Breaking Story
McCain, Romney in Tight Race as Michigan Votes
01.15.08 -- 8:24 AM
DETROIT (Reuters) - Republicans in Michigan began making their choices in the presidential race on Tuesday, with native son Mitt Romney battling for political survival in a primary that could either revive or sink his campaign.
As the results roll in from Michigan, Democratic White House contenders Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are scheduled to meet in an evening debate in Nevada, site of the party's next contest on Saturday.
The hectic schedule reflects the heightened intensity of the wide-open presidential race, as both parties choose candidates for the November election to succeed President George W. Bush.
Polls show Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who was raised in Michigan, running neck-and-neck with Arizona Sen. John McCain in a state where the ailing economy has moved to the top of the agenda.
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Heckler calls Giuliani ‘baby-killer’ in Miami
01.14.08 -- 8:00 AM
MIAMI - A heckler gave Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani a little in-your-face grief on Sunday, calling the former New York mayor “a baby killer.”
Giuliani, who has pinned his presidential hopes on the Jan. 29 Florida primary after largely ignoring Iowa and New Hampshire, was working the crowd at a restaurant in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood when the protester began shouting.
“This man is a baby killer! An abortionist!” Joseph Landry, of St. Augustine, Florida, yelled, startling people having brunch at the Green Street Cafe in the affluent area.
“It’s not true, it’s not true,” some Giuliani supporters shouted back.
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Huckabee and Thompson Trade Barbs
01.12.08 -- 11:20 AM
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee went from Mr. Nice to Mr. Nasty when rival Fred Thompson started calling him what he considered a bad name—a liberal.
The Southerners are fighting on warmer, more familiar turf in South Carolina, which holds a Republican primary four days after Michigan votes on Tuesday. Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, wants to build on his victory in the Iowa caucuses, while Thompson, once a Tennessee senator, needs a victory to keep his campaign afloat.
Huckabee said Friday that the lawyer-turned-actor-turned-politician had little to show for his time in the Senate.
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The Beginning of a Crack in the Democratic Coalition?
01.11.08 -- 7:46 AM
The stunning political earthquake in New Hampshire on Tuesday and its aftershocks are opening a wrenching fissure in Democratic politics -- raising the prospect of a bitter campaign with racial and gender undertones that could damage Democratic presidential hopes in November by alienating an important voting bloc -- African Americans or women.
Though the respective celebrations over Barack Obama's Iowa win and the resurrection of Hillary Clinton's campaign at first obscured signs of trouble, it has become apparent that together they inflicted wounds that may be difficult to heal.
In the days leading up to Tuesday's voting, the Clinton camp launched a vigorous assault on Obama's lack of experience, a point driven home stridently by former President Bill Clinton. He focused on Obama's credentials, insisted that Obama's voting record in the Senate on Iraq funding was no different than Sen. Clinton's and declared, "This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."
That prompted a sharp rebuke on CNN from Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist: "For him to go after Obama using 'fairy tale,' calling him a 'kid,' as he did last week, it's an insult. And I tell you, as an African American, I find his words and his tone to be very depressing."
Hillary Clinton drifted into the same troublesome waters by asserting that Obama was raising "false hopes" and saying that it took President Lyndon Johnson to enact the civil rights agenda pushed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That churned up blogosphere speculation about what she meant. The fairest reading seems that she suggested practical politician Johnson got a civil rights bill passed that the more eloquent President John F. Kennedy couldn't get through Congress. Still, the bottom line was that the reference to King opened Clinton to criticism that she had shown disrespect to the civil rights martyr.
Michael Eric Dyson, a former DePaul professor and author of Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, on MSNBC described the Clinton camp's criticism of Obama as carrying an "implicit racial subtext."
Clinton's challenge in the weeks ahead will be to hone her attacks on Obama in a way that doesn't alienate African Americans.
But Obama has a similar challenge in finding a way to go after Clinton without offending women.
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Back From the Political Dead, Clinton and McCain Head to Next Campaign Fights
01.09.08 -- 6:45 AM
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Led by Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain, candidates fanned out across the country on Wednesday in a U.S. presidential race dramatically reshaped by their comeback wins in New Hampshire.
Clinton, the New York senator and former first lady, defied the polls to narrowly upset Barack Obama in New Hampshire on Tuesday and set up a tough Democratic nominating battle that now heads to South Carolina and Nevada.
The 71-year-old McCain's political rebirth also gave his once-struggling campaign new life and put him in the midst of a wild scramble for the Republican nomination that has so far produced no clear favorite.
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NBC Projects Clinton Win in New Hampshire
01.08.08 -- 7:32 PM
MANCHESTER, N.H (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire Democratic primary on Tuesday, a huge victory that bolstered her bid for the party's presidential nomination after a third place loss in Iowa last week, NBC projected.
The projected win over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama revived the former first lady's momentum as the race headed into an intense month of campaigning culminating in the Super Tuesday nominating contests on February 5, when voters in some 22 states pick presidential candidates.
Republican John McCain, meanwhile, capped his rise from the political scrap heap with a big win over Mitt Romney that gave new life to his once-struggling presidential campaign.
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Talk of Hillary Exit Engulfs Campaigns
01.07.08 -- 8:10 AM
Facing a double-digit defeat in New Hampshire, a sudden collapse in national polls and an expected fund-raising drought, Senator Hillary Clinton is preparing for a tough decision: Does she get out of the race? And when?!
"She can't take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," laments one top campaign insider to the DRUDGE REPORT. "If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn't want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats."
Meanwhile, Democrat hopeful John Edwards has confided to senior staff that he is staying in the race because Hillary "could soon be out."
"Her money is going to dry up," Edwards confided, a top source said Monday morning.
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Key players in Clinton's inner circle are said to be split. James Carville is urging her to fight it out through at least February and Super Tuesday, where she has a shot at thwarting Barack Obama in a big state. But others close to the former first lady now see no possible road to victory, sources claim.
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Is the GOP Breaking Up?
01.02.08 -- 6:42 AM
The long-standing coalition of social, economic and national security conservatives that elevated the Republican Party to political dominance has become so splintered by the presidential primary campaign that some party leaders fear a protracted nomination fight that could hobble the eventual nominee.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney aspires to build a conservative coalition in the mold of Ronald Reagan, but his past support of abortion rights gives many social conservatives pause. Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister, is a purist on social issues but has angered economic conservatives because he raised taxes while he was governor of Arkansas.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sen. John McCain of Arizona have tough-guy images and hawkish records, but many Republicans are wary of them because of their immigration and other policies.
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Romney-McCain battle heats up in New Hampshire
12.29.07 -- 5:53 PM
Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, closing in on Mitt Romney's once-commanding lead in New Hampshire, arrived in the state on Friday and immediately shot back at his rival, who had spent much of the past two days here blasting McCain.
"Mitt Romney attacks when people are catching up with him," McCain said before boarding his "Straight-Talk Express" bus for six days of campaign events in the early-voting state.
"The people of New Hampshire do not respond favorably to negative campaigns," he said.
Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, is virtually tied with McCain for first in the polls in New Hampshire. McCain, who won the state in 2000, arrived there after Romney spent two days of campaigning at coffee shops, town-hall meetings and a ski resort.
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Voters Still Sampling Candidates
12.27.07 -- 10:14 AM
Dig beneath the surface of the raucous Republican presidential race and you will find even deeper turmoil: Four in 10 GOP voters have switched candidates in the past month alone, and nearly two-thirds say they may change their minds again.
Mike Huckabee, who has roared to a tie with longtime front-runner Rudy Giuliani, has little reason to feel safe, according to an ongoing national survey conducted for The Associated Press and Yahoo News.
Half of all voters - including four in 10 Republicans - know too little about Huckabee to even say whether they have a favorable impression of him, let alone whether he is conservative, liberal or moderate. That could be ominous, because it gives his rivals the opportunity to define him. Witness Mitt Romney's criticism of the former Arkansas governor on immigration and Fred Thompson's contention that he raised taxes "like a Democrat."
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