Holding true to the conventional wisdom about New Hampshire, a post Iowa Caucus poll has Mitt Romney leading John McCain with no apparent bump for Caucus winner Mike Huckabee:
Romney 30%
McCain 26%
Huckabee 11%
Giuliani 11%
Paul 8%
Thompson 2%
This weekend brings two debates for the Republican field. The Patriots aren't playing this weekend so expect all eyes to be trained to politics. Tonight's debate, broadcast on ABC, will feature all six candidates. Tomorrow's debate on FOX News will exclude Ron Paul.
FOX News has proved yet again that they are just a spin machine. Paul has more cash on hand, beat Rudy Giuliani soundly in Iowa, and will beat Thompson (and perhaps Giuliani and Huckabee) soundly in New Hampshire. But he is apparently not a viable candidate by FOX's standards. We probably aren't going to watch it (NFL playoff weekend afterall), and definately won't cover it.
A temporary alliance of sorts seems to have been struck between the McCain and Huckabee camps with adviser Ed Rollins telling the NYT:
“We’re going to see if we can’t take Romney out. We like John. Nobody likes Romney.”
Look to see if that plays in the debates.
Jonathan Martin also points out more flip-flops by Mitt Romney, this time on John McCain. Romney apparently had kind words for McCain in 2002 and in his book Turnaround.
I thought there were 7 Republican candidates? The ABC debate is not bringing in ALL of the candidates, they have excluded Hunter (who at this point has more delegates to the convention than Rudy or Huck, but not more than Fred).
We have known since the absolute first of these stupid debates that there are TOO MANY people at the table. Too many people to have a worthwhile debate.
Both ABC and Fox have set standards which have excluded either 1 or 2 people from the debate.
No one, except a the small number of Paul supporters, actually believe that he (or Hunter) have any chance of winning the nominations. The other 5 all have viable paths to winning the nomination. It makes perfect sense for those 5 to be at the table--and no others.
Posted by: Joel | January 5, 2008 1:25 PM | Permalink to Comment