Oh-eight (R): Keyes is in?
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2007 9:07 AM by Domenico Montanaro
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Republicans
It's official: Alan Keyes is making sense -- at least to the person he looks at in the mirror. The conservative activist announced his candidacy on Friday.
GIULIANI: NBC/NJ's Matthew Berger chronicles Giuliani's campaign stop in Loudon, NH, where the New Yorker noted how he "gets" NASCAR after attending racing events live. Meanwhile, Giuliani spoke briefly about Alan Greenspan's new book and the former Federal Reserve chairman's comments that the Iraq war was just about oil. "I haven't read Alan's book. I believe the Iraq war was about a number of things," he said. "To me, the Iraq war was about moving a pillar of support for Islamic terror." He went on to say that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime prevented Iraq from continuing to sponsor terror. "The reality is we come out of Iraq successfully, we keep them engaged and we defeat them, we put ourselves in a better position against Islamic terrorism."
HUCKABEE: The Saturday Des Moines Register reported that Huckabee, since Ames, has been spending a lot of time crisscrossing Iowa and “[f]inancial support has been growing as well. Huckabee said online contributions to his campaign the week after the Ames straw poll equaled contributions from the entire month prior to the Republican fundraiser.”
MCCAIN: The New York Times says “McCain is seeking to decouple his fortunes from those of Mr. Bush, in the latest chapter of a 10-year relationship that has been at times tortured, at times cordial, at times symbiotic. So it is that Mr. McCain sprinkles his speeches not with references to Mr. Bush but to General Petraeus, a shift that not only mirrors the White House strategy of putting the military out front but also symbolically encapsulates a recognition of what many Republicans consider to have been a fundamental mistake of Mr. McCain in his candidacy: trying to present himself as Mr. Bush’s anointed successor and ideological heir.”
The Los Angeles Times looked at McCain's efforts to woo veterans for his comeback. “McCain's campaign hopes to draw on veterans groups to boost his standing, much as Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts did in the 2004 Democratic campaign. Kerry surrounded himself with crewmen from the Navy swift boat he commanded in Vietnam who testified to his leadership and courage. But his operatives also built a far-reaching organization to mobilize veterans to campaign and vote for Kerry.”
The Arizona senator has long identified himself as Episcopalian, but on Sunday he told reporters in South Carolina that he has been a Baptist for years. He “noted that he and his family have been members of the North Phoenix Baptist Church in his home state of Arizona for more than 15 years.” South Carolina is a predominantly Baptist state. “In a June interview with McClatchy Newspapers, the senator said his wife and two of their children have been baptized in the Arizona Baptist church, but he had not. He told McClatchy he found the Baptist church more fulfilling than the Episcopalian church, but still referred to himself as an Episcopalian.”
A McCain spokesman tells First Read that this isn’t “a departure from anything McCain has ever said about his faith. He was raised Episcopalian, but has been a member of a Baptist church in Phoenix for over 15 years, where his children were baptized and his wife is also a member. This issue was given a thorough vetting in 2000 and he said the exactly the same thing.”
ROMNEY: NBC/NJ's Erin McPike reports on Mitt Romney's weekend trip to Iowa, including his tailgating at the Iowa-Iowa State game in Ames. At three stops on Saturday, Romney informed supporters that his campaign has held more than 150 events throughout the Hawkeye State in the months since he announced his presidential bid. None of Romney’s events attracted enormous crowds. At his first stop tailgating with the College Republicans from both universities, Romney quipped, "This is just like Massachusetts. You can fit all the Republicans in one tent." But Iowa adviser David Kochel later explained that the Sunday Des Moines Register the day after what is akin to the Super Bowl for Iowans is generally the most-read Sunday Register of the year, and he expected good placement for Romney.
Indeed, the Sunday paper indeed was plastered with photos from the game, but the AP story on Romney's appearances was located on page 2B and was sandwiched between a story on Richardson and one on Brownback. What's more, an opinion piece contributed to the Register by
Des Moines-based immigration lawyer Lori Chesser bashed Romney for "superficial caucus politics" in attacking sanctuary cities (and thereby hitting Giuliani) rather than proposing new and innovative immigration enforcement laws.
THOMPSON: In his Sunday column, the Columbia State’s Lee Bandy became the latest to criticize Thompson, calling a Thompson South Carolina rally “underwhelming.” “It wasn’t very impressive,” Bandy wrote.
The Concord Monitor: “A former Rudy Giuliani campaign worker has been named political director of Fred Thompson's New Hampshire campaign” -- Christopher Wood.
