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I am off to the Young Republican National Convention in Miami. I will be blogging some of it on-site. Mitt Romney will be speaking, as will Duncan Hunter. There will be a bunch of other exciting events, including a straw poll. The last big Young Republican straw poll last year was 1 vote win by [...]

Details from Mike DuHaime on Rudy Giuliani: 60k donors. Thinks that this can grow. Lower than McCain’s and Romney’s. $33m raised for this cycle $11m spent in Q2 $18m CoH and $0 debt "Finance numbers catching up polling numbers" Campaign contnuing to grow: Active in 12 states "Only candidate who can win the general election" [...]

Introductions Tancredo: MoC for 10 years Tommy Thompson: Candidate not the actor. Governor for 14 and Secretary of HHS Sam Brownback. Raised on farm in Kansas, have 5 kids, Senator Mitt Romney: Family, neighbor and MA. Giuliani: Likes the motto McCain: Served coountry all his life. Huckabee: Give people from Hope another chance Hunter: I [...]

McCain discusses Romney’s position on immigration: Maybe I should wait a of couple weeks and see if it changes. Maybe he can get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his yard. McCain refers to Romney’s general flip-floppery, Romney’s gun gaffes, and the illegals who take care of Romney’s yard.

John McCain opened the call with a discussion of his speech, his discussion with Kyl, and immigration. He notes that immigration is a national security issue. And he also notes that there’s no smaller bill that can get through the Senate. Ann Althouse asks about the difficulty of running for President and being a Senator. [...]

Rudy Giuliani talks about the debate. He said it was better. Challenging questions. He points out that they had time. Jennifer Rubin, from ABCNews.com (she gets around) starts with a question about the Senate vote on withdrawal. She notes that it was 29-67, with all the Democrats running for President voting in the affirmative. Giuliani [...]

I think that Rudy Giuliani did well tonight. No one really nailed him on abortion, which surprises me. And he really nixed Ron Paul. John McCain did well too. I think that he really had some good lines. He made a great impression. Without the really extraordinary intervention of Giuliaini on the Ron Paul line, [...]

9:05: McCain gets lucky with the first question on his best issue. He is 9:06: Thompson (is that hair real?) is asked about pressure on Iraq to get out. That’s a different version of revenue sharing. Winning the  peace is a good line. 9:08: Romney ducks the question about whether he would leave. Does he [...]

So, Romney mispronounces al-Maliki…. Brownback sounded quite good. He is articulate. Too bad he doesn’t stand a chance. McCain seems nervous. The Iran-Iraq fumble was a little awkward. Tancredo. Mr. "Bomb Mecca" And Giuliani drops the Reagan name… Romney flip-flops on Osama bin Laden. "of course" except not the other day. My focus group says [...]