Election Commentary
01/30/2008
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I guess I'm supposed to provide some primary punditry ... hmmhmhh ... Okay, in the Florida primary, the winner was McCain and the big loser was former frontrunner Giuliani who skipped all those earlier primaries so he could concentrate on Florida, with all its ex-New Yorkers. And he still got only about 15% of the vote.

So, are all the neocons who got jobs in the Giuliani campaign, like N. Podhoretz, Frum, Rubin, going to jump ship and join the McCain campaign? A lot of them supported McCain back in 2000. And will they be greeted with open arms by the McCain campaign, or will they be told they're losers—as shown by the Giuliani steamroller—and should stay away. My guess is the former, mostly because neocons are harder to kill than Rasputin. No matter how often everything they touch turns to ashes, they, personally, pop right back up with nice new sinecures in influential institutions.

Also, can somebody explain exactly what the difference is between McCain and Giuliani? They both are invade-the-world, invite-the-world, in-hock-to-the-world guys, just like Bush. So, why is McCain doing well and Giuliani is in the tank? Is it just because McCain showed up in the first few primaries while Giuliani was off acting like he had something better to do than run for President? Perhaps Woody Allen was right and 90% of success is showing up.

And do voters have any idea what anybody really stands for? I'd like to use Giuliani's flop as a weapon against the neocons—The voters rejected your man overwhelmingly, proving that your World War IV policies are bankrupt!—but I have this vague hunch that practically nobody who voted in Florida knew that Giuliani had thrown his lot in with the World War IV crowd anyway. (And the folks who vote in primaries are the hard core public affairs junkies compared to the crowd that turns out in November!)

And what exactly is the deal with Romney? I don't watch TV much other than American Idol, so I've never seen the man say one word. When he speaks, is there something about him that makes people just not like him? On magazine covers, he looks like a distinguished President, and his resume makes him sound like the least likely to screw up royally of all the current candidates in either party. But I've almost never seen anybody anywhere express any warm feelings toward him. Does he just get on people's nerves or what?

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