Spokane, Washington, public schools, in an effort to be inclusive, left out the holiday that is essentially the reason for the holiday season: Christmas. What was included? Well, Hanukkah, Human Rights Day, winter break, Eid al-Adha (the Islamic holy day), Kwanzaa, and the first day of winter. But no Christmas.
Just as a side note:
Huckabee is supposedly "booming." Well, let's look at Real Clear Politics:
Iowa: The average has Huckabee up only .2 points. Three out of five polls have Romney leading, with two out of five with Huckabee ahead.
New Hampshire: The average has Romney up by nearly 15 points. Huckabee is fourth, with one poll showing him in third and two polls showing him in fifth place. Romney leads in every poll.
Florida: Huckabee and his team are saying that he is now second in Florida. However, the average has Giuliani up just over 14 points. Huckabee is only in second according to one out of three polls, while Romney is in second in two. Giuliani leads in every poll.
Democrats run away from a Fox News hosted debate because of "bias" but Republicans participate in a CNN You-Debate hosted by none other than Anderson Cooper in which proponents of Hillary, Barack and John Edwards are chosen to ask questions of the Republicans. Does this sound right to you? Why aren't republican voters chosen as question-askers? It is the republican primary the candidates are campaigning for after all.
Oh, and then you have Anderson Cooper and CNN not doing the slightest bit of research on the questioners... Major Garrett reported on Fox this morning that a simple Google search tells you that the democratic questioners are supporting the respective candidates. Hmm.
And then there's the fist-fight that almost broke out.
Did anyone else notice that when Huckabee wanted to respond to Romney's accusations and ask Romney to allow him a chance to respond, Romney let him. But when it Romney's turn to respond, Huckabee wouldn't let him finish. Interesting.
And as for those of you who think Romney just says what will get him elected or that he doesn't answer the questions... let me remind you of this:
1. Huckabee constantly refers to his Christianity 2. Rudy's answers always come back to: "George Will said I ran the most conservative government" (too bad the American Conservative Union endorsed Romney) "I cut taxes 23 times" "crime went down" and "9/11." 3. Fred Thompson's wife is really the one running 4. Duncan Hunter only talks about the fence he built 5. Tom Tancredo focuses on immigration 6. McCain relies on his military service 7. Ron Paul is all about pulling the troops out of Iraq
Oh, and when Romney responded to the ad by Thompson, Romney at least gave a humble answer: "I was wrong." And he expanded to say that when it came time to make executive decisions about matters of life, that was when he sided with life. Not when he decided to run for president.
Anyway, the candidates have to say what they want to say during the short amount of time they have to say it because there are too many people running. Half of the candidates on the stage (Thompson, Hunter, Tancredo, McCain) shouldn't be wasting our time. If there were less people participating in the debates, there would be more time for substantive answers to the question at hand.
Oh, and why were Giuliani and Thompson placed in the middle? Does CNN not know that Huckabee, Giuliani and Romney are the 3 leaders?
As I've been saying for a good while now, if any other Republican candidate was leading in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and doing well in South Carolina, he would be considered the frontrunner. However, because it is Mitt Romney who is in this position, the GOP nomination is considered "wide open," or narrowed down to Rudy, Romney and Huckabee.
Why?
Because Mitt Romney hasn't polled well in national polls and he has very little name recognition especially when compared to Rudy.
But...
National polls don't mean anything. They don't take into account the electoral college... they disregard the fact that a candidate can win the presidency without winning the popular vote. In the primary the early states are incredibly important, which is why the candidates focus their time and money campaigning in them.
Anyway, the Talking Points Memo has an article on an "epiphany" the writer had about how well Romney is doing.
Face it, Rudy is really only doing well in Florida, Thompson is wasting his time campaigning in states where the primary isn't so important and McCain, well, there's been a lot of talk about his resurgence but he had his time as the frontrunner (way back when before the presidential campaigns really got started).
Oh, and Huckabee? The TPM says, "We've given a lot of editorial attention to Huckabee's surge in Iowa and the consequences it could have for Romney. I still believe that. But the graph makes pretty clear that the issue is Huckabee's surge, not any drop off in Romney's support. He's still rising, albeit at a slower pace. And that may simply be due to the fact that in a large field it gets harder to keep up the rate of increase in support as you near 30% of the total."
The italicized sentence is really important and something that no one has touched upon when talking about Huckabee's performance in Iowa.
On the Democratic side in Iowa, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich believes Obama is going to prevail. My question: why do we even care what Gingrich says? He was the Speaker during the 1994 Republican "revolution" and he's written a few books, but his place is in policy-making, not in election-predicting.
