Critical Perspective on Developments in National Security, Intelligence, and Technology
Shameless political stunts are the story of this race. The crying worked. Huckabee’s ad stunt worked too. Voters say that they want change but they keep falling for the same tired old tricks. That’s something that the better campaigners already knew.
As I said last night, this is good news for the Republicans. Hillary will be a smiles for a while but she and Obama will eventually have to slug this one out. The Republicans will have little more time to pare down the field.
Final Update – 9:47 PM CST: Fox News just called it for Hillary. ABC and CNN too. Obama is about to speak. He kicks off with “I’m still fired up and ready to go!”
9:44 PM CST: The gap is widening. I expect the rest of the major networks to call this soon.
9:39 PM CST: The Fox News panel credits the crying.
9:35 PM CST: CBS News calls it for Hillary as well. ABC, CNN, and Fox are holdouts.
9:33 PM CST: The AP has called it for Clinton! Fox News isn’t going to call it yet.
9:32 PM CST: 39%-36% in Hillary’s favor with 65% of the precincts reporting. Time is running out for Obama.
9:19 PM CST: John Edwards is speaking. Wouldn’t it be great if he quit but announced that his hair was staying in the race? Ugh, he’s giving the same speech again. There are physicians who haven’t met as many ill people as John Edwards.
9:16 PM CST: Everyone, Obama especially, is waiting on the total from New Hampshire’s college towns.
9:07 PM CST: Michelle Malkin asks “If Obama loses, will we start hearing about how racist America still is?” It’s 39%-36% for Hillary with 61% reporting.
8:48 PM CST: 39%-37% in Hillary’s favor with 52% of the precincts reporting! This could go on for a long time. Amazing.
8:39 PM CST: Obama’s brief surge has slowed. It’s a 40%-36% race in Hillary’s favor with 47% of the precincts reporting.
8:27 PM CST: The gap narrows again! It’s a 39%-37% race in Hillary’s favor with 41% of the precincts reporting.
8:23 PM CST: Obama is making a run and closing the gap. It’s a 39%-36% race in Hillary’s favor with 38% of the precincts reporting.
8:20 PM CST: McCain – “We are the makers of history, not it’s victims.”
8:13 PM CST: McCain is thanking the troops now. Hillary continues to lead Obama by 4%. Monday Morning Clacker: “Well done Team McCain New Hampshire! Well done indeed! Now, where the f*ck is the bar!”
7:56 PM CST: We could be nearing a surprising call for Hillary Clinton as she starts to pull ahead again (25,557/21,975). She leads Obama by 6% with 25% of the precincts reporting.
7:50 PM CST: It’s concession speech time for Mitt. He is, of course, handling it with class. 2 silvers and a gold is the message. It’s too bad that Wyoming is the presidential race’s equivalent of synchronized swimming.
7:43 PM CST: 19,977/18,130 in favor of Hillary with 18% of the precincts reporting. They’ve maintained this 1,800-2,000 (4%) vote gap for a while now.
7:33 PM CST: Hillary is still going strong. If she wins here tonight it’s good news for the Republicans as she and Obama could be slugging it out for many weeks ahead.
7:19 PM CST: Hillary is widening the gap. She leads Obama 40%-36% with 12% of the precincts reporting.
7:11 PM CST: Fox News is calling the Republican race for John McCain. No surprise there but I thought Romney was going to make it a bit more difficult for him than he did. ABC News has called it for McCain as well.
7:08 PM CST: I’ll be liveblogging the returns. Right now, with about 11% of the precincts reporting, the race looks tight on the Democratic side with Hillary leading Obama by less than 1,000 votes. If this trend continues we’ll be looking at dramatic Clinton comeback. McCain, on the other hand, has a significant (7,575/5,694) lead over Romney.
The New Republic has laid out the case against Ron Paul in excruciating detail. This is old news to those of us who’ve paid attention but it’s great to see this material finally getting the visibility it deserves.
After the Bhutto assassination I wrote:
“I won’t be surprised when I receive email from Ron Paul supporters claiming that she was actually assassinated by a zombie sasquatch assassin sent by a secret CIA mind control program operating out of a subterranean base which was joint financed by the Zionist-controlled Federal Reserve and space aliens.”
While I was joking, sort of, you’ll be surprised to learn just how close to that line of thinking Paul actually comes.
“He has given extensive interviews to the magazine of the John Birch Society, and has frequently been a guest of Alex Jones, a radio host and perhaps the most famous conspiracy theorist in America. Jones–whose recent documentary, Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement, details the plans of George Pataki, David Rockefeller, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, among others, to exterminate most of humanity and develop themselves into “superhuman” computer hybrids able to “travel throughout the cosmos”–estimates that Paul has appeared on his radio program about 40 times over the past twelve years.”
Daniel Koffer writes that if a conspiracy theory, or form of bigotry, exists you’ll probably find it mentioned in one of Ron Paul’s newsletters:
As Kirchick reports—whether describing post-apartheid South Africa as a “destruction of civilization,” alleging that Martin Luther King “seduced underage girls and boys,” warning of “tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise,” or urging white readers to arm themselves after “the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s,”—virtually every historic trope of racism, anti-Semitism, anti-gay bigotry, or conspiracy theorizing featured in the “Ron Paul Political Report” in one way or another.
Koffer goes on to list one damning quote after another. Here’s a taste:
“[O]ur country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists—and they can be identified by the color of their skin.”
This revelation won’t marginalize Ron Paul. He’s already there. What it will do, I hope, is strip him of the recent support he’s received from decent, yet naive, Americans. Those who continue to support him after this revelation, and there will be many, will lose their claim to both of those traits.
Other Blogging:
Michael Goldfarb
I won’t reproduce the quotes here, but there is no plausible explanation that might insulate Paul from the fallout. Kirchick and others attacked Paul a few months back over his failure to return a $500 check from a prominent white supremacist. At the time, Paul had explained that he couldn’t possibly screen ever donor. Of course he couldn’t, but the media had screened this one for him, and he refused to give back the money anyway. Now we know why. He’s been speaking in code to the dregs of American society this whole time. And he had no intention of alienating his base of support.
Ann Althouse
Look, I said it on Bloggingheads: The things Ron Paul has been saying made me suspect that his libertarianism were a cover for racism. Listen beginning at 8:07: “I feel like the people who are so enamored with those states’ rights positions and that libertarian position… Coming from the South… and older person… who grew up in the segregated South… How do I know he’s not a racist? … I find it offensive, the positions he’s taking, but maybe it’s the pretty face that you put on the position that is, if not really racist, just insensitive about race?”
Reason Magazine
I don’t think that Ron Paul wrote this stuff but that really doesn’t matter–the newsletters carried his name after all–and his non-response to Dave Weigel below is unsatisfying on about a thousand different levels. It is hugely disappointing that he produced a cache of such garbage.
Transterrestrial Musings
I voted for Paul for President in 1988, primarily because I tended to vote Libertarian in the eighties. If these existed at the time, and I’d read some of them, I might not have. Of course, I’ve never been a big fan of the Von Mises Institute, either. [Update a few minutes later] Having read in more detail, let me amend the above from “might not have” to “certainly would not have.”
Hot Air
Lots of anti-black, anti-Israel, pro-militia nuttiness at the link. This guy’s been in Congress for 31 years. No one in his district was able to beat him with this on his record?
The midnight votes are in. Obama and McCain lead:
In Dixville Notch, Obama received seven votes, John Edwards two votes and Bill Richardson one vote and Hillary Clinton none, according to the Associated Press. On the Republican side, McCain received four votes, Mitt Romney two and Rudy Giuliani one
In Hart’s Location, Democrat Obama received nine votes, Clinton received three and Edwards received one. Among Republicans, McCain received six, Mike Huckabee received five, Ron Paul received four and Romney one.
Romney will do much better as voting progresses. Hillary? I’m not so sure.
Yesterday I though Hillary would regroup after New Hampshire. I’m have my doubts after reading The Caucus this morning:
As they barnstorm through New Hampshire, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband are often introduced by supporters who once backed another candidate but converted to her cause.
Today, in Dover, Francine Torge, a former John Edwards supporter, said this while introducing Mrs. Clinton: “Some people compare one of the other candidates to John F. Kennedy. But he was assassinated. And Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who actually” passed the civil rights legislation.
The comment, an apparent reference to Senator Barack Obama, is particularly striking given documented fears among blacks that Mr. Obama will be assassinated if elected.
Bad – really bad – but it’s survivable because the words weren’t uttered by Hillary. Her campaign issued the obligatory distancing statement. It could have been inconsequential, it would have faded away, but a few hours later Hillary came out swinging:
“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” Mrs. Clinton said when asked about Mr. Obama’s rejoinder by Fox’s Major Garrett after her speech in Dover. “It took a president to get it done.”
The Obama campaign declined to comment on either of those remarks…
I have no idea what she hoped to accomplish with that remark. It could have been a stupid, but calculated, attempt to play the race card in New Hampshire. It could have been a clumsy attempt to paint Obama as nothing but a gifted orator – a guy who talks all day while serious white folks like herself and LBJ pass legislation. Perhaps it was both of those things. It may not matter at this point.
I’m not surprised that Obama hasn’t commented on this. He’s won. He knows that. He just needs a moment to collect his thoughts.
Update 6:26 AM CST:
Fox has video of both statements.
Others Blogging:
Riehl World View
Either she’s nuts, or she’s taken the Bill as the first Black president nonsense to heart. Another stupid line of attack destined to back fire on Hillary, especially among the Black community. She’s trying to take down a rising Black political star by invoking MLK? She doesn’t genuinely have the cred, or experience to make it work. Geesh! How desperate can she get?
AmericaBlog
I’m not even sure what to write here. Hillary made some odd comments this afternoon on FOX News about Obama and “false hope.” In these comments, she sounds as though she’s knocking Martin Luther King. I don’t believe for a minute that that was her intent, but the comments just come off as awful
The Richmond Democrat
Hillary Clinton has lost any remaining chance she had at the nomination.
Ali-Reza Anghaie and Scot Terban
Information Security, Hackers, China, and Cyber Hype
Jon Iadonisi and Tim Newberry
Phillip Smyth
Dr. Rebecca Johnson
