More oh-eight: Bloomberg’s meeting
Posted: Monday, January 07, 2008 9:06 AM by Domenico Montanaro
The Los Angeles Times uses today's meeting at the University of Oklahoma today as a backdrop to talk about a Bloomberg bid. "Bloomberg is to attend a meeting with a dozen leading Democrats and Republicans at the University of Oklahoma today -- the eve of New Hampshire’s primary -- to focus on putting an end to partisan gridlock in Washington. It's a gathering that some say could be a catalyst for a third-party candidacy.”
“On the evening before the Iowa caucuses last week, Bloomberg took time out of a news conference about the city's drop in teen smoking to criticize the presidential candidates and push an independent agenda, saying he wanted ‘to end the partisanship and special-interest influence that has just frozen progress in this country and is really destroying our reputation overseas.’”
“Bloomberg's team has created Facebook and MySpace pages and revamped his website. Last year, the mayor visited China to talk about commerce, Indonesia to talk about climate change, Mexico to talk about poverty, and Texas to talk about energy and oil."
The Washington Post’s Dana Millbank writes about something we’ve been noticing: how the candidates have been borrowing each others’ language. “In the presidential race,” Millbank writes, “Clinton has been the most flagrant shoplifter of others' campaign rhetoric. Last week, she cribbed verbatim three of Obama's slogans in a single phrase: ‘We are fired up and we are ready to go because we know America is ready for change.’”
”But Clinton is hardly the only thief in a primary battle that is overrun with me-tooism. Last week's Iowa caucuses exacerbated the pilfering, as candidates purloined themes that seemed to have worked for their rivals. Obama has stolen Republican John McCain's ‘straight talk’ theme and has made off with many phrases belonging to fellow Democrat John Edwards. And Republican Mitt Romney has been openly borrowing the ‘change’ theme from Obama -- or is it from Clinton?”
Gravel and Hunter spoke at their own alternative forum from Saturday’s and Sunday’s debates. “Hunter, a Republican congressman from California, and Gravel, a former Democratic senator from Alaska, may be opposites politically, but they were on the same side of the fence when it came to Saturday night's televised debates. That is, both were on the outside looking in, excluded from the stage. Hunter was also not invited to participate in last night's nationally televised Republican Forum sponsored by Fox News.”
