Hodgepodge

Been way behind on a lot of things.

BARAK will be in Iowa at the Harkin steakfry this weekend. We don't see Mr. Obama making the plunge in 08. The Fix makes an observation that might make us think twice about that though.

Take John McCain's advice and contribute to Rightroots- (Whalen and Lamberti first of course!)

Pataki had a meeting of the minds here in the Hawkeye State yesterday

Huck throws down

Examiner feature on Huckabee. Relevant quotes:

“I have a hard time seeing [McCain] being elected president, just because I think, at times, some of his views have alienated very important segments of the Republican Party,” Huckabee says. But Huckabee himself risks alienating a significant segment of the Republican Party with his support for President Bush’s controversial guest-worker program, which would grant legal status to illegal aliens.....

Take taxes, for example. While Huckabee has cut some taxes as governor, he has raised others, earning the ire of fiscally conservative groups such as the Club for Growth.

“Just because you’ve cut taxes a couple of times, that doesn’t justify raising taxes,” says Andrew Roth, the club’s director of government affairs.

“The Club for Growth, for some reason, is all on my back, and I think, in part, because I had the audacity to challenge some of them," Huckabee said.

Huckabee devotes so much energy to the health issue that he sometimes sounds like he’s running for surgeon general, not president. This has caused some critics to write him off as a sort of political novelty act.

“They want to ghettoize me as a single-issue candidate, but I’m not,” he says.

Huckabee is certainly laying his stake with the SoCo's and he clearly has some bitterness with the anti-tax lobby and the first quote is interesting because you could sub out the word McCain and enter the word Huckabee and it would still be cogent.

Ghettoize?

Edit: We gave the Romney people a shot so it's time to be fair. Huckabloggers, what do you think of the article?

Shall not catch a break

Unfortunately the Cooler intern had a "term paper" to do, so we did not have a coorespondant to write a snarky review of the Jim Gilmore event in Johnston last evening. I know our readers are disappointed about that. Here's some more bad news for George Allen though to make everyone feel a little better about themselves this morning.

A new Mason Dixon poll, showed Allen up 4 against Jim Webb; but even more concerning was the fact that Mark Warner led the junior Senator by SIXTEEN in a prospective match-up in the Commonwealth (Virginia, not Massachusettes Willard).

Even better, George Allen stole an amendment directly from Dick Durbin (D-IL) and claimed it as his own. Steven Colbert did an entertaining spoof which you can see here. H/T Race42008 for bringing this one to our attention.

Side comment on Race42008- moving Rudy into 1st place on your big board when he's not even definately a candidate yet, is kind of silly. What do you say for yourselves on that one?

All for now.

Hello Willard

I can't believe we didn't realize that Mitt Romney's real first name is Willard. We wonder how that would effect his Presidential aspirations if he went by Willard instead of Mitt. Anyway the Examiner (we don't even know what the Examiner is- will someone enlighten us in the comments please) did a thorough feature on Mitt Romney's Presidential ambitions. It hits on all the same stuff with Willard: polygamy, his growing prominence in the race, his father, and the glowing reviews he's received from the media. He also addresses the abortion flip-flop, with an interesting back story. Here are some pertinent excerpts:

“When I talk to each of the presidential candidates, every one of them brings up Romney — unsolicited — because they’re all focused on him as the smartest, toughest guy in the race,” Norquist said last month.

Romney says his epiphany occurred just two years ago, when discussing stem cell research with a pair of experts from Harvard.

“At one point, one of the two said, ‘this is not a moral issue because we kill the embryos at 14 days‚’ ”
Romney recalls. “And I looked over at Beth Myers, my chief of staff, and we both had exactly the same reaction, which is it just hit us hard.

“And as they walked out, I said, ‘Beth, we have cheapened the sanctity of life by virtue of the Roe v. Wade mentality.’

“There’s nothing I’d like better than seeing someone else out there as the front-runner,” he says. “Back in 1968, my dad was the front-runner and he lost.”

Indeed, former Michigan Gov. George Romney was the early favorite to capture the Republican presidential nomination nearly four decades ago. But he torpedoed his own campaign by remarking that his early support for the Vietnam war had been the result of “brainwashing.”

What do the Romney folks think about this article? Is it a fair assessment of your guy? Let's try and stay away from rehashing the same arguments as in the two below posts.

Huck the Cable Guy

Is Mike Huckabee from the South? We don't remember. Let's consult this article by Kay Henderson and see if we can figure it out. Git-R-Done Huck.

The Washington Post-Webbister

The Washington Post continues to hammer away at Senator George Allen, with editorials masquerading as news articles. With the ever-rising percentage of the Virginia electorate living in the DC suburbs, particularly Fairfax County, the Post's influence in Virginia elections would seem to be rising. This is all bad news for Sen. Allen.

Who's a friend to the family?

While the Cooler staff was sweating out a Hawkeyes road victory at a local watering hole, the Cooler intern was dispatched to Clive for the Iowa Christian Alliance's "Friends of the Family" dinner to assess the 08ers presence at an event that was sure to be populated by a the likeliest of likely caucus goers. The interns report is below:

I arrived at seven flags early and didn't see any visible 08 presence. The first Presidential "candidate" I spotted was Dr. Mark Klein. He was there with a couple of staffers who were harassing the unsuspecting guests. It looked like he had a full table or two in the back of the hall. Just as I was escaping a conversation with his campaign manager I was approached by another aggressive campaigner, John Cox. He had a couple staff as well and some kids wearing John Cox shirts. They had a table as well.

As far as the real contenders go, Mike Huckabee was the only one that came in person. He didn't speak and he mostly stood around talking to those who approached him. I talked with him briefly about what he was doing in town this week and he mentioned a couple of State House and Senate candidates he was campaigning for and said that he was really concerned about helping them right now and not worrying about 2008. (yeah right). I didn't see any of his staff with him. Kayne Robinson was the emcee and he introduced Klein and Cox but not Huckabee.

As far as Presidential staff goes, Romeny had a table and I saw Jeff Fuller and Chad Airhart sitting with some other Romney people. Frist also bought a table. Marcus Branstad was there, but I didn't see Brian Kennedy. McCain's Iowa staff members, Chuck Larson and Matt Gronewald were at a table with Jim Kurtenbach. No sign of Pataki's staff or any ITR people, which I thought was strange.

The speakers were a little on the long side, but Nussle gave a very convincing speech that was well received. The crowd seemed to be pleased with him afterwards, I'm sure that the Nussle people were concerned about that with the abortion flap this week. Steve King gave the best speech of the night, I thought. He received a raucus standing O before he even got started. The whole night lasted about 4 hours. There were at least 500 people there I'd guess, it was a big crowd.

Most of the guests I talked to wanted to talk about Nussle or the Iowa game (which I missed- Thanks a lot guys) and they hadn't really started thinking about 2008 yet.

Thanks to the intern for taking one for the team. Any Cooler minions that were in attendance should comment away.