Air America Hits Another Low Note

Thanks to Charlie Sykes for pointing this one out. Another reason why Air America isn't taken as seriously, and can't gain the audience of conservative talk radio. Yes, I know I've beaten heavily on Rush and Co. the last few weeks, but the fact is, I'm arguing against their ideas, and positions.

Were they pushing crap like this on their shows, I'd ask the local station to pull them from the air, as should happen to Randi Rhodes.



Maybe, just maybe, if the left on radio started debating ideas, and arguing points, instead of pushing this kind of crap they wouldn't have to be begging for the fairness doctrine to return to be heard.

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McCain All But Owns GOP Nomination

Much to the chagrine of conservative talk radio folks, Mitt Romney suspended his campaign today for the GOP nomination, all but handing it to John McCain.

Glenn Beck made an interesting point on the whole election issue in a recent posting at his site, noting that nothing would be better for him professionally than a democrat in the White House.

That might explain his recent ideas about who he'd vote for in a Hillary/McCain election. Beck and Coulter wouldn't be voting for Hillary as the best thing for America, but instead the best thing for their personal pocketbooks.

The problem is, that for the long term good of the country, Hillary or Obama would be a huge problem. Consider that 4 of the current Supreme Court Justices are over 7o years old. Should Stevens (87) and Ginsburg (74) decide to leave, who would you rather have appoint their replacement, McCain or Hillary? Yes, I know the whole "Alito arguement", which most of the far right hasn't listened to all the way through. McCain said that justice like John Roberts are the type he'd be appointing, guys who are conservative but not in a confrontational way as Alito can be.

Worse, consider if Kennedy or Scalia both 71 were to retire with Hillary in the White House. Replacing a reliable conservative and the current swing vote on the court with two Ginsburgs probably wouldn't be a great thing.

On the topic of health care, how many folks really think that after electing Hillary, and getting some sort of HillaryCare passed we could just undo that after the next election? If you raised your hand go to the corner and put on a dunce hat. Killing a federal program, especially ones that the arguements "for the children" or "saving grandma" can be applied to is impossible. Look at the fight over common sense market reforms for Social Security, making it so that it would actually grow at a faster rate than the government IOU's the trust fund contains do now. It didn't happen because it was demonized. Try and kill health insurance for a few million see how that works out.

On the subject of money, while McCain argued against the Bush tax cuts, he's said he'd make them permanent. Hillary and Barrack won't, period. Add to that the fact McCain's biggest arguement against them wasn't the class warfare one that Rush clings to like a life preserver, but the growth of federal spending. He wanted spending cut before taxes. Considering that position it's likely he'd actually try and cut spending from our bloated 3.1 trillion dollar budget. Does anyone think that either Obama or Clinton is going to champion smaller budgets anywhere but the Defense Department?

When I think of those three issues; whether I'm crazy about McCain's stance on some other things or not; I can't stomach the idea of a Obama or Clinton White House controlling them. If you can you've got a lot stronger stomach than me.

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Super Tuesday Fizzles

Many years ago; unfortunately not so many that I can't remember; there was no "Super Tuesday" primary races. Primaries were scatter from hell to breakfast, so to speak, starting in January and running meaningfully through late April. However, the parties didn't really like that, as they didn't get a presumptive nominee until pretty late in the game, especially when they had to run against an incumbent. Instead of concentrating on the other camp's candidates, they were having to argue with and beat up those in their own party.

Super Tuesday was supposed to be the solution, a big enough block of states, including 4 of the big ones, California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. A day big enough to make the nominee known, so that money could be spent on fighting the enemy, not one's own family.

Yesterday, however, fizzled as far as Super Tuesday's go, especially for the democrats. Instead of coming out with a presumptive nominee, they have a dead heat, and a lot of primaries to go, and the possibility of going to the convention without a clear cut winner.

For the GOP the far right isn't happy, John McCain has built a pretty close to insurmountable lead, especially with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee splitting the vote of those who don't support McCain. While both of the others have said they are sticking around, it won't be easy to raise the gobs of cash needed to keep going with McCain holding better than a 2-1 delegate lead over both of them.

One interesting number, to me, came out of yesterday, it was the numbers on independent voters in the GOP contests. Nearly 70% of them went for McCain. While a lot of the talking heads are pointing to his less than 40% of self id'd conservatives voting for McCain the independent number is as big, or bigger. You can't win general elections without getting independents to listen to you. McCain seems to be able to do that much better than either other candidate in that race.

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Oops, got it wrong

Hey, I predicted Guliani, Romney, McCain in New Hampshire, and Huckabee in 5th. I got it wrong, it looks like McCain, Romney, Huckabee (a distant third), Guiliani and finally Ron Paul and Fred Thompson with little discernable pulse.

On the Democratic side it looks like the media lovefest with Obama may not have given him any win, much less the double digit one predicted this as late as this morning. The women who abandoned Clinton in Iowa seem to have shown up in New Hampshire, as well as a good portion of registered Democrats.

On the GOP side, with no real front runner I'm not sure that the New Hampshire results make much difference. Though Romney failing to get within 10 points of McCain could have some impact on his fund raising.

On the Democratic side, though they might mean more than Iowa did. The death watch will suddenly be removed from Hillary's campaign, and Obama might start getting actual questions asked about his plans for 'change'.

Clinton may also decide against writing off Nevada and South Carolina, in hopes of stringing a couple of wins together. Many predicted she'd skip appearances in both states to concentrate on Super Tuesday. I'm thinking that now if she feels close in either or both states she'll show up with the bandwagon in hopes of a few more wins, to try and reestablish the inevitability of her campaign.

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The Big Surprise

There were really only two surprises in Iowa yesterday. Hillary Clinton coming in 3rd in the Democratic caucus, and the fact that she didn't win the female vote. Huckabee wasn't really a surprise, and Obama winning wasn't as big a surprise as the media would make it. Both were doing well in polls for weeks.

A few months ago the Clinton Machine(tm) was spout off about how, if nominated, Hillary Clinton would siphon off 25-50% of all GOP women and have them voting for her.

Well, now we've seen, at least in Iowa (see my last post) that Hillary is having a hard time getting a majority of women in her own party to vote for her. So I wonder, will her folks still stick to the "siphon" idea.

It will be interesting to see what Senator Clinton does over the weekend to try and get top billing back before Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. I can't see her letting the media gush over Obama for 96 hours before the next voting takes place. (For those of a technical nature, Wyoming votes tomorrow, but they're less relevant than Iowa). While coming in 3rd in both Iowa and New Hampshire won't doom her candidacy, it does destroy the "inevitability" of it, which is a good portion of what she's been running on. In fact, anything less than a very close 2nd place in New Hampshire may cause her lots of fund raising problems.

Obama, for his part, seems to be doing a decent job today of not rubbing Hillary's nose in the fact that she finished 3rd in the race. That's a good strategy, since Iowa didn't assure him of winning New Hampshire, and a fall off there could be a problem for him, since he's running on the "groundswell for change" platform. Never mind he's never given us the details, only lots of slick sales pitches.

One the GOP Side
For the Huckabee supporters who are ecstatic about last nights results, don't get too giddy. My guess is he'll finish a distant 5th in New Hampshire, and John McCain or Rudy will suddenly be the flavor of the week for the GOP. My predicted order of finish Tuesday is Guiliani, McCain, Romney, Thompson, Huckabee. The top three could flip flop amongst their positions, moving one spot either way.

If you need a reason, it's the lack of evangelical supporters in N.H. As ABC new's pointed out this morning, while 60% of Iowa GOP voters said faith is extremely important to them, that number plummets to 20% in New Hampshire.

While he could come back in South Carolina with help from the same group, my guess is that Romney and Guliani will be 1-2 there, pretty well dooming the Huckster before Super Tuesday.

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