BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
Generally: Every debate starts with more and longer packages, more solemn announcers, and a greater sense of import. Took 13:30 to get to the first question. I was surprised – pleasantly surprised – that for the most part the candidates had a good idea what they were talking about, and had thought through their basic positions. I say “for the most part” because Rick Perry and Herman Cain were clearly out of their depth. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
You’ve seen it a thousand times since Wednesday night. Gov. Rick Perry, primed with a talking point about the three Federal Departments he would shut down as President named the Departments of Commerce and Education and then couldn’t remember the name of the third Department.
One of the other contestants suggested the EPA, but that wasn’t it. John Harwood pressed the issue: “You can’t name the third one? Perry repeated the Department of Education, fumbled around for the Department of Commerce, and finally surrendered… “and let’s see. I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.”
So, Perry can’t debate. So what?
Here’s his problem: Voters have precious few data points on which to decide for whom they will vote for President. News reports (which they largely don’t trust). Advertisements. Mail. Phone calls. And, for a very, very few in the totality of the popular vote, having seen and/or met the candidate somewhere on the campaign trail. Continue reading
BY TONY BLANKLEY
Reprinted from The Washington Times
Here’s a thought: The GOP presidential primaries may well prove to be inconclusive, with the nominee actually being chosen at the convention in Tampa, Fla., in the fourth week of August next year.
True, it has been generations since a presidential nominating convention actually made that decision, although, admittedly, this idea pops up every four years. The last contested GOP convention that went beyond the first ballot was 1948, when Thomas Dewey was chosen on the third ballot – and went on to lose to Harry Truman. For the Democrats it was 1952, when Adlai Stevenson was chosen also on the third ballot – and went on to lose to Dwight Eisenhower. The longest was the Democratic convention of 1924 that went on for more than two weeks and took 103 ballots to nominate John Davis, who lost to Calvin Coolidge.
There may be a pattern there. As G. Terry Madonna and Michael Young point out in their insightful Dec. 6, 2007, article “What if the conventions are contested?” “It is no coincidence that brokered conventions ended after networks began to televise them. The 1952 convention is instructive. Actually settled on the first ballot when Dwight Eisenhower beat Robert Taft, the intraparty brawling that preceded the Eisenhower victory appalled thousands who watched it on TV.”
In fact, hotly contentious conventions – whether the GOP in 1912 or the riotous Democratic Chicago convention in 1968 – often augur poorly for the general election. But whether good news or bad, five odd features of this season’s GOP primary process suggest inconclusiveness. Continue reading
BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
The media made another contribution to the ‘dumbing down’ of American politics this week in their coverage of the Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas.
If you saw the debate, ask yourself a question. What piece of information conveyed during the debates will be most important to you in making a decision at the polls in 2012? The discussion of Herman Cain’s tax proposal? Foreign aid to Israel? Cutting defense spending? Securing our borders?
Not to Carl Cameron of Fox News or Brian Williams of NBC or Scott Pelley at CBS or the Washington Post or the Washington Times.
The most important piece of information in the debate for the media was the exchange between Gov. Rick Perry and former Gov. Mitt Romney about a meaningless lawn mowing incident four years ago. Apparently, back in 2007, Romney hired a lawn-mowing company that employed an illegal alien. Yep. Romney didn’t hire the worker and when a reporter exposed his employment, Romney ordered the company to fire him. When the company failed to, Romney fired the company. We weren’t told whether Romney had to mow his own lawn. Nothing in the exchange was new. The incident had been thoroughly vetted and reported years ago. Continue reading
BY TONY BLANKLEY
Reprinted from the Washington Times
October 3, 2011
William F. Buckley Jr., founding father of the modern conservative movement, famously asserted his doctrine of voting for the most conservative candidate who is electable. Let me presume to add an analytic codicil: The GOP and the conservative movement have tended to support the most conservative policies only when they are understood to be conservative and are plausibly supportable by the conservative half of the electorate.
As the ideological center of gravity on various issues has shifted back and forth across the conservative-liberal spectrum over the decades, so inevitably has conservative policy support. I have in mind four examples: abortion, federal aid to education, “cap-and-trade” and individual health mandates.
As a campaigner for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in all his campaigns, starting in his 1966 campaign for governor of California, I can vividly recall that in 1964, Goldwater and the conservative movement were against federal aid to education in its entirety. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com & Townhall.com
I was in Las Vegas Friday night as the guest of the conservative Citizen Outreach organization. We got to talking about the importance which may be visited upon the Nevada caucuses this year which, on the GOP side of the ledger has never been that big a deal.
A couple of weeks ago Florida decided to move its GOP primary up by about a month to January 31. That set all the other early states into a frenzy trying to figure out when they should hold their caucuses (Iowa and Nevada) or primaries (New Hampshire and South Carolina).
As of this writing the guessing is, Iowa will move its caucuses up to January 3; New Hampshire to January 7; Nevada to the 14th; and, South Carolina to January 21.
That means, the week between Christmas and New Year will be spent in places like Red Oak and Clear Lake, Iowa; and Claremont and Gottstown, New Hampshire.
As Mullfave Ed Rollins pointed out last week, “you can’t live off the land in Florida like you can in the other early states.”
Nevada’s population is centered around Clark County (Las Vegas and its environs) and Washoe County (Reno) so you can organize there pretty easily. South Carolina’s population is more than four million and spread out throughout the state, but SC is geographically the 10th smallest state so driving from point A to point M (or wherever) is not much of a challenge.
Florida is a different kettle of alligators. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from the FeeheryTheory.com
“And so tonight — to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans — I ask for your support.”
In November of 1969, Richard Nixon uttered this line in a televised address to the nation, explaining his plans in Vietnam.
At the time, the nation was enveloped in social, economic and racial turmoil. Nixon was speaking to the folks in the country who were respectful of authority, preferred order to chaos, disdained the revolutionaries and distrusted the intellectual elite who were attacking the pillars of American society.
The silent majority came to mean the white middle and lower middle class of America, and Nixon’s phrase came to be seen as a way to polarize an already polarized society. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Rerprinted from mullings.com
NOTE: This is the second MULLINGS coming out of the Iowa Straw Poll yesterday. It was written partially in Ames, Iowa; in Detroit, Michigan;and, finally finished at home in Alexandria, Virginia.
How can this happen? How can a successful Governor hire a group of really smart people, spend more than a year, and who-knows-how-many millions of dollars, meeting with potential and actual supporters, and elite members of the media in places like New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC only to come to a grinding halt in a place called Ames, Iowa?
ABC News, Weiner and the Scoop
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from mullings.com
To succeed in America – to truly succeed in America – you have to be more than excellent at what you do; you have to be a carnival barker making certain that every single person in each of the 50 states knows that you are excellent at what you do.
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from mullings.com
We’re probably within a week of the first Republican candidate to file papers opening an exploratory committee to “test the waters” in the 2012 Presidential campaign.
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from townhall.com
For those of you who may have missed the official Mullings bio (which is mostly true, by the way), Dr. Robert Hill, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio 45750 once introduced me as “What you get when you get when you cross a political hack with a philosopher.”
I’m not sure about the philosopher part, but I proudly introduce myself as a “political hack” on airplanes, on the Washington Metro, and at the Safeway which generally keeps further conversation to an absolute minimum
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from the Feeherytheory.com
I ran into Congressman Jimmy Duncan in the hall of the Capitol and we had a little chat.
Duncan is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, a savvy politician who is completely honest and to the untrained eye, just an awe-shucks, country lawyer type of person.
Duncan has taken some tough votes in his career. He votes against pretty much all spending bills and he voted against the Iraq War, votes that in hindsight look pretty smart. He is an old-time conservative, but he isn’t one to beat his own chest or pontificate too much.