Forbes has rated the GOP candidates in order of conservativeness: Fred Thompson, 40.6/50 John McCain, 40.5/50 Sam Brownback, 37.9/50 Mitt Romney, 36.7/50 Rudy Giuliani, 36.2/50 Duncan Hunter, 34.3/50 Ron Paul, 31.2/50 Tom Tancredo, 31.1/50 Mike Huckabee, 26/50 No idea what their methodology was. But some people are going to be 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…
UPDATE: The results have been updated. This weekend, the convention of the National Federation of Republican Women was held in California. They held a straw poll. I don’t have complete results yet, but the top-line result is pretty solid. Rudy Giuliani won an outright majority. Giuliani did speak to the Read more…
Patrick Ruffini, former E-campaign director for the RNC, and Dean Barnett, former driver for Mitt Romney in his 1994 Senate campaign, are debating the relative merits of activism (Ruffini, an activism activist, here and here) and punditry (Barnett, a punditry activist, here and here). I basically agree with Patrick, as Read more…
This weekend, I was an attendee at the European Ideas Network, an annual 3 day seminar of center-right European politicians, think tankers, academics, and business leaders. There were sessions about a huge range of topics. I can’t imagine a similar forum in the states in either party. One of the Read more…
Rep. Terry Everett (R-AL) just announced his retirement. I just got off the phone with a party leader in Alabama. It is looking like a two-way primary, at least. One option is George Wallace Jr. The other is State Senator Harri Ann Smith. She is an up-and-comer, while he is Read more…
My friend Robert Bluey really laid into Michael Gerson’s piece in the Post today. But I think that Rob missed the point. For him, the focus of the piece was this paragraph: It is a strange spectacle. Conservatives are intent on building a more appealing, post-Bush Republican Party. But their Read more…
Secretary of Agriculture and Former Governor Mike Johanns has announced that he is resigning and running for Senate. Finally a good recruitment break. Going to Washington, DC to run a Republican US Department of Agriculture is a lot better reason to leave Nebraska than running a liberal college and considering Read more…
Favorability of Republican Candidates Among Republicans/Republican Leaners Sept. 14-16, 2007 Favorable Unfavorable No opinion % % % Rudy Giuliani 70 22 9 John McCain 65 25 9 Fred Thompson 55 9 36 Mitt Romney 39 23 37 I thought this Gallup poll was fascinating. There are two very Read more…