Rove to Thompson?

Judging Rove's history, Rick Perlstein thinks the GOP's top political operative may be headed to the Fred Thompson campaign.

In 1972 he got a job working for the Committee to Re-Elect the President's Youth Division. Which sounds pretty innocent. But the youth division, run by a guy named Ken Rietz, was actually the wheelhouse for infiltrating the Edmund Muskie campaign. (An aside: Rietz is a top advisor to Fred Thompson's imminent presidential campaign. There are whispers that Thompson might become Karl Rove's next candidate. And as we know now, Fred Thompson served as the Nixon White House's spy with the Watergate prosecution.)

Thompson obit

Joe Klein makes a good observation on the demise of Tommy Thompson's presidential bid.

The other factor is that Thompson, much as he tried to pretend otherwise, simply wasn't as conservative as the Republican base. Unlike Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush (and now Mitt Romney), who act as if Washington, D.C. were the capital of France, Thompson actually believes in government and practiced his beliefs in a creative, humane but highly efficient way, especially when it came to welfare reform in the early 1990s. That seems a terrible liability for a GOP candidate these days.

Immigration entry

Updated.

Responding to Mitt Romney's attacks on Rudy Giuliani for allegedly harboring illegals as New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg swung back -- but more for the immigrants than for his predecessor.

When asked about the comments in Manhattan today, Bloomberg said, "Boy, let 'em come." He went on to say, "This city and this country were built by immigrants. Thrive on immigrants. And without more immigrants we don’t have a future."

***Looking at what Romney said, it was clearly an attack on what he perceived as Giuliani's handling of things -- and not New York or immigrants (Romney's not completely casting off his cross-over appeal to Blue State voters). How far the questioner went would be interesting to know. The New York Observer says Bloomberg was "asked about the comments." If Bloomberg was egged on -- for example, asked about his policy on immigrants -- his answer is understandable.

If not, he is yet again interjecting himself in the 2008 presidential race.***

*** Romney is labeling New York and other places "sanctuary cities" and threatening to cut off their federal funds if they don't do more to curtail illegal immigration.

Voter ID

Some observers have pointed out that only 14,000 voters turned out for this weekend's Ames Strawpoll -- a steep drop-off from participation in its last competitive races. Most have attributed the decline to Giuliani, Thompson and McCain not taking part, or to a lack of enthusiasm in the GOP. But MSNBC's First Read credits a stricter policy of ID enforcement.

Also, don't get carried away on turnout -- the Iowa GOP did a much better job of checking for Iowa IDs than in years past.

Someone else

Noam Schieber of The New Republic on the Ames Strawpoll.

Huckabee spent exactly zero resources busing in supporters and still managed 18 percent of the vote. The other two campaigns bought hundreds, if not thousands, more straw-poll tickets than the number of votes they received. (Straw poll attendees must obtain a $35-ticket in order to vote. Campaigns typically buy them up and distribute them to supporters.) Huckabee bought around 1800 tickets and received almost 2600 votes. Clearly, Romney and Brownback dropped a lot of cash on people who ended up voting for someone else, and that someone else was probably Huckabee.

"A hollow victory"

Iowa political journalist David Yepsen called Mitt Romney's Ames Strawpoll win, "a hollow victory."

Mitt Romney may have won the Iowa GOP straw poll Saturday in Ames but it was a bit of a hollow victory. That’s a sign he may not be the prohibitive front runner in Iowa after all.

Yepsen also quotes one "Republican Strategist" telling him, "[I]n 1999, Democrats were suffering from Clinton fatigue. Now, we're suffering from Bush fatigue."

Unofficial Ames results

Marc Ambinder has the unofficial results.

Romney wins with 31% and a paltry 4,516 votes -- far under his campaign's predictions. Huckabee placed second with 18.1% with 2587, but not too far ahead of Brownback (15.3%) and Tancredo (13.7%). Don't expect any of them to drop out yet.

Ron Paul (9.1%) will continue to raise eyebrows and Tommy Thompson (7.3%) will almost certainly drop his bid now.

Romney's bad day

A voting machine malfunction is delaying the official results of the Ames Republican Strawpoll, but if reports of turnout is accurate, only 14,000 Iowans took part. This would mean Mitt Romney's campaign delivered far fewer than the 20 to 25,000 Romney votes they expected. After all the money and hype, Ames could wind up a big defeat for Mitt Romney -- even if he wins comfortably.

It brings to mind LBJ's campaign predictions in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, though less consequential.

Romney reconsiders?

The Politico's Anne Schroder caught this quote during discussion of a 'Romney Girls' video, emphasis added.

Mitt Romney and his wife were on "Fox & Friends" this morning talking about the video. Romney said: "There's nothing like getting a good spot on YouTube."

So will he or won't he be attending the Republican CNN/YouTube debate?

Shadow race to be anti-Giuliani

With all the recent Republican mud-slinging over religion, Michelle Cottle of The New Republic notices the one candidate whose shirt is impeccably clean: Rudy Giuliani.

Cottle suggests the lack of attacks on Giuliani's religion indicates that the other candidates are waiting for the candidacy of "the serially unfaithful, thrice-wed, pro-gay, proudly pro-choice New Yorker" to fizzle with conservative caucus and primary voters. Convinced of the inevitability of Rudy's demise but unsure of when it will happen, '08 Republicans are working harder at becoming the anti-Giuliani candidate than beating the current Republican frontrunner.

Religion is one of the few openings they have.

Unfortunately for the competition, there just aren't that many red meat issues by which to starkly distinguish oneself from the pack. Most everyone in this group (thanks to a few strategic adjustments by Mitt in recent years) opposes abortion and gay marriage, loves guns, and cannot wait to round up America's 12 million illegal immigrants and send them home in cattle cars. As for the war on terrorism, it's hard to get to the right of Rudy, whose entire candidacy is based on his swaggering machismo and endless reminders that he is the Big Dog who helped New York survive 9/11.

Romney flip flops on an attack

On this morning's Republican Presidential Debate, moderated by George Stephanopoulos, Mitt Romney suggested he has changed his position from March attacking Rudy Giuliani for being pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and anti-gun.

Whitman: YouTube or die

Former New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman blogs at Politics NJ that Republican presidential candidates will forfeit support of young voters – who are tending Democratic – if they don't speak their language.

Bailing on the upcoming YouTube/CNN debate – a format designed specifically for young voters – is a big mistake.

Attack attention

In the race for the Republican presidential nomination, second tier candidates have finally drawn some attention -- for relentlessly attacking each other.

Leaving the frontrunners Giuliani, Romney, and McCain to squabble amongst themselves, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee are going at it. Early this week, a Huckabee surrogate derided Brownback for converting to Catholicism. The two campaigns have traded barbs, and now the Club For Growth is attacking Huckabee with an ad in Iowa.

Full page praise

CNN took out a full page ad in today's New York Times to run praise for it's Democratic YouTube debate -- the "most-watched presidential primary debate in cable news history among adults 18 - 34."

It closes, "Up next: The CNN YouTube Republican Debate."

We hope.

McCain's downfall

Michael Scherer captures Senator Bob Bennett's (R - UT) take on McCain's initial rise and subsequent fall.

"John McCain's people came into Utah and they said, You may not like John McCain, indeed you may hate John McCain -- doesn't make any difference," Bennett said. "Here is a poll that shows that John McCain can beat Hillary Clinton." But Bennett said that strategy only worked until former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani arrived on the scene. "Giuliani got in, and what's the first thing that the Giuliani campaign put out? A poll that shows Giuliani beating Hillary Clinton by a bigger margin."

GOP YouTube debate

Two items gleaned from Jose Antonio Vargas in The Trail on blowback from Republicans' refusal to the YouTube debate.

First, the base is not pleased (as predicted).

Second, refuting Joe Klein's "the general skew of the YouTube audience leeward."

YouTubers -- who, according to a study by comScore, which tracks Web audience, lean more Republican than Democrat. (Michael Bassik over at techpresident writes: "Specifically, there are 3.3 million self-identified Republicans on the user-generated video site versus 3.1 million Democrats. (An additional 5 million consider themselves independent.)"

Skipping Iowa

What's more interesting than Fred Thompson only raising $3 million in June is that he recently said, "August is kind of a down month, not much going on, so it wouldn't make sense to [announce my campaign] in August." Ed Kilgore observes,

That may be true in Washington, but not so much in, say, Iowa, where August features the State Republican Party's big Straw Poll (which Thompson apparently won't contest), not to mention the Iowa State Fair, where presidential candidates will be so thick on the ground that you won't be able to stir them with a stick. Indeed, Thompson's "not much going on" dismissal of the opportunity to eat corn dogs and deep-fried twinkies and admire the Butter Cow sculpture is a good sign that he has decided to skip Iowa altogether.

There have been years when a candidate doesn't have to compete in Iowa to win the nomination.; however this is not one of them.

North Carolina's electoral votes

Via Political Wire, North Carolina's House is expected to pass a bill to assign Electoral College votes by congressional district rather than the winner-take-all system, which is in place everywhere except for Maine and Nebraska. The bill almost guarantees that the 2008 Democratic nominee peels off reliably Republican electoral votes, and thus the measure has served as an indicator of party loyalty: not a single GOP legislator supports it, while only a few Democrats are in opposition.

Supporters contend it will cause both national parties to pay North Carolina more attention, while detractors say that even if such a tight race were to occur (one where 3 electoral votes could make the difference), it would only affect a few areas. Frankly, since the bill helps the party of the state's governing majority, it's hard to see it as anything other than partisan.

But on the bright side, its passage could be the dawn of a bi-partisan solution.

Given the impending bill, North Carolina Republicans would definitely prefer a National Popular Vote law, like the one recently signed by Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, in which the state pledges its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of the in-state winner, only to be enacted when enough states (possessing an Electoral College majority of 270) do the same. That way, the winner of the national popular vote is sure to have enough Electoral College votes to become president.

The latest information shows that all sponsors of the National Popular Vote in North Carolina are Democrats. Don't be surprised if Republicans are soon its most enthusiastic supporters.

Reaganesque

The New Republic's Jon Chait on the absolution of Fred Thompson.

The best evidence for this is the equanimity with which conservatives have accepted the news that Thompson once worked as an abortion-rights lobbyist. Milder revelations about Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney were met with howls of outrage. The news that Thompson actively lobbied to weaken abortion restrictions, on the other hand, has been met with a shrug.

The chinks in Reagan's conservative armor were similarly overlooked.

Ducking the GOP YouTube Debate

Read More:

• 'Update: Rudy Likely To Opt Out Of YouTube Debate' - Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic Online.
• 'Romney no fan of CNN/YouTube debate antics' - John Distaso - The New Hampshire Union Leader (via Political Wire).