Mitt is staying in the fight. Rudy is out and will endorse McCain

Lots going on in GOP world after the Florida primary.

Mitt is staying in the race and taking the fight to McCain over who is the most right wing of the right wingers. Mitt's got a lot of his own money to spend so this should be fun:

Republican Mitt Romney, his family and supporters vowed to carry his campaign into the vote-rich Super Tuesday contests next week after narrowly losing Florida's primary to rival John McCain.

In his concession speech Tuesday night, Romney issued a call to arms to conservatives to support him, vowing to cut federal spending, end illegal immigration and teach children "that before they have babies, they should get married."

Get good and ugly, Mitt. McCain really hates you. Don't forget that McCain lied about your record. Have at it.

We won't have Rudy to kick around anymore, although we'll be mocking his candidacy for years to come. What a spectacular disaster. Despite his best finish so far -- a distant third, which is way better then his usual sixth place -- Rudy is dropping out and backing McCain. Read the rest of this post...

No room in the GOP for moderates like Rudy

There's no room at the inn.

Giuliani's stunning loss in Florida tonight, and his utter flaming out of the Republican nomination - he has a grand total of 1 delegate - shows the degree to which far-right Republicans have taken over the GOP and forced moderates and anyone else who doesn't breathe fire or speak in tongues out of the party (your faithful blogger, Markos, Arianna and so many more included).

Just as messed up, conservative Republicans may end up rallying around Romney, a man who once ran for the Senate claiming to be more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy. A guy who in the past two years has suddenly become a lifelong conservative, after 58 years of embracing gun control, abortion, and gays. This is the standard-bearer for conservative Republicans, a guy who on the litmus test "conservative" issues is - oh I'm sorry, was two years ago - a liberal Democrat. This is the standard bearer for evangelical jam-Christ-down-your-throat Christians, a Mormon.

And they wonder so many of us left. Read the rest of this post...

CNN projecting McCain winner in Florida

9:21 PM

62% reporting

36% McCain
32% Romney
15% Giuliani
13% Huckabee
3% Ron Paul

The Democratic race doesn't matter, or count. Florida lost its delegates to the Democratic convention for violating DNC rules about when it could hold its primary. All the candidates agreed not to campaign in Florida as a result, but now Hillary is trying to get the delegates reinstated because she's winning. Imagine if she succeeds and those delegates are enough to push her over the top. Florida would again steal the election. And I suspect all hell would break loose. (8:39 PM: Hillary is having a "victory rally" in Florida tonight. Keith Olbermann read the official statement from NBC that no delegates are being awarded and that the campaigns pledged not to campaign in Florida. Watching the nicely printed "Hillary" signs being waved at the Clinton event, Keith said, "Everybody just happened to have those signs at home." No campaigning there.)

TIME is reporting that Giuliani is expected to endorse McCain as early as tomorrow.

Pat Buchanan on John McCain: "Here's a guy, basically, what does he say: 'The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we're gonna have a lot more wars.' "

Joe Scarborough: "John McCain's platform, and it certainly looks inviting for the fall, he's promised less jobs and more wars. Now that's something we can all rally behind."

UPDATE @ 8:16 PM: Florida being Florida, there were, of course, voting problems according to the Miami Herald. Be great if this screws up the GOP race:

Mysterious glitches cost some voters in Miami-Dade and Broward counties the opportunity Tuesday to vote for their candidates in the presidential primaries.

In some cases, it might have been voter error -- people who failed to register properly as a Democrat or Republican.

In others, the problem might be attributed to mistakes in registration rolls, though county election officials disputed that.

In several cases, however, the failure involved poorly trained election workers who apparently activated machines with the wrong ballots and, in some cases, were utterly confounded by the election.

Read the rest of this post...

Why is Larry Craig still in the Senate?

"Conservative" Republican Senator Larry Craig, the guy arrested for tapping his foot in an airport men's room, continues to hold his seat (ba dum pum) in the Senate. (I actually had the pleasure of walking by Larry Craig yesterday in the Senate. And no, I didn't ask directions to the bathroom.) Well it's looking like the Senate is stonewalling his ethics investigation. It's good to be Queen.

Read the rest of this post...

Early GOP exit polls leaking out of Florida

The National Review, which as a right wing publication really, really cares about the GOP nomination, posted early exit polls from Florida:

The first wave of exit poll numbers, including absentees: McCain 34.3 percent, Romney 32.6 percent, Giuliani 15.3 percent, Huckabee 12 percent.

Given these are exit polls, caveat emptor. That's all I'm saying.

Most polls close at 7 PM, although some on the panhandle stay open til 8 pm (the ten most western panhandle counties according to the Miami Herald). Read the rest of this post...

Bush on economy and home ownership

Bush took all of the credit for policies that led to the booming CEO economy (that never trickled down beyond CEOs) and record rates of home ownership. Is he still a stand up guy now or will he run from his words and his record?

Bush in 2004: "Thanks to being the most productive workforce in America, and I might say, thanks to good policies, this economy is strong and it's getting stronger," Bush told supporters.

Noting that 68 percent of Americans own their own homes, Bush said, "Home sales were the highest ever recently. That's exciting news for the country."

Fast-forward to 2008: The housing and mortgage meltdown caused the biggest one-year drop in the rate of homeownership on record, according to government figures released Tuesday.

The Census Bureau report showed that home owners accounted for 67.8% of occupied homes in the fourth quarter, down 1.1 points from a year earlier. It's the largest year-over-year drop recorded in the report. The ownership rate was also well below the 68.2% ownership rate in the third quarter of 2007.

Read the rest of this post...

More and better foreign policy voices: Alex Thurston

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I strongly believe in giving a bigger megaphone to those who deserve it but perhaps aren't yet very well known, especially because that's the kind of perspective that allowed me to come on board here in the first place. So I'm making an effort to highlight and recommend emerging voices every few weeks or so, mostly on foreign policy but sometimes other topics as well. The first was Matt Duss, and today I'd like to introduce y'all to Alex Thurston, another young foreign policy observer whose insights and expertise make his writing essential reading.

Alex is currently a student in the Master's program of Arab Studies at Georgetown, and studied religion as an undergrad at Northwestern. Unlike many pundits, he has actually lived abroad, spending much of 2006 and 2007 in Senegal as part of the Fulbright exchange program, studying Muslim youth movements. His understanding of the Middle East and Africa is comprehensive, and he's one of a growing group that understand internationalism *and* politics -- an intersection that was less necessary before the entire foreign policy apparatus was politicized but is absolutely vital now.

His recent post on continued escalation of tensions in Pakistan rightly warns against any rash moves by the US; moving east, his excellent analysis of the latest in Darfur helps keep focus on a still-overlooked tragedy. So you know the drill: Add The Seminal to your RSS feed or your daily reading list, and know that when you read Thurston, you're reading a progressive who knows his stuff and can be trusted. It's important. Read the rest of this post...

More on Romney potentially wearing an earpiece

UPDATE: The main article I link to below has been pulled, so we should assume that the author's allegation, that Romney's staff admits he wears an earpiece, is no longer proven. Having said that, I watched the debate live on TV, and heard the "answer" to Romney's question a split second before he gave it. I even rewound the tape, it's there. Listen for yourself.



CNN picked up on the story as did FOX. NBC's Brian Williams fills in a bit more info about the mystery on his blog:

I remember looking around the stage with a start - scanning the faces of the candidates, trying to figure out who had just said that. Apparently, others heard it, too. We're actually polling all of our folks (those who were anywhere near an open mike) and watching all of our iso tapes (where we record camera angles that isolate individual candidates) to see who the whispering bandit is. Its not as if anyone committed any offense - in fact, whoever it was was both fast on the draw and correct about where Tim was going with his question. It was just an oddly disjointed, not-immediately-identifiable voice, thus the mystery.

THIS IS MY EARLIER POST: I'm linking to this story over at RedState because I had the same experience as the writer. I was watching the GOP debate the other night, and had it TiVo'd, and all of a sudden I hear someone whispering about cutting taxes a second before Romney starts talking about cutting taxes. I went back, checked the tape, and there's the little ghost whispering about cutting taxes. Well, it gets better. Romney's staff admits he wears an earpiece through which they tell him what to do. Was Romney wearing such an earpiece during the debate, was that who we heard whispering? And this raises the issue, again, of Bush's rather obvious use of an earpiece to funnel him talking points - something the media has refused to follow up on, and which was painfully obvious especially a few years ago. Read the rest of this post...

Come November: Huckabee easiest to beat; McCain hardest

Some surprising results, to me at least, from our straw poll regarding which GOP candidate would be easiest to beat in November. I kind of expected that everyone would agree that McCain could be our toughest opponent, though I also feel that Giuliani could be tough too (in a general election - in the primaries he's pretty much toast at this point). I didn't, however, expect that you'd pick Huckabee as the easiest to beat, followed by Giuliani. I just figured that Romney would be the easiest to beat because of his having flipped on every single issue in order to run as a "conservative" after a lifetime of liberal positions on God, gays and guns (and the Mormon thing isn't going to help him either). But you guys felt Romney would be harder to beat than Huckabee or Giuliani. A lot harder. Interesting. Read the rest of this post...

Hillary speaks out about gay youth suicide

I gotta give her credit, she specifically chose to include a question about gay youth in her "Ask Hillary" video. While many of you may say "well, she should," yes she should, but I would imagine a lot of politicians would just as soon stay away from the issue lest they offend someone. So, she gets two points for this one.

Read the rest of this post...

McCain is now gay-baiting

That didn't take long. So much for our maverick. When the going gets tough, John McCain goes queer bashing. Note his adoption of the religious right buzz-phrase "special rights." Considering McCain helped shoot down a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, I'm just curious how he defines "special rights." McCain has always surrounding himself with gay men. Ever since I worked on the Hill in the late 80s, early 90s, McCain always had gay men on staff in senior positions. Openly gay men. Gay men who had no problem helping the gay rights movement. Gay men who people like McCain would call "gay activists." McCain had zero problem helping powerful openly-gay men advance in Washington, DC. He currently has no problem employing them at the highest reaches of his campaign - the highest reaches - helping them work their "special rights" agenda in his campaign and beyond. But now we're to believe that McCain suddenly has a problem with the gays and their "special rights."

Mitt Romney isn't the only GOP candidate playing games with their position on gays. McCain has been trying to have it both ways on gay issues for two decades now. Privately helping gay activists while publicly condemning them. There's a reason that conservatives don't trust McCain. He's just a more refined version of Mitt Romney. Say one thing, do another. Read the rest of this post...

US home foreclosures up 79% in 2007

And they are expected to be even higher this year. More economic failure, courtesy of the GOP. Regulation and oversight are not bad words, unless you are a Republican. Because the GOP failed to act, it's going to cost everyone much more money in the long run.

About 1.3 million homes received foreclosure-related warnings last year, up from 717,522 in 2006, Irvine-based RealtyTrac said. Foreclosure filings rose 75 percent from the previous year to 2.2 million.

More than 1 percent of all U.S. households were in some phase of the foreclosure process last year, up from about half a percent in 2006, RealtyTrac said.

Nevada, Florida, Michigan and California posted the highest foreclosure rates, the company said.

Read the rest of this post...

McCain on Mitt: He's a flip-flopping flip-flopper

The last Reuters/CSPAN/Zogby tracking poll of Florida Republicans has McCain leading Romney by four points: 35 - 31. Huck and Rudy are tied for third at 13 each.

Romney and McCain are doing their best to destroy each other. Love the front page NY Times headline: "Acrimony Reigns in G.O.P. on Eve of Florida Vote." Yes, let acrimony reign within the G.O.P. for month and months. Have to say, though, McCain has done a very nice job of defining Romney:

Mr. McCain volleyed back by describing Mr. Romney as a serial flip-flopper who had taken multiple positions on a variety of issues, including gay rights, global warming and immigration. “People, just look at his record as governor,” Mr. McCain said at a shipyard in Jacksonville. “He has been entirely consistent. He has consistently taken two sides of every major issue, sometimes more than two.”

They're giving us our talking points for the general election. Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's primary day in Florida. Mitt and McCain have made it really ugly. But remember, Florida is going to be the state where Rudy soars. Not going to happen. The big question is whether he can catapult into a distant third. The demise of Rudy is truly one of the great sub-plots of this election cycle.

The Democratic primary doesn't mean anything. The DNC, in its infinite wisdom, went to war with Florida over the early primary. Not like we'll need Florida in November.


Start threading. Read the rest of this post...

Link between junk food and violence?

Oxford University is launching a study in the British prison system to investigate the links between anti-social behavior and diet/nutrition. The initial studies have shown there could be a connection and changes could reduce (not eliminate) violent behavior in a significant portion of the population.

Mark Walport, head of the Wellcome Trust, which is funding the three-year study, said: "If this study shows that nutritional supplementation affects behaviour it could have profound significance for nutritional guidelines, not only within the criminal justice system but in the wider community – in schools, for example. We are all used to nutritional guidelines for our physical health but this study could lead to revisions taking account of our mental health."

The theory behind the trial is that when the brain is starved of essential nutrients, especially omega-3 fatty acids, which are a central building block of brain neurons, it loses "flexibility". This shortens attention spans and undermines self-control. Even though prison food is nutritious, prisoners tend to make unhealthy choices and need supplements, the researchers say.

Read the rest of this post...

Countrywide CEO to take lower payout

He's still going to walk away with a comfortable sum of money though it's not going to be as extravagant as initially planned thanks to public criticism. As for the failed CEOs of Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, who accepted massive payouts based on shoddy business that has since been written down, no change and business as usual. Yes, they did have contracts though what kind of contract doesn't take bad business into consideration? If your bonanza payout is based on smoke-and-mirrors business, should that really be acceptable? Read the rest of this post...