Thomas B. Edsall
The Huffington Post
Huckabee Embraces Confederate Flag To Woo White Evangelicals
January 18, 2008 12:30 PM
Columbia, S. Car. -- The populist campaign of Mike Huckabee, seeking to mobilize an insurgency of white evangelicals against the Republican establishment, took an abrupt turn today after the former Arkansas governor directly appealed to voters on the issue of race, summoning his fellow candidates to stop calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from government offices.
"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. ... If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole. That's what we'd do," he declared to applause at a campaign rally in Myrtle Beach Thursday.
At the same time, an Atlanta, Georgia, based organization, Americans for the Preservation of American Culture, began running radio ads attacking John McCain for his opposition to displays of the Confederate flag on public buildings and praising Huckabee.
"McCain has been doing it -- calling the flag a racist symbol -- for years," the announcer declares. "After McCain, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee stands as a breath of fresh air. Governor Huckabee understands that all the average guy with a Confederate flag on his pickup truck is saying is, he's proud to be a Southerner." The ad concludes: "In South Carolina, we're proud to be Southerners."
The addition of a powerful, racially-freighted issue into the Republican primary contest appears designed to enlarge the constituency of voters supporting Huckabee, expanding the circle of white conservative Christians to include descendants of George W. Wallace's campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s - a constituency that has shown the potential to become influential in southern elections, as David Duke demonstrated by nearly winning the governorship of Louisiana in 1991.
The emergence of the confederate flag as an issue -- if past elections are a guide - holds the possibility of inflicting damage on McCain.
When McCain ran in South Carolina in 2000 against George W. Bush, he, like Huckabee now, said the confederate flag issue is a matter of states' rights -- a laden term in these parts -- and should not fall under federal jurisdiction. Later in 2000, after losing the nomination, McCain renounced his states' rights position, acknowledging, "I chose to compromise my principles. I broke my promise to always tell the truth.... The Confederacy was "on the wrong side of American history. That, my friends, is how I personally feel about the Confederate battle flag. That is the honest answer I never gave to a fair question."
Debates over flying the Confederate flag above southern statehouses and other government buildings have been bitter and intense in recent years across the states of the former Confederacy, including here in South Carolina. Opposition to flying the Confederate flag has resulted in defeats for both Democrats and Republicans.
Huckabee, ironically, has been campaigning throughout the state accompanied by former Republican Governor David Beasley, a conservative white evangelical who lost a 1998 bid for re-election after he called for the removal of the flag from the South Carolina statehouse. During that campaign, cars across the state displayed a bumper sticker declaring "Keep the flag, dump Beasley!"
In next-door Georgia, former Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, who had appeared to be unbeatable with high popularity ratings, lost a 2002 bid for re-election after replacing the state flag, which prominently featured the Confederate battle emblem, with a flag that reduced the flag emblem to a barely visible icon. Sonny Purdue, Barnes' successful Republican opponent, issued campaign brochures declaring, "Remember who changed your flag."
www.ruffcommunications.com
Showing posts with label Huckabee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Huckabee. Show all posts
Friday, January 18, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Political HaySurge Protection
Political HaySurge Protection
By Jennifer Rubin
Published 1/10/2008 12:08:49 AM
Six months ago, pundits were predicting that congressional Republicans' patience with the Iraq war had run out. Led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, they were going to storm the Oval Office, deliver the news that no more funding would be forthcoming and thereby save their skins in the 2008 elections. Things have a funny way of working out.
General Petraeus did not just win the rhetorical argument in September because MoveOn.org overplayed its hand. He won because facts on the ground had shifted, Democrats who returned reported significant progress and commentators not known for their support of the war concurred that the surge was working. President Bush got his breathing room.
Fast forward a few months. Now the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post are in agreement. The Democrats' unseemly denial of reality and refusal to recognize the surge has indeed worked has become painfully obvious. Popular opinion on the war has turned and continued funding seems assured. While the future of Iraq's political stability remains in doubt, those who supported the surge are no longer the ones with egg on their faces.
The political ramifications of the last six months are now being played out in the presidential primaries. On the Democratic side Barack Obama's claim to fame -- opposing the war from the get-go -- and determination to withdraw troops immediately may, to some segment of the Democratic electorate, seem oddly out of sync. His anti-war credentials, while still overwhelmingly lauded by the Democratic base, pack a less powerful punch now that the Iraq war has disappeared from the front pages.
ON THE REPUBLICAN side the results are starker. John McCain has revived his political fortunes based in large part on his role in criticizing Donald Rumsfeld and supporting a revision of the Iraq strategy when other Republicans were "looking at their shoes." This offers more than "I told you so" brownie points for him. It clearly places his commander-in-chief credentials above all rivals and cements his image as the "straight talker" who does not trim his views to popular opinion. He has been able to utilize his support of the surge to advance the notion that despite his lifetime in Washington he is indeed the most effect "agent of change" in the race.
The success of the surge has also complicated the plans of McCain's opponents. While Romney tried to leave wiggle room if the surge did not work as planned (it only was "apparently" succeeding he told a debate audience in New Hampshire in September), his less-than-full-throated support looks less wise in retrospect. Coupled with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the surge and McCain's support for it has arguably made Romney's CEO experience looks less relevant than McCain's. McCain can credibly argue that it is not simply enough for a president to collect information and assemble advisers (who often disagree).
To look ahead to the general election, the surge may also have changed the landscape for the Republicans as a whole. If progress continues, the GOP will not face searing headlines and escalating body counts. The traditional image of the GOP as the more responsible and less skittish party in national security may be restored somewhat and the Democrats' willingness to "cut and run" again becomes a viable campaign issue.
So the lessons of the surge are familiar ones, but ones repeatedly forgotten by politicians anxious to seek safer ground in any controversy. Short-term political gain does not always translate into long-term electoral success. The public in the end will reward political courage -- in part because it is so rare.
And once again, political prognostication is a fool's game given the inability to foresee events weeks, let alone months, down the road. When in doubt and when all else fails, Republicans might be advised to do the right thing -- be resolute against American foes, trust reliable advice from our military, and ignore the howls from the media and liberal establishment.
In the end, it just might pay off.Jennifer Rubin writes from northern Virginia.
www.ruffcommunications.com
By Jennifer Rubin
Published 1/10/2008 12:08:49 AM
Six months ago, pundits were predicting that congressional Republicans' patience with the Iraq war had run out. Led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, they were going to storm the Oval Office, deliver the news that no more funding would be forthcoming and thereby save their skins in the 2008 elections. Things have a funny way of working out.
General Petraeus did not just win the rhetorical argument in September because MoveOn.org overplayed its hand. He won because facts on the ground had shifted, Democrats who returned reported significant progress and commentators not known for their support of the war concurred that the surge was working. President Bush got his breathing room.
Fast forward a few months. Now the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post are in agreement. The Democrats' unseemly denial of reality and refusal to recognize the surge has indeed worked has become painfully obvious. Popular opinion on the war has turned and continued funding seems assured. While the future of Iraq's political stability remains in doubt, those who supported the surge are no longer the ones with egg on their faces.
The political ramifications of the last six months are now being played out in the presidential primaries. On the Democratic side Barack Obama's claim to fame -- opposing the war from the get-go -- and determination to withdraw troops immediately may, to some segment of the Democratic electorate, seem oddly out of sync. His anti-war credentials, while still overwhelmingly lauded by the Democratic base, pack a less powerful punch now that the Iraq war has disappeared from the front pages.
ON THE REPUBLICAN side the results are starker. John McCain has revived his political fortunes based in large part on his role in criticizing Donald Rumsfeld and supporting a revision of the Iraq strategy when other Republicans were "looking at their shoes." This offers more than "I told you so" brownie points for him. It clearly places his commander-in-chief credentials above all rivals and cements his image as the "straight talker" who does not trim his views to popular opinion. He has been able to utilize his support of the surge to advance the notion that despite his lifetime in Washington he is indeed the most effect "agent of change" in the race.
The success of the surge has also complicated the plans of McCain's opponents. While Romney tried to leave wiggle room if the surge did not work as planned (it only was "apparently" succeeding he told a debate audience in New Hampshire in September), his less-than-full-throated support looks less wise in retrospect. Coupled with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the surge and McCain's support for it has arguably made Romney's CEO experience looks less relevant than McCain's. McCain can credibly argue that it is not simply enough for a president to collect information and assemble advisers (who often disagree).
To look ahead to the general election, the surge may also have changed the landscape for the Republicans as a whole. If progress continues, the GOP will not face searing headlines and escalating body counts. The traditional image of the GOP as the more responsible and less skittish party in national security may be restored somewhat and the Democrats' willingness to "cut and run" again becomes a viable campaign issue.
So the lessons of the surge are familiar ones, but ones repeatedly forgotten by politicians anxious to seek safer ground in any controversy. Short-term political gain does not always translate into long-term electoral success. The public in the end will reward political courage -- in part because it is so rare.
And once again, political prognostication is a fool's game given the inability to foresee events weeks, let alone months, down the road. When in doubt and when all else fails, Republicans might be advised to do the right thing -- be resolute against American foes, trust reliable advice from our military, and ignore the howls from the media and liberal establishment.
In the end, it just might pay off.Jennifer Rubin writes from northern Virginia.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Goldilocks Needs Tax-Reform, Not Populism
January 05, 2008
Goldilocks Needs Tax-Reform, Not Populism
By Lawrence Kudlow
Yes, corporate profits are slowing and jobs are softening. Despite 52 months of ongoing jobs gains and 1.3 million new payrolls in the past year, December jobs registered only 18,000 and the unemployment rate ticked back up to (a still historically low) 5 percent. Despite years of gains from a booming business sector, corporate profits are in fact falling at about a 6 percent clip.
But the last thing we need now is root-canal economic populism from the campaign trail and the mainstream media telling us that Americans are unhappy. Unhappy? According to a Gallup Poll released last week, "Most Americans say they are generally happy, with a slim majority saying they are 'very happy.'" They're also prosperous. According to Investor's Business Daily, household wealth in the U.S. soared 51 percent to $58.6 trillion in last year's third quarter from $38.8 trillion in 2002.
Meanwhile, the Goldilocks economy remains alive and well. It's still the greatest story never told. And while Goldilocks may have softened somewhat, getting her back on track is not rocket science.
The key thing to remember is that businesses drive the economy. Businesses create jobs and incomes for consumers to spend. Today's John Edwards/Mike Huckabee anti-business populism sounds more like William Jennings Bryan than Adam Smith.
It's absolutely crazy. They attack Wall Street and investors, which is another way of attacking capital. Without capital investment, there will be no new business, no new jobs, and no middle class.
And the reality is that today's economic weakness is coming from the business side, not the sub-prime/housing/consumer side. We're witnessing high energy and raw-material prices cause unit costs for businesses to rise faster than prices. That spells weakening profits.
As for this notion that consumers are tapped out, take a look at disposable income. After inflation, it's rising better than 2 percent. Strong income gains of 3.7 percent for hourly earnings are running 1 percentage point ahead of inflation measures based on personal consumption. As it happens, car sales were strong this week. They're running 3.6 percent at an annual rate, ahead of the third quarter. Even holiday sales have surprised on the upside.
All of this is why the Fed needs to deliver a 50 basis point rate cut at its January 30 meeting. A big-bang rate cut would help businesses, consumers, and mortgage owners. It would make the cost of money cheaper and expand the overall liquidity base of the economy.
Some folks argue that rising inflationary pressures would offset these benefits. But that's nonsense. Inflation is the most overrated issue out there. Even when you factor in energy, headline inflation for 2007 is going to come in below the prior year while inflation for 2008 should be even lower than that.
Back in 2000-01, when the economy was slowing markedly, the Fed obsessed about inflation. They were wrong, and then took a radical u-turn. It can't be the same story again. The money supply hasn't grown in a few years while inflation is poised to go way down. The Fed must act, and act big. After that, elected Washington can do the rest.
Right now the single best thing President Bush and Congress can do is slash the corporate tax rate for large and small businesses. Bush must reach out to Charlie Rangel and move the corporate tax to 25 percent from 35 percent. Then, instead of taxing successful capitalists as an offset, Congress can entirely abolish corporate-tax subsidy loopholes, special provisions, and other corruption-inducing K-Street earmarks.
A middle-class tax cut to help families and small businesses would also work wonders. This can be done by collapsing the three middle-income tax brackets of 15 percent ($15,650), 25 percent ($63,700), and 28 percent ($128,500) into one 15 percent bracket. These brackets apply to small-business owners who may be suffering the high costs of energy and raw materials. The biggest weakness in the jobs report is the household survey which is comprised of these owner-operated small businesses. Household job increases have slumped to only 262,000 over the last year.
A major cut in the corporate tax and a simplification of the middle-income tax brackets makes good economic sense. It would help the current softening of the economy and increase America's long-run potential to grow. This is a good plan for President Bush as well as the GOP candidates on the campaign trail. It sure as hell beats talking the economy down.
America is an optimistic country, and for the life of me I don't know why the Republican presidential candidates can't understand this. If a few things go wrong we can fix them. That's what the Fed is there for and that's what tax policy is there for.
Just because Goldilocks is alive and well, it doesn't mean she can't use a bit of help.
Lawrence Kudlow is a former Reagan economic advisor, a syndicated columnist, and the host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company. Visit his blog, Kudlow's Money Politics.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Goldilocks Needs Tax-Reform, Not Populism
By Lawrence Kudlow
Yes, corporate profits are slowing and jobs are softening. Despite 52 months of ongoing jobs gains and 1.3 million new payrolls in the past year, December jobs registered only 18,000 and the unemployment rate ticked back up to (a still historically low) 5 percent. Despite years of gains from a booming business sector, corporate profits are in fact falling at about a 6 percent clip.
But the last thing we need now is root-canal economic populism from the campaign trail and the mainstream media telling us that Americans are unhappy. Unhappy? According to a Gallup Poll released last week, "Most Americans say they are generally happy, with a slim majority saying they are 'very happy.'" They're also prosperous. According to Investor's Business Daily, household wealth in the U.S. soared 51 percent to $58.6 trillion in last year's third quarter from $38.8 trillion in 2002.
Meanwhile, the Goldilocks economy remains alive and well. It's still the greatest story never told. And while Goldilocks may have softened somewhat, getting her back on track is not rocket science.
The key thing to remember is that businesses drive the economy. Businesses create jobs and incomes for consumers to spend. Today's John Edwards/Mike Huckabee anti-business populism sounds more like William Jennings Bryan than Adam Smith.
It's absolutely crazy. They attack Wall Street and investors, which is another way of attacking capital. Without capital investment, there will be no new business, no new jobs, and no middle class.
And the reality is that today's economic weakness is coming from the business side, not the sub-prime/housing/consumer side. We're witnessing high energy and raw-material prices cause unit costs for businesses to rise faster than prices. That spells weakening profits.
As for this notion that consumers are tapped out, take a look at disposable income. After inflation, it's rising better than 2 percent. Strong income gains of 3.7 percent for hourly earnings are running 1 percentage point ahead of inflation measures based on personal consumption. As it happens, car sales were strong this week. They're running 3.6 percent at an annual rate, ahead of the third quarter. Even holiday sales have surprised on the upside.
All of this is why the Fed needs to deliver a 50 basis point rate cut at its January 30 meeting. A big-bang rate cut would help businesses, consumers, and mortgage owners. It would make the cost of money cheaper and expand the overall liquidity base of the economy.
Some folks argue that rising inflationary pressures would offset these benefits. But that's nonsense. Inflation is the most overrated issue out there. Even when you factor in energy, headline inflation for 2007 is going to come in below the prior year while inflation for 2008 should be even lower than that.
Back in 2000-01, when the economy was slowing markedly, the Fed obsessed about inflation. They were wrong, and then took a radical u-turn. It can't be the same story again. The money supply hasn't grown in a few years while inflation is poised to go way down. The Fed must act, and act big. After that, elected Washington can do the rest.
Right now the single best thing President Bush and Congress can do is slash the corporate tax rate for large and small businesses. Bush must reach out to Charlie Rangel and move the corporate tax to 25 percent from 35 percent. Then, instead of taxing successful capitalists as an offset, Congress can entirely abolish corporate-tax subsidy loopholes, special provisions, and other corruption-inducing K-Street earmarks.
A middle-class tax cut to help families and small businesses would also work wonders. This can be done by collapsing the three middle-income tax brackets of 15 percent ($15,650), 25 percent ($63,700), and 28 percent ($128,500) into one 15 percent bracket. These brackets apply to small-business owners who may be suffering the high costs of energy and raw materials. The biggest weakness in the jobs report is the household survey which is comprised of these owner-operated small businesses. Household job increases have slumped to only 262,000 over the last year.
A major cut in the corporate tax and a simplification of the middle-income tax brackets makes good economic sense. It would help the current softening of the economy and increase America's long-run potential to grow. This is a good plan for President Bush as well as the GOP candidates on the campaign trail. It sure as hell beats talking the economy down.
America is an optimistic country, and for the life of me I don't know why the Republican presidential candidates can't understand this. If a few things go wrong we can fix them. That's what the Fed is there for and that's what tax policy is there for.
Just because Goldilocks is alive and well, it doesn't mean she can't use a bit of help.
Lawrence Kudlow is a former Reagan economic advisor, a syndicated columnist, and the host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company. Visit his blog, Kudlow's Money Politics.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Friday, January 4, 2008
Saturday, December 22, 2007
So much to learn from the Huckabee surge
With all the talk about the surprising Huckabee surge in Illinois polls, and the big deal that so many "radical rightwingers" are running as Huckabee delegates, I've got to admit, I'm pretty excited for them all.
At the end of October, when I emailed the Huckabee campaign contact, he didn't know anything about getting delegates on the primary slate. I called for guys like Huckabee and Cox to stop dreaming. The incredible surge means there's real enthusiasm for Huckabee - and what he stands for -- that is translating into impromptu organization right here in blue Illinois.
I got a call last night from Elroy Leach, who's running as a Huckabee delegate in the 2nd Congressional District (that's where Jesse Jackson Jr is Congressman).
Elroy told me about his great admiration for Mike Huckabee, how Huckabee was the only Republican who had the courage and respect for black voters to attend the NAACP's recent presidential debate. Huckabee, he said, was praised by Princeton University professor and commentator Cornell West, who said he agreed with Huckabee's moral values.
Elroy was one of a group of young Cook County African-Americans who ran for state office in 2004, and who was ignored and brushed aside by the House Republicans. I wrote about them two weeks ago in the Southtown Star.
But you've got to admire these guys' tenacity and commitment to breaking through the Republican Party's wall. Elroy is now running for Ward Committeeman and hopes to make a difference in the Cook County GOP.
Elroy and others, such as Matteson's Dr. Eric Wallace who's running as a Fred Thompson delegate in the same congressional district, should be encouraged by Republicans this time around. Hopefully, someone at the IL GOP headquarters is paying attention.
The IL GOP elite and their commitment to the Democrat-lite Giuliani could end up being a very, very big embarrassment. It will show that THEY -- the Old Guard -- are the reason Democrats rule and reign in Illinois. It's time to stop blaming the alive and well energetic conservative Republican base.
There's much to learn from the current Huckabee surge.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Monday, December 10, 2007
Sunday, December 9, 2007
The Republicans Find Their Obama
The Republicans Find Their Obama
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 9, 2007
COULD 2008 actually end up being a showdown between the author of "The Audacity of Hope" and the new Man from Hope, Ark.?
It sounds preposterous, but Washington’s shock over Mike Huckabee’s sudden rise in the polls — he "came from nowhere," Robert Novak huffed last week — makes you wonder. Having failed to anticipate so much else, including the Barack Obama polling surge of days earlier, the press pack has proved an unreliable guide to election 2008. What the Beltway calls unthinkable today keeps turning out to be front-page news tomorrow.
The prevailing Huckabee narrative maintains that he’s benefiting strictly from the loyalty of the religious right. Evangelical Christians are belatedly rallying around one of their own, a Baptist preacher, rather than settling for a Mormon who until recently supported abortion rights or a thrice-married New Yorker who still does. But that doesn’t explain Mr. Huckabee’s abrupt ascent to first place in some polling nationwide, where Christian conservatives account for a far smaller slice of the Republican pie than in Iowa. Indeed, this theory doesn’t entirely explain Mr.
Huckabee’s steep rise in Iowa, where Mitt Romney has outspent him 20 to 1, a financial advantage that Mr. Romney leveraged to crush him in the state’s straw poll just four months ago.
What really may be going on here is a mirror image of the phenomenon that has upended Hillary Clinton’s "inevitability" among Democrats. Like Senator Obama, Mr. Huckabee is the youngest in his party’s field. (At 52, he’s also younger than every Democratic contender except Mr. Obama, who is 46.) Both men have a history of speaking across party and racial lines. Both men possess that rarest of commodities in American public life: wit. Most important, both men aspire (not always successfully) to avoid the hyper-partisanship of the Clinton-Bush era.
Though their views on issues are often antithetical, Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Obama may be united in catching the wave of an emerging zeitgeist that is larger than either party’s ideology.
An exhausted and disillusioned public may be ready for a replay of the New Frontier pitch of 1960. That pitch won’t come from Mr. Romney, a glib salesman who seems a dead ringer for Don Draper, a Madison Avenue ad man of no known core convictions who works on the Nixon campaign in the TV series, "Mad Men." Mr. Romney’s effort to channel J.F.K. last week, in which he mentioned the word Mormon exactly once, was hardly a profile in courage.
The fact to remember about Mr. Huckabee’s polling spike is that it occurred just after the G.O.P. YouTube debate on CNN, where Mr. Romney and Rudy Giuliani vied to spray the most spittle at illegal immigrants. Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado, the fringe candidate whose most recent ads accuse the invading hordes of "pushing drugs, raping kids, destroying lives," accurately accused his opponents of trying to "out-Tancredo Tancredo."
Next to this mean-spiritedness, Mr. Huckabee’s tone leapt off the screen. Attacked by Mr. Romney for supporting an Arkansas program aiding the children of illegal immigrants, he replied, "In all due respect, we’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did." It was a winning moment, politically as well as morally. And a no-brainer at that. Given that Mr. Tancredo polls at 4 percent among Iowan Republicans and zero nationally, it’s hard to see why Rudy-Romney thought it was smart to try to out-Tancredo Tancredo.
Mr. Huckabee’s humane stand wasn’t an election-year flip-flop. As governor, he decried a bill denying health services to illegal immigrants as "race-baiting" even though its legislator sponsor was a fellow Baptist preacher. Mr. Huckabee’s record on race in general (and in attracting African-American votes) is dramatically at odds with much of his party. Only last year Republicans brought us both "macaca" and a television ad portraying the black Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr., as a potential despoiler of white women.
Unlike Rudy-Romney, Mr. Huckabee showed up for the PBS presidential debate held at the historically black Morgan State University in September. Afterward, he met Cornel West, an Obama supporter who deeply disagrees with Mr. Huckabee about abortion and much else. I asked Dr. West for his take last week. After effusively praising Mr. Huckabee as unique among the G.O.P. contenders, Dr. West said: "I told him, ‘You are for real.’ Black voters in Arkansas aren’t stupid. They know he’s sincere about fighting racism and poverty."
Though Mr. Romney’s hastily scheduled speech last week has been greeted by Washington as an essential antidote to the religious bigotry that’s supposedly doing him in, this entire issue may be a red herring. Mr. Romney’s Mormonism has hardly been a secret until now, and Mr.
Huckabee’s eagerness to milk his status as a certified "Christian leader" has been equally transparent from the campaign’s start. Was there really a rising tide of anti-Mormon sentiment in Iowa over the past month, or is Mr. Romney just playing victim?
The real reason for Mr. Huckabee’s ascendance may be that his message is simply more uplifting — and, in the ethical rather than theological sense, more Christian — than that of rivals whose main calling cards of fear, torture and nativism have become more strident with every debate. The fresh-faced politics of joy may be trumping the five-o’clock-shadow of Nixonian gloom and paranoia favored by the entire G.O.P. field with the sometime exception of John McCain.
On the same day of Mr. Romney’s speech, two new polls found Mr. Huckabee with a substantial lead over him and Mr. Giuliani in South Carolina, a stunning reversal from a month ago. Don’t be surprised if a desperate Mitt, who has "accidentally" referred to Mr. Obama as "Osama," does desperate things. South Carolina’s 2000 Republican primary was a jamboree of race-baiting that included a whispering campaign branding Senator McCain as the father of an illegitimate black child. The local political operative who worked for George W. Bush in that race and engineered the infamous Bush visit to Bob Jones University is now in Mr. Romney’s employ.
Mr. Huckabee may well be doomed in the long term. He has little money or organization. He’s so ignorant of foreign affairs that he hadn’t heard of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran a day after its release. His sometimes wacky economic populism riles his party’s most important constituency, Wall Street. And who knows how many other Arkansas scandals will be disinterred along with the paroled serial rapist who popped out last week? That Mr. Huckabee has gotten as far as he has shows just how in sync his benign style is with the cultural moment.
To understand why he can’t be completely dismissed, consider last month’s Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll. Peter Hart, the Democratic half of the bipartisan team that conducts the survey, told me in an interview last week that an overwhelming majority of voters of both parties not only want change but also regard "reducing the partisan fighting in government" as high on their agenda. To his surprise, Mr. Hart found that there’s even a majority (59 percent) seeking a president who would help America in "regaining respect around the world."
This climate, of course, favors the Democrats, especially if the Republicans choose a candidate who brands them as the party of rage and fear — and even more especially if their Tancredo-ism drives a large Hispanic turnout for the national Democratic ticket in Florida, Nevada,
Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. But a Democratic victory is not guaranteed. The huge spread in the Journal-NBC poll between an unnamed Democrat and Republican in the presidential race — 50 to 35 percent — shrank to a 1 percent lead when Mrs. Clinton was pitted against Mr. Giuliani.
Mr. Obama’s campaign, though hardly the long shot of Mr. Huckabee’s, could also fall short. But the Clinton camp’s panic over his rise in the Iowa polls shows that he’s on the right tactical track.
The more polarizing and negative a candidate turns in style, the more that candidate risks playing Nixon to Mr. Obama’s Kennedy. That Mrs. Clinton’s minions would attack Mr. Obama for unseemly ambition because he wrote a kindergarten report called "I Want to Become President" — and then snidely belittle the press for falling for "a joke" once this gambit backfired — is Rudy-Romneyesque in its vituperative folly.
Experience, like nastiness, may also prove a dead end in the year ahead. In 1960, the experience card was played by all comers against the young upstart senator from Massachusetts. In Iowa, L.B.J. went so far as to tell voters that they should vote for "a man with a little gray in his hair." But experience, Kennedy would memorably counter, "is like taillights on a boat which illuminate where we have been when we should be focusing on where we should be going."
The most experienced candidate in 2008 is not Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Giuliani or Mr. Romney in any case. It’s Mr. McCain, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson who have the longest résumés. Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Obama, meanwhile, are both betting that this is another crossroads, like 1960, when Americans are hungry for a leader who will refocus the nation on the path ahead.
www.ruffcommunications.com
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 9, 2007
COULD 2008 actually end up being a showdown between the author of "The Audacity of Hope" and the new Man from Hope, Ark.?
It sounds preposterous, but Washington’s shock over Mike Huckabee’s sudden rise in the polls — he "came from nowhere," Robert Novak huffed last week — makes you wonder. Having failed to anticipate so much else, including the Barack Obama polling surge of days earlier, the press pack has proved an unreliable guide to election 2008. What the Beltway calls unthinkable today keeps turning out to be front-page news tomorrow.
The prevailing Huckabee narrative maintains that he’s benefiting strictly from the loyalty of the religious right. Evangelical Christians are belatedly rallying around one of their own, a Baptist preacher, rather than settling for a Mormon who until recently supported abortion rights or a thrice-married New Yorker who still does. But that doesn’t explain Mr. Huckabee’s abrupt ascent to first place in some polling nationwide, where Christian conservatives account for a far smaller slice of the Republican pie than in Iowa. Indeed, this theory doesn’t entirely explain Mr.
Huckabee’s steep rise in Iowa, where Mitt Romney has outspent him 20 to 1, a financial advantage that Mr. Romney leveraged to crush him in the state’s straw poll just four months ago.
What really may be going on here is a mirror image of the phenomenon that has upended Hillary Clinton’s "inevitability" among Democrats. Like Senator Obama, Mr. Huckabee is the youngest in his party’s field. (At 52, he’s also younger than every Democratic contender except Mr. Obama, who is 46.) Both men have a history of speaking across party and racial lines. Both men possess that rarest of commodities in American public life: wit. Most important, both men aspire (not always successfully) to avoid the hyper-partisanship of the Clinton-Bush era.
Though their views on issues are often antithetical, Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Obama may be united in catching the wave of an emerging zeitgeist that is larger than either party’s ideology.
An exhausted and disillusioned public may be ready for a replay of the New Frontier pitch of 1960. That pitch won’t come from Mr. Romney, a glib salesman who seems a dead ringer for Don Draper, a Madison Avenue ad man of no known core convictions who works on the Nixon campaign in the TV series, "Mad Men." Mr. Romney’s effort to channel J.F.K. last week, in which he mentioned the word Mormon exactly once, was hardly a profile in courage.
The fact to remember about Mr. Huckabee’s polling spike is that it occurred just after the G.O.P. YouTube debate on CNN, where Mr. Romney and Rudy Giuliani vied to spray the most spittle at illegal immigrants. Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado, the fringe candidate whose most recent ads accuse the invading hordes of "pushing drugs, raping kids, destroying lives," accurately accused his opponents of trying to "out-Tancredo Tancredo."
Next to this mean-spiritedness, Mr. Huckabee’s tone leapt off the screen. Attacked by Mr. Romney for supporting an Arkansas program aiding the children of illegal immigrants, he replied, "In all due respect, we’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did." It was a winning moment, politically as well as morally. And a no-brainer at that. Given that Mr. Tancredo polls at 4 percent among Iowan Republicans and zero nationally, it’s hard to see why Rudy-Romney thought it was smart to try to out-Tancredo Tancredo.
Mr. Huckabee’s humane stand wasn’t an election-year flip-flop. As governor, he decried a bill denying health services to illegal immigrants as "race-baiting" even though its legislator sponsor was a fellow Baptist preacher. Mr. Huckabee’s record on race in general (and in attracting African-American votes) is dramatically at odds with much of his party. Only last year Republicans brought us both "macaca" and a television ad portraying the black Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr., as a potential despoiler of white women.
Unlike Rudy-Romney, Mr. Huckabee showed up for the PBS presidential debate held at the historically black Morgan State University in September. Afterward, he met Cornel West, an Obama supporter who deeply disagrees with Mr. Huckabee about abortion and much else. I asked Dr. West for his take last week. After effusively praising Mr. Huckabee as unique among the G.O.P. contenders, Dr. West said: "I told him, ‘You are for real.’ Black voters in Arkansas aren’t stupid. They know he’s sincere about fighting racism and poverty."
Though Mr. Romney’s hastily scheduled speech last week has been greeted by Washington as an essential antidote to the religious bigotry that’s supposedly doing him in, this entire issue may be a red herring. Mr. Romney’s Mormonism has hardly been a secret until now, and Mr.
Huckabee’s eagerness to milk his status as a certified "Christian leader" has been equally transparent from the campaign’s start. Was there really a rising tide of anti-Mormon sentiment in Iowa over the past month, or is Mr. Romney just playing victim?
The real reason for Mr. Huckabee’s ascendance may be that his message is simply more uplifting — and, in the ethical rather than theological sense, more Christian — than that of rivals whose main calling cards of fear, torture and nativism have become more strident with every debate. The fresh-faced politics of joy may be trumping the five-o’clock-shadow of Nixonian gloom and paranoia favored by the entire G.O.P. field with the sometime exception of John McCain.
On the same day of Mr. Romney’s speech, two new polls found Mr. Huckabee with a substantial lead over him and Mr. Giuliani in South Carolina, a stunning reversal from a month ago. Don’t be surprised if a desperate Mitt, who has "accidentally" referred to Mr. Obama as "Osama," does desperate things. South Carolina’s 2000 Republican primary was a jamboree of race-baiting that included a whispering campaign branding Senator McCain as the father of an illegitimate black child. The local political operative who worked for George W. Bush in that race and engineered the infamous Bush visit to Bob Jones University is now in Mr. Romney’s employ.
Mr. Huckabee may well be doomed in the long term. He has little money or organization. He’s so ignorant of foreign affairs that he hadn’t heard of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran a day after its release. His sometimes wacky economic populism riles his party’s most important constituency, Wall Street. And who knows how many other Arkansas scandals will be disinterred along with the paroled serial rapist who popped out last week? That Mr. Huckabee has gotten as far as he has shows just how in sync his benign style is with the cultural moment.
To understand why he can’t be completely dismissed, consider last month’s Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll. Peter Hart, the Democratic half of the bipartisan team that conducts the survey, told me in an interview last week that an overwhelming majority of voters of both parties not only want change but also regard "reducing the partisan fighting in government" as high on their agenda. To his surprise, Mr. Hart found that there’s even a majority (59 percent) seeking a president who would help America in "regaining respect around the world."
This climate, of course, favors the Democrats, especially if the Republicans choose a candidate who brands them as the party of rage and fear — and even more especially if their Tancredo-ism drives a large Hispanic turnout for the national Democratic ticket in Florida, Nevada,
Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. But a Democratic victory is not guaranteed. The huge spread in the Journal-NBC poll between an unnamed Democrat and Republican in the presidential race — 50 to 35 percent — shrank to a 1 percent lead when Mrs. Clinton was pitted against Mr. Giuliani.
Mr. Obama’s campaign, though hardly the long shot of Mr. Huckabee’s, could also fall short. But the Clinton camp’s panic over his rise in the Iowa polls shows that he’s on the right tactical track.
The more polarizing and negative a candidate turns in style, the more that candidate risks playing Nixon to Mr. Obama’s Kennedy. That Mrs. Clinton’s minions would attack Mr. Obama for unseemly ambition because he wrote a kindergarten report called "I Want to Become President" — and then snidely belittle the press for falling for "a joke" once this gambit backfired — is Rudy-Romneyesque in its vituperative folly.
Experience, like nastiness, may also prove a dead end in the year ahead. In 1960, the experience card was played by all comers against the young upstart senator from Massachusetts. In Iowa, L.B.J. went so far as to tell voters that they should vote for "a man with a little gray in his hair." But experience, Kennedy would memorably counter, "is like taillights on a boat which illuminate where we have been when we should be focusing on where we should be going."
The most experienced candidate in 2008 is not Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Giuliani or Mr. Romney in any case. It’s Mr. McCain, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson who have the longest résumés. Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Obama, meanwhile, are both betting that this is another crossroads, like 1960, when Americans are hungry for a leader who will refocus the nation on the path ahead.
www.ruffcommunications.com
State GOP making overtures to African-Americans
State GOP making overtures to African-Americans
December 9, 2007
By Fran Eaton, SouthtownStar columnist
A few years ago, a Republican running for state representative in Harvey told me he was "pissed off to the height of pissivity" when the Illinois House Republican organization told him they couldn't financially help his campaign.
Such is a common complaint from so-called Tier 3 candidates running in strong Democratic districts or challenging solid incumbents. Republicans in Illinois learned long ago to pick their battles carefully. But J.R. Jordan really was irritated to discover thousands of those precious GOP funds being funneled to incumbent GOP House members facing no opposition that year.
I really couldn't blame J.R., nor the other black south suburbanites who voluntarily sought petition signatures for the 2002 GOP ballot, for being so angry.
Then in 2004, a black man from Maryland ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. His last-minute entry was a colossal gamble, and no one who supported the scheme for former U.N. Ambassador Alan Keyes to substitute for the abruptly-toppled GOP nominee Jack Ryan had any idea what a disaster it would be. Indeed, Keyes was so awful that he propelled Barack Obama into the national spotlight, and today the former Chicago state senator is a major contender for the Democrats' 2008 presidential nomination.
In 2006, two black Republicans challenged longtime area incumbents, and both struggled to get out their messages of education reform and family values. They also couldn't get any support from the GOP they wanted so badly to represent in Springfield.
So, you might wonder, what's the big surprise? Republicans are white-collar corporate moguls who take advantage of the middle class and abuse the poor, right? Why would they invest in Cook County minority voting blocs, where Democrats rule and reign?
Michael Zak, author of "Back to Basics for the Republican Party," says Republicans haven't always been perceived as so antagonistic toward minorities.
As a matter of fact, Zak writes, 150 years ago, "Radical Republican" U.S. Senator Charles Sumner starkly defined the difference between the newly-founded Republican Party and the Democrats in this way:
"The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man, that his bondage is cruelly wrong and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood, deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage as 'a sacred right of self-government.' "
Republicans led the fight against slavery.
Indeed, every Democrat in Congress voted against the 1863 D.C. Emancipation Act, which freed 3,100 blacks enslaved in the nation's capital.
Throughout the past few years, these hidden Republican roots have cultivated an array of minority conservative political leaders. Nationally-prominent blacks, such as former Maryland U.S. Senate candidate Michael Steele, as well as renowned football player Lynn Swann, former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts and former Ohio Attorney General Ken Blackwell, encourage others to follow.
The Illinois GOP will be kicking off its new minority outreach council this weekend. Matteson resident Dr. Eric Wallace - on the February primary ballot as 2nd Congressional District delegate for Fred Thompson - has been asked to serve. Others representing Latino- and Asian- Americans will join minority voices in the Illinois GOP.
Like Illinois, Florida is a major Republican state in the upcoming Super Tuesday primaries. Florida GOP spokesperson Erin VanSickle said her state's Republican outreach to minorities is just beginning to flourish.
"We are finding that the Republican message of lower taxes, small business tax incentives, less government interference and more freedom appeals to minority communities," she said.
The Florida GOP recently held its first African-American party convention and was delighted with the enthusiastic response.
One Republican presidential candidate is particularly focused upon nabbing the black community's vote. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher, credits black church members in gaining 48 percent of the black vote during his gubernatorial re-election.
While that figure is questioned by many, one political consultant says Huckabee approaches minority voters the right way:
"He breaks the traditional mold of the Republicans in trying to persuade African-Americans to vote for him, and that's what he did in Arkansas," Little Rock-based Stacy Williams told an Arkansas reporter. "African-Americans are pretty much like anybody else; if you advertise to them or target them and solicit their support, you're going to be successful."
While that's not a earth-shattering political revelation, Huckabee now appears to be leading in Iowa polls. His Illinois supporters slid him in as the last choice listed on the Feb. 5 Republican ballot.
The chances of getting the Chicago area's black community to vote for anyone but Barack Obama in the upcoming primary seems remote, and voters will need to ask for either a Republican or a Democratic ballot that day; that's something those coveted independent voters are hesitant to do.
But whether or not the new life among black conservatives will spring forth this election cycle, there's hope minorities will return to their alive-and-well Republican roots. It will be up to the Illinois GOP powers-that-be to nurture those tender roots to fruition once again.
One of the first people the state's GOP should contact in their minority outreach is that aggravated and disappointed Jordan in Harvey.
Last time I talked to J.R., he'd gone back to promoting a Democrat.
Fran Eaton is a south suburban resident, a conservative activist in state and national politics and an online journalist. She can be reached at featon@illinoisreview.com
www.ruffcommunications.com
December 9, 2007
By Fran Eaton, SouthtownStar columnist
A few years ago, a Republican running for state representative in Harvey told me he was "pissed off to the height of pissivity" when the Illinois House Republican organization told him they couldn't financially help his campaign.
Such is a common complaint from so-called Tier 3 candidates running in strong Democratic districts or challenging solid incumbents. Republicans in Illinois learned long ago to pick their battles carefully. But J.R. Jordan really was irritated to discover thousands of those precious GOP funds being funneled to incumbent GOP House members facing no opposition that year.
I really couldn't blame J.R., nor the other black south suburbanites who voluntarily sought petition signatures for the 2002 GOP ballot, for being so angry.
Then in 2004, a black man from Maryland ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. His last-minute entry was a colossal gamble, and no one who supported the scheme for former U.N. Ambassador Alan Keyes to substitute for the abruptly-toppled GOP nominee Jack Ryan had any idea what a disaster it would be. Indeed, Keyes was so awful that he propelled Barack Obama into the national spotlight, and today the former Chicago state senator is a major contender for the Democrats' 2008 presidential nomination.
In 2006, two black Republicans challenged longtime area incumbents, and both struggled to get out their messages of education reform and family values. They also couldn't get any support from the GOP they wanted so badly to represent in Springfield.
So, you might wonder, what's the big surprise? Republicans are white-collar corporate moguls who take advantage of the middle class and abuse the poor, right? Why would they invest in Cook County minority voting blocs, where Democrats rule and reign?
Michael Zak, author of "Back to Basics for the Republican Party," says Republicans haven't always been perceived as so antagonistic toward minorities.
As a matter of fact, Zak writes, 150 years ago, "Radical Republican" U.S. Senator Charles Sumner starkly defined the difference between the newly-founded Republican Party and the Democrats in this way:
"The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man, that his bondage is cruelly wrong and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood, deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage as 'a sacred right of self-government.' "
Republicans led the fight against slavery.
Indeed, every Democrat in Congress voted against the 1863 D.C. Emancipation Act, which freed 3,100 blacks enslaved in the nation's capital.
Throughout the past few years, these hidden Republican roots have cultivated an array of minority conservative political leaders. Nationally-prominent blacks, such as former Maryland U.S. Senate candidate Michael Steele, as well as renowned football player Lynn Swann, former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts and former Ohio Attorney General Ken Blackwell, encourage others to follow.
The Illinois GOP will be kicking off its new minority outreach council this weekend. Matteson resident Dr. Eric Wallace - on the February primary ballot as 2nd Congressional District delegate for Fred Thompson - has been asked to serve. Others representing Latino- and Asian- Americans will join minority voices in the Illinois GOP.
Like Illinois, Florida is a major Republican state in the upcoming Super Tuesday primaries. Florida GOP spokesperson Erin VanSickle said her state's Republican outreach to minorities is just beginning to flourish.
"We are finding that the Republican message of lower taxes, small business tax incentives, less government interference and more freedom appeals to minority communities," she said.
The Florida GOP recently held its first African-American party convention and was delighted with the enthusiastic response.
One Republican presidential candidate is particularly focused upon nabbing the black community's vote. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher, credits black church members in gaining 48 percent of the black vote during his gubernatorial re-election.
While that figure is questioned by many, one political consultant says Huckabee approaches minority voters the right way:
"He breaks the traditional mold of the Republicans in trying to persuade African-Americans to vote for him, and that's what he did in Arkansas," Little Rock-based Stacy Williams told an Arkansas reporter. "African-Americans are pretty much like anybody else; if you advertise to them or target them and solicit their support, you're going to be successful."
While that's not a earth-shattering political revelation, Huckabee now appears to be leading in Iowa polls. His Illinois supporters slid him in as the last choice listed on the Feb. 5 Republican ballot.
The chances of getting the Chicago area's black community to vote for anyone but Barack Obama in the upcoming primary seems remote, and voters will need to ask for either a Republican or a Democratic ballot that day; that's something those coveted independent voters are hesitant to do.
But whether or not the new life among black conservatives will spring forth this election cycle, there's hope minorities will return to their alive-and-well Republican roots. It will be up to the Illinois GOP powers-that-be to nurture those tender roots to fruition once again.
One of the first people the state's GOP should contact in their minority outreach is that aggravated and disappointed Jordan in Harvey.
Last time I talked to J.R., he'd gone back to promoting a Democrat.
Fran Eaton is a south suburban resident, a conservative activist in state and national politics and an online journalist. She can be reached at featon@illinoisreview.com
www.ruffcommunications.com
Monday, December 3, 2007
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Monday, December 03, 2007
If the current round of Huck-a-mania is nothing more than Mike Huckabee’s fifteen minutes of fame, the former Arkansas Governor is certainly making the most of it. Today, in the first full round of national polling completed since last week’s “debate” among Republican Presidential hopefuls, Huckabee has pulled to within three points of the frontrunning Rudy Giuliani. Heading into the debate, Giuliani led Huckabee by twelve.
Not only that, new polling data released today shows that Huckabee has pulled to within a single percentage point of Hillary Clinton in a general election match-up. Huckabee is also a frontrunner in Iowa and essentially tied for second in New Hampshire. Some pundits believe Huckabee’s numbers will surely go down as fast as they’ve gone up while others are beginning to consider the possibility that the bass-guitar playing Governor may become a serious contender for the Republican nomination.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows Giuliani with 20% support nationwide while Huckabee attracts 17%. Fred Thompson is at 14%, John McCain at 13% and Mitt Romney at 11%. Ron Paul attracts 7% of Likely Republican Primary voters nationwide and no other Republican candidate reaches 2% (see recent daily numbers). During the past week, three events—a debate, an endorsement, and Huck-a-mania—have created new challenges and uncertainties for the GOP frontrunners.
Rudy Giuliani is still seen as the most electable Republican. McCain, Romney, and Huckabee are essentially tied for second in this category.
Results for the Presidential Tracking Poll are obtained through nightly telephone interviews and reported on a four-day rolling average basis. Today is the first update for which all of the interviews were conducted following Wednesday’s Republican debate.
In the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Clinton now attracts 37% of the vote while Barack Obama earns 24%. John Edwards remains in third place among the Democratic hopefuls at 15%, Bill Richardson is the top choice for 6%, and no other Democratic candidate tops 3% (see recent daily numbers).
Seventy-three percent (73%) of Democrats believe that Clinton is at least somewhat likely to win the White House if nominated. That’s down from 81% a month ago. Sixty-six percent (66%) believe Obama is at least somewhat likely to win it all and 58% say the same about Edwards.
New polling on general election match-ups released over the weekend shows Obama tied with McCain, in a toss-up with Giuliani, and leading both Thompson and Romney.
Other polling released yesterday shows that just 23% believe the United States is heading in the right direction. Women are more pessimistic than men.
Also, during the month of November, 37.3% of Americans identified themselves as Democrats while 32.6% considered themselves Republicans. Those figures are virtually unchanged from October, are a bit better for the GOP than November 2006, but represent a significant decline in the number of Republicans since President Bush’s re-election.
See Rasmussen Reports general election match-ups and other key stats for all Republican and Democratic candidates.
The Rasmussen Reports Election 2008 Presidential Tracking Poll is updated daily. Today is the first day of regular weekend updates.
Daily tracking results are from survey interviews conducted over four days ending last night. Each update includes approximately 750 Likely Democratic Primary Voters and 600 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Rasmussen Reports provides a weekly analysis of both the Republican and Democratic race each Monday.
Each Monday, full week results are released based upon a seven-day rolling average. While the daily tracking result are useful for measuring quick reaction to events in the news, the full week results provide an effective means for evaluating longer-term trends.
Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.
The Rasmussen Reports ElectionEdge™ Premium Service for Election 2008 offers the most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a Presidential election.
Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.
This survey includes approximately 750-800 Likely Democratic Primary Voters and 600-650 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Monday, December 03, 2007
If the current round of Huck-a-mania is nothing more than Mike Huckabee’s fifteen minutes of fame, the former Arkansas Governor is certainly making the most of it. Today, in the first full round of national polling completed since last week’s “debate” among Republican Presidential hopefuls, Huckabee has pulled to within three points of the frontrunning Rudy Giuliani. Heading into the debate, Giuliani led Huckabee by twelve.
Not only that, new polling data released today shows that Huckabee has pulled to within a single percentage point of Hillary Clinton in a general election match-up. Huckabee is also a frontrunner in Iowa and essentially tied for second in New Hampshire. Some pundits believe Huckabee’s numbers will surely go down as fast as they’ve gone up while others are beginning to consider the possibility that the bass-guitar playing Governor may become a serious contender for the Republican nomination.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows Giuliani with 20% support nationwide while Huckabee attracts 17%. Fred Thompson is at 14%, John McCain at 13% and Mitt Romney at 11%. Ron Paul attracts 7% of Likely Republican Primary voters nationwide and no other Republican candidate reaches 2% (see recent daily numbers). During the past week, three events—a debate, an endorsement, and Huck-a-mania—have created new challenges and uncertainties for the GOP frontrunners.
Rudy Giuliani is still seen as the most electable Republican. McCain, Romney, and Huckabee are essentially tied for second in this category.
Results for the Presidential Tracking Poll are obtained through nightly telephone interviews and reported on a four-day rolling average basis. Today is the first update for which all of the interviews were conducted following Wednesday’s Republican debate.
In the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Clinton now attracts 37% of the vote while Barack Obama earns 24%. John Edwards remains in third place among the Democratic hopefuls at 15%, Bill Richardson is the top choice for 6%, and no other Democratic candidate tops 3% (see recent daily numbers).
Seventy-three percent (73%) of Democrats believe that Clinton is at least somewhat likely to win the White House if nominated. That’s down from 81% a month ago. Sixty-six percent (66%) believe Obama is at least somewhat likely to win it all and 58% say the same about Edwards.
New polling on general election match-ups released over the weekend shows Obama tied with McCain, in a toss-up with Giuliani, and leading both Thompson and Romney.
Other polling released yesterday shows that just 23% believe the United States is heading in the right direction. Women are more pessimistic than men.
Also, during the month of November, 37.3% of Americans identified themselves as Democrats while 32.6% considered themselves Republicans. Those figures are virtually unchanged from October, are a bit better for the GOP than November 2006, but represent a significant decline in the number of Republicans since President Bush’s re-election.
See Rasmussen Reports general election match-ups and other key stats for all Republican and Democratic candidates.
The Rasmussen Reports Election 2008 Presidential Tracking Poll is updated daily. Today is the first day of regular weekend updates.
Daily tracking results are from survey interviews conducted over four days ending last night. Each update includes approximately 750 Likely Democratic Primary Voters and 600 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Rasmussen Reports provides a weekly analysis of both the Republican and Democratic race each Monday.
Each Monday, full week results are released based upon a seven-day rolling average. While the daily tracking result are useful for measuring quick reaction to events in the news, the full week results provide an effective means for evaluating longer-term trends.
Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.
The Rasmussen Reports ElectionEdge™ Premium Service for Election 2008 offers the most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a Presidential election.
Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.
This survey includes approximately 750-800 Likely Democratic Primary Voters and 600-650 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Huckabee: I Beat the Clinton Machine Twice
Huckabee: I Beat the Clinton Machine Twice
Sunday, December 2, 2007 8:31 PM
By: Dave Eberhart
“We’re the only campaign that has had one trajectory, and that’s been forward and upward," says Mike Huckabee.
WASHINGTON -- Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who once trailed badly with little money and a skeletal campaign staff, has now pulled ahead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to steal the lead.
Last week, Newsmax caught up with Huckabee during his visit to Washington, D.C.
Huckabee, ecstatic about the rising poll numbers, explained the momentum factor: “We’re the only campaign that has had one trajectory, and that’s been forward and upward… We’re the only campaign that has not had a peak and now has slipped backwards.”
According to a Des Moines Register poll out this past weekend, Huckabee has the solid support of 29 percent of Iowans who say they definitely or probably will attend the Republican Party’s caucuses on Jan. 3. Romney placed second with 24 percent.
Meanwhile, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is not catching fire in Iowa, nor is former Sen. Fred Thompson, pulling 13 percent and 9 percent, respectively.
The phenomenon that is Mike Huckabee has not been lost on others deeply involved in the 2008 contest. Bill Clinton has candidly admitted that Huckabee may just be wife Hillary’s worst nightmare in a general-election matchup.
And Sen. Barack Obama is on record saying that Huckabee is his personal favorite GOP candidate.
Could the Democrats really want Mike Huckabee as their opponent next year?
“I think it just shows how smart these guys really, really are,” Huckabee tells Newsmax. “It’s an honestly good thing to have people who look at you as a formidable candidate. I think sometimes there are more Democrats who worry about me than the Republicans do.”
Newsmax last visited with candidate Huckabee this past summer.
Today, Huckabee exudes confidence.
Months ago, Huckabee stressed his greatest strength: he hadn’t “flip-flopped” on the signature issues.
“I have nothing to explain,” Huckabee said then with confidence. “I’m comfortable in my own skin.”
Iowa voters seems to be reacting to Huckabee’s authenticity.
Gena Norris, who along with her TV action star husband Chuck Norris, has boarded the Huckabee bandwagon big-time, reinforced the idea.
“He is just soooo genuine,” she confides to Newsmax.
She and Chuck were with Huckabee in St. Petersburg, Fla., for the latest debate and had joined him as well in Washington.
Mr. Norris notes that committing to Huckabee was not an easy thing:
“It was a tough thing because Duncan Hunter is a very close friend of mine and Fred Thompson is a good friend of mine. But the thing is that I had to go with my heart who I thought would be the best person to lead us into the next generation -- especially with the young people.”
For his part, Huckabee is thrilled to have Walker, Texas Ranger in his corner
“We had a lot of fun and put together an introductory spot that was the number one watched YouTube spot for a couple of days and really got a lot of attention,” he says.
Huckabee deftly sidesteps a Newsmax comparison of his own successes with that of fellow Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul. The Texas congressman, like Huckabee, is also doing well as an outside-the-pack candidate, getting attention and raising a lot of money online.
The easygoing, guitar-playing candidate simply refrains from rapping the competition. He wants to keep the formula positive and upbeat.
Not that his polite model has rubbed off on everyone else. As his poll numbers have climbed, so have the attacks. But Huckabee sees a silver lining in the vitriol:
“It’s almost as if that the more the negative attacks come from the other campaigns, the better our numbers get,” he said. “Not that I’m wishing upon myself more attacks,” he adds with a smile.
Nice guy Huckabee is a firm believer in Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment: “Thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican.” And that code of conduct applies even to a comment about his number one nemesis, Rudy Giuliani.
“I believe in Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment. Actually, I like Rudy and, you know, here’s why I like him. I disagree with him on several key issues, particularly the social issues."
Then Huckabee goes for the jugular in his easygoing manner.
“We’re not on the same page when it comes to the sanctity of life, the Second Amendment or same-sex marriage, but let me tell you what I admire him for . . .” Huckabee says, scoring big points with the religious right Republicans.
Huckabee admits his success has even surprised him and his campaign staff, and not just his Iowa success.
Huckabee notes that his campaign has built momentum in places like Texas, Florida, and South Carolina – places “where we shouldn’t even be in play.”
But in play he is, with poll rankings of second, second, and third, respectively, in those key states. And the reason for the good numbers is exactly what?
“Not because we have spent money,” he explains, “not because we got staff on the ground, not because we have run a minute’s worth of advertising, but purely on the strength of what mostly is happening in the blogosphere, people contacting people, the debates -- all of those things have an accumulative effect.”
Best Equipped to Battle the Clinton Machine
The candidate likes to point out that in Arkansas when he was sworn in as governor, only 11 out of 100 members of the state House were Republican. Furthermore, there were only four out of 35 senators who were Republican.
“I went into a legislature that was more lopsided than any other legislature in the country including Massachusetts,” Huckabee explains. “No governor faced a more overwhelming opposite-party legislature than I did and that legislature was heavily populated by people politically related to the Clintons.
“Bill and Hillary campaigned for every opponent that I have ever had,” he says, explaining how he took on the Clinton machine in Arkansas and beat them twice.
Huckabee notes that his unique advantage is that, in his opinion, nobody running for president knows the Clintons better -- and knows how their campaigns will be operated as well as he does.
“Believe me, the political machinery that they set up in Arkansas was the machinery against which I had to run every time I faced an opponent.”
Huckabee believes he can, and has, translated his Arkansas political savvy to the national stage.
“I think it’s really a matter of touching people at all parts of the spectrum. For example, I’m the first Republican in 119 years to get the endorsement of Machinist and Aerospace Worker’s Union. To be a Republican and get that endorsement at all is remarkable.
He even thinks he can tap into the African-American vote, citing CNN exit polls that showed he garnered 48 percent of the black vote in his re-election bid for governor.
Huckabee strongly maintains that he has the credentials to appeal to independent and disgusted and fed-up voters. He doesn’t have a Washington address; he’s not with the inside-the-Beltway crew and most importantly he is not part of what he sees as a highly discredited and unpopular set of lawmakers sitting atop Capitol Hill.
“Quite frankly this city isn’t just real popular out there in America right now, and if you see the polls you would say, well, boy, the president is not very popular. The only thing less popular is Congress right now.”
Huckabee does admit to one perhaps significant chink in his armor. Some might perceive him to be soft on illegal immigration.
He doesn’t think this is the case, however, and hopes that the rank and file voter will see that he simply wants to add a measure of fairness to the firmness.
“Some people want me to be a lot harsher [on immigration policy],” Huckabee explains.
“When I realized that there are kids [children of illegal immigrants] out there who are as good as me and they didn’t have a choice where they were born; they didn’t have a choice to whom they were born; then I have to ask myself do I really want to put my heel in their face no matter how hard they work?
“My soul won’t let me pander that issue any further than that and I’m not going to,” he says with determination.
Chuck Norris says that it’s Huckabee’s compassion for the children of illegals that is one of the factors that moved him to support his candidacy.
The actor teaches martial arts to Hispanic youngsters in Texas and sees any policy of blanket expulsion as counterproductive to the kids who are achieving the American dream through hard work and furthering their educations.
Norris says it’s all part of the complete Huckabee package.
“I really think that he’s a people’s president. I was always a people’s actor. Critics hated me. For 30 years all I got was negative press from the critics, but the people took to me and because of that I did 23 movies and 203 episodes of 'Walker Texas Ranger.'
© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Sunday, December 2, 2007 8:31 PM
By: Dave Eberhart
“We’re the only campaign that has had one trajectory, and that’s been forward and upward," says Mike Huckabee.
WASHINGTON -- Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who once trailed badly with little money and a skeletal campaign staff, has now pulled ahead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to steal the lead.
Last week, Newsmax caught up with Huckabee during his visit to Washington, D.C.
Huckabee, ecstatic about the rising poll numbers, explained the momentum factor: “We’re the only campaign that has had one trajectory, and that’s been forward and upward… We’re the only campaign that has not had a peak and now has slipped backwards.”
According to a Des Moines Register poll out this past weekend, Huckabee has the solid support of 29 percent of Iowans who say they definitely or probably will attend the Republican Party’s caucuses on Jan. 3. Romney placed second with 24 percent.
Meanwhile, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is not catching fire in Iowa, nor is former Sen. Fred Thompson, pulling 13 percent and 9 percent, respectively.
The phenomenon that is Mike Huckabee has not been lost on others deeply involved in the 2008 contest. Bill Clinton has candidly admitted that Huckabee may just be wife Hillary’s worst nightmare in a general-election matchup.
And Sen. Barack Obama is on record saying that Huckabee is his personal favorite GOP candidate.
Could the Democrats really want Mike Huckabee as their opponent next year?
“I think it just shows how smart these guys really, really are,” Huckabee tells Newsmax. “It’s an honestly good thing to have people who look at you as a formidable candidate. I think sometimes there are more Democrats who worry about me than the Republicans do.”
Newsmax last visited with candidate Huckabee this past summer.
Today, Huckabee exudes confidence.
Months ago, Huckabee stressed his greatest strength: he hadn’t “flip-flopped” on the signature issues.
“I have nothing to explain,” Huckabee said then with confidence. “I’m comfortable in my own skin.”
Iowa voters seems to be reacting to Huckabee’s authenticity.
Gena Norris, who along with her TV action star husband Chuck Norris, has boarded the Huckabee bandwagon big-time, reinforced the idea.
“He is just soooo genuine,” she confides to Newsmax.
She and Chuck were with Huckabee in St. Petersburg, Fla., for the latest debate and had joined him as well in Washington.
Mr. Norris notes that committing to Huckabee was not an easy thing:
“It was a tough thing because Duncan Hunter is a very close friend of mine and Fred Thompson is a good friend of mine. But the thing is that I had to go with my heart who I thought would be the best person to lead us into the next generation -- especially with the young people.”
For his part, Huckabee is thrilled to have Walker, Texas Ranger in his corner
“We had a lot of fun and put together an introductory spot that was the number one watched YouTube spot for a couple of days and really got a lot of attention,” he says.
Huckabee deftly sidesteps a Newsmax comparison of his own successes with that of fellow Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul. The Texas congressman, like Huckabee, is also doing well as an outside-the-pack candidate, getting attention and raising a lot of money online.
The easygoing, guitar-playing candidate simply refrains from rapping the competition. He wants to keep the formula positive and upbeat.
Not that his polite model has rubbed off on everyone else. As his poll numbers have climbed, so have the attacks. But Huckabee sees a silver lining in the vitriol:
“It’s almost as if that the more the negative attacks come from the other campaigns, the better our numbers get,” he said. “Not that I’m wishing upon myself more attacks,” he adds with a smile.
Nice guy Huckabee is a firm believer in Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment: “Thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican.” And that code of conduct applies even to a comment about his number one nemesis, Rudy Giuliani.
“I believe in Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment. Actually, I like Rudy and, you know, here’s why I like him. I disagree with him on several key issues, particularly the social issues."
Then Huckabee goes for the jugular in his easygoing manner.
“We’re not on the same page when it comes to the sanctity of life, the Second Amendment or same-sex marriage, but let me tell you what I admire him for . . .” Huckabee says, scoring big points with the religious right Republicans.
Huckabee admits his success has even surprised him and his campaign staff, and not just his Iowa success.
Huckabee notes that his campaign has built momentum in places like Texas, Florida, and South Carolina – places “where we shouldn’t even be in play.”
But in play he is, with poll rankings of second, second, and third, respectively, in those key states. And the reason for the good numbers is exactly what?
“Not because we have spent money,” he explains, “not because we got staff on the ground, not because we have run a minute’s worth of advertising, but purely on the strength of what mostly is happening in the blogosphere, people contacting people, the debates -- all of those things have an accumulative effect.”
Best Equipped to Battle the Clinton Machine
The candidate likes to point out that in Arkansas when he was sworn in as governor, only 11 out of 100 members of the state House were Republican. Furthermore, there were only four out of 35 senators who were Republican.
“I went into a legislature that was more lopsided than any other legislature in the country including Massachusetts,” Huckabee explains. “No governor faced a more overwhelming opposite-party legislature than I did and that legislature was heavily populated by people politically related to the Clintons.
“Bill and Hillary campaigned for every opponent that I have ever had,” he says, explaining how he took on the Clinton machine in Arkansas and beat them twice.
Huckabee notes that his unique advantage is that, in his opinion, nobody running for president knows the Clintons better -- and knows how their campaigns will be operated as well as he does.
“Believe me, the political machinery that they set up in Arkansas was the machinery against which I had to run every time I faced an opponent.”
Huckabee believes he can, and has, translated his Arkansas political savvy to the national stage.
“I think it’s really a matter of touching people at all parts of the spectrum. For example, I’m the first Republican in 119 years to get the endorsement of Machinist and Aerospace Worker’s Union. To be a Republican and get that endorsement at all is remarkable.
He even thinks he can tap into the African-American vote, citing CNN exit polls that showed he garnered 48 percent of the black vote in his re-election bid for governor.
Huckabee strongly maintains that he has the credentials to appeal to independent and disgusted and fed-up voters. He doesn’t have a Washington address; he’s not with the inside-the-Beltway crew and most importantly he is not part of what he sees as a highly discredited and unpopular set of lawmakers sitting atop Capitol Hill.
“Quite frankly this city isn’t just real popular out there in America right now, and if you see the polls you would say, well, boy, the president is not very popular. The only thing less popular is Congress right now.”
Huckabee does admit to one perhaps significant chink in his armor. Some might perceive him to be soft on illegal immigration.
He doesn’t think this is the case, however, and hopes that the rank and file voter will see that he simply wants to add a measure of fairness to the firmness.
“Some people want me to be a lot harsher [on immigration policy],” Huckabee explains.
“When I realized that there are kids [children of illegal immigrants] out there who are as good as me and they didn’t have a choice where they were born; they didn’t have a choice to whom they were born; then I have to ask myself do I really want to put my heel in their face no matter how hard they work?
“My soul won’t let me pander that issue any further than that and I’m not going to,” he says with determination.
Chuck Norris says that it’s Huckabee’s compassion for the children of illegals that is one of the factors that moved him to support his candidacy.
The actor teaches martial arts to Hispanic youngsters in Texas and sees any policy of blanket expulsion as counterproductive to the kids who are achieving the American dream through hard work and furthering their educations.
Norris says it’s all part of the complete Huckabee package.
“I really think that he’s a people’s president. I was always a people’s actor. Critics hated me. For 30 years all I got was negative press from the critics, but the people took to me and because of that I did 23 movies and 203 episodes of 'Walker Texas Ranger.'
© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
CBS Poll: Mike Huckabee Surging In Iowa November 13, 2007
CBS Poll: Mike Huckabee Surging In Iowa
Romney Leads, Ex-Arkansas Governor In Second With 21 Percent; Top Three Democrats Deadlocked
NEW YORK, Nov. 13, 2007
Campaign 2008
A glimpse at presidential hopefuls and a fund-raising overview as the campaign gears up.
Section
CBS News Polls
Read the latest polls done by CBS News polling unit.
·
(CBS) Mike Huckabee, is making a big move on Mitt Romney's long-held position as the front-runner among Iowa Republicans, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll. While Romney still holds the lead at 27 percent in the poll, Huckabee comes in a strong second at 21 percent, with a 5 percent margin of error. The poll also shows that Democrats are headed toward a heated showdown in Iowa, where Hillary Clinton holds a statistically insignificant lead over John Edwards and Barack Obama. Among likely caucus-goers, Clinton came out on top with 25 percent support, but she was trailed closely by Edwards at 23 percent, and Obama at 22 percent. With a margin of error of 4 percentage points, there is no clear leader. Trailing behind was Bill Richardson, at 12 percent, with all other candidates in single digits. The situation in Iowa, where nominating caucuses are scheduled for Jan. 3, is in stark contrast to New Hampshire, where Clinton and Romney continue to hold large leads among those likely to vote in the state's first-in-the-nation primary, which could come only days after Iowa's contests. But in both states, large chunks of voters have yet to make up their minds, meaning the results of the contests that will kick off the 2008 nominating season are still difficult to predict.
While the Democratic contest in Iowa has been a three-way battle for some time, most polls have shown Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, with a strong lead in the Hawkeye State, dominating the GOP field. Recent surveys have shown Huckabee picking up steam, but the CBS News/New York Times represents his best showing to date. In the poll, Rudy Giuliani was in third in Iowa at 15 percent. All other candidates were in single digits, including Fred Thompson, who had 9 percent support among likely caucus-goers. While Huckabee's strong showing would seem to be a surprise, CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs said it's the attention he's paid to the state coupled with his conservative message that is paying dividends. "A poll, of course, is simply a snapshot in time and we'll need to see more evidence of a Huckabee surge before buying into it totally," "But it's not surprising to see him gaining. Iowa is a state tailor made for Huckabee's candidacy and message." (Read more in CBSNews.com's campaign blog, Horserace) "Huckabee is a very good candidate in the sense he makes a very good appearance," CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer said. "I think that Huckabee actually has a chance to win out there… If he does, that puts a whole new spin on the race." "I'm still not sure he would be the favorite to get the nomination, but he's certainly going to be a factor as we move on down the road," Schieffer added. While Romney still has the lead in Iowa, his support base is softer than that of Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor whose campaign has gained momentum in recent weeks. Half of Huckabee supporters said they had made up their mind, compared to two-thirds of Romney supporters who said they could change their mind before caucus night. Overall, 57 percent of GOP caucus-goers said they haven't settled on one candidate. Huckabee could run into trouble if immigration is as important an issue as the poll indicates.
When asked what issue candidates should discuss, illegal immigration topped the list at 20 percent, and 44 percent of caucus-goers said illegal immigrants should lose their jobs and leave the country. Huckabee has been criticized for supporting pre-natal care for immigrants and educational opportunities for the children of immigrants, and only 13 percent said Huckabee agreed with them on this issue, compared to 26 percent for Romney. However, immigration may not be a deal-breaker: 75 percent said they could support a candidate who is less conservative than they are.
This could offer hope to Huckabee, but not to Giuliani. While 38 percent said he was the most electable of the GOP candidates, likely caucus-goers were split nearly evenly on whether they could support a candidate who disagreed with them on social issues like abortion and gay marriage - Giuliani favors abortion rights and supports extending gay rights, though he does not support same-sex marriage.
Meanwhile, on the Democratic side in Iowa, the contest appears also appears to going right down to the wire. None of the top three has firmed up their support yet - about half of those backing each candidate said they could change their minds before caucus night. Despite that fluidity, there are some clear patterns that show how important it will be for each candidate to turn out certain groups of voters: Women have a strong preference for Clinton, while those under the age of 45 give Obama a double-digit lead.
Obama and Clinton are nearly tied for support among first-time caucus-goers, but previous attendees give Edwards a narrow edge over Clinton. The findings indicate that if older and established voters dominate turnout, the caucuses could be a two-way contest between Clinton and Edwards. If the Obama campaign succeeds in its bid to bring young voters and first-time caucus-goers out on Jan. 3, however, it could leave Iowa with a win and a crucial momentum boost headed into later contests.
Doing so will be a challenge: Only a third of possible first-time attendees say they will "definitely" attend the caucuses, compared with six in 10 of previous attendees. One factor in Obama's favor is that nearly two-thirds of the state's independent voters who plan on voting on Jan. 3 say they'll attend the Democratic caucus. Obama attracts the support of 37 percent of those voters, compared to only 17 percent for Edwards and 15 percent for Clinton. The priorities of Iowans will also be crucial. Clinton is seen as the most electable in November 2008 by a wide margin.
However, Obama is clearly seen as the most likely to bring about change in Washington and Edwards holds a strong edge on the question of who understands the problems of Iowans. Edwards and Obama may also want to spend time making sure supporters of second-tier candidates see them favorably: Among those favoring other candidates besides them and Clinton, Edwards was the second choice of 30 percent, while Obama was close behind at 27 percent. A supporter of any candidate getting less than 15 percent support on the first count at a caucus is allowed to switch to another candidate or enter an "uncommitted" group.
As contentious as Iowa is, the next state on the campaign calendar, New Hampshire, is far less competitive. Among likely Democratic primary voters, Clinton has 37 percent support, putting her 15 points ahead of Obama. Among Republicans, Romney continues to dominate. He was backed by 34 percent in the poll, while John McCain and Giuliani both trailed at 16 percent.
All other candidates were in single digits. Clinton's support in the Granite State is solid. Though 52 percent of voters say they could change their mind, 62 percent of Clinton supporters "strongly favor" the New York senator and former first lady. As in Iowa, her experience is the top reason people are supporting her. Many New Hampshire Republicans also have yet to make up their minds, even more so than Democrats.
Among likely GOP primary voters, 66 percent said they hadn't made up their minds. Romney, unlike Clinton, has yet to solidify his support - only 31 percent of Romney backers said they had made up their mind. More than half of his supporters have reservations about him or are behind him because they dislike other candidates in the race. And the poll indicates Romney's religion could be a problem: more than one-in-four voters said they know someone who would not vote for a Mormon candidate.
CBS News and The New York Times conducted telephone interviews with 1273 likely caucus-goers in Iowa November 2-11, 2007 and 719 likely primary voters in New Hampshire November 9-12, 2007. The error due to sampling could be 4 points for Iowa Democratic caucus-goers, 5 points for Iowa Republican caucus-goers, and likely New Hampshire Democratic voters, and 6 points for likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire.
In New Hampshire, sampling was done using standard RDD probability selection processes. In Iowa, the sample was drawn from three sources: the state of Iowa’s registered voter list (matched to phone numbers where possible), an RDD phone sample with numbers that matched numbers on the registered voter list eliminated (in order to sample phone numbers unavailable on the state list), and a small cell phone sample. Results were weighted by probabilities of selection and by demographic characteristics to reflect the New Hampshire adult population and the Iowa registered voter list.
To create the probable electorates for each state, registered voters were also weighted by their intention of voting, their attention to the campaign, and factors related to their past voting behavior. Likely caucus-goers in Iowa represent 17% of the registered voter population; likely voters in New Hampshire represent 59% of the state’s registered voter population.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Romney Leads, Ex-Arkansas Governor In Second With 21 Percent; Top Three Democrats Deadlocked
NEW YORK, Nov. 13, 2007
Campaign 2008
A glimpse at presidential hopefuls and a fund-raising overview as the campaign gears up.
Section
CBS News Polls
Read the latest polls done by CBS News polling unit.
·
(CBS) Mike Huckabee, is making a big move on Mitt Romney's long-held position as the front-runner among Iowa Republicans, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll. While Romney still holds the lead at 27 percent in the poll, Huckabee comes in a strong second at 21 percent, with a 5 percent margin of error. The poll also shows that Democrats are headed toward a heated showdown in Iowa, where Hillary Clinton holds a statistically insignificant lead over John Edwards and Barack Obama. Among likely caucus-goers, Clinton came out on top with 25 percent support, but she was trailed closely by Edwards at 23 percent, and Obama at 22 percent. With a margin of error of 4 percentage points, there is no clear leader. Trailing behind was Bill Richardson, at 12 percent, with all other candidates in single digits. The situation in Iowa, where nominating caucuses are scheduled for Jan. 3, is in stark contrast to New Hampshire, where Clinton and Romney continue to hold large leads among those likely to vote in the state's first-in-the-nation primary, which could come only days after Iowa's contests. But in both states, large chunks of voters have yet to make up their minds, meaning the results of the contests that will kick off the 2008 nominating season are still difficult to predict.
While the Democratic contest in Iowa has been a three-way battle for some time, most polls have shown Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, with a strong lead in the Hawkeye State, dominating the GOP field. Recent surveys have shown Huckabee picking up steam, but the CBS News/New York Times represents his best showing to date. In the poll, Rudy Giuliani was in third in Iowa at 15 percent. All other candidates were in single digits, including Fred Thompson, who had 9 percent support among likely caucus-goers. While Huckabee's strong showing would seem to be a surprise, CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs said it's the attention he's paid to the state coupled with his conservative message that is paying dividends. "A poll, of course, is simply a snapshot in time and we'll need to see more evidence of a Huckabee surge before buying into it totally," "But it's not surprising to see him gaining. Iowa is a state tailor made for Huckabee's candidacy and message." (Read more in CBSNews.com's campaign blog, Horserace) "Huckabee is a very good candidate in the sense he makes a very good appearance," CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer said. "I think that Huckabee actually has a chance to win out there… If he does, that puts a whole new spin on the race." "I'm still not sure he would be the favorite to get the nomination, but he's certainly going to be a factor as we move on down the road," Schieffer added. While Romney still has the lead in Iowa, his support base is softer than that of Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor whose campaign has gained momentum in recent weeks. Half of Huckabee supporters said they had made up their mind, compared to two-thirds of Romney supporters who said they could change their mind before caucus night. Overall, 57 percent of GOP caucus-goers said they haven't settled on one candidate. Huckabee could run into trouble if immigration is as important an issue as the poll indicates.
When asked what issue candidates should discuss, illegal immigration topped the list at 20 percent, and 44 percent of caucus-goers said illegal immigrants should lose their jobs and leave the country. Huckabee has been criticized for supporting pre-natal care for immigrants and educational opportunities for the children of immigrants, and only 13 percent said Huckabee agreed with them on this issue, compared to 26 percent for Romney. However, immigration may not be a deal-breaker: 75 percent said they could support a candidate who is less conservative than they are.
This could offer hope to Huckabee, but not to Giuliani. While 38 percent said he was the most electable of the GOP candidates, likely caucus-goers were split nearly evenly on whether they could support a candidate who disagreed with them on social issues like abortion and gay marriage - Giuliani favors abortion rights and supports extending gay rights, though he does not support same-sex marriage.
Meanwhile, on the Democratic side in Iowa, the contest appears also appears to going right down to the wire. None of the top three has firmed up their support yet - about half of those backing each candidate said they could change their minds before caucus night. Despite that fluidity, there are some clear patterns that show how important it will be for each candidate to turn out certain groups of voters: Women have a strong preference for Clinton, while those under the age of 45 give Obama a double-digit lead.
Obama and Clinton are nearly tied for support among first-time caucus-goers, but previous attendees give Edwards a narrow edge over Clinton. The findings indicate that if older and established voters dominate turnout, the caucuses could be a two-way contest between Clinton and Edwards. If the Obama campaign succeeds in its bid to bring young voters and first-time caucus-goers out on Jan. 3, however, it could leave Iowa with a win and a crucial momentum boost headed into later contests.
Doing so will be a challenge: Only a third of possible first-time attendees say they will "definitely" attend the caucuses, compared with six in 10 of previous attendees. One factor in Obama's favor is that nearly two-thirds of the state's independent voters who plan on voting on Jan. 3 say they'll attend the Democratic caucus. Obama attracts the support of 37 percent of those voters, compared to only 17 percent for Edwards and 15 percent for Clinton. The priorities of Iowans will also be crucial. Clinton is seen as the most electable in November 2008 by a wide margin.
However, Obama is clearly seen as the most likely to bring about change in Washington and Edwards holds a strong edge on the question of who understands the problems of Iowans. Edwards and Obama may also want to spend time making sure supporters of second-tier candidates see them favorably: Among those favoring other candidates besides them and Clinton, Edwards was the second choice of 30 percent, while Obama was close behind at 27 percent. A supporter of any candidate getting less than 15 percent support on the first count at a caucus is allowed to switch to another candidate or enter an "uncommitted" group.
As contentious as Iowa is, the next state on the campaign calendar, New Hampshire, is far less competitive. Among likely Democratic primary voters, Clinton has 37 percent support, putting her 15 points ahead of Obama. Among Republicans, Romney continues to dominate. He was backed by 34 percent in the poll, while John McCain and Giuliani both trailed at 16 percent.
All other candidates were in single digits. Clinton's support in the Granite State is solid. Though 52 percent of voters say they could change their mind, 62 percent of Clinton supporters "strongly favor" the New York senator and former first lady. As in Iowa, her experience is the top reason people are supporting her. Many New Hampshire Republicans also have yet to make up their minds, even more so than Democrats.
Among likely GOP primary voters, 66 percent said they hadn't made up their minds. Romney, unlike Clinton, has yet to solidify his support - only 31 percent of Romney backers said they had made up their mind. More than half of his supporters have reservations about him or are behind him because they dislike other candidates in the race. And the poll indicates Romney's religion could be a problem: more than one-in-four voters said they know someone who would not vote for a Mormon candidate.
CBS News and The New York Times conducted telephone interviews with 1273 likely caucus-goers in Iowa November 2-11, 2007 and 719 likely primary voters in New Hampshire November 9-12, 2007. The error due to sampling could be 4 points for Iowa Democratic caucus-goers, 5 points for Iowa Republican caucus-goers, and likely New Hampshire Democratic voters, and 6 points for likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire.
In New Hampshire, sampling was done using standard RDD probability selection processes. In Iowa, the sample was drawn from three sources: the state of Iowa’s registered voter list (matched to phone numbers where possible), an RDD phone sample with numbers that matched numbers on the registered voter list eliminated (in order to sample phone numbers unavailable on the state list), and a small cell phone sample. Results were weighted by probabilities of selection and by demographic characteristics to reflect the New Hampshire adult population and the Iowa registered voter list.
To create the probable electorates for each state, registered voters were also weighted by their intention of voting, their attention to the campaign, and factors related to their past voting behavior. Likely caucus-goers in Iowa represent 17% of the registered voter population; likely voters in New Hampshire represent 59% of the state’s registered voter population.
www.ruffcommunications.com
The Real Deal - Real Clear Politics November 14, 2007
November 14, 2007
The Real Deal
It's official: Mike Huckabee is really, actually, shockingly on the move, and in a big way. The latest polls out of Iowa, dating back to the middle of October, show what is now more than a few good days for the former Arkansas Governor: They show him clearly, solidly in second place in the GOP race. That's a huge accomplishment for a guy with no money.
In a mid-October University of Iowa [PDF] poll, Huckabee was tied for second place. In subsequent polls from American Research Group, Zogby, CBS/New York Times [PDF] and Strategic Vision, he's in second place by himself, by as many as seven points, in the Strategic Vision poll, and six points, in the CBS/NYT poll. He trails only Mitt Romney, though by 12.8 points in the latest RCP Iowa Average.
The Huckmentum is unbelievable, considering that Huckabee has fewer staffers total than Romney has in Iowa alone. But with Sam Brownback out of the race, and despite big evangelical endorsements for Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain, could it be that rank-and-file Christian conservatives are making Huckabee the candidate of their choice?
If so, look for Huckabee to sustain his momentum. The Iowa Christian vote is estimated by some to be as high as 40% of the GOP base. If Huckabee can form a coalition of even half those voters, he will vault himself into serious contention. For the record, Politics Nation said Huckabee would do well as far back as December of 2005, though we will admit that we were selling more stock than we were buying in recent months.
Posted by Reid Wilson
www.ruffcommunications.com
The Real Deal
It's official: Mike Huckabee is really, actually, shockingly on the move, and in a big way. The latest polls out of Iowa, dating back to the middle of October, show what is now more than a few good days for the former Arkansas Governor: They show him clearly, solidly in second place in the GOP race. That's a huge accomplishment for a guy with no money.
In a mid-October University of Iowa [PDF] poll, Huckabee was tied for second place. In subsequent polls from American Research Group, Zogby, CBS/New York Times [PDF] and Strategic Vision, he's in second place by himself, by as many as seven points, in the Strategic Vision poll, and six points, in the CBS/NYT poll. He trails only Mitt Romney, though by 12.8 points in the latest RCP Iowa Average.
The Huckmentum is unbelievable, considering that Huckabee has fewer staffers total than Romney has in Iowa alone. But with Sam Brownback out of the race, and despite big evangelical endorsements for Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain, could it be that rank-and-file Christian conservatives are making Huckabee the candidate of their choice?
If so, look for Huckabee to sustain his momentum. The Iowa Christian vote is estimated by some to be as high as 40% of the GOP base. If Huckabee can form a coalition of even half those voters, he will vault himself into serious contention. For the record, Politics Nation said Huckabee would do well as far back as December of 2005, though we will admit that we were selling more stock than we were buying in recent months.
Posted by Reid Wilson
www.ruffcommunications.com
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Huckabee Can Win in Iowa November 07, 2007
November 07, 2007
Huckabee Can Win in Iowa
By Dick Morris
Mike Huckabee is on a roll. Nationally, I just won my bet with Bill O’Reilly when he broke 10 percent in the latest CNN poll. And in Iowa, he is now running second. Mitt Romney is in the lead at 27 percent, according to the latest American Research survey, with Huckabee nipping at his heels at 19 percent. Rudy Giuliani is in third at 16. John McCain still has a residue of 14 percent support left, and Fred Thompson, fading fast, is down to 8 percent.
So Huckabee is within striking distance. When Perrier had to cope with the scandal about the alleged adulteration of its product, it was evident that all the beverage had going for it was its purity. It had no taste. Compromise its purity and it was sunk. Romney is in much the same situation. His candidacy is based on his being an alternative to Giuliani, conservative on social issues. But if his purity is compromised, he could be in trouble.
But Romney was once pro-life. Then he ran in Massachusetts and became pro-choice. Then he decided to run in the Republican primary for president and he became pro-life again. His flip-flop-flip may get him in big trouble in Iowa.
Rudy is, of course, pro-choice. McCain, rightly or wrongly, was criticized for hurting the social conservative movement by limiting its ability to spend money on its pet causes in the McCain-Feingold legislation. And Fred Thompson lobbied for a pro-choice abortion-rights group in the early 1990s and has been squishy on the issue ever since.
That leaves Mike Huckabee as the only pure pro-life candidate, a social conservative who has never moved to the left.
Huckabee could be vulnerable on his tax record in Arkansas, but his support for the Fair Tax likely wipes away that issue.
But Huckabee has no money. Yet, despite a total absence of advertising, he has risen steadily in Iowa from single digits to double digits to second place. Indeed, his lack of funding may be creating a reverse chic, attracting voters who are turned off by the massive hard sell of the other campaigns.
So what happens if Huckabee keeps rising and wins in Iowa? It likely sets up a three-way contest in New Hampshire, with Huckabee, Romney and Giuliani facing off against one another. Romney has the money. Rudy has the stardom. And Huckabee would have the momentum.
This all may be a pipe dream, but in a caucus state, where turnout is low and enthusiasm is at a premium, Huckabee’s demonstrated ability to generate passion among his followers would stand him in good stead.
Remember what happened in Ames, Iowa, where Romney won the straw poll based largely on his ability to write $35 checks to enroll his voters in the paid admission-only event. Huckabee finished a strong second with 18 percent of the vote even though his voters had to pay their own way. Huckabee said, “I can’t afford to buy you. I can’t even afford to rent you.”
And at the Values Convention, Romney once again papered the house with paid-for absentee voters who enrolled for $1 each and voted for Mitt. Huckabee, with no money, addressed the gathering and stirred such passion that he swept the votes of most who were there and finished second, again.
Right now Iowa looks like a Romney rout. But Huckabee could surprise everybody before the votes are counted. Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Outrage.” To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to http://www.dickmorris.com/.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Huckabee Can Win in Iowa
By Dick Morris
Mike Huckabee is on a roll. Nationally, I just won my bet with Bill O’Reilly when he broke 10 percent in the latest CNN poll. And in Iowa, he is now running second. Mitt Romney is in the lead at 27 percent, according to the latest American Research survey, with Huckabee nipping at his heels at 19 percent. Rudy Giuliani is in third at 16. John McCain still has a residue of 14 percent support left, and Fred Thompson, fading fast, is down to 8 percent.
So Huckabee is within striking distance. When Perrier had to cope with the scandal about the alleged adulteration of its product, it was evident that all the beverage had going for it was its purity. It had no taste. Compromise its purity and it was sunk. Romney is in much the same situation. His candidacy is based on his being an alternative to Giuliani, conservative on social issues. But if his purity is compromised, he could be in trouble.
But Romney was once pro-life. Then he ran in Massachusetts and became pro-choice. Then he decided to run in the Republican primary for president and he became pro-life again. His flip-flop-flip may get him in big trouble in Iowa.
Rudy is, of course, pro-choice. McCain, rightly or wrongly, was criticized for hurting the social conservative movement by limiting its ability to spend money on its pet causes in the McCain-Feingold legislation. And Fred Thompson lobbied for a pro-choice abortion-rights group in the early 1990s and has been squishy on the issue ever since.
That leaves Mike Huckabee as the only pure pro-life candidate, a social conservative who has never moved to the left.
Huckabee could be vulnerable on his tax record in Arkansas, but his support for the Fair Tax likely wipes away that issue.
But Huckabee has no money. Yet, despite a total absence of advertising, he has risen steadily in Iowa from single digits to double digits to second place. Indeed, his lack of funding may be creating a reverse chic, attracting voters who are turned off by the massive hard sell of the other campaigns.
So what happens if Huckabee keeps rising and wins in Iowa? It likely sets up a three-way contest in New Hampshire, with Huckabee, Romney and Giuliani facing off against one another. Romney has the money. Rudy has the stardom. And Huckabee would have the momentum.
This all may be a pipe dream, but in a caucus state, where turnout is low and enthusiasm is at a premium, Huckabee’s demonstrated ability to generate passion among his followers would stand him in good stead.
Remember what happened in Ames, Iowa, where Romney won the straw poll based largely on his ability to write $35 checks to enroll his voters in the paid admission-only event. Huckabee finished a strong second with 18 percent of the vote even though his voters had to pay their own way. Huckabee said, “I can’t afford to buy you. I can’t even afford to rent you.”
And at the Values Convention, Romney once again papered the house with paid-for absentee voters who enrolled for $1 each and voted for Mitt. Huckabee, with no money, addressed the gathering and stirred such passion that he swept the votes of most who were there and finished second, again.
Right now Iowa looks like a Romney rout. But Huckabee could surprise everybody before the votes are counted. Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Outrage.” To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to http://www.dickmorris.com/.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Yepsen: Positive, Reagan-like spirit spurs Huckabee's rise October 30, 2007
Yepsen: Positive, Reagan-like spirit spurs Huckabee's rise
David Yepsen
October 30, 2007
DesMoines Regigister
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's been the hot candidate in the Republican race since he finished second in the Iowa GOP's straw poll back in August.Oh, there was a little time out for some chatter about Fred Thompson, but as he has fallen flat, the talk about Huckabee has resumed.In recent days, that talk has escalated to a new level of buzz: Huckabee's doing so well in Iowa, he just might be able to win the Iowa Republican caucuses.Wow. Conventional wisdom dictates former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's going to win Iowa. Ever since that straw poll, the buzzmeisters have slotted Huckabee to take second or third. To suggest he's going to win Iowa is taking it to a new level.It makes Huckabee people wince. Romney's had a juggernaut in Iowa for months. He's spent millions, runs lots of TV commercials, has made a couple of hundred appearances in the state and has staff all over it, including those in a sprawling suburban office park.Huckabee's low-budget campaign is, well, the difference between Beacon Hill and a trailer park. He's got only eight full-time staffers and runs his operation out of a low-rent storefront in downtown Des Moines. If homeless people went to caucuses, they'd have great access to Huckabee's campaign.Like Huckabee, Romney is fond of telling people he ran and won in a Democratic state. It's also true Romney ran as a liberal on social issues such as gay rights and abortion. Had he taken the positions on those issues that he proclaims now, he never would have been elected in Massachusetts.Huckabee, on the other hand, has been consistent, and GOP stalwarts are noticing that difference between the two men. Huckabee's rallied enough social conservatives to force Sam Brownback out of the race.While first place is a bit of a stretch, Huckabee's in a good position to win second. His fundraising is improving, and he's going to add staff.After Thompson's late start, he's lighting no fires in Iowa. His speech at the big Reagan Dinner Saturday night was a boilerplate thing he could have given anywhere. Romney didn't show. Huckabee got the only standing ovation.Huckabee's success has attracted attacks from conservative groups and news organizations who criticize him for implementing a tax increase the voters also supported. Huckabee said in an interview that some of these attacks are coming from "elitist" conservatives and "ideologues."He said "you always ought to be governing by your basic principles, but you also have to understand that government has to work." He says the attacks are evidence of his success."I'm a hunter," he notes. "You never point the gun at a dead carcass."But let's not get ahead of ourselves. As we chart Huckabee's success in the 2008 contest, it is most useful now to concentrate on his message. It is a positive, inclusive, good-humored one. As Republicans seek to rebuild from their defeat of 2006 and try to stave off a similar loss in 2008, they might study the Book of Huckabee."I'm a conservative, but I'm not mean about it," he tells audiences. He shows up at events with minority groups. His pro-life message also encompasses health care for poor women and a concern for children. His talk about education reform includes developing creative skills through art and music.He had fun playing the bass guitar in his band at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake - an event that attracted more than 600 people on Friday. A former Baptist pastor, Huckabee peppers his speeches with Scripture and rock-music lyrics.Unlike some Republican presidential candidates, who grew up in well-to-do families, Huckabee tells audiences his mother grew up in a house with dirt floors, and on his father's side, he is the first male to graduate from high school. That seems to give him a populist bent - and an understanding for poor people - that isn't seen in the Ivy League conservatives.At a time when GOP candidates are falling all over themselves to rekindle the spirit of Ronald Reagan in their party, Huckabee's coming as close as anyone.
DAVID YEPSEN can be reached at dyepsen@dmreg.com
www.ruffcommunications.com
David Yepsen
October 30, 2007
DesMoines Regigister
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's been the hot candidate in the Republican race since he finished second in the Iowa GOP's straw poll back in August.Oh, there was a little time out for some chatter about Fred Thompson, but as he has fallen flat, the talk about Huckabee has resumed.In recent days, that talk has escalated to a new level of buzz: Huckabee's doing so well in Iowa, he just might be able to win the Iowa Republican caucuses.Wow. Conventional wisdom dictates former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's going to win Iowa. Ever since that straw poll, the buzzmeisters have slotted Huckabee to take second or third. To suggest he's going to win Iowa is taking it to a new level.It makes Huckabee people wince. Romney's had a juggernaut in Iowa for months. He's spent millions, runs lots of TV commercials, has made a couple of hundred appearances in the state and has staff all over it, including those in a sprawling suburban office park.Huckabee's low-budget campaign is, well, the difference between Beacon Hill and a trailer park. He's got only eight full-time staffers and runs his operation out of a low-rent storefront in downtown Des Moines. If homeless people went to caucuses, they'd have great access to Huckabee's campaign.Like Huckabee, Romney is fond of telling people he ran and won in a Democratic state. It's also true Romney ran as a liberal on social issues such as gay rights and abortion. Had he taken the positions on those issues that he proclaims now, he never would have been elected in Massachusetts.Huckabee, on the other hand, has been consistent, and GOP stalwarts are noticing that difference between the two men. Huckabee's rallied enough social conservatives to force Sam Brownback out of the race.While first place is a bit of a stretch, Huckabee's in a good position to win second. His fundraising is improving, and he's going to add staff.After Thompson's late start, he's lighting no fires in Iowa. His speech at the big Reagan Dinner Saturday night was a boilerplate thing he could have given anywhere. Romney didn't show. Huckabee got the only standing ovation.Huckabee's success has attracted attacks from conservative groups and news organizations who criticize him for implementing a tax increase the voters also supported. Huckabee said in an interview that some of these attacks are coming from "elitist" conservatives and "ideologues."He said "you always ought to be governing by your basic principles, but you also have to understand that government has to work." He says the attacks are evidence of his success."I'm a hunter," he notes. "You never point the gun at a dead carcass."But let's not get ahead of ourselves. As we chart Huckabee's success in the 2008 contest, it is most useful now to concentrate on his message. It is a positive, inclusive, good-humored one. As Republicans seek to rebuild from their defeat of 2006 and try to stave off a similar loss in 2008, they might study the Book of Huckabee."I'm a conservative, but I'm not mean about it," he tells audiences. He shows up at events with minority groups. His pro-life message also encompasses health care for poor women and a concern for children. His talk about education reform includes developing creative skills through art and music.He had fun playing the bass guitar in his band at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake - an event that attracted more than 600 people on Friday. A former Baptist pastor, Huckabee peppers his speeches with Scripture and rock-music lyrics.Unlike some Republican presidential candidates, who grew up in well-to-do families, Huckabee tells audiences his mother grew up in a house with dirt floors, and on his father's side, he is the first male to graduate from high school. That seems to give him a populist bent - and an understanding for poor people - that isn't seen in the Ivy League conservatives.At a time when GOP candidates are falling all over themselves to rekindle the spirit of Ronald Reagan in their party, Huckabee's coming as close as anyone.
DAVID YEPSEN can be reached at dyepsen@dmreg.com
www.ruffcommunications.com
Huckabee Shows Amazing Strength Wednesday, October 24, 2007 4:54 PM
Huckabee Shows Amazing Strength
Wednesday, October 24, 2007 4:54 PM
Most of the attention in the GOP presidential race has been focused on front-runners Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, but Mike Huckabee has risen to the top of the second-tier candidates and now has what one political observer calls “the potential to surprise” in New Hampshire.
Huckabee’s success is making waves because he has spent little on advertising, has limited campaign resources, and was a relatively unknown name before entering the presidential race.Now, Sen. Sam Brownback’s recent withdrawal from the Republican race has given Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, “a clearer path to court religious voters,” columnist Scot Lehigh notes in the Boston Globe. But Huckabee seems to appeal beyond religious voters.
Political guru Dick Morris tells Newsmax that Huckabee “represents a new phenomenon in politics, a genuinely spiritual and creative person who wants to find new ways to inject a spiritual perspective into policy.”Morris notes that while Huckabee is “pro life and anti-gay marriage and all the rest” that appeals to GOP social voters, he can’t easily be put in a box.“
He wants to expand the purview of a spiritual influence on policy to other spheres,” Morris said. “For example, rehabilitation of prisoners, opposing childhood obesity, conserving the planet God gave us, teaching the arts in schools to enhance our divine creativity. He is a unique candidate with an appeal that transcends normal political boundaries and is catching on. And, in a world of bought-and-paid-for politics, he has little money but lots of popularity.”Huckabee’s is beginning to show.
Last weekend, Huckabee finished a close second in the values voter online straw poll conducted during the Family Research Council’s conference in Washington, D.C. But among the 952 people who actually attended the conference, Huckabee won in a landslide, garnering 51 percent of the votes, while Romney got just 10 percent and Giuliani, 6 percent. A recent Rasmussen poll had Huckabee tied for second with Fred Thompson in Iowa, not far behind Romney. And Huckabee last week got a boost from a favorable column by David Brooks, The New York Times’ influential conservative. The former Arkansas governor is “down to earth and likable; he’s also an engaging speaker, both smart and funny,” Lehigh writes. “To my eye, both he and Ron Paul, the Texas congressman, have the potential to surprise in the Granite State.” Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post has also come to admire Huckabee. In his "The Fix" blog, he writes: “Watch him in a debate or travel with him to a series of stump speeches and you see a candidate with real star potential.” But while voters “may like Huckabee more than they like the rest of the field,” Cillizza notes, “they still don’t seem to think he can win.”
On that front, Ed Failor Jr., a prominent Iowa GOP activist who has not committed to any Republican candidate, told Cillizza: “If all the people who I talk to who say ‘I’d be for Huckabee if I thought he could win’ would actually be for him, he could win Iowa.”Huckabee believes the U.S. should persevere in Iraq and supports a tax on consumption rather than income — the so-called Fair Tax.
“It’s a big idea, and one that will come under scrutiny if his candidacy grows," Lehigh said, concluding: “In a field where the leading candidates have thus far proved unpalatable or unconvincing to the Republican base, Huckabee is a true believer, a committed, consistent conservative. Now that he’s outrun his second-tier rivals, don’t be surprised to see his candidacy take off.”
© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Wednesday, October 24, 2007 4:54 PM
Most of the attention in the GOP presidential race has been focused on front-runners Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, but Mike Huckabee has risen to the top of the second-tier candidates and now has what one political observer calls “the potential to surprise” in New Hampshire.
Huckabee’s success is making waves because he has spent little on advertising, has limited campaign resources, and was a relatively unknown name before entering the presidential race.Now, Sen. Sam Brownback’s recent withdrawal from the Republican race has given Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, “a clearer path to court religious voters,” columnist Scot Lehigh notes in the Boston Globe. But Huckabee seems to appeal beyond religious voters.
Political guru Dick Morris tells Newsmax that Huckabee “represents a new phenomenon in politics, a genuinely spiritual and creative person who wants to find new ways to inject a spiritual perspective into policy.”Morris notes that while Huckabee is “pro life and anti-gay marriage and all the rest” that appeals to GOP social voters, he can’t easily be put in a box.“
He wants to expand the purview of a spiritual influence on policy to other spheres,” Morris said. “For example, rehabilitation of prisoners, opposing childhood obesity, conserving the planet God gave us, teaching the arts in schools to enhance our divine creativity. He is a unique candidate with an appeal that transcends normal political boundaries and is catching on. And, in a world of bought-and-paid-for politics, he has little money but lots of popularity.”Huckabee’s is beginning to show.
Last weekend, Huckabee finished a close second in the values voter online straw poll conducted during the Family Research Council’s conference in Washington, D.C. But among the 952 people who actually attended the conference, Huckabee won in a landslide, garnering 51 percent of the votes, while Romney got just 10 percent and Giuliani, 6 percent. A recent Rasmussen poll had Huckabee tied for second with Fred Thompson in Iowa, not far behind Romney. And Huckabee last week got a boost from a favorable column by David Brooks, The New York Times’ influential conservative. The former Arkansas governor is “down to earth and likable; he’s also an engaging speaker, both smart and funny,” Lehigh writes. “To my eye, both he and Ron Paul, the Texas congressman, have the potential to surprise in the Granite State.” Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post has also come to admire Huckabee. In his "The Fix" blog, he writes: “Watch him in a debate or travel with him to a series of stump speeches and you see a candidate with real star potential.” But while voters “may like Huckabee more than they like the rest of the field,” Cillizza notes, “they still don’t seem to think he can win.”
On that front, Ed Failor Jr., a prominent Iowa GOP activist who has not committed to any Republican candidate, told Cillizza: “If all the people who I talk to who say ‘I’d be for Huckabee if I thought he could win’ would actually be for him, he could win Iowa.”Huckabee believes the U.S. should persevere in Iraq and supports a tax on consumption rather than income — the so-called Fair Tax.
“It’s a big idea, and one that will come under scrutiny if his candidacy grows," Lehigh said, concluding: “In a field where the leading candidates have thus far proved unpalatable or unconvincing to the Republican base, Huckabee is a true believer, a committed, consistent conservative. Now that he’s outrun his second-tier rivals, don’t be surprised to see his candidacy take off.”
© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
www.ruffcommunications.com
From the Back of the Pack By DAVID BROOKS October 19, 2007
From the Back of the Pack
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: October 19, 2007
Rindge, N.H.
The first thing you notice about Mike Huckabee is that he has a Mayberry name and a Jim Nabors face. But it’s quickly clear that Huckabee is as good a campaigner as anybody running for president this year. And before too long it becomes easy to come up with reasons why he might have a realistic shot at winning the Republican nomination:
First, Republican voters here and in Iowa are restless. That means that there will be sharp movements during the last 30 days toward whoever seems fresh and hot.
Second, each of the top-tier candidates makes certain parts of the party uncomfortable. Huckabee is the one candidate acceptable to all factions.
Third, Huckabee is the most normal person running for president (a trait that might come in handy in a race against Hillary Clinton). He is funny and engaging — almost impossible not to like. He has no history of flip-flopping in order to be electable. He doesn’t seem to be visibly calculating every gesture. Far from being narcissistic, he is, if anything, too neighborly to seem presidential.
Fourth, he is part of the new generation of evangelical leaders. Huckabee was a Baptist minister. But unlike the first generation of politically engaged Christian conservatives, Huckabee is not at war with mainstream America. As a teenager, he loved Jimi Hendrix, and he’s now the bass player in a rock band that has opened for Willie Nelson and Grand Funk Railroad.
Fifth, though you wouldn’t know it from the past few years, the white working class is the backbone of the G.O.P. Huckabee is most in tune with these voters.
He was the first male in his family’s history to graduate from high school. He paid his way through college by working 40 hours a week and getting a degree in two and half years. He tells audiences that the only soap his family could afford was the rough Lava soap, and that he was in college before he realized showering didn’t have to hurt. “There are people paying $150 for an exfoliation,” he jokes. “I could just hand them a bar of Lava soap.”
His policies reflect that background. At the recent Republican economic debate, he was the candidate who most vociferously argued that the current economy is not working for the middle class. As the others spoke, he thought to himself: “You guys don’t get out much. You should meet somebody who’s not handing you a $2,300 check.”
He condemns “immoral” C.E.O. salaries, and on global trade he sounds like a Democrat: “There’s no free trade without fair trade.” (Polls suggest most Republican voters are, sadly, with him on this).
Sixth, he’s a former governor. He talks about issues in a down-to-earth way that other candidates can’t match. For example, he’s got a riff on childhood obesity that rivets the attention of his audiences. He asks them to compare their own third-grade class photos with the photos of third graders today. Then he goes down the list of the diseases that afflict preteens who get Type 2 diabetes.
“The greatest challenge in health care is not universal coverage,” he argues while introducing his health care plan. “It’s universal health. A healthy country would be less expensive to cover.”
Seventh, he’s a collaborative conservative. Republicans have tended to nominate heroic candidates in the Reagan mold. Huckabee is more of an interactive leader. His Legislature in Arkansas was 90 percent Democratic, but he got enough done to be named among the nation’s top five governors by Time.
He endorses programs that are ideologically incorrect for conservatives, like his passion for arts education. He can’t understand how the argument over the size of the S-chip funding increase became an all-or-nothing holy war. He also criticizes the Bush administration for its arrogance. “There was a time when people looked up to the U.S. Now they resent us, not because we’re a superpower but because we act like one.”
Huckabee has some significant flaws as a candidate. His foreign policy thinking is thin. Some of his policy ideas seem to come off the top of his head (he vows, absurdly, to make the U.S. energy independent within eight years).
But Huckabee is something that the party needs. He is a solid conservative who is both temperamentally and substantively different from the conservatives who have led the country over the past few years.
He’s rising in the polls, especially in Iowa. His popularity with the press corps suggests he could catch a free media wave that would put him in the top tier. He deserves to be there.
www.ruffcommunications.com
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: October 19, 2007
Rindge, N.H.
The first thing you notice about Mike Huckabee is that he has a Mayberry name and a Jim Nabors face. But it’s quickly clear that Huckabee is as good a campaigner as anybody running for president this year. And before too long it becomes easy to come up with reasons why he might have a realistic shot at winning the Republican nomination:
First, Republican voters here and in Iowa are restless. That means that there will be sharp movements during the last 30 days toward whoever seems fresh and hot.
Second, each of the top-tier candidates makes certain parts of the party uncomfortable. Huckabee is the one candidate acceptable to all factions.
Third, Huckabee is the most normal person running for president (a trait that might come in handy in a race against Hillary Clinton). He is funny and engaging — almost impossible not to like. He has no history of flip-flopping in order to be electable. He doesn’t seem to be visibly calculating every gesture. Far from being narcissistic, he is, if anything, too neighborly to seem presidential.
Fourth, he is part of the new generation of evangelical leaders. Huckabee was a Baptist minister. But unlike the first generation of politically engaged Christian conservatives, Huckabee is not at war with mainstream America. As a teenager, he loved Jimi Hendrix, and he’s now the bass player in a rock band that has opened for Willie Nelson and Grand Funk Railroad.
Fifth, though you wouldn’t know it from the past few years, the white working class is the backbone of the G.O.P. Huckabee is most in tune with these voters.
He was the first male in his family’s history to graduate from high school. He paid his way through college by working 40 hours a week and getting a degree in two and half years. He tells audiences that the only soap his family could afford was the rough Lava soap, and that he was in college before he realized showering didn’t have to hurt. “There are people paying $150 for an exfoliation,” he jokes. “I could just hand them a bar of Lava soap.”
His policies reflect that background. At the recent Republican economic debate, he was the candidate who most vociferously argued that the current economy is not working for the middle class. As the others spoke, he thought to himself: “You guys don’t get out much. You should meet somebody who’s not handing you a $2,300 check.”
He condemns “immoral” C.E.O. salaries, and on global trade he sounds like a Democrat: “There’s no free trade without fair trade.” (Polls suggest most Republican voters are, sadly, with him on this).
Sixth, he’s a former governor. He talks about issues in a down-to-earth way that other candidates can’t match. For example, he’s got a riff on childhood obesity that rivets the attention of his audiences. He asks them to compare their own third-grade class photos with the photos of third graders today. Then he goes down the list of the diseases that afflict preteens who get Type 2 diabetes.
“The greatest challenge in health care is not universal coverage,” he argues while introducing his health care plan. “It’s universal health. A healthy country would be less expensive to cover.”
Seventh, he’s a collaborative conservative. Republicans have tended to nominate heroic candidates in the Reagan mold. Huckabee is more of an interactive leader. His Legislature in Arkansas was 90 percent Democratic, but he got enough done to be named among the nation’s top five governors by Time.
He endorses programs that are ideologically incorrect for conservatives, like his passion for arts education. He can’t understand how the argument over the size of the S-chip funding increase became an all-or-nothing holy war. He also criticizes the Bush administration for its arrogance. “There was a time when people looked up to the U.S. Now they resent us, not because we’re a superpower but because we act like one.”
Huckabee has some significant flaws as a candidate. His foreign policy thinking is thin. Some of his policy ideas seem to come off the top of his head (he vows, absurdly, to make the U.S. energy independent within eight years).
But Huckabee is something that the party needs. He is a solid conservative who is both temperamentally and substantively different from the conservatives who have led the country over the past few years.
He’s rising in the polls, especially in Iowa. His popularity with the press corps suggests he could catch a free media wave that would put him in the top tier. He deserves to be there.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Second-tier hopefuls rally for Black vote By Stephen Dinan September 28, 2007
Second-tier hopefuls rally for Black vote By Stephen Dinan
September 28, 2007
None of the top four Republican presidential candidates showed up last night for a debate aimed at addressing minorities, ceding the stage to the lower-tier candidates who said they would take steps to try to win black voters to their party.
"I'm embarrassed for our party and I'm embarrassed for those who did not come," said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the top-performing Republican to show up, who touted having won 48 percent of Arkansas' black voters during one of his elections.
He advocated extra funding for blacks to bring down higher levels of hypertension and diabetes, and said drug crime penalties that strike harder at black criminals than whites should be ended.
Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, called for an official apology for slavery and promised to pursue the "symbolism" of a national black history museum.
But those race-directed solutions drew a strong rebuke from Reps. Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo, who said the solution is instead to extend freedom and opportunity.
"It is destructive to only talk about the politics of race," Mr. Tancredo said. "It really does not do a service to us as Americans."
Last night's forum, at Morgan State University in Baltimore, was moderated by talk show host Tavis Smiley, and the questions came from black and Hispanic pundits. It aired nationally on the Public Broadcasting Service.
The first 10 minutes of the debate were dedicated to bashing the four no-shows and, in some cases, Republicans as a whole.
"Let me take a moment right here and now to say hello to those of you viewing from home: Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senator John McCain, Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Fred Thompson," talk show host Tom Joyner said.
He then expressed his own skepticism of the Republican Party, saying there is "a perception out there that the Republican Party holds only the interests of the majority population." It was a theme repeated throughout the night.
Mr. Brownback said he had a solution for black voters to prove to Republicans that they matter: "Register Republican and vote for one of the six of us."
Former Ambassador Alan Keyes, who announced his candidacy earlier this month but who is being excluded from some of the debates, made a pitch for his own inclusion: "They may or may not be afraid of all black people, but there seems to be at least one black person they're afraid of."
Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney were both in California. Mr. Giuliani raised funds and accepted the endorsement of former Gov. Pete Wilson, while Mr. Romney met voters in Sacramento. Mr. McCain was in New York yesterday while Mr. Thompson was in Tennessee.
The stage included four empty lecterns representing them.
Some clear differences emerged between the candidates who did show.
Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Brownback both identified themselves as strong supporters of giving the District of Columbia voting rights in Congress, though Mr. Brownback said it must be through a constitutional amendment.
Mr. Brownback, who until now has been a staunch advocate of granting citizenship to illegal aliens, did a U-turn and said he "will not support new paths to citizenship."
On the death penalty, all but Mr. Paul agreed that it needs to be retained for the most serious crimes. All six candidates said states can require identification to be shown before a voter may cast a ballot, though Mr. Paul said that has to be within limits.
"They might want to think it's a good excuse to have a national ID card to vote, and I am positively opposed to any move toward the national ID card," said the former Libertarian presidential candidate.
www.ruffcommunications.com
September 28, 2007
None of the top four Republican presidential candidates showed up last night for a debate aimed at addressing minorities, ceding the stage to the lower-tier candidates who said they would take steps to try to win black voters to their party.
"I'm embarrassed for our party and I'm embarrassed for those who did not come," said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the top-performing Republican to show up, who touted having won 48 percent of Arkansas' black voters during one of his elections.
He advocated extra funding for blacks to bring down higher levels of hypertension and diabetes, and said drug crime penalties that strike harder at black criminals than whites should be ended.
Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, called for an official apology for slavery and promised to pursue the "symbolism" of a national black history museum.
But those race-directed solutions drew a strong rebuke from Reps. Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo, who said the solution is instead to extend freedom and opportunity.
"It is destructive to only talk about the politics of race," Mr. Tancredo said. "It really does not do a service to us as Americans."
Last night's forum, at Morgan State University in Baltimore, was moderated by talk show host Tavis Smiley, and the questions came from black and Hispanic pundits. It aired nationally on the Public Broadcasting Service.
The first 10 minutes of the debate were dedicated to bashing the four no-shows and, in some cases, Republicans as a whole.
"Let me take a moment right here and now to say hello to those of you viewing from home: Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senator John McCain, Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Fred Thompson," talk show host Tom Joyner said.
He then expressed his own skepticism of the Republican Party, saying there is "a perception out there that the Republican Party holds only the interests of the majority population." It was a theme repeated throughout the night.
Mr. Brownback said he had a solution for black voters to prove to Republicans that they matter: "Register Republican and vote for one of the six of us."
Former Ambassador Alan Keyes, who announced his candidacy earlier this month but who is being excluded from some of the debates, made a pitch for his own inclusion: "They may or may not be afraid of all black people, but there seems to be at least one black person they're afraid of."
Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney were both in California. Mr. Giuliani raised funds and accepted the endorsement of former Gov. Pete Wilson, while Mr. Romney met voters in Sacramento. Mr. McCain was in New York yesterday while Mr. Thompson was in Tennessee.
The stage included four empty lecterns representing them.
Some clear differences emerged between the candidates who did show.
Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Brownback both identified themselves as strong supporters of giving the District of Columbia voting rights in Congress, though Mr. Brownback said it must be through a constitutional amendment.
Mr. Brownback, who until now has been a staunch advocate of granting citizenship to illegal aliens, did a U-turn and said he "will not support new paths to citizenship."
On the death penalty, all but Mr. Paul agreed that it needs to be retained for the most serious crimes. All six candidates said states can require identification to be shown before a voter may cast a ballot, though Mr. Paul said that has to be within limits.
"They might want to think it's a good excuse to have a national ID card to vote, and I am positively opposed to any move toward the national ID card," said the former Libertarian presidential candidate.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
