Day: January 2, 2008

Oh boy.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) made a last-minute decision to appear on “Late Night with David Letterman” on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, campaign sources said. Wednesday is Letterman’s first night back since the writer’s strike. “They reached out to us yesterday and we agreed to do it,” a Clinton aide said.

It’s not all that surprising that Hillary would consider an appearance on Dave’s show a safe move. Dave stopped being funny right around 2003 at the start of the Iraq war. While he may have always been a liberal, he’s really become a tool for the Democrats these days. Now Letterman is nothing more than a tired cranky old man.

Tags:
2008 Election, Campaign, Hillary Clinton, Iowa Caucus, Liberalism, Politics, David Letterman

For tens of thousands of ditto heads, Rush hit the nail in the Huckabee coffin today.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Gov. Huckabee, mighty fine man and is a great Christian, is not a conservative, he’s just not,” Limbaugh said. “If you look at his record as governor, he’s got some conservative tendencies on things but he’s certainly not the most conservative of the candidates running on the Republican side.”

Rush has been in a feud with Huckabee since before Christmas.

While calling Huckabee’s now-famous Des Moines presser Monday “Clintonesque,” Limabugh said he would not “join the chorus” of those saying it would damage the Republican’s chances.

“It’s quite possible people will see Huckabee’s press conference as an attempt to be honorable, that the drive-bys [in the mainstream media] have now sabotaged him on,” Limbaugh observed.

“And they can easily conclude, ‘Look, he didn’t air the ad, you guys did.’ The people that are looking at Huckabee in a supportive way are not analyzing Huckabee, this is what you have to understand. They are not picking apart his policy, they’re accepting him for what he is based on his identity politics. So I don’t think they’re going to take it to the nth degree the way the drive-by pundits are.”

Limbaugh, who has previously offered warm words for Fred Thompson, appeared to be dissatisfied with at least three of the top GOP candidates.

…and that’s not good for those three candidates. While he often pushes his listeners to be “free thinkers”, it’s undeniable that most of them take their cues from the words of the mighty El Rushbo. It’ll show at the polls, for sure.

Tags:
2008 Election, Campaign, Huckabee, Politics, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh

From Midnight to 4 AM, the London Ambulance Service dealt with over 1,825 emergency calls from revelers who were too drunk to function.

Tags:
Happy New Year, London, United Kingdom, Drunk, Binge Drinking

Camp Hillary is sending the message that a third place Iowa win is really a first place win. Huh?

As the presidential candidates engage in furious pre-caucus spin, one of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s most prominent Iowa supporters said Wednesday that she’s already accomplished what she needs to in Iowa and can declare success even if she finishes in third place.

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack told ABC News that Clinton has shown that she can appeal to a wide swath of Democrats, which is what she came to Iowa to do.

“She has done what she needed to do here,” Vilsack said shortly before a Clinton campaign event in Indianola. “When she started the process she was way behind — it’s now by all standards a competitive race.”

Asked if the order of finish matters, Vilsack deflected the question.

“She absolutely had to be competitive, and she’s accomplished that,” he said. “Obviously, everybody’s interested in winning, and I think we’re going to do well. It’s tight. There’s no question about that.”

If Hillary loses Iowa, what does it mean? While it might not mean much in the delegate count, it will mean a lot to her aura of inevitability. The national media will will effectively call January 3, 2008 as the official time of death of the Hillary Clinton for President campaign. It will be hard for the Clinton political machine to beat back the frenzy that will result.

Tags:
2008 Election, Hillary Clinton, Iowa Caucus