The Occasional Observer

C'mon, get in on the fun with your primary predictions. The person who does the best wins a free car.

Fredo:

IA, NH - Mitt
SC, FL - Huck
Nomination - Brokered convention

MB:

IA - Huck
NH - McCain
SC, FL - Mitt
Nomination - Mitt

SHK:

IA, NH - Mitt
SC - Huck
FL - Rudy
Nomination - Mitt

Mayor Protium (!):

MI - Paul (!)
Nomination - Huckabee

With tomorrow's Hawkeye Cawkeye, as many as 4 candidates (if you count Keyes as a candidate) could end up dropping out. A sound victory for Romney, say, 7 points or more (highly unlikely but stranger things have happened), and Huck could decide to hang it up. A weak showing for Fred (4th or worse) and he's done. Hunter should probably drop out after Iowa. I have a sneaking suspicion that all 3 of them will probably try to hang on until South Carolina and hope for some Southern Home Cookin' (military home cookin', in Duncan's case), but it's possible the field could be down to 4 candidates.

UPDATE:

A Romney operative over at R 4 '08 says he has it on "good authority" that Fred's planning on dropping out post-Iowa. Apparently, he's seen the tea leaves about the results of the Cawkeye, and he's not seeing anything encouraging.

The Politico has picked up the story.

Thompson denies the story.

UPDATE 2:

On Monday, someone's releasing a book with "startling charges," meant to impugn a major candidate on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. Early betting is on McCain as the targeted candidate.

Following up on the Brooks article is this National Review Online forum, dealing with the same topic: the health of the Reagan coalition. I don't have time for a review of the various comments made by some big guns of the conservative movement, but it's definitely worth a read.

His NYT column out today is mostly about how Mitt has made himself the most likely GOP candidate, but has also made himself nearly unelectable in the general. He makes similar points to those I've been making, except Brooks uses both facts and logic.

But the Romney stuff, both pro- and con-, is covered ground for the well read OccObs audience. What is more interesting is Brooks' big picture assessment of where the GOP is headed:

As Walter Mondale was the last gasp of the fading New Deal coalition, Romney has turned himself into the last gasp of the Reagan coalition.

That coalition had its day, but it is shrinking now. The Republican Party is more unpopular than at any point in the past 40 years. Democrats have a 50 to 36 party identification advantage, the widest in a generation. The general public prefers Democratic approaches on health care, corruption, the economy and Iraq by double-digit margins. Republicans’ losses have come across the board, but the G.O.P. has been hemorrhaging support among independent voters. Surveys from the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, Kaiser Foundation and Harvard University show that independents are moving away from the G.O.P. on social issues, globalization and the roles of religion and government.

If any Republican candidate is going to win this year, he will have to offer a new brand of Republicanism.

In Brooks' comments there are echos of Newt's Sarko critique. The GOP brand must evolve to remain relevant. It's hard for people of a naturally conservative temperment to move on from a successful template, and that's no doubt why Republican candidates hitch themselves to the Reagan wagon at least thrice per speech, and Republican voters lament the existence of a Reagan in the field with equal frequency.

Can a non-traditional Reagan Republican (Rudy, Huckabee) carry enough of the base to win, while simultaneously re-branding the party to appeal to a new voting block? Can a traditional Reagan Republican (Mitt, Fred) win when, in 2008, the public seems to prefer the Democratic issue basket by a wide margin?

The '08 campaign, like every campaign, makes for some fun speculation. But it is not an end unto itself. Lest anyone take a "l'campaign pour l'campaign" approach to American politics, it's good to remember that our future security and prosperity are on the line.

Forces are stirring in the East, and this autocratic regime will seek the ring of power for itself:

2008: The year a new superpower is born

Here comes the world's newest superpower. The rest of the world is gloomily contemplating economic slowdown and even recession. Not in Beijing. China is set to make 2008 the year it asserts its status as a global colossus by flexing frightening economic muscle on international markets, enjoying unprecedented levels of domestic consumption and showcasing itself to a watching world with a glittering £20bn Olympic Games.

The world's most populous nation will mark the next 12 months with a coming-of-age party that will confirm its transformation in three decades from one of the poorest countries of the 20th century into the globe's third-largest economy, its hungriest (and most polluting) consumer and the engine room of economic growth.

They're placing their bets over at R 4 '08, with the votes about to start getting counted!

Kavon goes through a set of possible scenarios here.

And in case there was any question as to how unsual this primary season is (we may never see another like it), check out today's Rasmussen tracking poll. With voting three days away, there is a 4-man tie with Fred still within striking distance:

John McCain 17%
Mike Huckabee 16%
Mitt Romney 16%
Rudy Giuliani 15%
Fred Thompson 12%
Ron Paul 7%

Here is my prediction, FWIW:

IA: Mitt 26, Huck 23, McCain 19, Fred 14, Paul 8, Rudy 8
NH: Mitt 33, McCain 31, Huck 12, Paul 11, Rudy 11
MI: Mitt 31, McCain 28, Huck 18, Rudy 16, Paul 5
SC: Huck 31, Mitt 26, McCain 18, Rudy 17, Paul 6
NV: Mitt 37, Rudy 28, Huck 25, Paul 8
FL: Huck 38, Mitt 32, Rudy 23, Paul 5

Followed up by Huck winning most Southern states, Mitt winning most New England, Western and Midwestern states, and Rudy taking CA and the Mid-Atlantic.

No one has a majority of the delegates. Brokered convention, baby!

If you find it surprising that, amidst the campaign din in Iowa reaching fever pitch, I've been laying back on the posting, allow me to explain. Everything that has happened over the past couple of weeks, and is happening now, is merely an amplification of storylines that I've been discussing for a year now. While the Bhutto assassination has major repercussions on the international stage, the reactions from the candidates and the way those reactions have been framed by the MSM have been a big yawner. From McCain's, "see, you need me"; to Mitt's "a CEO and governor make important decisions too, and foreign policy is no different than any other decision making process"; to Edwards's "Run, Forest, Run!"; there's not much new here.

That said, Broder has a story up in the WaPo today that could be a race-changer. I say it's semi-new because the possibility of a Bloomberg independent bid is old news. The coalition of names he's assembling for this "moderates convention" is new news and big news.

We knew of the Bloomberg-Hagel connection from last summer, when Chuck teased us with the phrase, "who'd have thought it--a Nebraska country-boy and a New York city-boy?", if I may paraphrase from memory. But the list of names continues to expand: Sam Nunn, probably the most electable of the group, from a Presidential perspective. Chuck Robb, Gary Hart, John Danforth, and Christie Todd Whitman are pretty big names as well. Where are the Concord coalition folks? You'd almost expect to see Warren Rudman and Bob Kerrey in on this effort as well (oh yeah, Bob sold out his convictions to shill for the Shrill).

Needless to say, these experienced old hands are playing their cards just right. They're not assembling to start a 3rd party bid, they say. Rather, they want to help the parties get "refocused":

"...if we don't see a refocusing of the campaign on a bipartisan approach, I would feel I would want to encourage an independent candidacy."

As I said, there are some big names in this group, and Bloomberg may have smartly determined he'd get a better ROI for his campaign dollar funding a Nunn-Hagel or Hagel-Robb ticket than he would running himself.

From the POV of the GOP, this creates a ton of new possibilities. We can assume that McCain is the only likely GOP candidate who would meet the "bipartisan approach" metric (think G14) these moderates are looking for. Any other candidate would probably cause them to blanch (Rudy is too "take-it-or-leave-it"; Mitt, Fred, and Huck too caught up in "divisive" socially conservative policy).

The bigger question is, who does the 3rd party candidacy help, and who does it hurt? After the '92 election, Republicans have such a bad taste in their mouths for a 3rd party candidacy that many assume it helps the Dems. Kavon Nikrad has argued voicferously that a Bloomberg candidacy would help the GOP, as he is a liberal on virtually every level (other than the fact that people have preconceived notions about how to define a billionaire's ideology).

Nunn and Hagel change the calculation entirely. If Bloomberg's real goal is to defeat the GOP (as I speculated over the summer), and he's willing to invest $100 million or so in that effort, bankrolling either of those two would virtually ensure it. Nunn would split away plenty of culturally conservative Southerners from the GOP, states that the Republican party can't lose and still win the election. Hagel's a die hard pro-lifer, and despite his libertarian domestic agenda and multi-lateralist foreign policy approach, he would also siphon off plenty of GOP votes. Keep in mind his ACU rating is in the same area as the John McCains and Fred Thompsons of the world.

Where's this all heading? For my peace of mind, nowhere good. After years of frustration that the GOP selected a mediocrity for President, I swore I'd support excellence over rigid ideological purity. That led me to Romney (where I got both, thanks to his idelogical contortions). Based on resume and history, I still think Mitt will make the best President of any candidate on the GOP side. In my heart, though, Huckabee and his agenda is the most inspiring to me. But I have to grudgingly admit that my mind is telling me that McCain is becoming the best option for winning the general election. He stands the best chance of uniting the party, and still drawing enough independent voters to win. The head-to-head polling at RCP certainly bolsters that premise. And while I was skeptical of that polling 3 months ago, I think it's starting to become valid now. There's a been a lot of MSM coverage and the public's perception of these candidates is starting to harden.

So, I keep wondering, could I pull the lever for the guy who I think is the best positioned to win in the general, versus the guy who I think is the most capable for the job, or the guy who says the most things I agree with (and still stands a chance of winning the nomination)?

Luckily, voters in IA, NH, SC and FL will have to do the hard work first. Before I'm put to the test, they get to fashion the landscape. Thank goodness.

So what happens when your jaw is broken in a drunken brawl, but you're at a research station in Antarctica?

You have to get flown to New Zealand to get to a hospital.

Can't say I'm too surprised. Two guys cooped up in a small space like that. Throw in some New Year's liquor. And then maybe a comment, like, "Fancy that, are you threatening me?"

Now that's my kind of campaigning.