Huckabee’s official blog has issued several ways Iowans can help him in these last few days before the primary. Visit the sight to find out how you can help Huckabee’s campaign. Not from Iowa and still want to support him? Click here to donate to his campaign.
The Boston Globe posted an article today suggesting that Mike Huckabee and John McCain have formed some sort of alliance (or at least a truce) in order to disrupt some of Romney’s plans.
McCain and Huckabee have put aside whatever differences each might have in the interests of blocking Romney, said Dante J. Scala, a University of New Hampshire political scientist. At presidential debates, and whenever they cross paths on the campaign trail, McCain and Huckabee swap compliments. Their campaigns have resisted circulating the sort of “opposition research” and negative news articles on each other that they routinely send out on Romney.
“It’s the opponent of my opponent is my friend, at least for the time being,” Scala said yesterday. “Both of them have an interest in derailing Romney early – Huckabee in Iowa and McCain in New Hampshire – and each one stands to benefit from the other’s success.”
Scala said the partnership may well rupture in a month, if McCain and Huckabee succeed in knocking Romney off his game plan of winning both Iowa and New Hampshire. But for now, they have no reason to attack each other. Huckabee is busy courting socially conservative evangelical voters in Iowa, while McCain is focused on locking up socially moderate, fiscal conservative voters in New Hampshire. Neither is competing aggressively on the other’s turf.
“Down the road, if Huckabee and McCain win the first two contests, then they may well turn on each other because they may be the only two left standing,” Scala said. “But for right now, I think their goal of supplanting Romney is bigger than any disagreement with each other.”
Hope everyone has a very merry Christmas!
Michelle Malkin does a nice job outlining the events that happened over the past year concerning the Iraq War. Its pretty long but its a good article.
Today, the British newspaper The Times ran an article about why Mike Huckabee might be the one the religious right has been looking for.
The evangelicals have become used to wielding significant – if not always decisive – influence on nomination contests since 1980. But, for people who preach so hard against promiscuity, this time around they showed a previously unsuspected disposition for serial-flirting with the candidates.
The first suitor was George Allen, before his career was wrecked when he got caught making an apparently racist remark. Next came Mr Romney, who struggled to prove he had not two-timed them by supporting abortion and gay rights in the past – or deal fully with their fear of his Mormon faith. Fred Thompson also dallied with their affections before he got rejected for being old, lazy and turning up late by not announcing his candidacy until September.
By October, some had given up and were talking about backing an independent. Others were braced for an unholy alliance with Mr Giuliani, who supports abortion and gay rights. But then Mr Huckabee – previously so far behind nobody had really noticed him – arrived with a speech that sent volts through the “Values Voters” summit in Washington.
If Huckabee can avoid any big scandals in the coming month, he might be able to ride the wave of support by the religious right to a presidential nomination. However, a lot can happen in a month and I wouldn’t be surprised if the opposition is waiting until closer to the primaries to issue a few more attacks on him.
Ala’a was 9 years old, strong of will but weak of body — he suffered from cerebral palsy and weighed just 55 pounds. He lived among about 20 kids with physical or mental disabilities at the Mother Teresa orphanage, under the care of nuns who preserved this small oasis in a dangerous place.
On Sept. 6, 2003, halfway through his 13-month deployment, Southworth and his military police unit paid a visit to the orphanage. They played and chatted with the children; Southworth was talking with one little girl when Ala’a dragged his body to the soldier’s side.
Black haired and brown eyed, Ala’a spoke to the 31-year-old American in the limited English he had learned from the sisters. He recalled the bombs that struck government buildings across the Tigris River.
“Bomb-Bing! Bomb-Bing!” Ala’a said, raising and lowering his fist.
“I’m here now. You’re fine,” the captain said.
Over the next 10 months, the unit returned to the orphanage again and again. The soldiers would race kids in their wheelchairs, sit them in Humvees and help the sisters feed them.
To Southworth, Ala’a was like a little brother. But Ala’a — who had longed for a soldier to rescue him — secretly began referring to Southworth as “Baba,” Arabic for “Daddy.”
Then, around Christmas, a sister told Southworth that Ala’a was getting too big. He would have to move to a government-run facility within a year.
“Best case scenario was that he would stare at a blank wall for the rest of his life,” Southworth said.
To this day, he recalls the moment when he resolved that that would not happen.
“I’ll adopt him,” he said.
Read the whole thing. It is truly an awesome and uplifting story.
(Hat Tip Hot Air)
A new study finds that even in a nuclear exchange with Iran, Israel would still come out on top. However, would it even be considered a win when the casualties on both sides could reach 20 million?
The Dallas Morning News editorial board announced today that it endorses Mike Huckabee for the Republican presidential nomination.
“I’m a conservative,” he likes to say. “I’m just not mad about it.” Along those lines, what sold us on Mr. Huckabee is a sense that of all the Republicans, he is the change agent the nation most needs. John McCain, whose candidacy is quite appealing despite concern about his age and temperament, was arguably that man once. But his moment has passed.
America needs a clean break from the bitter politics of the recent past. From the right, Mike Huckabee, a progressive conservative with a pastor’s heart, can deliver.
Well, right now there are six candidates in the Russian presidential race but guess who is presently leading in the polls? That’s right, its Dmitry Medvedev, President Putins choice of successor.
Medvedev is the clear front-runner in the race. The First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has the a strident backing of at least four parties, including United Russia, which gained 64 per cent in the Duma election. But his main advantage is the man he’s been working with for 16 years and can always listen to.
According to a recent survey by the Russian public opinion research centre, Mededev leaves other contenders trailing in his wake.
In the past couple of months, we have seen a lot of turmoil and shifts of influence in the 2008 presidential race. The Republican side has been much more of a toss up than the Democractic side, with five to possibly six major contenders entering into the primaries. On the Democratic side, the race seems to be only between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with Edwards trailing them both.
Even after roughly a year of campaigning, the question still remains: Who is going to win the nomination from each side? Well, I’m not even going to pretend that I know, even though I have a few hunches on who it will be. However, I would like to take the time to present some often overlooked information that can be used to predict the public opinion (or at least popularity) of each candidate.
To do this analysis, I will be using two different internet tools: Google Trends (analyzes searches and news reference frequency) and Alexa.com (estimates the percentage of internet users that visit a particular site).
First, lets look at the Democratic candidates. Here is the Google Trends chart of the past year.
Red: Hillary Clinton Light Blue: Barack Obama Yellow: John Edwards
By now, you can see that judging by the search results, its almost a dead heat between Clinton and Obama. So that isn’t much help in judging who might win. Now, lets look at each candidate’s “reach” according to Alexa.com.
Now, this chart shows that Barack Obama has a lot more internet users visiting his site, more than Clinton and Edwards combined. If we went by this, Barack Obama would seem to be the the peoples’ pick for the Democratic candidate.
Now lets take a look at the Republican’s side. Here is the Google Trends chart of the searches for the top Republican candidates:
Red: Mike Huckabee Light Blue: Mitt Romney Yellow: Rudy Giuliani Green: John McCain Dark Blue: Fred Thompson
Now, by this chart, it would seem that it is a close race between Huckabee and Romney. Now, since this is just a chart of the number of searches for their names, it only really judges their popularity. If all the press coverage about Huckabee and Romney dies down, their search popularity might follow suit.
Now lets look at the Alexa.com chart for these five candidates.
Now this chart shows a gigantic surge in the percentage of internet users going to Huckabee’s official campaign website. If we go by this chart, it would seem that Huckabee would be the winner of the Republican nomination.
Now, something that has me worried is the popularity of Ron Paul on the internet. Here is the Google Trends chart including Ron Paul in place of John McCain.
Red: Mike Huckabee Light Blue: Mitt Romney Yellow: Rudy Giuliani Green: Ron Paul Dark Blue: Fred Thompson
Ron Paul puts all of the candidates to shame according to the amount of searches for him on the internet. This high search volume is even happening when his news reference volume is the lowest of any candidate!
Here is his Alexa.com chart that includes Ron Paul and excludes John McCain:
The percentage of internet users that go to his website is outrageously larger than any of the other Republican candidates. If we went by Ron Paul would easily be the Republican’s presidential candidate.
Even when you compare Ron Paul’s site with the Clinton and Obama, he comes out ahead. Here is Alexa.com’s chart:
Now, I’m not even going to pretend I know what this may mean for the primaries but it is something that I feel people should be paying more attention to.
Overall, if we forget the Ron Paul factor and nothing big happens within the next two to three weeks, the primary race seems to be between Clinton and Obama (no surprise there) and between Huckabee and Romney if we go by this internet data. It will be interesting to see how well this theory holds up come January.
