He'll be the savior of the conservative movement, I tell ya.

Please Newt, don't do it. Sure, you may get the Conservative Christian vote, but that's not even the majority of the GOP vote and you'll get exactly zero of the Independent and Democrat vote unless some little old ladies have trouble with their butterfly ballots again. Keep you day job as commentator on various news shows as your time has passed and to be honest, you're not all that appealing. Here's the scoop:

Matt Towery, a former senior aide to Newt Gingrich, had dinner with the former House Speaker and notes "it is clear that the presidency is now very much" on his mind "and that he remains convinced that none of the candidates in the current field has captured the imagination of the party."

And Newt will? This is an excuse for Newt, he sees a traffic jam and he's going to ride in and steal votes from Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. All that will happen is he'll take some of the social conservative vote from Rudy, some of the Southern vote from Fred and plod along in the 8-11% range where Romney's currently residing and get crushed in the primaries.

You know what Newt? On second thought, run and take some of the heat off the candidates that really matter. It will be like a two-week vacation for Giuliani and Thompson so throw your hat in.

There was an article in yesterday's Providence Journal that I'm surprised hasn't gotten more attention -- a reprint of a story Saturday in the Washington Post -- In Swing Districts, Democratic Enthusiasm Is Harder to Come By. It reports on an internal poll taken by Democratic pollsters in August that, until the article by Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray, had remained secret:

Conventional wisdom dictates that Democratic voters are thrilled with their choices for president, bursting at the seams to rally behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) or whoever gets the party's nod next year. A recent survey by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, however, showed Clinton and Obama trailing former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) in the 31 Democratic-held House districts regarded as most imperiled in 2008, and even potentially serving as a drag on those lawmakers' reelection chances. A poll found that if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton tops the ticket in 2008, some vulnerable Democratic House incumbents will have reason to worry. The poll was conducted in August but has not been previously reported. It paints a "sobering picture" for Democrats, according to a memo by Lake and Daniel Gotoff that accompanies the poll report.

In those Democratic districts polled, voters were asked to choose between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, followed by the same question on Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani. Rudy beats Clinton 49 to 39, and he beats Obama by a surprisingly small 41 to 40. This poll was taken before the losses suffered by the Democrats during the past two weeks on the Iraq War. With the above Presidential poll results, I'm gathering that the districts in question are more conservative than the usual Democrat held district. I'm wondering if the events in Congress over the past two weeks would make the Democrats' problems in those districts even greater.

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.

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.

My fellow Ohio Blogger Brain Shavings compiled the questions together.

"It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business." ~ Al Pacino, "The Godfather"

Mitt Romney has shown similar ruthlessness in disposing of his connection with scandal-embroiled Sen. Larry Craig.

"Once again," Pat Buchanan quoted Romney as saying, "we've found people in Washington have not lived up to the level of respect and dignity that we would expect for somebody that gets elected to a position of high influence. Very disappointing. (Craig is) no longer associated with my campaign."

Romney broke a pretty significant bond. As PJB detailed: "Up to this week, Craig was one of only two senators to have come out for Mitt Romney. He headed up the Romney campaign in Idaho. He vouched for Mitt in Congress and the country."

The former Bay State governor thus seems like an anti-George Bush in terms of standing by his lieutenants. Dubya stuck up for ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "Throughout Gonzales' sometimes rocky tenure, Bush had defended him, accusing his detractors of playing politics," ABC News reported.

Which is the better policy, staying loyal to a supporter or dismissing them when they misstep? Romney will find out as the primaries progress.

I've been advocating a run by Fred Thompson for president for well over two years and now that the time is nearing for him to declare, I'm underwhelmed. Take his campaign slogan: Security, Unity and Prosperity. Sure, it invokes all the good things but it's just so blah as much of his non-campaign has been. Couldn't his consultants come up with something better than that?

Thompson had the opportunity to walk on and be a rock star. He had serious momentum going and let it all slip away by not capitalizing on the opportunity. He should've been at every event possible with his wife and showing that he can lead the country and not sit back and allow easy shots to be taken against him. Anyone who's played sports can tell you that once you lose momentum, it's hard to get it back and in a way he's ceded it to the man who will be his biggest rival: Rudy Giuliani.

I imagine that Thompson will get a little bump upon his announcement on September 6 but unless he kicks his campaign up about four notches, he'll be hard-pressed to win the nomination with the primaries starting right after the start of the new year. To say his non-campaign and belated announcement are disappointing would be an understatement and this coming from a man who supports his bid.

Well, at least TNT is not taking Law and Order episodes with Fred starring off the air.

Howard Dean and the DNC aren't the only ones upset about early primaries. The GOP is preparing to also sanction the states that elect to move their primaries to earlier dates contrary to the party's clearly defined directives, according to the Palm Beach Post:

"The rules that were adopted at the convention in 2004 are clear and will be applied equally to every state," said Amber Wilkerson, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman. Under committee rules, the state parties must file a report by Sept. 4 detailing when and how convention delegates will be selected. The committee will publish a "Call to the Convention" before the end of the year detailing how many delegates each state will receive. States that inform the party before the "Call to the Convention" that they plan to hold their primaries before Feb. 5 or after July 28 would lose half their GOP delegates; states that make the indication later would lose 90 percent of their delegates.

That means that the GOP will also move to punish other early states, including Wyoming, which just moved its primary to January 5, 2008. That makes it the winner in the "who's first" primary sweepstakes for the time being.

But Ryan Sager writes in The New York Sun that GOP officials still believe that regardless of any possible sanctions (i.e. removal of half of the GOP delegates), Florida's primary on January 28, 2008 will still be the "make or break" contest for Republicans. The winner of that (now looking like Rudy Giuliani) will carry the momentum and advantage of winning a large cosmopolitan state into the primaries on Super Tuesday (February 5).

By the way, the latest primary schedule can be found here to the left of Susan Page's article on the chaos of the 2008 primary season. It's current as of 8/30/07 at 5:02pm. But I'm already hearing rumors that earlier today Michigan's House just voted to move it's primary up to the middle of January! Sheesh....

The best article I've seen so far on the effects (intentional and unintentional) of the front-loaded 2008 presidential primary schedule is up this morning at USA Today - As states play 'Me First,' primaries fall into chaos, by Susan Page. With so many states moving their primary dates earlier in the 2008 calender, we are faced with the fact that we might know both major party presidential candidates by the middle of February. That does a couple of things probably not foreseen by the architects of the early primaries, including the elimination of public financing of presidential campaigns. That's because candidates who accept public financing must legally wait until their party's convention is held to nominate them before they can receive and spend campaign funds. Candidates in this day and age are not going to wait, essentially from February to the end of August, to campaign against the other party and its presumptive nominee. They can spend primary money during that time, but legally that's set aside to spend only against opponents from the same party running for the nomination. The result: no public financing next year.

While the parties have attempted to corral the 2008 primary process, that's creating a mess as well. Right now it looks as if one of the most populous and important electoral states, Florida, might not even have any delegates allowed at the Democratic convention in Denver. The DNC will also be forced to deny delegates to Michigan (home of Detroit) if that state approves a measure to move its primary to January 15. Strangely, the party could then reverse itself at the convention, where the party and the candidates vote on the rules of the convention and the party platform for the election. It's possible that a good part of convention week could be spent arguing on whether or not to seat several hundred delegates from important Democratic states. But that would only be after months of Democrats accusing other Democrats of "disenfranchisement".

More importantly, this mess of a primary season has the potential to produce a serious case of "buyer's remorse".

When assessing polling results early in the primary season, sometimes results can be seen as suspect because the national electorate hasn't yet gotten to "know" all of the candidates. That's because some political figures in each party already are recognized nationally, and others might be recognizable in a particular state or region, but have yet to make a national name for him or herself.

That's why polling firms often ask people if 1) they recognize a name, and 2) they have enough information about that person to evaluate him or her as a candidate. This can give an idea of the potential upside of one candidate against another. If a Candidate A has a huge national name recognition and polls well against a Candidate B that doesn't have the same approximate level of national name ID, it follows that as Candidate B gets better known nationally, he or she might do better in future polls against Candidate A.

Gallup has an article up on what they call the "Name ID" statistics of both the Democratic and Republican primary candidates. It shows that the leaders on the Democrats' side all are known enough nationally for voters to form opinions about them. That's good for Hillary Clinton. She won't have to deal with someone coming out of the blue at her.

It's a bit different on the Republican side, however.

We have come a long, long way since the invention of the telegraph. In today's day and age, information travels faster than it has ever traveled before and the impact of this on politics has been tremendous. But is this entirely a good thing?

As a result of the expedition of the dissemination of news to the public, politicians have seen their campaigns accelerated and this has led to a number of states attempting to move their primaries up. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing remains a point of debate. As Yahoo News points out, in Michigan, the State Senate has approved a measure to move the state's presidential primary nominations to January 15. However, this is not a "done deal" as of yet.

"Republicans control the state Senate, Democrats the House, so changes in the measure are likely. State Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer said the Senate bill contains language that doesn't comply with national party rules and therefore is unacceptable."

Earlier this summer I posted on this little comment from Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, when the State of Florida defied his edict not to move up their Democrat Presidential primary date:

Sure, Florida is America's biggest political swing state. But don't expect the national Democratic Party to back off punishing Sunshine State Democrats for scheduling an early presidential primary. "Their primary essentially won't count, " Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said of Florida. "Anybody who campaigns in Florida is ineligible for delegates."

Well, it looks as if Dean and the DNC are going to finally announce this weekend what they are going to do about the "rogue states" that have moved up their primary dates, disobeying the DNC. It seems clear from the above quote that anything less than awarding no delegates to Democrats who campaign in Florida and the other early states, essentially making those primaries meaningless, will do.

The ugly elbowing over which states will go first in the 2008 presidential primary process is due to explode into open warfare Saturday as the Democratic National Committee decides what to do about "rogue" states that are threatening to violate party rules. The DNC's powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. in Washington to decide primarily what sanctions to take against Florida, where Democrats say they will conduct a primary on Jan. 29 in violation of party rules. The Politico has learned, however, that a secret 9 a.m. "off the record" breakfast will precede the open meeting and the 30 sometimes contentious members of the rules commitee will try to achieve some kind of consensus.

Read the whole Politico article, it's quite interesting. Will the Democrats be men and women of their words? We shall see...

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post that looked at the wild swings in the 2004 Democratic primary election. In short, the moral of the story is that fortunes change very quickly in politics. A few short weeks before the nation's first primary, Howard Dean was dominating the headlines, and John Kerry was placing third or forth in most polls. But momentum from victory in a single state (Iowa) propelled Kerry to a second win (New Hampshire), and, in turn, a veritable stranglehold on the nomination.

The media (and I include bloggers in that vast category) love to have a story to tell. Lately, that story has been the realization that Hillary Clinton will inevitably be the Democrats' nominee. In part, this comes from the fact that Clinton has run a sound campaign and continues to do well in national polls. But another aspect, it seems to me, is the fact that people are uncomfortable with the idea of uncertainty. As a country, we seem to just want to get the whole thing over with, hence our obsession and over-analysis of polls. But if history teaches us anything, it is that national polls are fickle. The value of state primaries is that they focus voters on the candidates themselves, rather than on the stories that we in the media write about them. They listen to them at diners and state fairs and schools, and, yes, debates. And while Mrs. Clinton may appear to have an insurmountable lead in national polls, Iowa, where the candidates have been spending the bulk of their time and energy, remains a toss-up.

At Sunday's Democratic debate, Barack Obama showed why he hasn't faded away. George Stephanopoulos gave each of the other candidates the chance to explain why Obama was too inexperienced to be president. But it was Obama himself, who turned the question to his advantage. "Nobody had more experience than Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and many of the people on this stage that authorized this war."

This is not to say that Obama has not made mistakes. But what candidate hasn't? The fact remains that, like his two main rivals, Obama has a strong organization in Iowa, and very well may win the state, causing a chain reaction similar to, say, 2004.

With the expected-sooner-or-later news that Tommy Thompson is bowing out of the GOP presidential primary, I've been wondering, who's next?

The top tier, those who are collecting money, support, or doing well in the polls will be in it to stay. Also in it for the long haul are those for whom the message is way more important than their position in money or polling, or even their own self-respect. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, I'm looking at you. It's the middle tier, those who are serious candidates, have great resumes, but are now facing the obvious. They will never get their party's nomination. At least, not in this cycle.

My vote on the GOP side is for Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. Despite placing third place in the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll, he lost to Mike Huckabee, who is competing for the exact same sets of conservative Christian voters, despite spending almost twice as much money. He's a senator, which is a weaker position than a governor, and there are still two governors or former governors in the race (plus a mayor who was the executive of a city with a bigger population than most of the states.). Basically he's redundant, and at some point he will face those facts, probably before January, long before January.

On the Democratic side, we have a close one between Joe Biden and Chris Dodd. Neither of them have a chance, most folks don't even know they are running. Obama is sucking up all the oxygen and whatever's left is going to Hillary and John Edwards. My bet is that Chris Dodd will bow out first because Joe Biden thinks very, very highly of himself, enough to overcome any feelings of inadequacy about scraping the bottom of the barrel in this contest. Chris Dodd is out before December?

What's your call? Who's out next and when?