Luntz lays into Paulians
Frank Luntz has just laid into some of the ragged horde of Paul Supporters. He roundly criticised those that have sent vicious and sometimes violent emails to Sean Hannity of Fox News and to various campaigns. It was interesting to hear him plead “for respect” in the primary progress. It seems that the Paulian zealots are getting noticed for all the wrong reasons both on and offline.
These pinheads are doing nothing for the libertarian cause.
Rand has more.
No commentsEd Husain trashes Golders Green
In a spiteful piece in the Sunday Telegraph Mr Husain claims that the heavily Jewish area Golders Green is a “no-go” area for non-Jews. This is clearly rubbish and based on personal experience its not true. Heavily Muslim areas however are not at all similar. Hit the wrong day, Friday, and expect to get threatened by young Muslim men…with death.
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Dodgey column: Primary season fun
Things are looking up to be pretty special this primary season. There is a growing feeling that neither Republican nor Democrat will have a nominee before Super Tuesday, the 5th of February. There are some who think that it might not even be solved on the Republican side until the Convention.
Now obviously this is a great news for politics geeks, pundits and political advisors. However I think its a great news for the country and even the overall state of democracy. Now hundreds of thousands of voters will have a chance to actually influence the choice of nominee for either party.
It can hardly be good for democracy to have the nominee decided by the end of January leaving all the rest of the states yet to go out of the loop. Granted neither Iowa nor New Hampshire will like this as it will lessen their impact on the entire process. It is even possible that one of the two states will have chosen neither nominee.
And think of the restaurants, hotels and other venues in the states that never used to get a look in from the candidates in this round. They will now have a boost when the caravan comes to town with candidates and their entire crew. And that does not even include the press corps. This campaign will probably make a few journalistic careers as the networks and newspaper need all hands on deck to cover the chaos.
The only people who might not like this are the candidates themselves. There is a far greater chance that some candidates will have to pull out merely as they are going broke and cant sustain their campaign. The extended viable primary caucus will tax these men and women more than any other time in recent memory. They will have to prove their metal and stamina like in no other primary season.
This, of course, also makes the strategy more interesting. Which states do you concentrate on? Logic says the ones with the most delegates, ala Guiliani. Then again if you get enough small states before you could possibly get momentum and carry a large state despite not spending that much time there.
I am really looking forward to the next month or so; or even longer if it carries on. This is the most exciting and interesting primary season for a very long time. What with the pollsters coming a cropper, the candidates getting desperate and the pressure to win its going to be a hell of a lot of fun. Watching and reading the foreign press trying to get their head round the whole palava is most entertaining.
Its going to be a wild ride. That ride is good for American democracy and good for the process of picking a President.
No, I am not going to brave any predictions.
NB: Crossposted at As Maine Goes
As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.
Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.
California grabs your thermostat
Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.
This is a stunning bit of state authoritarianism.
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