No Runny Eggs

Jim Geraghty gets results, as well as an e-mail from Todd Chelf, the man who asked Thompson the question about his “desire” that the chattering class said was proof that he didn’t really want the job (also exploded by the extended and actual answer also transcribed by Geraghty):

After watching the blogs and media coverage of the question, I think the question and answer were taken out of context. From the start I want to make one thing clear, I do not nor have I ever thought Sen. Thompson is lazy. No one can accomplish in a lifetime what he has accomplished and be lazy. The question really came from months of frustrations. I started looking around for a candidate early because I really wanted to be a part of a campaign. Gov. Allen from Virginia was a possibility until his election meltdown. I looked at Gov. Huckabee early, but wrote him off as not being a viable candidate this time around. Shows you what I know. I also saw some of the big government ideas the Romney camp is now pointing out.

Speaking of Gov. Romney, I looked at him as well. Something about Gov. Romney just does not feel right. There is something about him I just do not trust. He is a little to slick. His image is a little too perfect. I could care less he is a Mormon. Frankly, I think the press made too big of an issue of his faith. I can only remember one person who mentioned his Mormon faith as being an issue. Most Iowa Republicans I spoke with about Romney were more concerned about his flip-flopping on the issues, than him being a Mormon bishop.

A high school friend of mine is a lobbyist in Washington D.C. During a phone call he mentioned Fred Thompson was thinking of running for President. I remember asking "The guy from Law & Order?" I knew he had been a senator, but did not know much anything else about him. Then I started receiving emails from Lamar Alexander and his Volpac telling me he was trying to get his good friend Fred Thompson to run for president. I began to look at Sen. Thompson and his record. I got excited. Here was proven conservative with a proven track record. He was well known to people outside of the political geeks. Not mention the last time the Republicans nominated a proven conservative who was marginal actor we nominated one the greatest presidents of all time.

Then the waiting began. I was in the Ames area during the straw poll, but I did not go, because I was waiting for my candidate to get into the race. I rationalized his late entry the same way he did on Saturday, he was getting into the race when candidates use to get into the race. I kept telling my family and friends just wait until he gets into the race, it will be like a ground fire. Finally, he announced and then nothing. It was like running downstairs on Christmas morning, only to find underwear under the Christmas tree. The day arrived, but there was no excitement. To be honest, my interest waned.

A few months ago he came to Burlington. I arrived at the event site when the doors were to open and the place was packed. There was excitement. He walked into the room and spoke. He said what I wanted to hear. Finally here was my candidate. There was still something missing. He did not ask me to support him. He told me what he thought about the issues. He fielded questions from the audience. It did not feel like a campaign rally. It was more like a lecture from an outstanding political speaker. Then the questions really started to creep into my mind, does this man really want to be President? Is he running for President or Secretary of Homeland Security? We see that in Iowa. Candidates for "president" are really running for some other office. I wanted to ask him that night do you want to be my president. I found myself wanting to support Sen. Thompson, but not knowing if he wanted me to support him.

I continued to look at all the candidates, but I kept coming back to Sen. Thompson. I wanted the chance to hear him talk again and Saturday was my chance. My friend from D.C. was visiting town so we went together to hear Sen. Thompson. The room and crowd were smaller this time. The only seats left were next to a woman I know through my work with the Boy Scouts. We waited for Sen. Thompson to arrive. Rep. King of Iowa introduced him. He walked into the room and sat down at the table with one of our local radio personalities. Again his answers were refreshing. Instead of sound bite after sound bite, he gave long thought out answers. He was advocating the ideas I wanted to hear. Then the question and answer session arrived. I wanted to know does this man want to be my President? I got the last question in.

The answer was exactly what I hope it would. It was a great answer. At points during the answer I was ashamed I had asked the question. I knew the answer. Do I really want to support a candidate who lives to be President? Is that type of candidate really interested in serving the nation or serving his own self-interest? Sen. Thompson positioned himself as willing to serve, not for an enlarged ego, but out of a deep desire to serve his nation. He has desire to make our nation better for his children and grandchildren. Far from a slick Branson like presentation, he presented himself as a dedicated patriot willing to serve if we, the American people, were willing to have him do so. He refuses to be a President under false pretenses. He is not leading us into a shotgun relationship. He understands that under the founder’s concept of the social contract, both parties must be fully aware of the terms of the contract when entering into the agreement. If the American people do not want him to be President, he is not going to trick us into agreeing to him. As I said, the answer was refreshing. It was a great answer.

I went and saw Gov. Romney that night. Do not misunderstand me; if Gov. Romney is the Republican nominee for President, I will support him. His presentation was an event. His hair and teeth were perfect. He smiled. He pressed the flesh. His wife glowed as she stood next to him. Make no mistake; Gov. Romney wants to be President of the United States. Maybe that is why I do not trust him. In the end, Sen. Thompson was right, the next President should be someone who wants to serve the nation, not someone who wants to be President. Far from the press coverage that stated Sen. Thompson does not have the desire to be President, his desire is to serve the American people. He believes the best way to do that is to be President. If he is not elected President, he will not be disappointed. He will find some other way to serve the American people, just like he has throughout his career. After listening to Sen. Thompson and thinking about what he said, I can only conclude he is the best candidate for the job.

If Thompson has ever had a problem, it is that he refuses to play by the presstitutes’ 15-to-30 second clock.

At 17 minutes, it’s a bit long for the attention-deficit-disorder crowd, but it is worth the view.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VblJq4j0_SE[/youtube]

(H/T – Death By 1000 Papercuts via Curt)

Another piece of the conservative Iowa puzzle fell into place today as Rep. Gary Worthan endorsed Fred Thompson. Worthan pretty much summed up my thoughts: “I’ve been impressed with Fred’s ability to boil the issues down to the essential items, without a lot of hyperbole. He just plain tells the truth. We’re in a long hard struggle and there are no easy answers like some of the other candidates are coming with.”

Things are starting to gel, and as both Rick Moran and I pointed out on bRight @ Night, there is still a lot of room for movement in Iowa. The late endorsements from the politicians that matter, the Fred bus tour, and the blogburst (both the money raised and the numbers shown) have put Thompson on the far bank of the half-frozen river and in position to be the last man standing, not just the last conservative standing.

I got a bit inspired by Brennan’s use of the word “brilliance” to describe Mike Huckabee’s latest two gaffes…

I know, I’m no Chuck Jones, and that isn’t from “Operation: Rabbit”, but it fits the entire Huck-A-Boom/Huck-A-Bomb theme.

Revisions/extensions (10:41 pm 12/28/2007) – Latest bout of genius from Huck – he took $52,000 in speaking fees from entities working on embryonic stem cell research, working on expanding access to the “morning after” pill, and pushing for more gun grabs (H/T – Slublog from both his place and AoSHQ).

Bryan’s roasting of Ron Paul’s piss-poor performance on Meet The Press is an instant classic, as well as the perfect excuse to break out some classic Paul-Nut imagery:

Just a quick sample of something I commented on over there:

Evidently Paul doesn’t realize the utility that ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons would offer an Iran whose president has repeatedly declared his personal desire to wipe Israel off the map.

That’s just door #1, which would disqualify Paul on sheer stupidity.

Door #2 is that he doesn’t care if Israel is wiped off the map by nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, in which case he gets disqualified for having no idea what the saying, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it," means.

Door #3 is the most-frightening; he’s rooting for Israel’s destruction. Judging by his quip that the cross equals fascism, I’d say it’s fair to state the door is unlocked.

Outstanding work from Jim Lynch, so I’ll just point you in the right direction.

I wonder if MKH would let him do the voiceover for a remake of a classic HamNation (I still say “To Hear Good News” would’ve won video of the year by a larger margin than “Sopranos: DC Edition” did, but that’s just me).

When Rush Limbaugh spends the first hour of his show crushing a candidate (Jim Geraghty has a multi–part liveblog), they stay crushed.

Guess Huckabee truly is a uniter (H/T via Jim – Brian Maloney) – “The good news for Mike Huckabee is that he’s doing one hell of a job of reuniting significant portions of the old Reagan coalition. The bad news is that it’s increasingly arrayed against him.”

Whether it stays together after the Huck-A-Bust is complete, nobody knows.

Revisions/extensions (1:12 pm 12/21/2007) – Jim asks whether it’s fatal. It’s the death blow that was never taught to Chuck Norris. Specifically to the guy from another campaign that brought up the Iowa pastors; there are a lot more parishoners than pastors, and the parishoners are a lot less forgiving.

In honor of Hillary Clinton’s holiday regifting greetings, Jim over at bRight & Early has a couple of songs worthy of Charles Henrickson and doug from upland:

I’ll Be In Your Wallet
The Clinton Song (Social Programs for Everyone)

We do need the tune to sing it to though :-)

I don’t know whether I will be revising and extending my remarks back in May and June on the question of whether conservativism is out of gas, but Jim Geraghty makes a pretty strong case for it being in the process of cracking up.

I’m still trying to formulate my thoughts, and I’m hoping that January doesn’t make me reconsider those remarks.

Well, I guess flipping does have its advantages.

The rumors that Tom Tancredo will drop out of the Presidential race tomorrow have been swirling around the ‘Net all day. Richard Miniter at Pajamas Media throws some gasoline on this fire. First, he points out that Tancredo does not have to decide now whether he will either run for his seat again or run for the soon-to-be-open Senate seat held by the retiring Wayne Allard in the next few weeks as Colorado does not have a January requirement to file for candidacy. Second, he may well endorse Fred Thompson.

The man who may be kingmaker in Iowa, Rep. Steve King, endorsed Fred Thompson. What’s interesting is while Michelle Malkin had it right all along, MSNBC tried to push Mitt Romney. They pushed so hard, reps from Team Romney were in the back room bewildered when King delivered the coup de grace to them.

Guess when Huck-A-Boom turns into Huck-A-Bomb (or is it -Bust?), it will be a case of last man standing instead of returning to the default.

Or at least as instant as I get. Since I managed only one d-bomb, and I managed to more-or-less keep up, I’ll go with my notes:

Rudy Giuliani – B- – The good: He hung tough on the fiscal conservatism message. The bad: He once again pissed off the social conservatives. The ugly: Back to all-NYC, all-the-time, and he’s a Gorebal Warmnig acolyte.

Mike Huckabee – D+ – The good: Ducked-and-weaved his way around the fiscal trap. The bad: The pinata resembled old, fat Huck, and it got split open by as much his own words as his opponents’. The ugly: The claims that the “Fair”Tax will cure poverty and baldness.

Duncan Hunter – C+ – The good: Stayed on target. The bad: That target is leading Jack and spit, and Jack left town. The unexpected: He actually left San Diego for once on education.

Alan Keyes – D- – The good: He finally got to sit at the adults’ table as the “conscience” of the Republican Party. The bad: Instead of actually advancing his campaign, he burned his 15 minutes of fame trying to be said conscience. The takeaway: If you thought Thompson was late, he’s got nothing on Keyes.

John McCain – B from me, F from the average Iowan – The good (or what the Iowans would say is bad): Very strong on the fiscal conservatism issue; too strong for the average ADM corn farmer. The bad: He didn’t get quoted. The ugly: He’s almost a Gorebal Warming acolyte.

Ron Paul – D+ – The good: When dragged away from the Blame America First/Last/Always and goldbug lines, he actually makes sense. The bad: He always returns home to roas…er, roost. The ugly: He took Rosie O’Donnell’s advice.

Mitt Romney – B from me, A from the average Iowan – The good (at least not specific to Iowans): None of the candidates laid a glove on him (which speaks to the weakness of the field more than to his actual performance). The bad: 4 more years of Bush with even more gubmint-forced health care “solutions” and welfare handouts. The Iowa-specific good: He rediscovered his pander.

Tom Tancredo – C- – See Duncan Hunter’s wrap, only he wasted a golden opportunity on education.

Fred Thompson – B- – The good: He laid a good smackdown on Washburn. The bad: He reinforced the “lazy” line by saying he’d waste Year 1 doing a lot of talking (say, isn’t that what the campaign’s for?). The odd: His tax smack on Romney, which seemed good at the time, will not survive the first cutting of the raw tape.

Carolyn Washburn, the moderator – F – The good: At least this was less than 1:30. The bad: She is a domineering liberal bent on an agenda anathema to no less than 50% of each of the Pubbies on the stage. The ugly: That’s 1:23 I’ll never get back.

These debates, hosted by The Des Moines Register, will be the last debates before the Iowa caucuses. I cannot guarantee that I will be live-blogging either, mainly because I can’t guarantee I will be back in front of the computer by 1 pm. What will make these debates unusual, besides the odd start time and the fact that we’ll be going another 3 weeks without another before the selection process actually starts, is that it will be available over a multitude of networks; CNN, C-SPAN3, Fox News Channel, Fox News Radio, and C-SPAN Radio, as well as at DesMoinesRegister.com.

Since I wasn’t able to collate a look ahead to the Republican debate, which will feature not 8, but 9 candidates (including Alan Keyes), I’ll just point you in the general direction of Jim Geraghty’s preview. Besides, he put together something far better than I could with an unlimited amount of effort.

Ed: I had intended to make this a multi-part one-day series, but events are keeping me from getting to part 2 until at least tomorrow.

A couple of interesting things happened since my last look at the pool. The first is something I should have expected; the Democrats have historically been very reluctant to continue to embrace their early front-runner, in this case Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama has taken the lead in Iowa, and is threatening in New Hampshire and South Carolina. However, that also bumps up against the other Dem maxim – Iowa is not a reliable precursor to success. If it were, we would’ve had nominee Howard Dean. It remains to be seen which of the maxims holds.

The second is the meteoric climb of Mike Huckabee in Iowa and South Carolina at the putative expense of everybody else, but especially early-state front-runner Mitt Romney. The ease of Huckabee’s supplanting of Romney caused a pair of “panic” moves; Romney giving his “Mormon” speech, and Fred Thompson declaring Iowa his Alamo.

I’m almost certainly in the minority on the “Mormon” speech; I honestly and personally did not see the reason for it. By the same token, unlike a lot of others that can fairly be described as the “religious right”, my sole religious “test” is whether one’s religion (or lack thereof) compels him or her to violate the Constitution by imposing said religion (or lack thereof) upon the rest of the country. I don’t see that out of Mormonism.

Thompson’s campaign has come to the late realization that Iowa, as one of only 3 pre-Super Duper Tuesday states that count as much now as they did in prior elections, is wide open. Even though Huckabee, with the undoubted aiding and abetting by the media, has made a miraculous move, it wasn’t exactly a solid movement. A recent poll that gave Huckabee the lead also noted that roughly 60% of Iowans could still be persuaded to leap off a particular candidate’s bandwagon.

Now that the prelims are done, it’s time to eliminate the also-rans (later, Hunter, Paul, Tancredo, Richardson, Kucinich, Biden, Dodd, and Gravel) and focus on why each of the 8 remaining can and cannot win their respective party’s nomination:

Hillary Clinton (D)

Why she can win: She still has the popular (in Democratic circles) Bill as her husband, and thanks to DNC machinations, she has the reduced Michigan contingent locked up. Also, she and her campaign staff are masters of negative campaigning.
Why she cannot win: As stated above, the Democrats tend to dump early front-runners like yesterday’s trash. Morever, her campaign is imploding.

John Edwards (D)

Why he can win: He’s perfectly poised to benefit from any potential backlash from mud slung between Clinton and Obama.
Why he cannot win: This isn’t Wisconsin 1992, where those who play the nice guy can finish first.

Rudy Giuliani (R)

Why he can win: There’s way too much time between Iowa/New Hampshire/South Carolina and Super Duper Tuesday for any surprise candidates to maintain momentum on their own, and his entire strategy has revolved around SDT. This has been enhanced by the faltering of Romney in 2/3rds of that early triad.
Why he cannot win: He is, frankly, a liberal running in what is still considered a conservative set of primaries.

Mike Huckabee (R)

Why he can win: He’s got the big media-driven mo.
Why he cannot win: Other than abortion, God and guns, he is, frankly, a liberal running in what is still considered a conservative set of primaries. Morever, he doesn’t have the monopoly on the secular 2/3rds of those 3.

John McCain (R)

Why he can win: I believe that somebody other than Giuliani, Huckabee, and Romney will be the media flavor of the week before New Hampshire, and McCain’s been Old Reliable for them in the past. Also, he’s running further to the right than he’s run before.
Why he cannot win: Elephants tend to have long memories, and McCain has a lot of baggage.

Barack Obama (D)

Why he can win: He’s a shiny new package for the same tired liberal policies, and he wasn’t the early front-runner.
Why he cannot win: Seven letters – C-L-I-N-T-O-N

Mitt Romney (R)

Why he can win: He still has New Hampshire, and he still has a pile of money.
Why he cannot win: There’s a certain lack of trust of all his flip-flops. That was the big knock on the last candidate out of Massachusetts, and it would be ironic to say the least if the Republicans fell into the same trap the Democrats did the last Presidential election.

Fred Thompson (R)

Why he can win: Out of the 5 remaining Republicans, he is the most-conservative one left. There are still hints of something out there the pollsters are missing.
Why he cannot win: The campaign has frankly been a disaster, and the media is bound and determined to have two liberals duking it out from mid-February through November.

I’m still gathering my thoughts on a “X campaigning days to Iowa” update on the race, while waiting to see what a couple of late-breaking moves (one I should have seen coming, one I couldn’t) and the Mitt Mormon speech did. However, I can’t let Mike Huckabee’s meteoric rise in Iowa, South Carolina (if Rasmussen can be believed), and nationally (again, if Rasmussen or national polls can be believed) go without comment, especially since just about my entire blogroll is playing Hack-a-Huck. Allow me to get my six fouls in.

While I agree with Ace that the presstitutes are pretending to love Huckabee right now and that a Huckabee-Dem matchup would hand the Oval Office to said Dem, I’m a bit more conspiratorial than his implication that matchup is what they want. While they would like that matchup, it is only their second-favorite matchup behind the Rudy Giuliani-Dem one because they’ll win either way there. Despite the (apparent) lack of movement by Fred Thompson, they are still deathly-afraid of Thompson as the nominee, and they’ve also become afraid that the full “conversion” of Mitt Romney to a conservative is real. They needed someone to finish cutting the tires of Romney’s early momentum, and who better than someone that can finish the process of separating the pro-lifers from the Republican Party because his only conservative qualifications are that he’s a Baptist minister and pro-life?

The binary choice of Giuliani and Huckabee is unpalatable to signifiant and different, if somewhat-overlapping, segments of the Republican Party. Despite not being exactly a fiscal or governmental conservative, Giuliani is positively Goldwaterian (circa 1964) compared to Huckabee. On the pro-life front, there almost cannot be a wider difference between the two.

Huckabee has several serious problems as a Presidential candidate beyond his fiscal and governmental liberalism. Despite his late protestations that he isn’t an shill for illegal aliens (H/T – Hot Air), he has a long and sad record of being a shill for same. I wish those three items were enough to have killed his campaign, but as the second President Bush has proven over the last 8 years, the core of conservatism has been eroded over the last 75 years to the point where government-induced “compassion” has become a bigger draw than the desire for a hands-off government that actually maintains its borders.

Depending on whether Huckabee is stopped cold before or after January, it’s fortunate or unfortunate that those are the least of his problems. You may or may not have heard of Wayne Dumond (if you haven’t, he’s a convicted rapist who was paroled at the urging of Huckabee who went on to rape and murder a woman; a damning timeline of Huckabee’s involvement in the decision to parole Dumond at Hot Air). Considering that Republican voters care a bit more about stuff like that than Democratic ones (just ask Mike Dukakis), I’ll wager that Huckabee’s ultimate failure will come well before Dukakis’.

If those don’t sink Huckabee in Iowa and South Carolina, there’s an interesting (in a Chinese way) quote from Huckabee that was caught by Jim Geraghty that will finish the split job started by the presstitutes – “There’s only one explanation for it (Huckabee’s surge in the polls), and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people.”