No Runny Eggs

Don’t let the title I gave this thing fool you, but Christian Schneider makes a pretty strong case for Jeri Ryan being the woman that changed the world over at his employer’s (the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute) blog. I can’t do him justice by either excerpting or stealing, so go read it. (R&E part 2 – 7:29 pm 1/7/2008) – If that crashes on you, Chris cross-posted it over at Atomic Trousers. I waited as long as I thought I could before doing theft below; sorry about that, Chris.

I can, however, offer the obligatory picture…

Revisions/extensions (7:03 pm 1/7/2008) – Michelle Malkin delivered a Malkinlanche to the WPRI that almost crushed the server, so I’ll steal it except for the pic Chris used (not the one I chose). While I would prefer the commentary to be either at the WPRI or Malkin’s place, I’ve already picked up a comment here, so I can’t exactly shut that down now.

With Barack Obama’s meteoric rise topping the news these days, many people have forgotten the bizarre series of events that paved the way to his stunning ascendance. It’s especially interesting given that some personal and minor details, thought at the time to be insignificant, could now eventually shape the world we live in – given that Obama has a realistic chance to win the presidency. In retrospect, Obama’s presidential run was the candidacy that almost never happened.

Back in 2004, Barack Obama was an Illinois state senator with some modest accomplishments on his resume. He spearheaded welfare reform in the Illinois statehouse, and took the lead in passing a law that required interrogations in murder cases to be videotaped.

After unsuccessfully challenging strong Democratic incumbent Bobby Rush in a Congressional primary in 2000, Obama returned in 2004 to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald. Obama emerged from a crowded Democratic primary that included multi-millionaire Blair Hull, who spent $29 million of his own money in the primary alone (including paying homeowners $75 a day to keep his signs in their yards). In an 8-candidate race, Obama garnered 53% of the vote, routing his opponents.

Yet despite running away with the primary, Obama still had a formidable challenge in Republican Jack Ryan. Ryan was an impressive candidate – attractive and wealthy, with law and business degrees from Harvard. After making a fortune at Goldman Sachs, Ryan left to teach in an inner city school.

Yet Ryan had a problem – during the campaign, he was going through a messy divorce from actress Jeri Ryan, of "Star Trek: Voyager" fame. Details of Jeri Ryan’s testimony contained lurid details about Ryan forcing his wife to go to sex clubs in Paris. These details were toxic to Jack Ryan’s campaign, and he saw his poll numbers plummet – eventually, Republican leaders pressed Ryan to quit the race, fearing he was toxic to the statewide ticket.

Eventually, Ryan bowed out, leaving the Illinois Republican Party to find a candidate to run against Obama. This led to the national embarrassment of Alan Keyes moving to Illinois to run. Naturally, Obama won 70%-27%, buoyed by his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

The rest is history. Certainly, Obama deserves all the credit for the way he has excited Democratic crowds around the country – leading to his rout of Hillary Clinton in Iowa. And he may have beaten Jack Ryan on his own. But it’s fascinating to think that the salacious testimony of a woman scorned could one day fundamentally alter the path of the world in which we live. Without it, Barack Obama could still be sitting in the Illinois statehouse, planning his next political move.

Note: this will be at the top of the blog through 10 pm; fresher stuff (if any) will be below):

Yes, it’s a bit early, but I need solace after an extra-chunky NFL weekend (0-3 straight-up, 0-3 ATS, 2-1 O/U so far and another set of losses setting up late in the first half of the last game). Guess CoverItLive got a bit too crowded last night. No matter; I’ll be back at it here at 6:45 Central, along with most of the Pubbies (Ron Paul will finally be shown the door, so the threat of a-, s-, d-, f- and h-bombs is significantly-reduced). The usual rules apply, namely I paraphrase heavily, questions are in italics, answers are in normal text, my own comments that are in-line with questions or answers are in parentheses, and because it’s Fox, if you see “DING! DING!” and it’s not in parentheses, it’s not me agreeing, it’s the bell ringing.

Joining in the live coverage (I’ll try to remember to add to this):
– Mike (Mike’s America/Flopping Aces – both links given because Flopping Aces “may” be down for part of this)
– Justin Higgins at Right On The Right
– Hot Air
– Michelle Malkin (without the Red Bull this time)
– Free Republic

Revisions/extensions (8:58 pm 1/6/2008) – First, thank you, everybody, for making this a fun and busy live-blog. I had hoped to get to Mike’s, but much like his, things got real busy. Thank you, Stephen, for sending over the usual VodkaPundit crew.

As for who won and lost, I may go back through the tapes tomorrow. I need some sleep right now; I’m in the middle of a nice little chest cold that laid me flat most of the day.

R&E part 2 (10:00 pm 1/6/2008) – Fortunately, the debate got done before CoverItLive went down. Once it comes back up, that blank in the middle of the post will have the wrap.

(H/T – JammieWearingFool, who is having a better NFL weekend than I am; then again, who isn’t?)

How desperate is Hillary Clinton to demonstrate that her campaign isn’t Dead (Wo)man Walking? Desperate enough to bus in people from Massachusetts, says the Washington Times:

Reporters who walked into this Nashua high school today were immediately struck by the crowd "” there are visibly more people here for Sen. Hillary Clinton than were here for Sen. Barack Obama yesterday in the same location.

The Clinton crowd was loud and boisterous and their foot-stomping was thunderous.

Many of them were also from Massachusetts.

Clinton gave a few minute speech about how she sees the race for 2008 shaping up, then started taking questions. As she did, I noticed dozens of people start streaming out via the back doors.

Of the 7 people I interviewed, three said they had taken advantage of the short drive to come see both Clinton and Obama in the area in advance of the Feb. 5 Massachusetts primary.

But the others said they were Clinton volunteers who came up to canvass on her behalf this weekend.

Serap Sankoh, a biostatistician from Acton, Mass., said she had been actively recruited to attend and wave signs wildly by the Clinton campaign. “I got the telephone calls not last night but the night before and I’m a die-hard supporter, so I made the drive,” she said.

Another reporter noticed a charter bus parked outside "” and it wasn’t part of our traveling motorcade.

Yark – CoverItLive died about 9:20. Time to do this the old-fashioned way…

9:22 – To Richardson – Pushing national service for college education.

9:22 – To Breck – It’s the corporates. Destroy them (and not the Islamists?) for the sheeple.

9:23 – P-p-please mandate a carbon tax. – To Richardson – It’s a stupid idea because it’s a mandate and it is passed onto the people. Cap and trade is also a mandate, but it’s good. We need light rail (bullshi*)

9:25 – To Obama – I like cap-and-trade and mandating sacrifices on the altar of Gorebal Warming.

9:26 – To Hiliary – We’re headed to a recession, so we need more welfare.

9:28 – We have 3 engines out, we’re leaking fuel…oops, wrong speech. We have a housing crisis, a job crisis, and a looming recession. Defend taking away the Bush tax cuts. To Hiliary – Rich is $250K.

9:32 – Sorry about that; the PHP error popped up again (have to track it down). To Obama – I like trickle-up.

9:34 – How do you improve the economy? To Richardson – Balance the budget, pay off the ChiCom debt, line-item veto (so far, so good), kill corporate welfare (starting to go off the rails), tax breaks for those that overpay (way off the rails).

9:34 – What would you take back? To Hiliary – Why me first? They’re not talking about recession, education, and I’ll leave the rest to the pundits.

To Richardson – I’d take back backing Wizard White because he wasn’t lieberal enough.

To Breck – I take back what I said about the Black Pantsuit jacket a few debates ago, you look mahvelous, Hill.

To Obama – We’re different than the people we eliminated and the the Pubbies (no shi*, Sherlock).

And we’re done.

Thanks for coming on out. Sorry about the outages, both on the CoverItLive and this place. I’m headed to bed; I don’t feel like listening to ‘Rats spin ‘Rats.

I haven’t yet decided whether to be nice or surly (you’ve got a few minutes yet to vote)…

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…but whatever the decision, it will be below. If you’ve never watched a live-blog with CoverItLive’s software, it’s quite a bit nicer than just watching it on a blog. First, you don’t have to hit refresh. Second, you can participate (all comments on the CoverItLive portion are subject to my approval). Third, if I do decide to be nice, I can multicast this puppy. Going in, Mitt Romney took Wyoming with 8 delegates, Fred Thompson was second with 2, Duncan Hunter picked up his first delegate, and the 12th was still up in the air as of post time.

Revisions/extensions (5:29 pm 1/5/2008) – Hate to disappoint those of you who want me to show my AoSHQ colors, but this thing’s going multi-cast. I will, however, be making massive use of the <expletive deleted> tag. I will also be keeping an eye on the NFL.

Also, I almost forgot the ground rules; I paraphrase a lot, questions will be in italics, answers in plain text, and any personal comments in-line with questions or answers will be in parentheses.

Also live-blogging (list as of 5:13 pm):

– William Smith at Conservative Blogger (also using CoverItLive)
– Free Republic (yeah, it’s not a blog, but it’s also home for me)
– Allahpundit at Hot Air
– Justin Higgins at Right On The Right (exact thread)
Added 5:58 pm
– Ace of Spades
– Michelle Malkin

There’s a certain dearth of pro-Huckabee blogs on my roll and reader (no, that’s not by design; most of the blogs there got there long before the primary season started a year ago, and I didn’t drop anybody because of who they supported), as well as a dearth of Democratic ones (that’s by design) so this is not likely going to be pretty. Let’s roll with those that didn’t simply choose to drink the night away (and see if I can inflate the TTLB ranking of some good blogs):

– Jack M is rooting for a brokered convention.
– Kate, in a common theme, wonders, “(W)hat the hell are those Iowans smoking anyway?”
– Gaius calls it unhappy returns for both Clinton and Romney/McCain (the latter is an unusual call).
– Trail-Mix has a long, laundry list on both sides of the aisle.
– Sinistar is doubling down on Fred. (side note; I agree; let it ride)
– Swint is blaming Mormon bigotry and spinning madly for Mitt
– Ed Driscoll has a two-parter: “A Mormon in the Dog House?” and Obama’s victory over both Clinton and the Jackson/Sharpton wing of the party
– The Fred folks won a ticket to the next dance.
– Mary has the triple play – Obama in the racial time warp, a warning for the Huck-a-Soldiers that not everybody is like Iowa, and Smilex for Clinton.
– Elliot declares Obama the Dem king, but isn’t ready to hand over the Pubbie crown to Huckabee.
– Bruce recaps his radio show with the obvious; Obama and Huck win big, Clinton and Romney lose big.
– HeatherRadish tried to stay awake to avoid being eaten by her cat, got embarrassed by the Huck-A-Iowans.
– The Headless One thinks the unthinkable nightmare scenario; Obama v Huckabee v Paul v Bloomberg.
– Allahpundit asks whether we can dance on Hillary’s grave (answer; not yet; we need that race alive long enough to sort out our own problems without having the “false-flag” Paul-Nuts really deliver a SNAFU package).
– Bryan asks, “What now?” (Well, Clinton’s going to go grab a pair of pliers and a blow torch)
– Jib continues the common theme and asks, “Really, Iowa?”
– Brian of Liberty Pundit has a lengthy view that I can’t do justice in a few short words.
– Jim Lynch says it went as expected.
– Jessica McBride has a bullet-point review.
– Michelle Malkin focuses on some of the eclectic – Duncan soldiering on despite a 1% showing (makes sense; he used the ignore-Iowa strategy, and his campaign is more to raise awareness than anything else), unions losing (again), and asking whether the LeftStreamMedia will stop race-based fear-mongering (short answer, upon Obama’s numerical inevitability as the nominee and not a moment later).
– Dean continues the theme of the night/morning, “Anybody but that goob,” and warns there is one last gasp out of the Clinton Slime Machine for Obama.
– Gopfolk may be wrong and he may be right (wasn’t that a song?)
– Peggy Noonan says, “Out with the old, in with the new.” (I would’ve went with the “bold” from the old Miller Brewing commercial; Obama and Huckabee aren’t exactly “new” as much as “bold”).
– Bill Bradley says it’s historic.
– Mark McNally says it was Preachers’ Night in Iowa.
– Fred (Dooley, not Thompson) came oh-so-close to using actual swear words to describe Clinton’s reaction (I normally would supply them, but since this mega-link post will likely draw in some traffic and hopefully send out some as well, I won’t here; I probably will repeat them in another post because I can’t get rid of my AoS moron itch).
– Matthew declares winners and losers in the Huck v Mitt battle.
– Jon Ham has a two-parter: he asks how a black guy can beat a white woman and a white man in a state that’s 90% white, and points out Chuck Grassley’s idiotic defense of the caucii.
– John Hawkins does a lengthy “What now?”
– Silent E has a unique way to state the obvious.
– Slublog’s at stage 2 of grief, and has used his anger to become a late-blooming FredHead. He’s also fearful of the coming split, which explains the bloom.
– Kathy Carpenter is almost alone in saying there were no surprises.
– Teresa does the wrap in pics.
– Peter has a 2-parter – who’s left to stop the Huckster except Fred (along with F-bombs and flying ashtrays from Clinton), and Huck’s the man with the glass jaw (er, at this point, it’s Romney with the shattered glass jaw)
– Asian Badger continues the theme of the night/morning with “Huckabee, Schmuckabee”.
– Jim Geraghty has Master Rove’s review (dammit; I missed Jim’s on CNN; anybody have video?)
– RAG rejoices that skin color is no longer a barrier to victory.
– Mary Katharine has the last-second New Hampshire itinerary for Huckabee (please burn that mo in NH, Mike)
– USCitizen points out that Thompson took 3rd despite the Fox News Blackout.
– Stephen Green punches out an angry open letter to Iowans that starts off with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
– Will Collier takes the Giuliani/Hunter approach to Iowa; it doesn’t matter.
– Zip says, “It don’t mean nothin’, not a thing.”
– James Wigderson sings “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
– Brian Fraley gives some free professional analysis (pssst, hey Sean, The Markesian Group is available)
– Erick declares war on the Politico, which has declared war on Thompson and congratulates Ron Paul
R&E part 1 (10:17 am 1/4/2008)
– Nick gives this round to Jesus (note to Nick; Giuliani wasn’t competing in Iowa, and he isn’t competing in New Hampshire, so he’s going nowhere).
R&E part 2 (10:44 am 1/4/2008)
– Curt is ready for the South Carolina round.
– I’m horrible at self-promotion, but I may as well point you at my own lack of cognitive consciousness.
R&E part 3 (12:20 pm 1/4/2008)
– William Smith gives a Granite insight into what’s next.
– Just a Grunt offers a $10 commentary for 2¢.
– Eric takes a typical long Tygrrrr look at a Pope and a Hope.

I’ll have more tomorrow after a good night’s sleep, and I may well revise and extend this then, but I won’t let a lack of cognitive consciousness stop me from putting out a few overtired thoughts.

First, on the Democratic side, John Edwards is DONE!!! with a capital E and three exclamation points. Yeah, he took second to Barack Obama, but he needed to both get much closer than 8 percentage points (in delegate-equivalents; the Dems have goofy rules that don’t let vote totals get out) to the lead and more than a half a percentage point ahead of Hillary Clinton. Iowa was his make-or-break state, and he didn’t quite make.

Speaking of Clinton, she is now on life support. I won’t say that race is over, if only because there is enough of the Clinton Slime Machine for one more slime, but if she can’t capture New Hampshire, we will have Dem nominee Barack Obama long before Super-Duper Tuesday, with potentially-frightening consequences for the Republican process.

On the Republican side, almost everybody, including the temporary-cheering section in the media, grossly underestimated the Huck-A-Boom. Mike Huckabee has survived a very heavy round of Hack-A-Huck, mainly by tapping into both the logical conclusion of “compassionate ‘conservatism'” (namely, using the power and full weight of government to force a particular set of values that at best bear a passing semblance to conservatism) and the evangelical factor to destroy the well-(and self-)financed person that exlemplified the “mere” extension of “compassionate ‘conservatism'” and the rest of the field. The problem is the next state, New Hampshire, isn’t exactly evangelical-friendly. However, he’s game to try.

Destroyed best describes Mitt Romney. In the span of 6 weeks, he went from the prohibitive favorite to a 9-point loser despite outspending the competition and flopping from view to view to fit the perceived message, and he’s headed to another state where he’s in unexpected serious trouble. He’s uncomfortably stuck in the middle of the road with the loser toe tag on.

The view on Fred Thompson is very mixed. As I type, he’s holding onto a 0.26-point lead for third with 7% of the precincts left to report. The good news is his original competition in his next competitive state, Romney in South Carolina, is dead in the water, listing, settling, and ablaze, and Thompson is, if barely, the last broad-spectrum conservative relatively unscathed. The bad is New Hampshire lies between the two, and South Carolina is arguably very evangelical-friendly (remember, John McCain’s campaign died there in 2000 immediately after he pissed off the evangelicals).

John McCain lives on to fight another day. Even if he doesn’t come back to take 3rd, he exceeded expectations, which combined with Romney’s fall, will be more than enough to give him New Hampshire again. However, the field is too crowded, and he’s not enough of a media darling to take that and do what he didn’t do in 2000.

Ron Paul is the third surprise. He has the ability to be a very nasty spoiler (with the emphasis on nasty), though beyond helping to finish off Romney in New Hampshire because of his Libertarian background, I do not know who else he will spoil, mainly because there is still barely a Democratic race.

Perhaps the night’s biggest Republican winner is also the night’s second-biggest Republican loser. Despite getting only 3%, Rudy Giuliani has to be happier than a pig in slop over the devastation of Romney. While Huckabee could easily get 2 of the 3 early states that Romney had hoped to sweep, Huckabee’s base is far more dissimilar to Giuliani’s than Romney’s is. That leaves the Giuliani strategy of using the large, socially-liberal states to rack up the delegates pretty much unassaultable directly.

So, what now? To cleanly paraphrase Marcellus Wallace (which means I lose the most-colorful half of the language), let me tell you what now. Thompson has to get a few hard-cases to go to work on the Huck in South Carolina. You hear me talking, Huckleberry boy? We ain’t through with you by a damn sight. We’re gonna get medevial.