Politics: August 2005 Archives

Karol isn't predicting who the Republican nominee will be in '08, but, blogger enthusiasm notwithstanding, she says it won't be Rudy or Condi. Go read why, and read her insightful list of the eventual nominee's defining characteristics.

Karol links to Patrick Ruffini's latest straw poll. He's added two twists to the previous poll. In addition to a ballot of likely candidates, there's a second ballot, with some unlikely but popular choices -- Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and Fred Thompson. You indicate whether you'd vote for one of the four over your initial pick, if you had the chance. He's also asking for your state and is presenting results by state. Patrick is also tracking results by referring blog, but I notice that neither BatesLine nor Karol's Alarming News show up in the stats for the previous straw poll, even though we both had it linked. Ruffini has posted his analysis of the initial results for the new straw poll.

Patrick also has been analyzing detailed presidential results, and has a map showing the change in the Bush vote between 2000 and 2004 in each municipality in New Jersey. The cool thing is that he overlaid the map on Google Earth, so you can see aerial view colored with the results, and get a sense of the types of places where Bush gained and lost. The most interesting trend: The wealthier a township, the more likely a swing away from Bush from 2000 to 2004.

Political analyst Michael Barone is now a blogger, and he's categorized the congressional districts where Bush gained and lost the most between '00 and '04. Barone calls Oklahoma's rural 2nd, 3rd, and 4th districts, where Bush did much better in '04, "Zell Miller districts."

One of the darkhorses in the Ruffini straw poll is Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who got a favorable mention here a while back. A couple of weeks ago Fayetteville, Arkansas, blog Overtaken by Events reported that Huckabee, along with many other Arkansas pols, protested loudly against an immigration raid at a poultry plant in Arkadelphia. Huckabee said the calls to his office were running a thousand to one against his position, but does it take more courage to defy popular opinion or the interests of the state's biggest business interests?

... is this.

Christopher Walken, the actor, plans to run for President in 2008, and he has launched a campaign website. Is this a self-indulgent publicity bid? Is there some depth to his political thinking, or is he just another celebrity with an inflated sense of self-importance? This quote from his bio may be a clue:

Having residences both in rural Connecticut and upper-west Manhattan, he sees that all walks of life are becoming disgruntled and apathetic towards the American government, and feels a duty, as a child of the American public, to restore the peace, prosperity, and greatness of the United States.

Yes, you'll meet all walks of life in the Upper West Side and among the Connecticut country estates of the wealthy. He forgot to mention that he sometimes travels to Los Angeles and flies over the great heartland of our country, occasionally looking out the window for a second or two.

He stakes out positions (pretty much the mainstream media consensus positions) on only three issues (campaign finance reform, stem cell research, and military spending), but Ace has gleaned some additional platform planks from the characters he's played in the movies.