There's been a great deal of anticipation for Fred Thompson to get into the presidential race for 2008. But while waiting for his decision is causing excitement among conservatives, is it also creating problems?

In assessing the decisions of Rudy Giuliani and John McCain to skip the Iowa straw poll on Aug. 11, Pat Buchanan extends his analysis to Thompson, who will also not be participating in the poll.

"Writing off Iowa makes sense for Thompson," Buchanan writes. "For it is hard to see how he could make up for the lost six months he has already ceded to the other candidates in organizing the state. Most Iowa political activists have already committed to other candidates."

In April, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that among the predictions from former (Bill) Clinton strategist James Carville was that "The current Republican field is so notably lackluster – 'Rudy Giuliani has been married more times than Mitt Romney's been hunting' -- that the party will turn to someone not even in the field yet. And 'the only person I can figure is Jeb Bush.'"

Or Thompson. But can anticipation trump organization? We'll see...

There a great column over at OpinionJournal.com by Peggy Noonan that sums up Hillary and the tactics and strategy that she unveiled this week. Noonan notes that the slash-and-burn politics that was devised by Paul Begala, James Carville, and Syd Blumenthal during Bill Clinton's national political career is being perfected by the Hillary campaign. And its first target is Barack Obama.

It started with Hollywood mogul David Geffen, a former Friend of Bill to the tune of $18 million and nights in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. Geffen had the temerity of calling the Clintons what they are: crooked and ruthless. Hillary's main hitman, Howard Wolfson, struck back not at Geffen, but at Obama, whom Geffen is supporting. Wolfson's retort was classic Clinton -- Obama should apologize, return Geffen's money, etc. But that Hillary (and nothing happens in her campaign without Hillary approving it) should respond so quickly and viciously to Geffen's comments is telling.

First, as Noonan posits, it shows that Hillary is afraid of Obama. It's why she entered the race several months early -- she couldn't stand having Obama get all that good press coverage, which she thought was her birthright.

Interesting article in this morning's Washington Post: Midterm Election Leaves Political Landscape Blurry by Dan Balz. While part of it is selling the next election as the most important yet, he also quickly discounts the myth being spread by the Left that last Tuesday's election was a rejection of conservatism. The liberal leadership of the Senate and the House owe their new positions of power to conservative and moderate Democrats such as Jim Webb and Heath Schuler, after all.

And to support his premise, Balz calls on not the usual suspects on the right, but Democrat pollsters and strategists like James Carville and Stan Greenberg. Guys like that -- if they really thought that this was the end of conservatism, the coronation of liberalism, or the accession of a new Democrat Majority for ages to come -- would be screaming it from the highest mountains:

What the election was not, in the view of strategists in both parties, was a powerful affirmation of the Democratic Party, despite its takeover of the House and Senate. One post-election survey, conducted for the liberal groups Democracy Corps and the Campaign for America's Future, found that both Republicans and Democrats emerged from the contest with negative images.

"This is not an election where one party went down and the other party went up," said Stan Greenberg, whose firm conducted the survey on election night and the night after. "The story still has to be written on how this period becomes a period for Democratic dominance."

When deciding who the best political minds of the last decade are, the list comes down to Karl Rove, James Carville and perhaps Paul Begala. Rove would sit atop this list because of his genius in the 2004 campaign alone. Rove figured that John Edwards was the more formidable candidate because he had no real track record and had a lot fewer areas to hit him. John Kerry, on the other hand, left so many openings that Rove devised a great strategy:

With his Southern base, charismatic style and populist message, Edwards, they believed, could be a real threat to Bush's reelection.

But instead of attacking Edwards, Rove's team opened fire at Kerry.

Their thinking went like this, Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party's nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most.

In other words, Rove used the absolute Democratic hatred of President Bush to get the opponent he wanted. It's a beautiful plan in its simplicity, and the media obediently printed every single thing the Bush administration said about Kerry, thus making sure that the party would rally around the Massachusetts senator even knowing he was the worst candidate to run since Bob Dole in 1996. Kerry is Dukakis without the brains, and Rove and the GOP picked him apart piece by piece on Vietnam and his infamous "Winter Soldier" speech.

Well, Rove is doing it again and the Clinton camp is buying into it, they are taking every word Rove has said over the last week of his resignation tour about Hillary and using it to garner support, which will come from all areas of the Dem coalition. Hillary's spokesperson believes the hype:

"Considering that the Rove rhetoric closely mirrors what some Democratic candidates are saying, it's clear that the Republicans think she will win in 2008."

Rove knows full-well that Hillary is the single-most polarizing individual in the race and that she will not attract the needed "centrists" from the middle whose votes are mandatory for a win.

H/T: PW

This is quite the bombshell and I would expect it will have quite an effect for the next week or so. James Baker has endorsed Bush's surge plan:

"The president's plan ought to be given a chance," Baker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Just give it a chance."

...

Baker also deflected criticism from Democratic senators that the president's new Iraq strategy lacked sufficient emphasis on diplomatic talks with Iran and Syria. Baker said the new plan envisions new diplomatic initiatives, though it does not include one of the ISG's chief recommendations: direct talks with Iran and Syria.

With this, it certainly seems like Baker is walking away from key items in the ISG, which he chaired. The effect of Baker's endorsement will be amplified because the media coalesced around the "wise men" and gave this bi-partisan plan almost mythical status. James Baker's stature was raised even further in the eyes of the media when it became clear that George Bush was not going to setup direct talks to gain Iran and Syria's help in Iraq.

James Dobson does not speak for the religious right, says another card-carrying member:

Former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer contends that conservative Christians should seriously consider supporting Thompson if they want to avoid a "nightmare scenario" where they are forced to choose between two pro-abortion, pro-gay rights candidates – Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.

"He (Thompson)'s obviously against same-sex marriage. He doesn't support quite the same constitutional amendment that some of the others of us do, but he's been talking with us about it, and has been moving closer and closer on the amendment," said Bauer, who is president of American Values, according to OneNewsNow.

"So I hope that we can, as a movement, be very wise about this, and not savage candidates that we may very well have to support in 2008 if they're running against Hillary Clinton."

As I suspected, Fred Thompson has not suffered at all from Dobson's attack, and indeed the collective blogosphere opinion was to think even more highly of Thompson. And with this latest defense it appears that Thompson can get the support of both the religious right and the libertarian elements of the GOP. It's the best of both worlds!

In what was a most enjoyable day on Capitol Hill, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), finally got to question Al Gore on his support of global warming. Gore did not fare so well:

WASHINGTON, DC – Former Vice President Al Gore refused to take a "Personal Energy Ethics Pledge" today to consume no more energy than the average American household. The pledge was presented to Gore by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, during today's global warming hearing.

Gore of course refused and muttered something about his home and businesses being "carbon neutral". Carbon neutrality is, of course, a sham cooked up by energy grubbing liberals to make themselves feel better about their wasteful habits.

Gore looked and sounded like a man who was in a battle of wits, unarmed. Inhofe was better prepared and the recent hit piece on Gore by the NY Times probably didn't do much for his self confidence. The Times piece and other media are suddenly changing their tunes on the global warming issue, either because they know Gore would get creamed if he chose to run for president or because they think he may draw votes away from Hillary.

Here's more on this as it happened. And here's a video making the rounds:

This is important because Dr. James Dobson is probably the most respected among evangelical leaders. He can, and will, move votes. He's obviously been thinking a lot about Rudy Giuliani and has come to a conclusion:

My conclusion from this closer look at the current GOP front-runner comes down to this: Speaking as a private citizen and not on behalf of any organization or party, I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. It is an irrevocable decision. If given a Hobson's – Dobson's? – choice between him and Sens. Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, I will either cast my ballot for an also-ran – or if worse comes to worst – not vote in a presidential election for the first time in my adult life. My conscience and my moral convictions will allow me to do nothing else.

This is the sort of thing that I thought would happen. Further back in the article, Dobson explains that it wasn't just the abortion issue, but also his gay marriage stance, and his failure in his own personal life.

I wrote before that one of Rudy's big problems was that the GOP spent the entire eight years of the Clinton administration saying that "character matters." Those who said that will have a tough time covering for Giuliani who committed some of the same personal fouls. James Dobson has reconciled it in favor of "character matters"; and Giuliani is out.

On Monday President Bush met with the James Baker-led Iraq study group. The panel is expected to render a report on the neocon-Bush failure in Iraq by the beginning of the year.

But the real news is that this is just another corporate ploy: It is NOT simply bailing out ever-dysfunctional Bush II. It's NOT about the demands of the American electorate that we end war in Iraq or ANYWHERE in the Middle East.

It's about saving the greedy, carnivorous interests of the OIL INDUSTRY and U.S. corporate state. Who dies or who lives in the U.S. military presence in the Middle East is irrelevant, as long as it's not rich white men.

Just look at the members of the group: With the exception of Baker, not one of them has international policy experience in the Middle East: These are corporate types -- the goal is wealth not humanity.

...Saying Nothing. That's the old James Brown refrain, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg leveled it at both the Republican and Democratic parties yesterday:

Bloomberg, who left the GOP and is asked almost daily about running for president, said Wednesday that neither the Republican nor Democratic Party "stands for anything."

"There isn't any philosophy" for either party, he said after a speech on improving public schools.

The problem, as Bloomberg sees it, is that politicians place partisan loyalty above everything else. In effect, party allegiance itself becomes a higher priority than actually solving the country's pressing needs. Does this not sound a tad like a man who is planning an independent run for the White House?

As to the question of underlying political philosophy, Fred Thompson delivered another in a series of his mealy-mouthed, wink-wink, I'm almost in, just a few more days of 'Law and Order' re-runs, speeches yesterday.

Yesterday, fellow Stump blogger Phil Bailey posted here on former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's testimony about the administration's pressuring of then Attorney General John Ashcroft to approve the NSA wiretapping program. After watching the video clip that was also posted, I'm not surprised that Phil (and others) would come to the conclusion he did -- it appears shocking.

But there's a lot more to the story, including the fact that according to Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee staff, James Comey has performed admirably as one of Sen. Chuck Schumer's moles within the Justice Department. He was also one of the people who gave us Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor to embarrass the administration, and really should never have been in the position he held in the first place, at least not in a Republican administration.

Tuesday's hearing was a passion play put on by Schumer for the media and adoring Democrats. The storyline -- the Bush administration used immoral and covert means to achieve an illegal end -- is the NSA program. There's a little problem with that narrative, however: in testimony not reported on in the media but in the transcript and tape of the hearing, Comey changed his orchestrated tune when being questioned by (no-friend of the president) Sen. Arlen Specter.

In his interview with President Bush broadcast on Sunday's ABC This Week Bush asserted to George Stephanopoulos that his administration has "never been stay the course" in Iraq. From the transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: James Baker says that he's looking for something between "cut and run" and "stay the course."

BUSH: Well, hey, listen, we've never been "stay the course," George. We have been - we will complete the mission, we will do our job, and help achieve the goal, but we're constantly adjusting to tactics. Constantly.

I haven't read Monica Goodling's testimony today -- I've only seen read and seen clips of her telling the House Judiciary Committee that the primary reason for Paul McNulty lying in front of Congress was... Paul McNulty. Which isn't what the Democrats wanted to hear, since McNulty and James Comey were Chuck Schumer's allies and moles in the Justice Department.

Had the Bush administration had a competent vetting and hiring process, they wouldn't have even had those jobs in the first place, at least not under a Republican president. Come to think of it, had the Bush administration had a competent personnel process, Gonzales wouldn't be Attorney General either. And Colin Powell wouldn't have been Secretary of State, Richard Armitage would have been advising Saudi Arabia, Scott McClellan wouldn't have been Press Secretary, etc. But that's another post.

One comment about the statement that she didn't know if she had broken the law when determining the political allegiance of prosecutors: First, that's not what she said. Second, she was not talking about the U.S. attorneys, the supposed subject of this hearing, as is being alleged by some on the left. Those are political appointments, and although the Democrats cry otherwise, U.S. Attorneys are nominated by the individual state's senior senator of the same political party, and they are expected to emphasize the law enforcement priorities of the president. If they don't, they should be gone.

Dinesh D'Souza has written a book entitled The Enemy at Home in which he posits that Islamo-fascism as a whole and al-Qaeda in particular attack us not because of our troops in the Middle East, the War in Iraq or even our support for Israel. He believes that they attacked us because of our liberal ways, our advocacy of secularism and our spreading of western values. In effect, he bluntly blames the American Left for us being attacked.

As one would imagine, liberals went ballistic. The extremely solipsistic James Wolcott of Vanity Fair went on a tirade where you could nearly see him spitting at his laptop screen as he pounded the keys.

New Virginia Senator James Webb tried an end run to stop the war in Iraq, by limiting the deployment options of the military. The idea of guaranteeing time between deployments made great sense rhetorically and it was hoped the idea of supporting the troops while stopping the war would enable them to pick off enough senators to get it done.

But it was not to be, as the WaPo reports, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now giving up on clever strategies and going back to the old strategy which did not work last spring:

Instead, Reid will again push for a firm deadline, this time June 2008, along with a stronger effort at cutting off war funding.

"It's all definite timelines," Reid said.

The Senate will resume the war debate today, and Reid invited Republicans to offer proposals. His spokesman said that several possibilities are being negotiated, although it appeared unlikely they will meet the 60-vote threshold to pass.