 46% with Obama at a puny 18% and Edwards out of sight at 11%) and her strong showing in general election matchups (she beats everybody but Giuliani).

So it is definitely appropriate to read the tea leaves and project what President Hillary would do if elected.

The answer is not pretty. If she is elected, as it looks like she will, there is a very good likelihood that she will bring with her a heavily Democratic Senate. With four Republican incumbents endangered (Coleman, Minn; Sununu, N.H.; Smith, Ore; and Collins, Me) and four open seats likely to go from Republican to Democrat (Virginia, N.M., Colorado, and, possibly Nebraska), she could have 58 Democrats at her beck and call, making a filibuster unlikely.

That highly Democratic Congress and President Hillary would likely combine to enact legislation so far reaching and ideologically polarizing as to be a rare turning point in American history. One has to think of Woodrow Wilson’s first two years, FDR’s first term, Lyndon Johnson’s first two years as president and, on the right, Reagan’s revolution to find anything comparable in scope and extent.

It’s a frightening thought.

Start with her tax policies.

TAXES

Hillary makes no secret of her intention to roll back Bush’s tax cuts on the ‘wealthy.’
But her definition of ‘rich’ is sufficiently inclusive so as to encompass everyone with a family or household income over $200,000 a year. Clearly she would include the following in the tax cuts she will repeal (or allow to sunset):

• She’d raise the top bracket of the federal income tax, restoring it to 39.6% from its current 35% level.
• She’d increase the capital gains tax, restoring it to 20% – or maybe even go higher. My bet is that she will increase it to 30% or even eliminate special treatment for capital gains altogether, taxing gains as ordinary income (at 40%).
• Hillary will almost certainly roll back much- if not all- of the estate tax reductions of recent years, lowering dramatically the size of estates subject to the levy.
• She’d restore the tax on dividends to 30% from its current 15%.

But her agenda will doubtless go further. She will be much more radical in raising taxes than Bush was in cutting them.

SOCIAL SECURITY TAXES

One of her most important steps will probably be to raise Social Security (FICA) taxes. She won’t raise the rate since that would impact her liberal base. Instead, she’ll raise the threshold of income that subject to taxation, now limited to the first $97, 500 of income.

At a recent candidate forum in Iowa, Hillary played it cute. First, she told the audience that she had nothing ‘on the table’ about Social Security taxes. Then, after the meeting, she privately told Todd Bowman, a schoolteacher who was in the audience, that she would consider imposing FICA taxes on all those who earn more than $200,000. She told Bowman that she would probably keep the current threshold at $100,000, skip the next hundred thousand of income, and then tax all income over $200,000 for Social Security.

So, look forward to some big changes there.

(Of course, she will not remove the cap on benefits, just on taxes).

Her remaining tax increases will likely relate to ending the capital gains treatment of carried interest in partnerships. Managers of real estate, energy, or private equity partnerships pay capital gains taxes on their management fees or their share of the profits even though their payments have nothing to do with any capital they may have directly invested.

Hillary will dress up these tax increases (the biggest in history) as tax relief for the middle class! She’ll maintain this fiction by using the bogyman of two largely theoretical tax increases which might eventually confront middle class taxpayers.

EXTENDING THE BUSH MIDDLE CLASS TAX CUTS

First, she’ll take credit for renewing the Bush tax cuts in the middle and lower income tax brackets. Projected over ten years, this will come to a tidy sum of “tax relief” she will offer to the middle class. Since these cuts are slated to expire in the early years of the next president’s first term, their extension could be billed as a middle class tax cut.

THE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX CUT

Second, she’ll change the nature and structure of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) so it does not affect the middle class as drastically as it will if left unchanged. This legislation, enacted more than a decade ago, was designed to subject all high income taxpayers to a minimum proportion of their income they had to pay in taxes regardless of which deductions or shelters they claimed on the tax forms.

But inflation and increased prosperity has now moved 23 million Americans into a position where the AMT would apply to them.

Hillary never mentions that it was her husband who vetoed the repeal of the AMT in 1999. No, it’s all the Bush Administration’s fault.

In recent years, Bush and the Congresses have chosen to adopt one year patches to postpone the effective date of the expansion of the AMT to the middle class. They did so because they didn’t want to have to account for the ten year projected revenue loss repealing or modifying the AMT would entail.

But it’s a game. Nobody expects the AMT to take full effect, ever. However, the amounts involved are so stupendous that Hillary can take credit for all of it, over ten years, as part of her “middle class tax cut.”

By cutting the two theoretical tax increases – renewing Bush’s middle income cuts and reforming the AMT – she can show the biggest net tax reduction in history at the same time that she is, in fact, legislating the largest net increase in history.

HEALTH CARE

Having once been wounded and left for dead by her signature issue, she is very carefully deceiving us about what she would actually do as president in changing health care. She pretends that she would simply move to cover the 45-50 million uninsured and would leave everybody else’s health care insurance in tact.

But her pretensions are nonsense. If Hillary extends health coverage to 50 million Americans, she will drastically increase the demand for all manner of health and hospital care services. The fact that most of those who will be newly covered are illegal immigrants or other people living just below or just above the poverty level indicates an especially high rate of increase in demand for services. But the supply won’t go up. There will be no sudden increase in the number of doctors, nurses, or hospital beds.

With a constant supply and a rapidly increasing demand, prices for health care will skyrocket. But with 16% of our GDP currently going to health care, how much more can we afford? No other country has more than 11% of its economy devoted to the medical sector. The Administration will have to resort to price controls or limits on health care utilization to temper the increase in health costs.

That means one absolute change that she’s keeping quiet about: health care rationing by the government. Hillary will say that it is fairer to ration health care based on merit than on price as it is now done. But the fact remains that “no, you can’t” will be heard more and more by those seeking health care.

This impact will be especially great on the elderly, where life and death decisions must be made with a view to balancing costs with benefits. While every elderly person is already covered by Medicare, of course, the aggregate increase in demand caused by the inclusion of 50 million new people in the system will drive up costs for all and require rationing for all. And it is easiest to ration medical care to the elderly. Half of all Medicare spending is during the final year of the patient’s life. We will see a revisiting of the “duty to die” ideas of former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm.

The long term effects of Hillary’s health care reforms will fundamentally change the entire nature of our medical system. The utilization controls and cost limits will make the current private insurance system a cover and a front for increasing government regulation.

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

In the area of prescription drug costs, which account for 10% of all health care spending, we can anticipate major efforts to reign in costs, requiring generic drugs on all Medicare and Medicaid prescriptions, cut backs on pharmaceutical advertising, and limits on drug company reps who push their medicines on doctors.

The taxes Hillary will raise can always be repealed. But her health care changes are forever.

EDUCATION

Hillary will likely follow the lead of Congressman George Miller, Chairman of the House Education Committee, in weakening the essential provisions of the
No Child Left Behind Act. Under its current provisions, schools and students are rated based on objective test scores. Miller’s proposals, which Hillary will probably adopt, call for using graduation rates as a substitute for testing in assessing student and school performance.

The difference is crucial. It means that subjective grading by the teachers themselves will be used to asses the success or failure of their teaching. A system designed to bring higher standards to schools will bend to accommodate mediocrity as a result of pressure from the teachers unions.

IMMIGRATION

Hillary is co-sponsor of two key bills: The SOLVE Act and the DREAM Act. These two acronyms describe legislation which would give every illegal immigrant, and their children, legal status if they have lived in the United States for five years.

To earn this amnesty, they will not be required to learn English, have a job, stay arrest-free, pay taxes, or jump through any of the hoops set up by the Bush Administration. They would simply have to live in the U.S. for five years without getting caught.

These laws also guarantee in-state tuition for all children of illegal immigrants who have lived here for five years.

And, since the illegal immigrants would now get legal status, they would be eligible for another of Hillary’s campaign promises – free health insurance for all citizens and legal immigrant children.

So, here’s the deal: Come here illegally. Dodge the cops for five years. Then you can get legal status, a path to citizenship, health insurance for your kids and in state tuition at their local state university.

SOCIAL POLICIES

One of the most novel of Hillary’s ideas (and perhaps the most pernicious) will be the extension of government largesse to the middle class.

Hillary realizes, as Bill once told me, that any government entitlement for poor people can be easily repealed since they lack political power and practical voting strength. But middle class entitlements, once granted, last forever – see Social Security and Medicare and rent control in New York City.

So Hillary will pioneer entitlements and grants for middle class families, making them at once dependent on government aid, winning their political gratitude, and giving them a stake in benefit programs that also help the poor.

She will bring us much closer to the Swedish, French, and German model where everybody gets
a check from the government, regardless of their wealth or income, making it impossible to criticize the program.

Already she has floated three ideas along these lines:

• She proposed a $5,000 baby bond to each newborn in the U.S.. After public mockery, she backed off the idea, but it likely remains on her agenda.
• She suggested government grants to the states to fund seven paid days of sick leave for all employees, public or private.
• She favors extending the coverage of the Family and Medical Leave Act to all businesses of 25 or more employees, down from the current exclusion of all firms with 50 or fewer workers.

But these programs are but the tip of the iceberg. Her presidency would bring with it a major expansion of government benefits, particularly in those flowing to the middle class. The potential of such legislation is to transform us into more of a European style nanny state social democracy and less of a free enterprise country based on self-reliance.

TERRORISM

Look for her to curtail the wiretapping without warrants by the NSA and to weaken the Patriot Act in important respects. Hillary will have to respond to the demands of the left to curtail programs like Guantanamo and aggressive interrogation techniques even though these steps would make us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

IRAQ

But don’t think Hillary would withdraw from Iraq! She won’t. If anything, she may increase our commitment there and extend it for many years.

As president, Hillary’s most pressing concern will be to show the world and her domestic audience that she is tough. Overcoming misconceptions of how a woman might govern, she will be at great pains to demonstrate her strength and firmness. These concerns, plus her own views on the Iraq situation, will keep us in Iraq for most of her first term.

Before Obama entered the Democratic primary and transformed a cakewalk into a potentially tough fight, Hillary was quite plain about her belief that our involvement in Iraq “entailed significant residual security commitments” that she felt bound to honor. Interviewed by the New York Times in March of this year, she suggested several of the missions she felt would have to continue under her presidency:

• Policing the border with Iran
• Hunting al Qaeda in the provinces
• Providing intelligence, logistical, air, and training support to the Iraqi Army as needed.

While she refuses to elaborate or to speculate on the size of the troop commitment which would be required, one can easily see her becoming committed to a policy of ongoing troop presence. And once we have troops in Iraq, we might have to send in more to protect the ones we have there.

It will be interesting to see how the Democratic liberal base takes to her Iraq policy. It is easy to see her becoming subject to the same kind of abuse and criticism as Lyndon Johnson was when he escalated our troop commitment to Vietnam after winning the 1964 election on a peace platform.

We hope it won’t happen. But if she does win, this outline will likely prove prescient – and depressing.

Hold on to your wallets!

DICK MORRIS’ ’08 PLAY BY PLAY

VOLUME 1, #19

SEPTEMBER 10, 2007

FRED THOMPSON: GOING NOPLACE FAST

Now that Thompson has finally declared his candidacy, albeit on the Jay
Leno show, many are pinning their hopes on him as a later-day Ronald Reagan.

But he’s not going to be viable. Here’s why:

The Political Insider

Thompson is not at all the outsider maverick that he claims to be. In fact, he’s the ultimate Washington insider. He was a successful lobbyist before he went to the Senate and he returned to lobbying after leaving it. Until very recently, he worked for Equitas, a British insurance company trying to squirm out of paying for asbestos/cancer claims. He also represented a Tennessee Savings and Loan, Toyota, and Perrier.

Jean Bertrand Aristide, the quasi-Marxist deposed Haitian president who was
last generation’s equivalent of Hugo Chavez was one of his clients. And the right will not like that he lobbied for the Teamsters Union
Pension Fund.

Although Thompson is adamantly opposed to government subsidies, he sought a handout
for Westinghouse for its nuclear power plant in Oak Ridge.

And although he claims to be pro-life, he was an advocate for a pro-choice
group.

The New York Times reported today that in 1992, Thompson’s old law firm actually advised the lawyer for the Libyan terrorists who were charged with planting the bomb on Pan Am flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. The firm was paid over $800,000 – that’s a lot of lawyering. The Libyans billed the firm for several hours for conferring with the lead attorney on the case. According to the firm’s lawyers, Thompson advised them on “jurisdictional” issues. Translation: how to keep the terrorists from being extradited to stand trial. At the time, Libya was refusing to extradite the suspects and the entire international community was outraged. It was then that the U.S. added Libya to the list of countries where there is state-sponsored terrorism. Ultimately, the suspects were extradited and tried in Scotland. One of them was convicted, while the other was acquitted. In 2003, Libya admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and agreed to pay $2.7 billion to the families of the survivors. No thanks to Fred and his law firm.

Thompson’s view on lobbying for questionable clients is that it is no different than a lawyer defending a client. He says that he makes “no apologies” for his lobbying clients. But apparently Thompson doesn’t realize that voter don’t like lobbyists (or lawyers, for that matter). The latest Gallup Poll reports that 75% of the American voters believe that it is “unacceptable” to finance a presidential campaign with contributions from Washington lobbyists. How will they feel about voting for one?

Questionable Conservative Credentials:

One of Thompson’s lobbying clients, in particular, will rankle with conservatives:
The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. While Thompson says that he has “no recollection” of lobbying for
the group in 1991, the minutes of a September 14, 1991 meeting of the association report that he was hired to “aid [the association] in
discussions with the administration.”

Judy De Sarno, the executive director of the group at the time says that she has specific memories of discussing Thompson’s lobbying work with him in phone conversations and during meals at Washington Restaurants.

Former Democratic Congressman Michael D. Barnes (D-Md) confirms that Thompson worked for the abortion rights group. He was employed by the same lobbying and law firm that Thompson worked for and he said he talked to Thompson “while he was doing it [lobbying for the group], and I talked to [De Sarno] about the fact that she was very pleased with the work he was doing for her organization.” He added: “I have strong, total recollection of that. This is not something I dreamed up or she dreamed up. This is a fact.” How odd that Thompson would have “no recollection.”

When Thompson first ran for the Senate in 1994, he checked a box on a questionnaire about abortion indicating that he believed that abortion “should be legal in all circumstances for the first three months.”

And when he ran again in 1996, he told the Christian Coalition that he “opposed” a constitutional amendment protecting “the sanctity of human life.” He wrote on the questionnaire “I do not believe that abortion should be criminalized. This battle will be won in the hearts and souls of the American people.”

With a Republican field of a pro-choice candidate (Giuliani), a recent convert to pro-life (Mitt Romney), and a former abortion lobbyist (Fred Thompson), the right wing doesn’t have much to choose from.

Immigration

But Thompson will also get in trouble for his immigration positions. In 1995, he voted against limiting services other than emergency medical care and public education to illegal aliens. He was one of only six Senators to vote against the proposal. Voters will not like that he wanted to use tax money to provide a host of medical and other services to those who flouted our laws and came here illegally.

And, in 1996, he voted against creating an employer verification system so that businesses could identify illegal immigrants who applied for jobs in their companies.

Terrorism

As noted above, Thompson and his law firm worked to help keep Libyan terrorists from standing trial for killing all of the passengers on Pan Am flight 103. In the aftermath of 9/11 and on its 6^th anniversary, Thompson will have difficulty with his past work.

Taxes

Finally,
Thompson has ruled out signing a pledge not to raise taxes if elected
president. A no-tax pledge, a fundamental for any conservative
candidate, is a litmus test for most voters in the New Hampshire’s
Republican Primary and they will not take kindly to Thompson’s position.

Nepotism

In
our book, Outrage, we disclosed the widespread practice of members
of Congress hiring their wives and families to work on their Political
Action Committee (PAC) payrolls. But Thompson went even further:
He paid his son, Daniel — for four years — as a no-show employee
of his PAC after he had left Congress.

The
PAC had about a quarter of a million dollars available when he decided
not to run for another term in the Senate. Since 2002, the PAC
has been almost totally dormant. It raised almost no more money
and gave out $70,000 to other political candidates. The balance,
$170,000 went to Daniel. The PAC had no office, no phone, no fax,
and almost no activity. But Thompson used it to pay his son, a
total abuse of campaign funding.

What’s
wrong with paying your son through campaign money? Plenty.
First, he gave his son money that could have been used to elect other
Republican candidates. Second, the people who donated the money
to him assumed it would be used to finance his political activity, not
nepotism. Finally, using PAC money to pay one’s own family blurs
the distinction between a personal bribe and a campaign contribution.
If the money special interests give you is directed at political work,
it’s a contribution. But if it passes through the membrane that
separates the personal from the political, it begins to assume the characteristics
of a bribe, particularly when it is for doing absolutely nothing!

Turmoil Within

All
summer, the war has raged, not pitting Thompson against his Republican
rivals, or even his Democratic opposition, but featuring a battle of
Mrs. Fred Thompson against virtually her husband’s entire campaign
staff.

The
list of axed, fired, or forced-to-resign employees would distinguish
a campaign of far greater tenure, but coming in a candidacy yet even
to be announced, it is truly unique.

The
first ax fell when Jeri Thompson – who fancies herself a political
consultant – challenged Tom Collamore, an experienced southern political
operative for control of the campaign. Jeri’s indignation at
what she perceived as the staff’s wasting her husband’s money rose
to an apogee when she arrived at the campaign headquarters and allegedly
took attendance!

Collamore,
who is a former VP of Altria, the sanitized name for Philip Morris,
was forced out and former Bush Energy Secretary of US Senator from Michigan
Spencer Abraham was brought in to take his place. Abraham lasted
all of ten days and a new team was installed in place.

The
latest casualty of these endless internal wars is former Fox News staffer
Jim Mills, the third communications director in this still fledgling
campaign. Also gone last week was his close aide, Mark Collaro. Every
day brings new firings and departures.

Unless
Thompson’s house gets itself in order, it won’t be a campaign, but
a floating civil war.

No dough

Thompson
and his staff worked assiduously throughout June and July to raise funds
for his exploratory committee. They boasted that they would exceed
expectations as they beat the donor community for money. But the
results were underwhelming. They raised only $3.4 million and
spent $600,000 of it in the process. More to the point, half of
it came from Tennessee, where Thompson had served as Senator, indicating future troubles in mounting a broad based fund raising operation.

Arthur Branch

But,
as his decision to duck the Fox News debate on September 5^th
and appear on the Leno show instead indicates, he is not used to appearing
unscripted on television. Arthur Branch, the character he plays
on Law and Order, is glib, fluent, eloquent, and down homey. But
is Fred sans script? Will he appear flat compared to Branch?
How will he look without contrived camera angles, expert lighting, and
the kind of professional makeup you get on television but not on the
campaign trail?

All
these concerns are doubtless very much in Thompson’s mind and may
account for his hesitant, on-again, off-again approach to declaring
his candidacy and jumping in the ring.

HILLARY’S
STRANGE FUNDRAISER: REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

The strange case of ‘Hillraiser’ Norman Hsu gets even stranger as
more details are disclosed. How did this fugitive become one of the
top fundraisers for Hillary Clinton? And where did his money come from?

It
all sounds so familiar, doesn’t it? Remember when Johnny Chuang passed
$50,000 in cash in Hillary’s White House office?

No one knows very much about Hsu. It now appears that his business addresses
were nothing more than a postal drop or a phantom company. He went through
a second bankruptcy in recent years. So where did he get the $600,000
that he donated to Democratic candidates?

QUESTION: How can someone get close to Hillary Clinton?

ANSWER: Send a check. Pretty soon, you’ll be on a list
and receive invitations to elite events.

Now that Hsu is in custody, maybe some of the serious questions about
him will be answered. We’re all ears.

When the Wall Street Journal first disclosed the curious circumstances
surrounding some of the contributions that he bundled, Hillary Clinton’s
enforcer and press secretary, Howard Wolfson righteously defended Hsu:

“During
Mr. Hsu’s many years of active participation in the political process,
there has been no question about his integrity or his commitment to
playing by the rules, and we have absolutely no reason to call his contributions
into question or to return them.”

That
statement is, as they say in Washington, inoperative.

MIKE HUCKABEE
SURGING IN IOWA AND NEW HAMPSHIRE

Former Arkansas Governor
Mike Huckabee, who came in second in the Iowa Straw Poll, has moved
from 1% to 9% in Iowa and from 1% to 14% in New Hampshire.

Keep an eye on him!

________________________________________________________________________

THANK YOU!

***Copyright Eileen
McGann and Dick Morris 2007. Reprints with permission only***