Category Archives: Political Animals

Giuliani is on Fox right now. The background behind him bears the slogan “Tested. Ready. Now.”

The Long-Suffering Girlfriend points out that this sounds more like a slogan for a prescription drug than a candidate.

On the tv, CNN is using pie charts to show each candidate’s vote share within their party. On the GOP chart, we see slices for Huckabee, Romney, Thompson, McCain… and a large blank spot where Ron Paul’s 10% should be. Also missing is Giuliani’s 4%. Over on the Dem side, Bill Richardson’s 2% slice is clearly visible.

Fox has a pro-big-government conservative slant, so their recent slight of Ron Paul wasn’t too unexpected.

CNN has a center-left bias, so one wonders if Paul and Giuliani’s slices are left blank so their names get less screen time.

UPDATE: Never mind that conspiracy theory rubbish. More likely, the graphic was programmed to only display the top four candidates, regardless of vote totals.

I’ve thought for a while that the Democratic ticket would be Obama-Richardson.

Obama and Richardson might think that, too. The Politico is reporting that their campaigns have some sort of vote-trading arrangement, which of course they vigorously deny.

Interesting.

Update: CNN has more.

Who knows who’s going to win tonight in Iowa? Just for fun, here are my predictions.

Dems – Obama wins, with Clinton in 2nd and Edwards in 3rd.

GOP – Romney wins, with Huckabee in 2nd and Fred Thompson in 3rd.

I’ll be rooting for Bill Richardson and Ron Paul to do well, since they seem to me the least bad candidates from each party.

Once the primary dust settles, I expect an Obama/Richardson ticket going against Romney/Huckabee, and a Democratic victory.

The fun starts in about an hour.

John Edwards has come out as the “anti-poverty candidate.”

Does this mean the other candidates are pro-poverty?

The ever-reliable Drudge Report says the DNC views Huckabee as “an easy kill” in the general election. Therefore they want him to be the GOP nominee, and will refrain from attacking him in the primary cycle.

Brilliant move, I say. He’s economically liberal and socially conservative, which is the least popular political philosophy in America these days. Then there’s his nanny-statist streak. This bodes well for the Dems. Most people are either liberal or conservative across the board. Recent research says that most of the remainder is consistently anti-government — economically conservative and socially liberal.

The smallest group is Huckabee’s, which is consistently pro-government.

You’re not going to get a candidate endorsement from this blog since I don’t like any of ’em. To be crass, one of my guiding principles is that all politicians are whores (I admit to a few noble exceptions).

I will say that, on the GOP side, I probably agree with Huckabee the least. If he does win the nomination, he deserves an electoral drubbing.