Blogs of War

So says Mark Halperin at Time anyway. It wouldn’t be surprising to see this happen Wednesday. Rudy staked a lot on Florida and he’s getting clobbered – as many expected:

Said one New York Democrat: “Either Rudy is a genius and is about to deny half a century of conventional political wisdom, or he has run the most stupid presidential campaign in history.”

On the bright side, at least he let us down before he was elected.

The sad things is the he outlasted Fred Thompson:

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is abandoning his second bid for the White House. In an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the congressman said he was quitting the race and would made a formal announcement Friday.

“I want to continue to serve in Congress,” he told the newspaper.

Kucinich said he will not endorse another Democrat in the primary.

It’s the economy, stupid:

In a state suffering from the highest unemployment rate in the nation, voters turned to the businessman-turned-politician who pledged to help turn their economy around.

Not surprisingly, the economy was by far the most important issue to Michigan voters. For Romney’s chief competitor in the Michigan primary, John McCain, that was bad news. Only three in 10 voters who cited economic concerns as their top priority gave their votes to McCain; almost four in 10 went for Romney.

Mitt now clearly leads the delegate race:

Romney: 42
Huckabee: 21
McCain: 19
Thompson: 6
Paul: 2
Giuliani: 1

I’d still call this a four-way race, at least until Super Tuesday. Sadly, Thompson isn’t connecting outside of the conservative base. Ron Paul’s tinfoil hat brigade is great at gaming online polls but polls do not award delegates. The delegate count also looks pretty bad for Giuliani but his Super Tuesday strategy could still transform the race. It’s not looking like a particularly great move however:

His best bet was to hope the early going failed to reveal any front-runner and that he could gallop up the middle between the other contenders.

It could still happen, but he’s dropped a long way already. Some polls put him well ahead of all other Republicans in nationwide polling last year. A Sunday poll released by Washington Post-ABC News had him in fourth place with just 15 per cent national support, behind John McCain’s 28 per cent, Mike Huckabee’s 20 per cent and behind Mitt Romney’s 19 per cent.

The news isn’t a lot better in Florida. A Quinnipiac poll released on the weekend shows McCain has the lead with 22 per cent, with Giuliani and Romney at 20 per cent and Huckabee at 19 per cent. He’s still in the hunt, but he’s headed in the wrong direction. A poll taken Dec. 20 had Giuliani at 27 per cent and McCain at just 15 per cent.

Said one New York Democrat: “Either Rudy is a genius and is about to deny half a century of conventional political wisdom, or he has run the most stupid presidential campaign in history.”

Rudy still has faith:

“It’s clear after tonight that while the race remains fluid and competitive, our strategy remains on track,” Tony Carbonetti, a senior adviser to Mr. Giuiani, said in a statement.

Public restrooms are actually private gay sex dens – according to the ACLU:

In an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy.

Craig, of Idaho, is asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to let him withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct stemming from a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport.

The ACLU filed a brief Tuesday supporting Craig. It cited a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling 38 years ago that found that people who have sex in closed stalls in public restrooms “have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

That means the state cannot prove Craig was inviting an undercover officer to have sex in public, the ACLU wrote.

John Hawkins has released two funny pro-Fred videos. Part one can be found here.

An Obama supporter’s take on Hillary Clinton’s freakout.

Justin Johnson is only seven years old but he isn’t happy with Hillary either.

I could almost vote for The Onion’s very NSFW Jimmy Carter:

You better get down on your hands and knees and kiss Jimmy Carter’s rosy-red Georgia-peach-picking ass and beg me to run your f*cking country again, because there’s no way I’m ever gonna come to you f*ck-knobs and politely ask you if I might please be a presidential candidate in your precious f*ckin’ election. So you can just bite my c*ck. I’ve had it with you jerkoffs and your jerkoff candidates.

The profanity gets much worse so I wouldn’t click on this link from work if I were you.

It isn’t too late for Fred to be a factor but he needs a needs a serious, buzzworthy, surge to reset the race. That surge, if it’s to come, will be the result of his performance last night and his ability to dial in that tone that so resonated with the conservative base. We’ll know soon if Fred can be a factor:

“I don’t know of any better place to stand my ground and test my case than in South Carolina,” Thompson told a couple of hundred people at a pancake house in the northern part of the state as he began an 11-day bus tour.

He said the results in New Hampshire and in Michigan on Jan. 15 will factor into whether he stays in the race, but that South Carolina will be key.

Arizona Sen. John McCain won the Republican primary in New Hampshire.

“This is where we make our stand — this is where I have chosen to make my stand,” Thompson told a crowd at a barbecue restaurant. He later told reporters he needs to do well in South Carolina, which votes Jan. 19.

“There’s no question about it. It could prove at the end of the day that South Carolina is determinative as far as I’m concerned, but we’re not there yet,” he said.

Update 9:28 PM CST:: Internet probelms here. I have to bail out of the liveblogging. I’ll wrap up once I can get a decent connection.

Update 8:51 PM CST:: Ron Paul is going nuts again. You can tell the other candidates are really tired of this crackpot.

Update 8:44 PM CST:: Romney just said that Ron Paul should “stop reading Ahmadinejad’s press releases.” Best line so far.

Update 8:42 PM CST:: Rudy and McCain handled questions about the incident with Iran well. Ron Paul just had a total freakout meltdown – typical blame America stuff – the audience is laughing at him.

Update 8:35 PM CST:: Fred on the Iranians – “One more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins they’re looking forward to seeing.” Like Huckabee he followed with a more serious response.

Update 8:31 PM CST:: Huckabee threatened our enemies with a trip through the “gates of hell.” It was pretty entertaining but lacking a bit of sophistication. His second answer was a bit more thoughtful.

Update 8:29 PM CST:: Ron Paul on the GOP – “We finally got control of the government and we became big government people.” He’s right about that.

Update 8:26 PM CST:: Whoa Fred Thompson is kicking ass! Finally someone with some credibility addresses all of this Reagan legacy talk. He just stepped in and schooled everyone and drew the first applause of the night.

Update 8:22 PM CST:: Obligatory Reagan praise. Too bad they never seem to actually want govern like Reagan when they have the opportunity.

Update 8:19 PM CST:: Fred Thompson is talking about specific techniques for managing the economy. That sure confused everyone.

Update 8:17 PM CST:: Ron Paul is screaming “I hate blacks and gays!” Just kidding – that material is reserved for his newsletters.

Update 8:14 PM CST:: Rudy is promoting balance in all things. He must be taking yoga classes.

Update 8:11 PM CST:: Hucakbee is addressing economic issues in terms that his key snake-handling constituency can understand.

Update 8:07 PM CST:: McCain says that he’s ready to wield the veto pen and tackle wasteful spending.

Update 8:03 PM CST:: I almost clicked past it at the start. I saw that musical number and thought it was a state beauty pageant.

Paglia contrasts the two in a thoroughly entertaining piece at Salon:

The current wave of support for Barack Obama from Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans is partly based on his vision of a new political discourse that breaks with the petty, destructive polarization of the past 20 years. Whether Obama can build up his foreign policy credentials sufficiently to reassure an anxious general electorate remains to be seen.

But Hillary herself, with her thin, spotty record, tangled psychological baggage, and maundering blowhard of a husband, is also a mighty big roll of the dice. She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark (“Cue the tears!”). Forget all her little gold crosses: Hillary’s real god is political expediency. Do Americans truly want this hard-bitten Machiavellian back in the White House? Day one will just be more of the same.