We’re now less than 2 months out from the Iowa caucuses, and under 3 from the likely end of the primary portion of the race. That means it’s time to winnow out the chaff, at least on the Republican side. Fox News decided to exclude from its December Iowa debate the candidates that haven’t picked up 5% of the polling in Iowa. The net effect is Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, and Tom Tancredo are out of the next show. Personally, I believe that’s about a debate or two too late because that leaves 90 minutes (if memory serves, that’s the length of the Fox News debates) of having a chance of substantive discussion. Even better, if things hold, I’ll be able to do a profanity-free live-blog.
Before I get back to the Republicans, I’ll quickly note that the Democratic race is still Hillary Clinton’s to lose even though Barack Obama has closed in Iowa. While she’s doing her best Bill Clinton impersonation by planting questions in the audience, Obama just isn’t able to capitalize because even the Democrats realize that explicitly calling for tax hikes, even for their Holy Grail of Social Security, isn’t going to fly with the electorate. The good news for the Republicans is that Clinton has a very hard ceiling of under 50% in the various national head-to-head polls. The bad is she also has a very hard floor of above 45%.
In a big blow to the campaigns of John McCain and Fred Thompson, the Republican National Committee decided to go halfway down the road of the Democrats and take away half of the delegates from the states that are holding primaries before Super Duper Tuesday, February 5. McCain’s and Thompson’s strategy of using a pre-SDT primary (New Hampshire and South Carolina, respectively) to leverage their way to victory just went down in flames.
Similarily, Mitt Romney’s strategy of buying his way to a sweep of the traditional early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and using the homestate advantage of Michigan, has been somewhat neutered. While he will, in all likelyhood, win Iowa, all the money he has spent in New Hampshire and South Carolina has just gone down the drain.
With that bit of background out of the way, let’s move on to the candidates:
Rudy Giuliani – His strategy of focusing almost exclusively on Super Duper Tuesday and the large-population liberal states is essentially intact. Even though losing half of Florida’s delegation will hurt him, Florida is still the largest pre-SDT prize, larger than Iowa or Nevada (Giuliani is leading there in the latest polls, regaining the momentum from Romney), and he pretty much has the ex-NYC vote and thus the state locked up. It also is the last contest before Super Duper Tuesday, so if his double-digit lead holds up, he will have the big momentum going into February. He also picked up the biggest personal endorsement of the season in Pat Robertson. The bad news is a lot of conservatives aren’t buying the Robertson endorsement, and the rumblings are that they will stay at home in November 2008 if he’s the nominee.
Mitt Romney – The good news: he should have most of the early states. The bad: not only has he lost half of that benefit, but at least so far, that projected success has not translated to projected success on Super Duper Tuesday.
Fred Thompson – With apologies to Sean Hackbarth, the slow-motion Thompson campaign simply hasn’t caught on with those answering the polls or the majority of the insiders. However, Thompson has reportedly scored the biggest overall endorsement of the season with the National Right to Life Committee. The volume of blue-on-blue fire directed at Thompson hints that the pollsters and the insiders are missing something.
John McCain – He does have the pro-illegal-alien wing of the Republican Party locked up with Sam Brownback’s endorsement. Unfortunately for him, that’s not nearly enough to overcome his extremely high negatives over his opposition to tax cuts, support of the media’s gatekeeper role, and dislike of the religious portion of the Republican base. Worse, even if the New Hampshire effect wasn’t halved, he is going up against a pair of “hometown heroes” in Romney and Giuliani.
Mike Huckabee – I’m honestly surprised that he’s hanging in there as the big-government evangelical. Judging by the RealClearPolitics state-by-state polls, it’s essentially just Iowa that’s giving him any hope whatsoever. He doesn’t have the money to exploit any potential upset.
Ron Paul – Yes, he’s raised $9 million over the last 3 1/2 months. Just don’t ask too many questions on where that money has come from, as there is strong evidence that a significant portion of that is from less-than-honest-or-legal sources. The ideological heir to the late-19th-century anarchists hasn’t done anything useful with that influx of cash, and the ease of intercontinental travel and communications has made his neo-isolationism suicidal.
Duncan Hunter/Tom Tancredo – If I were a game show host, I would say something like, “Thank you for playing. Bob, tell them the parting gifts they didn’t win.”
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