Justin Hart of Race42008 wrote a post that is 95% correct. He said: You don’t try to win straw polls as proof of your national success among a group of voters. You don’t try to win straw polls as proof of momentum. You don’t try to win straw polls as Read more…
Mike Huckabee has a great crowd here. Certainly a much stronger reception at the beginning than either Romney or Giuliani. Way bigger. Starts with jokes about the baby boomers collecting social security. "If you that’s bad economic news, just wait until you hear about all the old graying hippies getting Read more…
The entrance had more standing, but less cheers than Mitt Romney. But Romney had a lot of astroturf, as Phil Klein pointed out, so it is hard to tell. Rudy starts with an attack on Washington. Unlike Romney’s speech, there was more of a narrative structure. He wanted the people Read more…
Alan Fram AP’s story about Rudy Giuliani and conservatives fundamentally misses the point. He says, "Giuliani’s Conservative Vote Tenuous." That would be true, if it turned out that his lead in polls was based on the vote of conservatives who don’t know what he thinks on issues. It seems that Read more…
A number of people have asked me why I think that the religious right hasn’t found a candidate. The supposition is that if the religious right came around and supported someone like Mike Huckabee or Sam Brownback, they could be the nominee. Here is my attempt to answer that question. Read more…
I’m going to get in big trouble for this. My friend David Freddoso tried to define conservatism in relation to the Rudy Giuliani phenomenon with: There is a long philosophical debate to be had over what makes a conservative, but conservatives in Washington have a rule of thumb for awarding Read more…
This morning, I got an email from a family group leader. He was incredulous. He said: Our "leaders" testify to the sincere conversion of a guy who today believes the Boy Scouts are wrong to prohibit homosexual Scoutmasters… That was in response to Ralph Z Hallow’s article about Romney in today’s Washington Read more…
I spent Friday morning at the Americans for Prosperity Conference, Defending the American Dream. (blog here) I was struck by several things about it. First, there were a lot of people. 1,600, and they said that they turned away more people. A lot of these are Republican activists. Some of Read more…
The Economist’s Democracy in America blog gets the Rudy Giuliani versus social conservative politics right: That last scenario sounds bad for all Republicans, because it would be a help to the dread Hillary Clinton. But at this point it looks like a Democrat, Hillary or otherwise, is going to win Read more…
Yesterday Salon reported about a meeting that occurred concurrently with the quarterly meeting of the Council on National Policy, a conservative organization that tries to coordinate the actions of various components of the conservative movement. The top-level story that people are taking from this is that the conservative movement organizations Read more…