Quote of the day

You realize you could just as easily put up a side-by-side graphic comparing Ron Paul’s votes and Rudy Guiliani’s. Aside from the fact that Guliani did get marginally more votes than Paul, the comparison is pretty much the same.

There would be one difference though. The comparison between Guliani and Paul actually says at least something about the New Hampshire primary.

So why Fred vs. Kucinich instead of Guliani vs. Paul? Because AP likes to poke the Fredheads now and then.

Predictably, some have tried to turn AP’s little poke at the Fredheads into an actual statement that Fred has no chance.

Enjoy the joke or not, but all it says is that Fred did very badly in New Hampshire. Which was exactly what he suspected would happen, and why he never campaigned there. On the other hand, McCain won New Hampshire, and he’s not about to win the nomination.

Why? McCain has no respect for the Reagan coalition of fiscal conservatives, religious conservatives, and national security conservatives. McCain’s great on national security, when he’s not pre-emptively surrendering on border control, effective interrogation of terrorists, nomination/confirmation of conservative judges, and caving in to liberal criticism of so-called “warrantless domestic surveillance.”

Ok, so maybe McCain’s not so great on national security. But McCain’s almost good on fiscal conservatism, at least as far as holding down spending. Of course, he didn’t defend the tax cuts that pulled us out of the Clinton recession at the end of the Clinton administration. So he only gets partial credit for fiscal conservatism

But McCain’s big mistake is how he treats the religious conservatives. He had a great shot at the nomination in 2000 until he foolishly, for whatever reason, publicly denigrated the religious conservatives who were considering voting for him. Sure, it earned him major points with the press, but it cost him the nomination.

Winning elections is all about giving people a reason to vote for you. McCain fails badly at that. There’s so much so good about him. But as a candidate, New Hampshire notwithstanding, he’s horrible in comparison to Thompson, Giuliani, Romney, and maybe even Huckabee. In fact, evangelicals/fundamentalist Christians are more likely to vote for vaguely plastic Romney — Mormon faith notwithstanding — or social liberal Giuliani than they are for McCain.

Thompson doing badly in New Hampshire makes little difference. He deliberatley accepted miserable numbers in Hew Hampshire so he could concentrate on hist strategy of trying to win South Carolina. Thompson is not going to quit before South Carolina, any more than Rudy is going to quit before Super Tuesday. Calls for Thompson to give up or his supporters to jump ship before South Carolina are just foolish. It ain’t gonna happen.

theregoestheneighborhood on January 9, 2008 at 3:02 AM

Maybe he should have done the debate and not Leno.

Christoph on January 9, 2008 at 1:13 AM

I keep seeing people say this, but I don’t really think that was much of a strategic error. If he’d skipped Leno and done the debate, I doubt it would have made much difference. I still doubt he would have done well in NH. And Leno had a lot more viewers watching than have watched any of the debates.

As much as it may hurt skipping a state, it looks a lot better to be able to dismiss low numbers by saying, “Well, it wasn’t our strategy to campaign there,” than to spend sharply limited time and money campaigning heavily on non-fertile ground instead of where you stand your best chances.

I think the real lesson of the Fred! campaign is that it takes a LOT of time and effort to run a presidential campaign. Even Reagan failed to capture the 1976 nomination before finally getting the 1980 nomination. Granted, he was running against a sitting president the first time, but he was also a well-known and popular political figure in his own right.

If Fred had started this whole process six months earlier, he might be doing a lot better,

theregoestheneighborhood on January 9, 2008 at 3:19 AM