ABSENT: Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mitt Romney

PRESENT: Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Alan Keyes

What were they thinking? They say a picture is worth a thousand words and the four empty chairs on the podium of the Republicans' recent debate on Thursday, September 27th at Morgan State University spoke volumes. Regardless of the spin or the rationale (reported "scheduling conflicts" for each of them), those candidates obviously did not think it was worth their while to show up and there is no way to interpret that except that they didn't think it was important to reach out to these blocs of voters -- which is interesting, since the over 60, white male, southern voter is probably going to vote for one of them anyway and is a shrinking population. I'm not sure a candidate can win the national election anymore with over 60, while male, southern voters.

Mike Huckabee said he was "embarrassed for our party and I'm embarrassed for those who didn't come."

Sam Brownback said, "I think this is a disgrace that they are not here...a disgrace to our country...bad for our party...I don't think it's good for our future."

The general consensus is that after the primary, whoever the Republicans select will start moving towards the center and reaching out to these other voters. Good luck with that strategy. There are a lot of us around who will remind people of who was important, or not, to the candidate in September 2007.

With apologies to "Star Trek," let me just say this about John McCain's presidential aspirations: "It's dead, Jim".

Over the weekend, David Freddoso at NRO traveled to the Michigan GOP confab at Mackinac Island where just hours earlier John McCain lost his Michigan chairman. Yes they were both there:


That's a pretty big hit. Some of us recall that in 2000 John McCain won a surprising and huge victory in the Michigan primary If he has any hope at all (and he doesn't) he needs to do the same thing in 2008. That's not going to happen when your main man in Michigan decides to jump ship. But then again, McCain was able to convince a lot of Democrats and independents to come over and vote GOP (and for him) instead of the boring and decided Democratic nomination. This year, Hillary Clinton is not quite anointed yet, and Democrats will probably choose to vote on the Democratic side.

See more at the Detroit News.

He has to fly commercial?! It's definitely over.

NRO reports on the Straw Poll result from the Mackinac conference conducted this weekend:

Romney - 39.12%
McCain - 26.56%
Paul - 10.83%
Giuliani - 10.62%
F. Thompson - 7.15%
Huckabee - 2.55%
Hunter - 1.23%
Tancredo - 0
Brownback - 0.31%

While local Michigan blog both-right reports on a poll of Michigan likely voters

Giuliani 27%
Romney 13%
Thompson 13%
McCain 6%
Huckabee 5%
Brownback 4%
Tancredo 0%
Hunter 7%
Paul 2%

Huge differences. Keep in mind that the straw poll is of party activists that paid to attend a conference, while the voters are just voters. So, we can tell that in Michigan, (and other places) there is a huge difference between what the party establishment wants, and what the rank-and-file want. Mitt Romney spent a lot of time in Michigan, his dad was governor, he has a lot of organizing money so it's not surprising he would do well.

- John McCain's support is nonexistent outside of the establishment
- In fact it's so bad that Duncan Hunter is doing better.
- Mike Huckabee is not breaking through anything, in fact did not attend.
- Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani both do much better with the voters than the establishment.

Michigan has moved up it's primary and will be a significant factor in choosing the next president. McCain and Huckabee need to worry about that. The others, not so much.

The race for the Republican nomination for president is a field that is still too tough to call. Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson are in the lead and very close to one another in most polls. Mitt Romney and John McCain are well behind Giuliani and Thompson, but they are not so far beyond that they can not make a great leap forward. (No relation to Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward.) Of course, there is also the possibility that Giuliani and Thompson may drop in the polls at some point in the future. As such, the primary states are taking on critical importance in the eyes of the candidates.

According to The Politico, Michigan has taken on significant importance in the eyes of the nominee hopefuls and with the January 15 (early) primary rapidly approaching the Republican contenders is spending more and more time there. Michigan is a huge state and has the potential to be a swing state despite being very blue.

The Politico's take on the contenders' positions in the race is as follows:

Romney has the best organization, Giuliani is late putting his team together but appears strong in the polls, Thompson is as much x-factor as he is a threat and McCain is in a precarious position.

You can't get a more accurate assessment than that.

The latest Harris poll shows Fred Thompson leading Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama:

... One-third (32%) of those who say they will vote in a Republican primary or caucus will vote for Thompson while 28 percent will vote for Giuliani. Much further back is John McCain, who continues his downward slide with 11 percent saying they would vote for the Arizona Senator, and 9 percent who say they would vote for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

... Just under half (46%) of those who would vote in a Democratic primary or caucus would vote for the former First Lady while one-quarter (25%) would vote for Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Former vice president candidate and North Carolina Senator John Edwards is further back with 14 percent saying they would vote for him. No other candidate is in double digits.

The only really surprising thing in this poll is that young Democrats will vote for Obama while the older (61 and over) favor Hillary overwhelmingly. A return to the Al Gore, Sr. Dixiecrat roots perhaps?

The Thompson lead is to be expected as he is the "new" candidate. His performance in the debates will be extremely important, should he falter, Rudy will grab this race and run with it setting up the election we were robbed of back in 2000 when Rudy had to bow out because of cancer and Hillary ran against lightweight Rick Lazio.

These are good, strong numbers for Thompson and he should take heart, however they could change dramatically should he not make a good showing. I suspect he'll do fine but also that Giuliani will get a small bump be his brouhaha with MoveOn.org so things should even out. Mitt Romney and John McCain are toast at this point and only can be saved by a complete upset in the early primary states.

On the donk side, John Edwards just hasn't found his stride and is hovering at 12-16% based on polling. He stands no chance of advancing if he hasn't grabbed the electorate by now.

The AP snagged this very interesting e-mail:

"Isn't Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won't talk at all about what he believes, and can't speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson wrote.

"He has no passion, no zeal, and no apparent 'want to.' And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"

This should cause no great consternation in the Fred Thompson camp. The religious right folks are rallying around Mike Huckabee, but so far the Arkansas governor has not broken out of the second tier. If he does so, then the Dobson thing may matter. But for Thompson, the fact that he does in fact look like Ronald Reagan when you stand him next to John McCain, Mitt Romney, and especially Rudy Giuliani. Dobson may not like it, but he's pointedly not endorsing Giuliani either, and right now it's a two-man race.

Thompson can wait it out. Dobson will come around if it's Fred vs. Hillary Clinton. And besides this will make the libertarian wing of the Republican party gravitate toward Fred Thompson even more.

Ryan Sager does a stand up job taking apart the effort to resuscitate John McCain in the media.

Once considered by some the unquestionable front-runner for the GOP nomination (despite every poll showing Mayor Giuliani out front), over the summer the Straight Talker has been having his obituary typed up like a frail pope with a robust head cold. Now, however, the press is ready to declare a McCain "rebound." A Washington Post columnist, David Broder, recently said Mr. McCain has found his footing; the Manchester Union-Leader penned an editorial heralding, "A comeback begun," and the Arizona Republic said, " McCain is on the rise."

It's only a matter of time before Newsweek runs a cover declaring Mr. McCain "The Comeback Kid" or some other such nonsense.

Humbug - to put it politely. Mr. McCain certainly has seen a bounce since August, when he bottomed out with national numbers such as 7% in the Fox News poll and 11% in the Quinnipiac poll. Now, he's back up to an average of around 15%, exactly where he was in July and 10 points down from where he was in January. So, yes, call it a bounce - like a dead cat hitting the pavement.

That front-runner status was always a fiction, and the perception relied on an ignorance of what the average Republican voter really thought about McCain. The only thing changed is that the CW became a bit more educated as a result of the immigration debate and the aftermath.

The latest fundraising numbers put it in perspective. In the first quarter, McCain raised $12.5 million. In the second quarter, he raised about $11 million. Now in the third quarter, he's raised only $3.7 million with next to no cash on hand? That's not the direction you want to be moving in. Now that the numbers are out, the other campaigns won't take him seriously and neither will the media. McCain is over. But then again, he always was.

The Politico is reporting that a Texas oilman now on trial for paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein made quite a few donations to politicians before being indicted in 2005. Doing my own quick search through Fundrace and OpenSecrets.org, I wasn't able to find any Republicans who the oilman, Oscar Wyatt, donated to, other than the one that the article mentions, John McCain. All of the donors reported on in the article have indicated that they either have or intend to donate the money from the oilman to charity. All of them, that is, except for Hillary Clinton.

Joe Biden is donating to charity a contribution from a Houston oilman on trial for charges related to paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, and John McCain says he'll follow if Oscar Wyatt is convicted. But Hillary Rodham Clinton would make no such pledge.

Now that this story is in the news, I'm certain that Hillary will donate the money to charity, and make a big public relations thrust while doing so. That what her campaign does best -- make lemonade out of lemons. But this does highlight Hillary's biggest weakness -- lack of judgment. Her first instinct is not to do what's right, but what's best for her own self interest. In this case, money.

Rapper Kanye West famously declared it during the telethon to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

An article in today's Washington Post asks whether the same might be said about the current Republican field for president. This comes as a result of their refusal to participate in a debate moderated by Tavis Smiley at Morgan State University that is to be aired on PBS. It's the second such snub in a month. The same candidates (save John McCain) also took a pass on appearing at a debate on Spanish-language channel Univision.

Well, more than a few people inside the party are not happy. Here's former candidate Jack Kemp, who enjoyed huge support in the African American community:

"We sound like we don't want immigration; we sound like we don't want black people to vote for us. What are we going to do--meet in a country club in the suburbs one day? If we're going to be competitive with people of color, we've got to ask them for their vote."

Newt Gingrich has dabbled in Spanish, and doesn't like what he's seeing, either:

"For Republicans to consistently refuse to engage in front of an African American or Latino audience is an enormous error. I hope they will reverse their decision and change their schedules. I see no excuse--this thing has been planned for months, these candidates have known about it for months. It's just fundamentally wrong. Any of them who give you that scheduling-conflict answer is disingenuous. That's baloney."

Ouch. President Bush took 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. Anybody want to lay odds on the percentage a Republican will garner from African Americans or Latinos this time around?

Even with the bump that Fred Thompson got last week after his official announcement, and with John McCain's bounce this week (see Gallup here), Scott Rasmussen still believes that this is a three person race on the GOP side, with no clear frontrunner. Each of the three that Rasmussen mentions (Rudy Giuliani, Thompson, and Mitt Romney) have their strengths:

Thompson is currently seen by Republican voters as the most politically conservative candidate, clearly an asset in a party where more than 60% of Primary Voters are politically conservative.

Rudy Giuliani is seen by the GOP voters as the most electable Republican candidate.

Mitt Romney has pursued a different strategy. While struggling in the national polls, he has built a solid organization and is leading in the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primary, and other early states.

But I think that the lead that Thompson has developed over Giuliani (28% - 19%) should worry the former mayor of New York. Nationwide, Giuliani is very similar to Hillary Clinton in that he has almost universal name recognition. Thompson does not, at least not as a Republican candidate for President. The more that the base of the GOP get to know Thompson's views, the more they will recognize that his brand of conservatism mimics theirs. At that point, the electability factor with Giuliani begins to even out.

John McCain does it every time. Once I think he's settled back into the race, he goes and says something stupid, which makes me have to slam him again.

This time McCain says he no longer belongs to the Church of England but now gets with the Lord Southern Baptist-style:

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who has long identified himself as an Episcopalian, said this weekend that he is a Baptist and has been for years.

Campaigning in this conservative, predominantly Baptist state, McCain called himself a Baptist when speaking to reporters Sunday and noted that he and his family have been members of the North Phoenix Baptist Church in his home state of Arizona for more than 15 years.

"It's well known because I'm an active member of the church," the Arizona senator said.

This is pandering of a high order, not quite Hillaryesque but nearing that level. At least he didn't use a fake black or fake Southern accent like she did.

As I wrote earlier, who gives a damn about someones religion? I thought we were well passed that when Catholic John Kennedy was elected and the Jewish Joe Lieberman almost was. It's a non-issue that McCain is attempting make into one and he looks idiotic doing it. Does Senator McCain think he can resurrect his campaign by trying to win over Southern Baptists? Fred Thompson will own the South and McCain can't do anything about it at this point.

Thus far, McCain has flip-flopped on immigration and his religion, what's next John, are you going to turn against the war effort to garner some support?

It's happened again. Another foot, another mouth. This time it's Rep. John Boehner, the lead Republican in the House. What did he say? The death of thousands and wounding of tens of thousands was 'a small price to pay'. Seriously.

BLITZER: "Mr. Leader, here is the question. How much longer will U.S. taxpayers have to shell out $2 billion a week or $3 billion a week as some now are suggesting the cost is going to endure, the loss and blood the Americans who are killed every month, how much longer do you think this commitment, this military commitment, is going to require?"

A small price. Tell it to the families. Even other Republicans are not backing him. John McCain said:

With all due respect, every American wounded or sacrificed is the greatest possible price to pay,"

And of course Democrats seized on Boehner's very poorly chosen words. Rather than apologize, Boehner's office said he was talking about the money but the question was how much longer do you think this commitment, this military commitment, is going to require?" And now, we're supposed to accept the sacrifice of thousands more. A small price indeed.

When he was held captive in Vietnam, it probably looked like his time on earth was limited. After he got beat by Bush, it looked like he would be too old to run again. When he showed compassion for the problems of illegal immigrants, it looked like he had killed his political hopes. Yes, most of us believed that the hopes of John McCain being president of the United States had turned to dust.

Dust you say. Was it the phoenix that rose from the ashes. The bird is the symbol of immortality. Isn't Phoenix the capital of Arizona. Isn't McCain the senator from Arizona? Yes he is and like the phoenix, he has risen from the ashes.

In the latest Rasmussen report, McCain has begun to rise. He has pulled ahead of Mitt Romney (no big deal) and his "favorability rating" among Republicans has risen to 63%. This is just behind Fred Thompson (64%) and Rudy Giuliani (68%).

Even if McCain loses, it would be nice to see him in the race until the end. The man has fought for his country and not been afraid to say what he believes.

Senator John McCain has been slowly going up in the polls after having floundered terribly for several weeks. It would seem that by strongly staking out a pro Iraq War stance, McCain has gained a few points in the polls as well as gaining some of his favor with the public back. According to the AP, McCain has made several appearances with veteran's groups and has also campaigned with a banner that states "Never surrender."

This campaign strategy is far removed from the anti-war stances taken by Sen. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and sets him far apart from the Democratic field, but will it help him significantly in the Republican primary?

While the end result remains to be seen, a win would be doubtful Sen. John McCain has suffered a major setback on the presidential campaign trail as his poll numbers have been lagging in every poll in the nation. Most embarrassingly, McCain's numbers in is own home state has been disastrous. In fact, there was speculation at one point that McCain might not even win re-election for his Senate seat. For McCain, being tied directly to the failed Amnesty Bill was unforgivable in the eyes of the public. Will his public support for the war effort reverse the tide of negativity facing his campaign? It would seem that it will, but to what extent remains to be seen.

Could a hot topic catapult a GOP second-tier candidate into the 2008 presidential nomination?

Earlier this year, it looked like illegal immigration could be that topic. It brought headlines to Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, and headaches for President Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Now Republicans seem united in opposing illegal immigration. In last week's presidential debate, McCain, after making an insensitive reference to "the Guatemalans" on Mitt Romney's lawn, said, "No one, by the way, is for amnesty. I and the president of the United States, both of us from border states, came forward with a plan that we thought was comprehensive and workable with the priority being border security, which remains my position."
What remaining issue could spark an insurgency? Iraq. Anti-war Rep. Ron Paul of Texas articulated his anti-war argument in New Hampshire.