In this Guest Voice post, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Bill Steigerwald interviews Republican Bob Barr, who is seeking the libertarian Presidential nomination.:

Bob Barr Leaps in as a Libertarian — Interview

by Bill Steigerwald

With the announcement that he’ll seek the Libertarian Party’s 2008 presidential nomination, former Georgia Republican congressman Bob Barr has added another twist to an already crazy election year.

Barr, who hopes to win the LP’s top spot at the party’s convention that starts Thursday, May 22, in Denver, has an impressive resume that backs up his claim that he’s the most qualified presumptive candidate of any party.

A lawyer, former U.S. Attorney and ex-CIA official, Barr, 59, was born in Iowa, but thanks to his military parents he lived in such exotic locales as Lima and Teheran, where he graduated from high school. He served in the House from 1995 to 2003, where he was known as a hard-line conservative who hated the IRS and fought tirelessly for privacy rights and other civil liberties.

Barr is far from the perfect libertarian. Many libertarians have serious issues with him over things like his vote in favor of the Patriot Act (which he now regrets) and his zealous support of the war on drugs, which he has backed away from.

Meanwhile, Republicans are mad at Barr because they fear as a third party candidate he could do to John McCain what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore in 2000 — steal just enough votes to keep McCain out of the White House. When I talked to Barr by telephone on Thursday, he was on the grounds of the United Nations, where he said nothing is very good — even the food.

Q: Why did you decide to run?

A: I decided to run for several reasons. One, because I want to restore the Constitution to our federal government. It seems to have been completely forgotten and disregarded by Congress and by this administration. I believe in the Constitution. I believe in separation of powers. I believe in the rule of law. I believe in limited government. And these are principles and policies that apparently neither the national Republican nor the national Democrat Party believes in. I believe great damage is being done to our Constitution and I see no remedy at all, no likelihood of that changing if we rely on the two parties to field our candidates for national office.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ron Paul, one of the most interesting and unique of the men who ran for the Republican nomination, well… He’s not giving up.

He and his considerable group of supporters have already rented space for their assembly near the site of the Republican Convention in St Paul Minn.

Paul doesnt support John McCain; thinks McCain’s ideas are far different than his.

Says he has a lot of ‘numbers’ in terms of voters

Doesnt think he’ll be interested in campaigning with Bob Barr, who is running to gain the nomination on the Libertarian ticket.

Some people think Ron Paul– and Hillary Clinton– are demented for not dropping out of a race that some insist they cannot win, and that are in effect, over already.

However from the point of view of our country being is such serious straights, it’s just my two cents worth, but if I had to choose who to be in my lifeboat trying to not go down with the current ship of state, I don’t think I’d want sister and brother sailors who gave up because it seemed the odds were not good, or because they thought the lifeboat cost too much money to man, or because landfall had not yet been sighted…

I’d want the brothers and sisters who are stalwart, never give up kinds of people… considering not the odds only, but what great moment is at stake. “Never, never, never”… you know, like that other ‘demented’ guy Winston Churchill said.

This interesting article by Marcus Baram who writes for ABC news, on what has become what I’d call ‘a mosh pit’ of candidates …

Asked during an appearance on “The Daily Show” last week which of the two Democratic nominees he preferred to run against in the general election, McCain quipped, “Ron Paul.”

But Paul might get the last laugh during
Read the rest of this entry »

Is Arizona Senator John McCain facing an opposition-free Republican convention where it’ll be clear, conflict-free sailing as he wins the delegate count to make him the nominee and shapes a platform to his personal liking? According to the Los Angeles Times’ Andrew Malcomb, the answer is “nope”: Rep. Ron Paul’s forces will be there and they have other ideas:

…..[Q]uietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in St. Paul at the beginning of September.

Paul’s presidential candidacy has been correctly dismissed all along in terms of winning the nomination. He was even excluded as irrelevant by Fox News from a nationally-televised GOP debate in New Hampshire.

But what’s been largely overlooked is Paul’s candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party’s most conservative conservatives. As anticipated a month ago in The Ticket, that situation could be exacerbated by today’s expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.

And, the Washington Times reports, Barr is notably unpersuaded by GOP establishment types calling him and pleading with him not to run. So McCain will face Republican opposition from within (Paul) and outside (Barr) his party.

But it’s what happens at the convention that could be ticklish for McCain.

Since most of the convention will be considered dullsville by most of the news media with a foregone conclusion, little drama, the Paul story could get extra focus if Paul forces come up with some great quotes, angry followers, etc that could add the beloved conflict to what was supposed to be zzzzzz-er scripted coronation.

Still, the Democrats shouldn’t be grinning. As Malcomb notes, BOTH PARTIES now face divisions within them that could hurt them at the ballot box. “Nevermind Ralph Nader…” he writes.

Malcolm details the embarrassing votes McCain did not get running unopposed in many GOP primaries in recent weeks, plus other factors as well, indicating continued resistance to the Arizona Senator among conservatives. AFP reports:

While John McCain is practically assured the Republican presidential nomination, many party members are having a hard time accepting him — and showing it with symbolic votes against him in primary contests.

The Republican nomination battle has been all but decided for over two months. Still, some Republicans used the April 22 Pennsylvania primary and last week’s votes in Indiana and North Carolina to register their unhappiness with the de facto victor.

Some vote for libertarian Texan Ron Paul, who has refused to quit the race and has racked up more than one million votes, according to his campaign.

Other Republicans keep voting for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas — both markedly more conservative than McCain — although both have long since dropped out of the race and endorsed him.

As many as 25 percent of Republican voters want a different candidate to represent their party in the November 4 presidential election. In Pennsylvania, 27 percent opted for Huckabee or Paul; in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6, McCain opponents earned 23 percent of the vote.

The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, calculated that McCain had garnered no more than 45 percent of the Republican vote since January.

The Paul forces have been giving money to their candidate and fighting local fights.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Paul forces have quietly taken over some local groups and this all part of a larger delegate war. In Maine, establishment forces battled and outvoted Paul’s troops at the convention. The situation in Nevada was much messier: e establishment forces had to recess the convention because Paul’s forces were so well-organized.

What’s going on?
Read the rest of this entry »

Onetime iconic consumer advocate Ralph Nader has announced yet another run for the White House — but past-campaign political hubris plus a loss of a big chunk of his previous voting constituency is unlikely to make him a major factor. Even so: his presence in the race threatens to siphon some votes away from the Democratic Party’s 2008 nominee.

Several factors have converted Nader from a onetime-youthful consumer advocate, idolized on college campuses, to what he is today: the modern Harold Stassen whose philosophy, resentment towards both major parties and apparent love of the national political spotlight probably means he’ll run again until his aging legs can’t carry him. The news reports give you some of the story and his prospects — but not all of it.

The Associated Press:

Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a third-party candidate, criticizing the top White House contenders as too close to big business and pledging to repeat a bid that will “shift the power from the few to the many.”

Nader, 73, said most people are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties due to a prolonged Iraq war and a shaky economy. The consumer advocate also blamed tax and other corporate-friendly policies under the Bush administration that he said have left many lower- and middle-class people in debt.

“You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized and disrespected,” he said. “You go from Iraq, to Palestine to Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bumbling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts.”

“In that context, I have decided to run for president,” Nader told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Nader also criticized Republican candidate John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton for failing to support full Medicare for all or cracking down on Pentagon waste and a “bloated military budget. He blamed that on corporate lobbyists and special interests, which he said dominate Washington, D.C., and pledged in his third-party campaign to accept donations only from individuals.

The AP story also noted that Republican former Gov. Mike Huckabee said that GOPers will welcome Nader into the race, since he draws votes away from Democrats.

Reuters neatly summarizes the context:

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader said on Sunday that he is launching another long shot independent campaign for president of the United States.

Nader, who will turn 74 this week, announced his presidential bid on NBC’s “Meet the Press” saying that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are addressing the problems facing Americans.

Nader also ran for president in 2000 when he got about 2.7 percent of the national vote as the Green Party candidate and played a role in deciding the final presidential outcome. He also ran as an independent in 2004 and got only a tiny fraction of the vote.

Many Democrats blame Nader’s participation in the close race between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George Bush in 2000 for tipping the election in favor of Bush. They believe that but for Nader’s name on the ballot in Florida, Gore would have been the clear winner and president today instead of Bush.

Nader called Washington “corporate occupied territory” that turns the government against the interest of its own people.

The MSNBC video of Nader’s announcement is HERE.

The Chicago Tribune’s The Swamp says times have changed — but that Nader could indeed play a role:

The days of a third-party candidate claiming a large share of the American vote — such as the nearly 20 percent that H. Ross Perot won in 1992, playing a role that many Republicans will never forget — may be gone.

Yet, with elections contested on the margins in many states — from Iowa to Wisconsin, and from New Hampshire to Florida in recent years — any active third-party candidacy could have an impact on the Electoral College balance.

And already this year, sizable numbers of people have voiced discontent with the leading candidates — discontent manifested in the campaign of Republican Ron Paul, for instance. So the question looms this year: Might Nader play the spoiler once more?

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that current Democratic party primary front-runner Senator Barack Obama professes not to be concerned:

Barack Obama said today during a visit at the Ohio State University Medical Center that he wasn’t terribly concerned about the prospect of a Nader campaign. “I think the job of the Democratic Party is to be so compelling that a few percentage [points] of the vote going to another candidate is not going to make any difference.”

An email to supporters from Nader’s presidential exploratory committee ticked off a list of issues that have been “pulled off the table by the corporatized political machines in this momentous election year,” including defense budget cuts, opposition to nuclear power, and a single-payer national health insurance system.

Obama responded to criticism from Nader, who has suggested that the Democratic hopeful lacks substance, by noting that Nader has reached out to his campaign. “My sense is that Mr. Nader is somebody who if you don’t listen and adopt all of his policies thinks you’re not substantive,” Obama said, before praising Nader as a “heroic” and “singular figure in American politics.

So that gives a clue how Obama — if he wins the Democratic spot — will deal with Nader, respectfully but assertively. It sounds as if Obama won’t ignore the Nader challenge but won’t kowtow to it.

In realistic political terms, three party bids have been losing propositions in American politics because of our winner-take-all system. Third parties have (a) influenced the future policies of a major party, (b) didn’t have much of an impact, or in some close races (c) siphoned votes away from a major political party, often giving victory in some cases giving victory to the party the siphoning party’s voters agreed with the LEAST.

See the Boston Globe’s review of third parties’ history HERE.

Even though his followers and third party advocates hate to hear it, there is virtually no chance Nader can win. And his influence on the American electoral scene has waned from the days when he was an iconic young crusading lawyer taking on the car manufacturing corporations in his landmark book Unsafe At Any Speed.

I was then a student from Connecticut — his home state. Nader would be often be on the radio, on TV talk shows — he was the epitome of the serious, incorruptible, idealistic young crusader with his devoted “Nader’s Raiders” followers all over the country.

What has happened to him since is sad because he became overexposed politically and weighted-down with hubris — so the most he will gain in 2008 would indeed be siphoning-off Democratic votes if it’s a razor-thin-victory-margin election. He is not an up and coming force — or even as respected as he once was — any longer.

Some reasons why it has changed:

Read the rest of this entry »

Is the system of American electoral primaries really in the national interest? According to some on the other side of the Atlantic, the answer is an emphatic no. Philippe Marliere writes for France’s Rue 89, that not only are people around the world ‘exasperated,’ and demanding to know, ‘why the BBC is paying such costly attention to non-decisive votes more than ten months before the presidential election,’ he continues that, ‘With few exceptions, the primaries create a democratic parody, from which the main socio-political stereotypes and prejudices emerge reinforced. … One could laugh at such practices if they weren’t about to appear in Europe.’

By Philippe Marlière, Translated By Kate Davis February 19, 2008 France - Rue89 - Original Article (French)

Never have the American primary elections generated such a strong and sustained interest in the rest of the world. Media coverage of the first vote held in the state of Iowa sparked a media frenzy that was out of all proportion to the importance of the event. The extraordinary candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side, and of John McCain on the Republican side, only partially explain this craze.

THE PUBLIC FATIGUE Read the rest of this entry »

In one of the most biting pieces about McCain yet published anywhere in the world, this Spanish commentary in El Semanal Digital offers a comprehensive volley of criticism, which does not fit comfortably into any political perspective currently holding sway in the U.S., although its thrust is the old saw that McCain is indeed out of step with the conservative mindset.

Some examples:

In 1993, senator McCain voted in favor of the leftist pro-abortion judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the Supreme Court.

In 2006, he was part of the so-called ‘gang of 14’ which sought to prevent the Republican Party from avoiding the obstructionist maneuvers of the democrats who wanted to stop by all means president Bush from appointing conservative Anthony Alito again to the Supreme Court.

McCain led the republican delegation that opposed the so-called ‘proposal 200’, an initiative of the state of Arizona, approved in November 2004, which required that a person had to demonstrate US citizenship before being eligible for receiving state benefits or to vote.

… and so on…

The results?

It is not surprising, consequently, that John McCain has been openly favorable to the suicidal policy of ‘amnesty’ that pretends to convert to ‘North Americans’ the 12 million illegals who are in the country in violation of the law.

The voters of the Republican Party consider it very very unlikely that McCain would reverse the famous Roe vs. Wade sentence that guarantees abortion in the US.

But, not being American, and so not fitting into the boxes of American liberal and conservative, the writer sees as much of a problem for McCain in his bellicosity as his lack of conservatism:

On Youtube, you can find a video in which John McCain, in the style of the old song by the Beach Boys, Barbara Ann, the senator sings in front of the audience ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb—bomb, bomb Iran’. The pun is most telling, and if you listen to McCain in Polk City, Florida, on January 27 in front of CNN cameras stating: ‘I am sorry to tell you but there will be other wars. We will never give up, but there will be other wars’, you know that John McCain has morphed into a good opportunity for the return of the “neocon” epidemics to the power centers in Washington. Between a president McCain and the Zionist hawks spread all over the world, the West can find itself immersed again in an absurd and unnecessary war against a country three times more populated than Iraq.

The Spaniard does more than criticize though: he offers an alternative to McCain… and it’s not Hillary, with whom he shares views that promote,

delocalization and immigration without restrictions and abortion for everybody

It is rather,

Ron Paul, the only candidate to the presidency who said something different from the other three candidates on the key points of immigration, economic policy and foreign policy

In fact,

The best kept secret of the American elections is the critical position of a senator from Texas who thinks immigration is destroying his country’s cohesion, ‘free trade’ is not free but the blackmailing of people by big corporations and banks, and that disastrous foreign policy is pushing the country over the abyss.

Why is this the best-kept secret? El Semanal Digital has a suggestion for that too.

To find out what, and to read the rest of the article, click here, for the translation by WATCHING AMERICA.com

I’ve just double-checked each of these sources and you can find the exact tallies at all of the links.

Here’s the Kansas GOP Caucus homepage and here’s CNN’s results page.

Louisiana (both parties today; here on CNN too)

Try here or here for Nebraska (Dems only today) (or here on CNN).

The Washington State Democratic Party sends visitors to CNN’s election page for results (Dems only today), here.

The short version: Mike Huckabee wins Kansas (nooooo surprise there if you’ve followed that state’s support for teaching creationism and other socially conservative positions), Barack Obama wins all three primaries.

Update: Looks like Huckabee may win Louisiana and Washington, and Barack Obama has won the Virgin Islands.

From The Caucus:

In a message to supporters sent just before 11 p.m. Friday night, Representative Ron Paul, a long-shot G.O.P. candidate from Texas, basically conceded that he’s not going to win the party’s nomination.

That said, he’s scaling back his campaign — but not entirely.

He said:

With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter.

Mr. Paul clearly stated that he will not run as a third-party candidate. Right now, his priorities are serving the residents in his Texas congressional district and winning re-election.

You can read the letter in its entirety here on Ballot Access News.

Were you a Ron Paul supporter? Do you think he did the right thing? What’s the value of his candidacy been, for whom?

And to whom will his supporters now pledge allegiance?

This is a Guest Voice column by Michael Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s oldest son, who is also a popular radio talk show host. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.

Show Us The Shining City On The Hill

by Michael Reagan

Thanks to Mitt Romney, John McCain has all but wrapped up his party’s presidential nomination.

So where does the Republican Party stand at this point in a crucial election year? Well, consider that none of the potential nominees of the party — except maybe McCain to some extent — has ever gone out and helped any Republican get elected to anything.

Now that he’s suspended his campaign and is out of the race, if Mitt Romney still wants to be president of the United States some day let him call me up and I’ll give him the road map he needs to follow to become the GOP nominee in another year.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the three men have all been working from the top down and not from the bottom up. As a result, the voters — the grass roots — are all over the landscape, and the primary results showed there’s no real consensus. They were with Huckabee, they were with Mitt Romney, they were with McCain, and some were with Ron Paul.

Mitt Romney didn’t do anything to gain the trust of the base, while McCain — who hasn’t yet won the trust of the base — is a familiar old face.

The bottom line here is Read the rest of this entry »

Bowing to the inevitable, Mitt Romney reportedly has suspended his quixotic run for the presidential nomination after winning only a small handful of states in the first month of primaries while squandering his sons’ inheritance in spending an outrageous $1.6 million per delegate won only to eat John McCain’s dust.

In a swan-song address this afternoon to the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington that was Romney at his disingenuous best, he opted for dividing since he couldn’t conquer, declaring that he was falling on his sword because:

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

The former Massachusetts governor is the latest Republican wannabe to learn to hard way, as did Rudy Giuliani, that being a liberal or moderate in conservative drag not only is a bad fit but doesn’t fool anyone in the ideologically rare air of GOP politics.

Romney had even out-Giulianied Rudy as a flip flopper, changing his stripes on abortion, stem cell research, gun control, the minimum wage, gay marriage and gays in the military, and nowhere more so than on health care where his views were a carbon copy of Clinton’s until he got the presidential itch.

The mathematical odds against Romney prevailing grew expodentially after he was trounced in the Super Tuesday primaries, giving McCain a commanding 703-293 lead in delegates. Mike Huckabee has 190, with 1,191 needed to clinch the nomination, meaning that Romney would have to win more than 80 percent of the delegates in play over the next month to remain competitive..

Romney’s exit is a further complication for hard-core conservatives who are dead set against McCain. Some conservatives had showed tepid support for Romney, but are now left with McCain, Huckabee and Ron Paul.

From one of my favorite Ohio bloggers, Clark Street Blog:

Terse summarizations of the candidates/campaigns so far:

DEMOCRATS

OBAMA: Hope with me, dream with me, believe in me, vote for me.

CLINTON: Is the applause meter on?

EDWARDS: I am in this until the end. The END! Okay, never mind.

DODD: I would like to share some thoughtful remarks on some important matters of policy. Hey, is this thing on?

RICHARDSON: You want experience? How about Congress, Cabinet, Diplomat, and Governor? (* crickets *)

KUCINICH: We shall overcome, and we shall do it with drum circles.

BIDEN: Why do I keep tasting bits of shoe leather in my mouth?

GRAVEL: I don’t care who, and I don’t care why, but SOMEONE IS GETTIN’ A FIST SANDWICH.

REPUBLICANS

ROMNEY: Thanks to the internet, my positions are now available in real time.

McCAIN: America, thy name is victory.

HUCKABEE: America, thy name is victory for Jesus.

GIULIANI: I love Bush. I love Cheney. The last 7 years have been great. I say MORE COWBELL!

PAUL: Half of what I say makes total sense. Do you really care about the rest?

THOMPSON: Look, I really need this nap. I was at a costume party at my wife’s sorority until pretty late. I dressed up as Ronald Reagan.

Please, if you like it, give the proper attribution. Thanks.

Exit polls tomorrow night will undoubtedly show voters went into the booths worried about health care, home foreclosures, job security and other fallout from an impending recession.

Their concerns are understandable, but they may want to recall that a little over a year ago, in November 2006, their ballots gave control of Congress to Democrats with a mandate to stop the war in Iraq.

That did not happen and since then voters have been lulled by an Imperial President, using Gen. Petraeus as a human shield, into forgetting that American deaths there now total 3,945 at a cost to taxpayers exceeding $10 billion a month.

All the Republican candidates, except Ron Paul, are in favor of continuing to do that.

As for the Democrats, in 2002, I wrote to Sen. Hillary Clinton pleading with her not to give George W. Bush the power to invade Iraq and warning that, if she did, I would never vote for her for any office. Tomorrow I will keep that promise.

Cross-posted from my blog.

Hattip Mahalo.com.

First, a hattip to this post by PunditMom for BlogHer for cluing the clueless (that would be me) into the fact that Maine’s GOP caucus is February 1-3 (that would be, this weekend).

At just after 9pm, Saturday evening, February 2, with 64% reporting, check out how close Ron Paul and John McCain are - 18.9% to 21.5%, respectively. Ah, New Englanders (Romney is over 50%)

Some resources:

New York Times coverage with results as they come in here

Census Bureau Pre-Caucus Snapshot (from PunditMom’s BlogHer post)

The caucus schedule by county

And more info still from the Maine GOP

Did any of the Republican presidential primary candidates tonight during the final GOP debate before Super Tuesday sound like they really want this job, have dreamed of this job, have desired and thought about what they could accomplish for so many in such a role before, oh, say, they started running for the job (including John McCain)?

If they have, it is not coming through.

I’ve heard GOP talking heads describe their field as having people who would make “fine presidents,” but don’t we deserve better than fine?

Is it possible that a week from today that the Democratic and Republican presidential races will be over bar the shouting?

The likelihood the 22-state Super Tuesday primaries will produce prohibitive favorites in either let alone both parties would not seem to be great. But big-state wins by Hillary Clinton and John McCain would make them the presumptive nominees because it would be extremely difficult for their chief rivals — Barack Obama and Mitt Romney — to play catch up in the convention delegate races.

The wrangling between the Clinton and Obama campaigns over single delegates as in Nevada and Clinton’s push to seat blackballed Michigan and Florida delegates when there are more than 4,000 at stake shows how important the delegate race is going into Super Tuesday, especially with John Edwards now bowing out.

It took a few weeks longer than the Democrats, but a welcome shakeout in the Republican race after the Florida primary vote left Rudy Giuliani sucking his thumb and Mike Huckabee sucking his rivals’ dust.

Although Romney was a relatively close second to McCain, who got 36 percent of the vote compared to his 31 percent, Romney has won only one of the five contests he has entered and that was in Michigan where he has native-son status. In a way, the race is now Romney’s to lose although he has only two clear-cut advantages over McCain at this critical juncture — he is better organized in more states and can spend his sons’ inheritance to a fare thee well while the Arizona senator is scraping the bottom of the fundraising barrel.

Nevertheless, McCain’s win on a top-down-on-the-convertible Florida winter day was all the more impressive because this was a closed primary in which only registered Republicans could vote and he received broad support from mainstream Republicans in what will be a crucial swing state in November.

Read the rest of this entry »

Has there been a lousier major presidential candidate in recent memory than Rudy Giuliani, an ethically challenged one trick pony whose campaign has pretty much self destructed before his “first big test” next week in the Florida primary?

I don’t think so, but am willing to take on challengers.

Giuliani’s descent from Republican frontrunner status in national polls last fall to the point where Ron Paul has received nearly twice as many votes in the early primary contests, is a thing of beauty.

It’s hard to imagine what America’s Mayor can say or do beyond the conservative flapdoodle that this former dyed-in-the-wool liberal has tried to perpetrate on voters to salvage even a decent showing in the Sunshine State, where he had expected to be the winner. He now badly trails John McCain and Mitt Romney and is a distant third with Mike Huckabee in one Florida poll and fourth behind McCain, Romney and Huckabee in another. He had been first in both polls in December.

What makes Giuliani’s tumble even more breathtaking is that he has spent some 52 days campaigning in Florida and dropped $3 million on advertising but is drawing smallish crowds many places and is now having to fend off questions about whether he will even stay in the race if he loses.

So what happened?

* His strategy of ignoring the early contests and instead concentrating on Florida backfired badly as his opponents got plenty of face time as the media focus went from Iowa to New Hampshire to Michigan and most recently to South Carolina, and he got practically none. Now the media has saddled him with an “underdog” label and that will be all but impossible to shake between now and next Tuesday.

* He has said that the more people find out about his ideas the more support would accrue to him, but those ideas range from a crackpot foreign policy to a variety of views that reveal him to be out of his depth when it comes to national issues.

* His endless boasts of his post-9/11 attack prowess haven’t given him an edge. Besides which, he is vulnerable to criticism that his administration failed to address flaws in the response to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 that remained on 9/11, and that he sent clean-up workers into harm’s way after the Trade Center towers fell.

* His negatives are high because of a series of personal and professional scandals that make Bill Clinton seem like a pillar of probity by comparison. A presidential campaign should not be a popularity contest, but truth be told, Giuliani just isn’t a very nice person.

* His greatest strength is the substantial number of New York transplants in densely populated South Florida who know him well. His greatest weakness is the substantial number of New York transplants in densely populated South Florida who know him well.

* He has a severe money crunch and senior aides have not been paid for some time. (McCain and Huckabee also are strapped, while Romney is drawing on his personal fortune.)

Giuliani acknowledged his underdog status in last night’s mostly civil Republican debate.

He joked that Romney had gone easy on him in asking a question about the economy and suggested that it reflected that his rivals no longer considered him a threat.

“When Mitt Romney asked me a question, he asked me a very nice question. I think I lulled him into a false sense of security,” Giuliani said, adding later in the debate: “We’re going to come from behind; we’re going to win here in Florida.”

More here, here, here, here, and here.

This is a Guest Voice column by Michael Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s oldest son, who is also a popular radio talk show host. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.

Newt: A GOP Dark Horse?

Making Sense, by Michael Reagan

Fred Thompson’s gone. Duncan Hunter’s gone. All these people are gone. Huckabee could become Huckabeen — gone by next Tuesday. So could Rudy after next’s Tuesday’s Florida primary.

All of a sudden you’ve got this Republican primary coming down to McCain, Romney and Ron Paul. With all this uncertainty, just where can a conservative go? All of a sudden radio talk show hosts, who reflect the opinions of grass-roots conservative voters, are all over the lot hammering on Rudy, hammering on Romney, hammering on McCain and hammering on Paul.

Listening to them you get an idea who they want or don’t want. They don’t like McCain. Most probably they support either Huckabee or Romney. Although they think Rudy is gone, he could come back if he wins in Florida next Tuesday.

If Huckabee is finished, I think they go to Romney, who is somewhat more conservative than the rest. At any rate, conservatives could be faced with backing either McCain, or Romney, or Huckabee or even Rudy.

Or they could end up backing none of them.

Who, then, could conservatives end up backing? Well, who recently has come out with a new book? Who’s doing all the shows talking about his new book? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not watching this one. I do see that The Caucus at The New York Times is live-blogging. BTW, The New York Times has just endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

The potential upside of a great Obama presidency is enticing, but this country faces huge problems, and will no doubt be facing more that we can’t foresee. The next president needs to start immediately on challenges that will require concrete solutions, resolve, and the ability to make government work. Mrs. Clinton is more qualified, right now, to be president.

AND

Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe.

There’s a lot to love about Ron Paul. And he is appreciated far afield, as evidenced by this op-ed from Siglo XXI, a Guatemalan Spanish-language daily, translated as ever by Watching America.com.