2008

Leading Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is up on the air, with the first Spanish language radio ads of the '08 cycle.  But here's a few things you won't hear in his ads.  First, Mitt Romney wants to amend the constitution to make English the national language: "English needs to be the language that is spoken in America. We cannot be a bilingual nation like Canada."  And Romney opposes comprehensive immigration reform that would bring millions out of the shadows and provide a path to citizenship for hard-working, tax-paying immigrants who play by the rules and want a better future for their families.  At this month's Conservative Politcal Action Conference Romney said: "McCain-Kennedy [Comprehensive Immigration Reform] isn't the answer. As governor, I took a very different approach. I authorized our state police to enforce immigration laws. I vetoed a tuition break for illegals and said no to driver's licenses. McCain-Kennedy gives benefits to illegals that would cost taxpayers millions. And more importantly, amnesty didn't work 20 years ago, and it won't work today."  This kind of anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic rhetoric is bad policy.  It did not help Republicans win elections in 2006 and it won't help them in 2008. 

According to an article in the New York Times, Florida moved up its primary date yesterday. Details are in the lede:

Casting more uncertainty over the presidential nominating process for 2008, the Florida Legislature on Thursday moved the state’s primary up to Jan. 29, ignoring the threat of sanctions from the national Republican and Democratic parties.

Marco Rubio, speaker of the Florida State House of Representatives, had this to say of the decision:

“We have people who get invited to a big party where they drop a balloon and people wear funny hats,” said Marco Rubio, speaker of the State House of Representatives. “But they don’t have any role to play.”

“At the end of the day,” said Mr. Rubio, a Republican, “the truth of the matter is that the nominee of either party is going to want to make sure they have not offended the big donors and the biggest activists in the most important state in the country that is electorally available.”

Now I know how he feels about the Florida primary AND apparently the Kentucky Derby...

That's right, the first GOP Presidential debate was held last night and in comparison to the Democrats' event last week, their views felt pretty outside the mainstream.  The NYT has more.  Maybe the most news-worthy moment was Mayor Giuliani's thoughts on choice: 

Mr. Giuliani, who has said he supports abortion rights, gave conflicting signals on the issue. He joined the other nine in saying he would not be upset if the Supreme Court voted to overturn the decision that legalized abortion. But later he endorsed a woman’s right to make a decision on whether to have an abortion.

“It would be O.K. to repeal,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Or it would be O.K. also if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as a precedent, and I think a judge has to make that decision.”

Similarly, he said that, while he supported public financing of abortion for poor women in New York, in other states, “people can come to a different decision.”

Last night during the Republican presidential debate, Senator John McCain drew a clear distinction between his views on immigration and those of Rep. Tom Tancredo. From the debate:

REP. TANCREDO: Well, of course, if I thought there should be another one, I wouldn’t be here. I think that I serve the purpose. I think that we -- good men all here, don’t get me wrong. But I am telling you this; that there are issues that I believe have not been addressed tonight, not in full, and I believe that they do separate us, and I certainly believe the issue of immigration and immigration reform and what’s going to happen to this country unless we deal with this forthrightly.

No more platitudes. No more obfuscating with using words like, "Well, I am not for amnesty but I’m for letting them stay." That kind of stuff has got to be taken away from the political debate, as far as I’m concerned, so people can understand exactly who is where on this incredibly important issue.

And when they see that, I think, frankly, I’m --

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, time.

Anyone have a follow-up with that? Anyone with disagree with the strong anti-illegal immigration position? Take a strong view? Senator McCain.

SEN. MCCAIN: Well, I’m happy to say that we’ve been working very hard for a couple of months with Democrats and Republicans, led by the president and his Cabinet, to come up with a comprehensive solution and resolution of this terrible problem.

One thing we would all agree on: the status quo is not acceptable. We have to secure our borders, but we also need a temporary worker program, and we have to dispose of the issue of 12 million people who are in this country illegally.

This issue is a(n) important and compelling one, and it begins with national security. But we also need to address it comprehensively, and I’m proud to work with the president of the United States on this issue.

Yet, as Senator Chris Dodd pointed out yesterday in this AP article, McCain seems to have allowed his presidential aspirations to water down his once fierce support of Comprehensive Immigration Reform:

"[Senator McCain] and Senator Kennedy were working on a comprehensive package ... and he's no longer, I gather, a co-sponsor of that," Dodd said. "It had some bipartisan momentum, and now, if you asked me who's on the other side today I couldn't name anybody at this point. Maybe there is someone, but not of the stature McCain brought to the debate."

Senator Barack Obama sent the following letter to DNC Chairman Howard Dean to encourage the DNC to make video from Democratic debates open to the public for free. Sort of off topic, but I wonder whether inciting citizen political participation was a good idea given the Obama campaign's recent MySpace incident.

Dear Chairman Dean:

     I am writing in strong support of a letter from a bipartisan coalition of academics, bloggers and Internet activists recently addressed to you and the Democratic National Committee. The letter asks that the video from any Democratic Presidential debate be available freely after the debate, by either placing the video in the public domain, or licensing it under a Creative Commons (Attribution) license.

     As you know, the Internet has enabled an extraordinary range of citizens to participate in the political dialogue around this election. Much of that participation will take the form of citizen generated content. We, as a Party, should do everything that we can to encourage this participation. Not only will it keep us focused on the issues that matter most to America, it will also encourage participation by a wide range of our youth who have traditionally simply tuned out from politics.

     The letter does not propose some radical change in copyright law, or an unjustified expansion in "fair use." Instead, it simply asks that any purported copyright owner of video from the debates waive that copyright.

     I am a strong believer in the importance of copyright, especially in a digital age. But there is no reason that this particular class of content needs the protection. We have incentive enough to debate. The networks have incentive enough to broadcast those debates. Rather than restricting the product of those debates, we should instead make sure that our democracy and citizens have the chance to benefit from them in all the ways that technology makes possible.

     Your presidential campaign used the Internet to break new ground in citizen political participation. I would urge you to take the lead again by continuing to support this important medium of political speech. And I offer whatever help I can to secure the support of others as well.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

For more information on NDN's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election, click here.

And that's not a good thing for the Republican Presidential hopefuls, as Adam Nagourney of the NYT points out:

As they gather Thursday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library for their first debate, the Republican presidential candidates are thrilled at the chance to associate themselves with Reagan. But they may not be able to escape the challenge created for them by the current president.

As much as Iraq or health care or any other issue, the question of how to deal with President Bush is vexing the Republican field. Do they embrace him as a means of appealing to the conservative voters who tend to decide Republican primaries? Or do they break from him in an effort to show that they will lead the nation in a new direction? Do they applaud his policies or question his competence — or both?

Many questions surround Fred Thompson these days: Will he run for President? Who is he? What would happen if he entered the race? Thankfully there are a few articles covering some of these. The LA Times offers this profile of the former Republican Senator and Charlie Cook offers an analysis on who would be most affected by his decision to run.

For more information on NDN's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election, click here.

In an effort to migrate to an official MySpace page, Barack Obama lost about 80-90% (according to techPresident) of his friends that were on his unofficial page. More on that here and here. To read what happened as told by the creator of the unofficial page, Joe Anthony, click here. I'm interested to see how this plays out, and to see what you think, as Obama seems to have lost over 100,000 friends.

UNRELATED UPDATE: (via Tim Chambers) Endorse Barack, a new site that is a " central point for petitions where grassroots citizens call for our elected officials to endorse Barack Obama for President" is now up.

For more information on NDN's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election, click here.

President Bush vetoed the $124 billion Iraq Responsability Act as expected last night and immediately gave a nationally televised 6 minute speech in which he lashed out at Democrats in Congress for sending him a bill that he said "substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgments of our military commanders."  He also called it a "prescription of for chaos."  Apparently the editor who checks to make sure these statements couldn't apply to President's own leadership had the day off yesterday. 

Senator Jim Webb seems to have the right attitude going forward, saying"We won this war four years ago. The question is when we end the occupation" on the floor of the Senate yesterday.

And the WAPO takes a look at what the Democratic Presidential candidates are saying about the Iraq War, the veto and how to proceed.

Not many words can describe the Vanity Fair article on Rudy Giuliani, so I'll just paste an interesting paragraph from it and wish Michael Wolff well:

It's a Catch-22 kind of nuttiness. What with all his personal issues—the children; the women; the former wives; Kerik and the Mob; his history of interminable, bitter, asinine hissy fits; the look in his eye; and, now, Judi!, his current, prospective, not-ready-for-prime-time First Lady—he'd have to be nuts to think he could successfully run for president. But nutty people don't run for president—certainly they don't get far if they do.

For more information on NDN's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election, click here.