Hat Tip: Elect Romney Blog

Mayor Giliani:

Rudy Giuliani didn't score many points with social conservatives last week when he issued this impassioned endorsement of the Supreme Court's decision to uphold a federal ban on "partial-birth" abortion: "I agree with it." He certainly didn't win over Richard Land, who has said he would never vote for Mr. Giuliani. . . "If he'll lie to two wives, what makes you think he wouldn't lie to you?" . . . we have Rudy Giuliani, a twice divorced, pro-choice, supporter of civil unions.
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But it seems there is just about nothing Rudy Giuliani could do to change Mr. Land's mind about his candidacy. "Three is one too many spouses for most evangelicals," he says. . . What bothers Mr. Land is the "circumstances of [Mr. Giuliani's] divorce and the fact that there is more than one of them." It's not exactly a distinction the Bible makes, as Mr. Land no doubt knows, but he may be right about how much spouse-hopping evangelicals will tolerate.

Governor Romney:

Mr. Land might, on the other hand, vote for Mitt Romney. He says that evangelical voters may be able to get over their problems with a Mormon. "Charitably speaking," Mr. Land says, "they would call [Mormonism] the fourth Abrahamic religion. When they're less charitable, they would call it a cult." And they might even let him off the hook for his flip-flops on the social issues. "A lot of people in this country who are pro-life didn't used to be."

Mr. Land says that reporters have misunderstood what it means that Mr. Romney has changed his mind. "Why does the liberal media call it a flip-flop? Because they believe in the moral correctness of their pro-choice position. The only reason someone would move from the morally correct position, as they perceive it, to the morally incorrect position is because of political expediency. But religious conservatives believe that their position is the morally correct position. So they don't see this as a flip-flop. They see this as a journey . . . as growth."

"Hard-to-Get":

Richard Land is a man waiting to be courted, and on behalf of religious conservatives he is playing hard to get. He wants "to make certain that we never become as taken for granted by the Republican Party as African-Americans have been taken for granted by the Democratic Party." . . . With a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a doctorate of philosophy from Oxford, he has often been credited with providing the intellectual heft behind the religious right's political strategy.

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Dr. Richard Land [Wikipedia]
President of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
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Senator McCain:

John McCain, who voted against the gay marriage amendment and who crafted the campaign finance laws that have done much to damage the anti-abortion efforts of religious conservatives;

Senator Thompson:

. . . or perhaps Fred Thompson, who supported McCain-Feingold and says that gay marriage is a state issue. Mr. Land remains oddly upbeat, particularly about Mr. Thompson, the possibility of whose candidacy he finds "tantalizing."

"The Unelectable Candidates":

But he acknowledges the reality of his constituency's situation: "Evangelicals would be very happy if Mike Huckabee or Sam Brownback or Duncan Hunter were the nominee, but the problem with those three guys is they don't give any indication they can win." And he adds, "With Hillary Clinton looming on the horizon, electability is a very important issue." . . . At the very least, the evangelical influence in the Republican primary will be diluted, with some religious conservatives thinking ahead to the general election and others going for the purest representative of their values. It is noteworthy that even among the unelectable candidates, evangelicals can't make up their minds between a free-trade, open-immigration candidate like Sen. Brownback and a closed-borders protectionist like Rep. Hunter.

Governor Romney:

Mitt Romney is still a good possibility, but Mr. Land is waiting to see if the former Massachusetts governor will take his advice and give a major address on the way his faith influences his politics (à la JFK's 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on his Catholicism).

Speaker Gingrich:

. . . Mr. Land wouldn't vote for Newt Gingrich: "I am not a big enough hypocrite to have made character an issue with Bill Clinton and turn around and vote for men who broke their oaths to their wives." Having been in his current position since 1988, Mr. Land has had more than enough opportunity to see Mr. Gingrich up close, and he has not been impressed: "When he was speaker, when they went into conference to negotiate, it was always our issues that got negotiated away and his economic issues that didn't." . . . Mr. Land suggests that Mr. Gingrich was good at paying lip service to evangelicals: "He always understood how important social conservatives were to the coalition." But Mr. Land believes that many of them have learned their lesson: "I think most evangelicals still don't trust him."

Consequences of a Giuliani GOP win?

If Mr. Giuliani does somehow win the nomination, Mr. Land predicts that "you will see a drop in evangelical participation in the presidential election and in races below that." Sounding more like a preacher warning of a coming plague, Mr. Land says, "even if the alternative is Hillary," a lot of evangelicals will stay home.

These are some provacative comments from Richard Land. Land has already promised to wage a full frontal assault on Giuliani should he still be a strong candidate as things get closer. Not so sure that is a good thing for the generals, we do need to win. But what I do find especially heartning though is his position on Romney's "flip-flop's" and his honesty about the need for a commander in chief who has some good marital standards- something I believe in strongly.

From RCP:

Romney said the May 3 debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library -- co-sponsored by The Politico and MSNBC -- proves that Republicans "have a lot more courage of our convictions," because they are willing to take questions from a moderator who earlier in his career worked as an aide to Democratic politicians. Democratic presidential candidates have refused to take part in two debates co-sponsored by Fox News, arguing that the network is slanted toward Republicans.

"Why is it that the Democrats wouldn't even go on Fox, but we Republicans are happy to sit there and have Chris Matthews of the Carter administration, former chief of staff to (ex-House speaker) Tip O'Neill?" asked Romney, in a Tuesday evening interview here with The Politico. "We're happy to sit there and have him dish questions to us, but they won't even go on Fox."

Democrats have backed out of debates co-sponsored by Fox with the Nevada Democratic Party and the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute amid strong pressure from liberal online activists who contended that Fox has a pro-conservative bias.

Yes the Demo's are wimps, we saw it last night. Actually last night seemed like a game of softball. I wouldn't blame it on the moderator necessarily, but rather the short amount of time given to answer questions. Makes me glad SC is considering limiting the number of GOP candidates in their debate. I do give Kucinich points for pointing out he lived in the same house he bought long ago for $20,000- a good jab at Edwards.

Cillizza with the scoop:

RANGEBURG, S.C. -- In the midst of the Sen. John McCain's presidential announcement tour comes news that Marlene Elwell -- one of the Arizona Senator's leading social conservative advocates -- has parted ways with the campaign.

Elwell, who was one of McCain's chief liaisons to the faith community, confirmed her departure in a brief telephone interview this evening. She did not offer any further explanation on the decision.

Elwell, who is based in Michigan, rose to prominence in social conservatives as a leading member of Pat Robertson's campaign. She was also a prime mover in the Michigan effort to define marriage between a man and a woman that passed in 2004.

The departure of Elwell comes just days after McCain replaced his longtime finance director Carla Eudy in what communications director Brian Jones described as part of an overall overhauling of the presidential campaign.

A huge get for Team Romney Counter Terrorism Official Cofer Black Joins up with Mitt. Mitt and Cofer had this to say:

"I am pleased to welcome Cofer Black to our campaign. He has a long and impressive career dedicated to making America safer and more secure in the world," said Governor Romney. "Our country faces a new generation of challenges and Black's experience at the forefront of our nation's counterterrorism efforts will be a tremendous asset."

Joining Romney for President, Cofer Black said, "Our country faces grave threats from abroad – threats that will require us to change our thinking, institutions and strategy if we are to prevail. Governor Romney sees clearly the threat in front of us and will give our military and intelligence professionals the tools and leadership they need to ensure that America remains strong, free and prosperous."

Background On Cofer Black:

Cofer Black Is A Former Top Counterterrorism Official With More Than 30 Years Experience. Black is Chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions. Beginning in February 2005, he became Vice Chairman of Blackwater USA and CEO of The Black Group. Black was the United States Department of State Coordinator for Counterterrorism with the rank of Ambassador at Large from December 2002 to November 2004. In this role, he was the point person for the U.S. government's international counterterrorism policy in the first term of the Bush administration. Prior to joining the State Department, Black had a distinguished 28-year career in the Directorate of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency. During his CIA career, Black served six foreign tours in field management positions and served as Task Force Chief in the Near East and South Asia Division, Deputy Chief of the Latin America Division and Director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center.

This comes to us Via HeavyM who originally posted it at www.race42008.com.

With the Ames Straw Poll version 2007 coming up in roughly 100 days, now is as good of time as ever to look at what this massive political event is, what it means, and what it takes to win it.

History of the Poll

The Ames Straw Poll began in 1979 and has continued every year preceding a competitive election (1987, 1995, and 1999) for a total of four times. The upcoming poll on August 11, 2007, therefore will be the fifth Ames Straw Poll held.

Even though the poll dates back nearly three decades, it was only in 1999 that it began to take on the significance it has now. Until that most recent straw poll, charges of cheating ran rampant at the event (voters would have their hands stamped, run into the bathroom to wash the ink off, and go vote again), meaning that no one took the results too seriously. In 1999, the Iowa GOP officials began using indelible ink that couldn’t be washed off as well as posting voting monitors at the voting areas and in all the bathrooms to ensure more reliable results.

At the last straw poll, George W Bush won with 31% of the vote. He would, of course, go on to win the nomination, but such foretelling is not a historical definite at the event. For instance, Bush 41 won the first straw poll in 1979 and Reagan ended up with the nomination, and in 1987 Pat Robertson won the contest but lost the nomination to Bush. Now that the voting is fairer and more reliable, though, some people argue that the results are a more significant barometer of a candidate’s success.

What it Means and How to Win

It’s the first real test of candidates on two different levels: organization and support. A win in Ames generally means you’ve succeeded in both of those arenas. And it also means you’ve succeeded in raising extravagant amounts of cash prior to the event.

Consider these statistics: Dubya spent $825,000 on the event in 1999 and walked away with first place. Steve Forbes spent over $2 million for his second place finish. What did they spend the money on?

A better question might be what didn’t they spend the money on. Tickets to the event in 1999 were $25 apiece, which all the campaigns gladly paid for in return for a vote. Parking cost money, which again, the campaigns paid for - if you even drove your own vehicle and didn’t take one of the free buses the campaigns chartered. Each campaign had tents outside the main hall for which they paid money - increasing in price the closer to the hall the tent space was (the apex being Bush’s tent, which was closest to the hall and cost him $63,000). At each tent, the campaigns offered food and drinks as well as live music from famous musicians, all free. Steve Forbes even hosted a carnival of sorts, complete with children’s rides that he rented and set up. All in the quest to attract voters.

Truth be told, the real winner of the Ames Straw Poll is the Iowa GOP which hosts the event as its annual fundraiser.

This should be instructive when thinking about how to win the poll now, in 2007. If Bush spent nearly a million dollars and Forbes nearly two million eight years ago, one can only imagine how much the campaigns will spend on the event this year. That does not bode well for poorly funded campaigns such as Tommy Huckback, Gilmore, Paul, or Tancredo. And it says something to the chances of a late-comer such as Fred Thompson succeeding in such an environment.

Of course, there are always going to be the die hards that will pay their own tickets, drive their own cars, vote, and go home all without being tied to a campaign, but the vast majority of the voters there will be there thanks to candidates’ generosity.

But, as mentioned above, organization is only one half of the coin. You can’t very well pay for people’s tickets to the event if you can’t find people who support you enough to go in the first place and sit through hours of speeches and give up their entire Saturday just to throw your name in a box - and for a poll, nonetheless, not even a real election. This is where all the grassroots campaigning leading up to the event pays off. You’ve gotta have a voter base to turnout in the first place before you can start paying for tickets and bus rides and the like.

So it takes both to emerge victorious in Ames: support from people who want to go and vote for you, and the organization to get more of them there than your opponents can. And in 1999, the results did mean something - after disappointing finishes at Ames, Alexander and Quayle both dropped out of the race; after his first place showing, Bush’s frontrunner status was cemented (at least until McCain got in the race a month later).

Roughly a hundred days from now, we will watch the hoopla and extravagance with great excitement and great anticipation, because the Ames Straw Poll is the first real test of the candidates’ strength in this campaign.

I re-edited this and changed a couple things.

...Or so says Romney to the Politico:

"That, I will do," promised Romney. "I like (Supreme Court Chief Justice John) Roberts and (Justice Samuel) Alito, I like (Justice Clarence) Thomas and (Justice Antonin) Scalia. I like that kind of thinking on the bench, and that's the kind of justice I will appoint...

"...You also have decisions as an administration on things like abstinence education, on the morning-after pill, on teaching kids to wait before they have babies, on insisting on parental responsibility for a father who has an out-of-wedlock child. These policies are also important, and will become a major part of my effort to encourage a culture of life rather than the culture of death."

The point here is (and it's been made before) that the President is head of the party, and the nation. Not only do we need competence we need moral character. Romney's personal life is impeccable. Dean Barnett once wrote that while a driver for Romney, Mitt tried to convince him that he should practice abstinence before marriage. Romney could say this to Dean, however out of date Dean thought it was, because presumably Romney had practiced abstinence before marriage himself.

Romney has the ability to speak with moral authority on the need of strong families, having a moral foundation, and the need to protect the unborn- having protected the unborn while governor and counseling women to avoid abortions before governor. I think statistics show that during President Clinton's tenure there was a laxing in attitude toward sexual behavior among teenagers, even a jump in those who believed oral sex was not sex. I am not saying that abstinence before marriage is a prerequisite for the Presidency in any sort of way, but I am saying the president sets the moral tone for the nation in many ways: therefore having strong moral character and a clean personal life is a great base to go from.

So the act of picking great judges is a wonderful thing, as we have seen the fruition of that in recent days, yet we shouldn't forget the importance of promoting a culture of life and a culture of moral integrity. What good is any of our progress if our nation has lost these two things?

Boston Globe reports:

Republican Mitt Romney would appoint an ambassador-at-large to prevent nuclear terror if elected president, arguing that avoiding a terrorist attack with unsecured nuclear weapons should take on heightened urgency in the United States.
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The Republican candidate, in a speech planned for Thursday night at Yeshiva University in New York, says such a person would have the authority and resources to cross agency and departmental boundaries, ensuring nonproliferation strategies are coordinated at home and abroad.

"Further, I would promote an international initiative to develop a new body of international law that would make nuclear trafficking a crime against humanity, on a par with genocide and war crimes," according to a text of Romney's remarks provided to The Associated Press. "By allowing for universal jurisdiction, charges can be brought up in any court preventing traffickers from hiding in complicit or weak countries."

Romney says the acts of black marketeers trying to sell so-called loose nukes "should not be dismissed with the kind of nonchalance that accompanies routine violations of the law."

David Brody had this to say:

This Mitt Romney guy is really something else. I've been researching the candidates for months now and Romney always seems to be ahead of the curve.

Tonight at Yeshiva University in New York he's going to propose that as President he would create the position of a nuclear terror ambassador. You can read more on this by clicking here.

I'm not going to get into the merits of how that would work. My point is simply that time after time Mitt Romney seems to come up with innovative ideas before others. Look at healthcare in Massachussetts. You may not like it, but he's thinking outside the box. Romney came into the Salt Lake City Olympic games and had a bunch of ideas to turn it around. The guy's a successful CEO who is clearly a man full of ideas...

...Like a prize fighter, Romney is not up against the ropes waiting for the next punch to be thrown. He's the one throwing haymakers. If he keeps it up with more fresh ideas, he just may deliver a knockout.

If you haven't done so already... be sure you visit the Five Brothers Blog where the five sons of Mitt Romney blog at the official Mitt website.

Recently, they've been receiving emails with people proffering look-a-like celebrities. Here's the first round of pics:

After Paul Bedard's post on his US News and World Report blog yesterday comparing my brother Josh to Ashton Kutcher, all of my brothers were on an email train making fun of him. Everyone then started picking out famous look-a-likes for all the other brothers ... I'm sure we can do better for Tagg.

Josh Ashton Kutcher

Matt Bob Woodward

Tagg Booger

Labels: brothers

From Wapo:

Mitt Romney began airing commercials Wednesday on national cable networks at a cost of some $2 million in an attempt to boost his standing among the leading Republicans seeking the presidency.

The campaign also renewed an ad campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, a Romney adviser said. Most of the national ads will run on Fox News, a strategic effort by the campaign to reach conservative voters.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife Ann, talk to reporters during a campaign stop at the Florida Capitol, Monday, April 23, 2007, in Tallahassee, Fla. (AP Photo/Phil Coale) (Phil Coale - AP)

The adviser spoke on the condition of anonymity because the campaign does not publicize its ad strategy. In the national ad, called, "I like Vetoes," Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, says that as president he would demand that discretionary domestic spending be capped at 1 percent less than the rate of inflation.

"If Congress sends me a budget that exceeds that cap I will veto that budget," Romney says. "I like vetoing."

Besides Fox, the ad also will run on CNBC, MSNBC and CNN. The total cost of airing the ads is expected to be about $2 million and will run for more than a month.

Couple thoughts:

1. This is another bold step forward. His ads in NH, SC and Iowa resulted in higher polling. This is the beginning, I believe, of a larger media campaign that will build through Spring and Summer. I predict by summers end to mid fall it will be a tight race, within a few points of the top candidates. I also predict (off topic) Romney will do very well (top two) at Ames.

2. The 2 million for the adds is about 1/6th of Romney's cash on hand as of April 1st. Evidently Romney feels that there is more cash to be hand. This shows some of the predictions of Romney not being able to keep pace in Quarter 2 with Thompson sucking the room dry are are cream puff ideas, since he is spending like he has the dough. Remember this guys knows how to make and spend money wisely.

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Here's Governor Romney on the key failures of McCain-Feingold:

"As I have traveled the country in connection with my campaign for President, I have been inspired by the commitment of countless Americans to shaping the future of America's political system. Their commitment takes many different forms, from distributing literature, to attending a campaign rally, to contributing money to an individual candidate. I applaud this involvement, even if it is not supportive of my candidacy. An informed and active citizenry is vital to the long-term health of our political system."

"I have not spent a career in politics, but I know enough about the laws of this country, and the way Washington works, to understand that the McCain-Feingold law is riddled with shortcomings.

"Let's start with something basic: the American people should be free to advocate for their candidates and their positions without burdensome limitations."

"The American people should be able to exercise their First Amendment rights without having to think about hiring a lawyer. But that is the direction in which we are headed. In 2004, the non-profit group Wisconsin Right to Life wanted to run grassroots radio and television ads urging people in the state to contact their Senators (which the ads mentioned by name) and ask them to oppose the ongoing filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees. A provision in McCain-Feingold, however, was used to argue that the ads were illegal. Rendering a verdict on what constitutes acceptable political speech is something for voters – not judges – to decide."

"We step into dangerous territory when politicians start eviscerating our fundamental freedoms in the name of amorphous principles, like campaign finance reform. If I am elected President, a top priority will be to push for the repeal of this deeply-flawed measure, and restore the full freedom of political participation and expression to the American people."

Labels: John McCain, mccain-feingold