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Two new national polls show Huckabee tied with Giuliani for first

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Fascinating.

In the CNN/Opinion Research survey, Giuliani has 24 percent, Huckabee 22 percent, Mitt Romney 16 percent, John McCain 13 percent, and Fred Thompson 10 percent.

In the New York Times/CBS News poll, Giuliani has 22 percent, Huckabee 21 percent, Romney 16 percent, and McCain and Thompson 7 percent each.

That’s really quite startling, isn’t it?  For months and months, Giuliani’s been alone on the top, with Romney and McCain stuck in the teens, and everyone else in the crapper.  Suddenly, someone has tied Giuliani — and it’s Huckabee!  Romney and McCain are still stuck where they’ve been for months.  Only one candidate is moving up.

It remains to be seen whether recent revelations about Huckabee’s curious predilections while Governor will hurt him.  So far, he’s still looking like the one who can turn the race upside down.

Meanwhile, the Democratic race is closing, though Hillary maintains a solid lead.

Among Democrats, CNN’s survey puts Clinton at 40 percent, Obama at 30 percent, and John Edwards at 14 percent. The Times/CBS poll has Clinton at 44 percent, Obama at 27 percent, and Edwards at 11 percent.

And Oprahmania may be overblown.

One interesting finding in the Times survey: while 44 percent of Democrats said Bill Clinton’s involvement made it more likely they would support his wife, only 1 percent said they would be swayed by Oprah Winfrey’s support for Obama, despite the thousands who showed up for rallies over the weekend.

Then again, it may not.  The impact of Oprah strikes me as something that’s quite difficult to poll.  I don’t think it should be underestimated.  She is not likely to change anyone’s mind — but it seems to me that she may well encourage some people to vote who otherwise wouldn’t.  That could affect the race significantly.

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  1. I get a feeling that people who are going to do what Oprah says without like, thinking, are probably people who are already Obamaniacs.  They both do the something from nothing, lets have hopes instead of policy candor.  I don’t think she brings in many new people.  It’s like Pat Robertson endorsing Huckabee, it doesn’t bring anyone new in, just keeps what they have already (even though he didn’t for some reason).  

  2. One Year Ago – polls cited by media, and media in general explained slowly using small words so Republicans could understand them that John McCain was Annointed.  Other candidates, don’t bother getting out of bed – McCain and the Straight Talk Express holds all GOP’s in thrall.

    <

    p>Except it didn’t.

    <

    p>Then, they moved on to America’s Mayor – Rudy, HE is the Annointed One.  The GOP, they said shaking their heads shrewdly, is all about pragmatism and electability – Rudy and his 9/11 aura holds all GOP’s in thrall.

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    p>Except it didn’t.

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    p>After indulging in a brief flirtation with Fred Thompson, they moved on to Mike Huckabee.  He plays in a rock band!  Lost 100 pounds!  He’s just so darn LIKEABLE!  And of course, Huckabee and his Christian Leader ploy holds all GOP’s in thrall.

    <

    p>Except it doesn’t.

    <

    p>WHY do you pay attention to these people?  Does Bob Schieffer even KNOW a Republican?

    <

    p>Ask John McCain – saying something over and over doesn’t make it so.

        • is only a snapshot in time. What is significant about Huckabee’s rise is that his snapshots are being taken closer and closer to the actual primary.

          <

          p>The more I learn about Huckabee, though, the less I fear him in a Presidential contest. It’s a good thing that the primary is getting closer and closer – because people will have less time to learn about what his record really is before the real election starts. Amen to that.

    • …is taking cues from the lickspittle msm.
      They bat for the other team.
      Note that they frequently and obliquely refer to Mormonism as an “issue” for some, but not for themselves, of course! (them being oh-so-broad-minded, dontchaknow ;-P)

      • They bat for themselves.

        <

        p>There’s no liberal bias to the media (excepting Air America and the like). There’s no conservative bias to the media (excepting Fox and the like).

        <

        p>There is, however, a corporate bias. The media is out for themselves and their owners and their advertisers. If you think otherwise, you’re kidding yourself.

          • …NBC is owned by a defense contractor, GE.  At least Faux is not.  

            <

            p>So, tell us, which is more beholden to the US federal government?

          • …that guys like matthews and obermin are on the level, then it’s no WONDER that you look at FOX like it’s the Third Reich! =^O

    • It used to be that Republicans would get a Westerner, on whom their Southern social reactionary base and their Northern money-based constituency could project what they liked and what they wanted to hear.

      <

      p>This year the Republican field has split into the Northern candidates (Giuliani/McCain), there is/was a fight for Southern candidate (Huckabee/Romney/Thompson), and the Western-identified candidates are the protest candidates, i.e. Tancredo and Hunter and Paul.

      <

      p>This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go, of course.  They’d have to combine two of the four or five ‘major’ candidates to get things to work.  Huckabee+McCain might be the only combo with a real chance.  Not that it looks likely to happen, of course.

      • McCain is definitely Western and Romney is definitely Northern.

        <

        p>But I think you’re right that Huckabee/McCain is their only real chance.  

      • Speaking of the myth manufacturer, I found this interesting email in my box this morning.  Star Parker symbolizes the audience WIllard was playing to last week.  She is a real up-by-the-bootstraps, from welfare to wealth entrepreneur who works on race and poverty issues via her 501(c)3 called Cure.  For her, finding Christ (the anti-gay, womb-controlling version), not to mention getting a marketing degree, was the key.  In other words, she’s another serious political Christian.  Her following is heavily African-American, but not totally.  OK, now you’ve met Star.  Here is her astute analysis  of The Speech.  Emphasis added

        The doubts about Romney remain. Romney’s speech confirmed rather than dispelled the doubts about his faith and conservatism that have troubled his campaign

        Mitt Romney gave his long-anticipated speech about religion, which he called “Faith in America.”

        The purported purpose of the address was for the Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor to dispel festering doubts about himself because of his Mormon faith.

        Unfortunately, I believe it was a failed performance.

        I think that Romney and his team overestimated the extent to which his Mormonism has been what is troubling his candidacy and underestimated the extent to which his credibility has been the real problem.

        Despite outspending all the other candidates, the Romney candidacy hasn’t ignited.

        By contrast, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has maintained his lead in national polls, despite a background of three marriages, estranged children, pictures of himself in drag, open support for gays, open support for abortion, having endorsed a Democratic candidate for governor of New York, and support for gun control.

        But Giuliani has not been running as a traditional conservative candidate. Romney has.

        What dogs Romney is a sense that he is not being honest about who he is.

        In an election such as this, where voters clearly are concerned about honesty and transparency, candidates who do not score well in these areas are paying a price.

        In Romney’s case, that price reflects his credibility challenge in convincing religious conservatives that his changed positions on abortion and gays are for real.

        It’s not news that Romney ran two political campaigns, one for the Senate in 1994 and one for Massachusetts governor in 2002, in which he campaigned openly and clearly as pro-Roe v. Wade and pro-abortion rights. Suddenly, in 2004, as a result of some kind of epiphany tied to embryos and stem-cell research, he opposed abortion.

        Similarly regarding gay rights, Romney has a paper trail expressing support that strains the credibility of his current stance in support of traditional values and family.

        Given persistent doubts about the sincerity of Romney’s stands on these two issues, both of central concern to religious conservatives, it is astonishing that he would make a major speech about his views on religion and faith in America and not mention either.

        Yes, he clarified, regarding his Mormon faith, that “no authorities of my church” would influence his presidential decisions. But this tells us who he is not. We need to know who he is.

        And here Romney left us with platitudes about religion in America with which few of any stripe would disagree.

        Despite his assurance that his commitment to religious liberty does not mean that he sees no place for religion in public life, he ducked the hard questions about what this means.

        The boldest he could get was to say we should continue to acknowledge the Creator on “our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history,” and in public displays during holidays.

        But despite noting family breakdown as one of the challenges of our generation, he never mentioned the importance of the preservation of the traditional family, never mentioned abortion and never mentioned his personal concern about either.

        It feeds the doubts about Romney in that, in my experience, those who have had a change of heart about abortion are among the most passionate and committed.

        It certainly is my personal experience, and what I have seen in the work I do with crisis pregnancy centers around the country.

        But Romney didn’t give a hint that this is something that keeps him up at night.

        Comparisons have been made with John Kennedy’s speech during his 1960 presidential campaign in which he addressed concerns about his Roman Catholic religion.

        Romney could have clearly contrasted himself with Kennedy, who made a point to say that religion did not belong in public life and decried the fact that questions about religion were diverting attention from the “real issues” of the campaign.

        And he might have pointed out that the Kennedy presidency marked the beginning of a great cultural decline in America. Just one point of comparison: In the early 1960s, 3 percent of white babies were born to unwed mothers, compared with almost 30 percent today, and 24 percent of black babies were born to unwed mothers, compared with 70 percent today.

        Romney’s observation that “freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom” and that “freedom and religion endure together or perish alone” was not something I would expect to hear from someone of deep faith.

        Religion endures any circumstance. Faith exists independent of freedom. It survives the darkest, dankest prison cell. But freedom allows it to flourish.

        I think Romney, with this speech, confirmed rather than dispelled the doubts about his faith and conservatism that have troubled his campaign. If the point was to fix his credentials as a bona fide conservative leader, he failed.

        So despite Willard spending a lot of money to say the get the right word out, Parker refers the gay-loving serial adulterer Giuliani because he is up front and honest (as far as she knows!) on these issues.  Sorry Peter, but your Willard just isn’t convincing the troops.  At least not the ones with street smarts.

  3. a physician from Montgomery, Ala., named Randy Brinson.

    Brinson is the keeper of a massive e-mail list of much-coveted Christian voters that Huckabee is using to reach and organize people in early-voting states such as Iowa.

    Brinson’s list numbers about 71 million contacts, with 25 million identified as belonging to “25 and 45 years old, upwardly mobile, right-of-center, conservative households,” he said. In other words, a target-rich environment for a candidate such as Huckabee, who is preaching a compassionate conservative message heavily infused with religious sentiment.

    How did Brinson get this big list?

    <

    p>It involves Mel Gibson.

    <

    p>Check out the link.

    In Iowa alone, Brinson’s list has produced 414,000 contacts for the Huckabee campaign, a stunning number given that less than one-quarter of that total is expected to vote in January’s Republican caucuses.

    If only one percent of that 414,000 people decide to go for Huck in the caucus, that would give Huck a 4 percentage point boost in the totals.

    • But it wasn’t until Jim Caviezel, the actor who played Jesus in the film, taped a pitch for Redeem the Vote that the list really took off. Caviezel’s video was e-mailed to more than 60 million people, Brinson said, and started a chain of events that eventually turned the list into a behemoth.

      <

      p>So 60 million people relieved an email through some website to check out a clip of Jesus from Mel’s movie.

      <

      p>Now, we’re to believe that (1) the 71 million email addresses are still valid, checked regularly, and aren’t regulated to the spam folder, and that (2) more than one third of them [or more if the 71 mil is too high] belong to 25-45 year old, upwardly mobile, right-of-center, conservative households?

      <

      p>Not a chance.  That only leaves 65% for anyone who falls in any of the following categories:
      * under 25 or over 45
      * liberal
      * moderate
      * economically stable but not upwardly moving
      * economically unstable/unemployed/buried by credit card bills or a ballooning mortgage payment

      <

      p>Based on a “friend” going to the Passion of the Christ website and entering in an email address?

      <

      p>I don’t buy it.  Of those 414,000 contacts, a huge number don’t live in Iowa.  A chunk of the email addresses are no longer used or go to spam.  A handful of the recipients are dead.  So, whittle the number down substantially.

      <

      p>Email is cheap and easy — but because it’s cheap and easy it’s effectiveness per recipient is dramatically reduced.  Handing the campaign 400,000 phone numbers would be far more valuable.

      <

      p>IMO, Huckabee’s turbo booster is Mitt Romney’s footware and Hispanic gardeners, Giuliani’s escorts for his escort, Hollywood Fred’s disinterest, and the Straight Talk Express’ U-turn on the Southern televangelists.  Nature [and the polls] abhors a vacuum.

  4. This removes any doubt.
    So when do we attack Iran?
    I cant wait to pick up the latest series of “Heroes of the Crusades” playing cards to add to my collection.
    All Choices the Same.

  5. Interesting article today on Politico.com regarding the messianic messages sent out by Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Oprah at the SC and NH rallies this past weekend. An interesting take. I hope Obama does not continue down this path…it gives me the creeps…and hearing Oprah trying to play the minister makes me wish she would get back to her TV set and just be Oprah.

    <

    p>www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7281.html

  6. and I have no basis in fact, just impressions… and I haven’t seen Oprah on television in about 10-15 years.  None of these are solid, and I don’t know which are more significant than others, but:

    <

    p> * I think she will help Obama with African Americans votes.  The “is Obama black enough” question has lingered, and Oprah will help there.  Then again, time alone may have been enough.
    * I think she will help Obama with the soccer mom vote, the vote Clinton seems to do the best with.
    * I think she will help Obama with the moderate/independent female vote, which might have [and might still] break to Clinton or Edwards to a GOP candidate in open primary states.
    * I think she may get more people to the polls — the kind of people who vote in November but not in the primaries may be motivated by Oprah, and if so that is likely to help Obama.
    * Newsbuzz.  Obama’s in the news and not for a bungle.  That only helps, right?
    * Fund raising.  I’d think that Oprah has lots of friends with money, and she can shake ’em down for checks… easier to do now that she’s gone “public” with her support.

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