Well, Joe Trippi, one of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards’ top strategists, thinks he knows the answer: Rove “doesn’t want John Edwards to win the Democratic nomination.”
“Rove knows that Democrats will rally around whomever he attacks—so he attacks the candidate he thinks Republicans can most easily defeat,” Trippi wrote to supporters in a fundraising e-mail. “It may seem backwards, but Rove and his cronies did the same thing last time around. In 2004, they were scared of John Edwards, so they attacked John Kerry.” (CNN)
Why do I not buy it? Remember “I voted for it before I voted against it”? Imagine this video playing nation-wide:
After weeks of top-tier democrats squabbling with one another its nice to see a change of pace. Now top-tier Republicans are ready to go at it.
Today Fred Thompson, who isn’t running yet, took a swipe at Rudy Giuliani. On his Web site Thompson wrote:
When I was working in television, I spent quite a bit of time in New York City. There are lots of things about the place I like, but New York gun laws don’t fall in that category.
Anybody who knows me knows I’ve always cared deeply about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. So I’ve always felt sort of relieved when I flew back home to where that particular civil liberty gets as much respect as the rest of the Bill of Rights.
Thompson of course was going after Rudy Giuliani whom he mentioned later in the post:
Now, the same activist federal judge from Brooklyn who provided Mayor Giuliani’s administration with the legal ruling it sought to sue gun makers, has done it again. Last week, he created a bizarre justification to allow New York City to sue out-of-state gun stores that sold guns that somehow ended up in criminal hands in the Big Apple.
Meanwhile Mitt Romney has also been swiping Giuliani over NYC’s status as a “sanctuary city” or place where illegal immigrants can go without fear of prosecution.
Yesterday I noted how logging into Democratic Web sites is a chore, today I follow-up with the Republican sites. If you want a summary, its just as bad.
WINNER for both parties is Fred Thompson who not only provides a link at the top to sign-up for an account BUT ALSO MAGICALLY SIGN-IN. Wow, what a concept and he isn’t even a candidate yet.
John McCain will let you sign-up but not sign in on the main page. To login with John McCain you have to go to “McCain Space” where you cannot login immediately you have to click another link to find the form.
Mitt Romney lets you sign up to join the team but it isn’t clear this leads to any more interaction that needs a login. I can post a comment to the Mitt Blog without logging into an account. Same with Sam Brownback. I can join “Team Brownback” but other than getting some e-mails there appears to be no account creation or login.
Rudy Giuliani, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul & Mike Huckabee don’t seem to have any kind of social networking/long-term account system in place to login to either making most of these Republican sites pretty basic. Go, look, contribute leave.
So four stars to Fred Thompson, zero stars for just about every other candidate Republican or Democrat.
Now as I said yesterday why is account creation important? I noted because it lets you track your visitors, give them access to information tailored to them and it helps the campaign keep in contact. What would it also do? Republicans, please note this, it makes it easier for people to contribute. Once a person is logged in they could contribute with pretty much two or three clicks and little typing making them more likely to do it several times and in the heat of the moment when they are all fired up from seeing you speak or reading something on your site.
Give them twenty steps instead of two or three and you might lose them. So my point is, start getting sign-ups and when you do actually give them the ability to sign-in.
Michael Dukakis has seen this script before: a Republican administration besieged by scandal and running out the clock on its second term, while wide-eyed Democrats confidently lick their chops, knowing there’s no way in hell voters will reward the G.O.P. with four more years in the White House.
It was around this very moment 20 years ago, the summer when Oliver North told Congress he was “authorized to do everything that I did” and Reagan fatigue took hold, that Mr. Dukakis, then the 53-year-old governor of Massachusetts, emerged at the head of a crowded Democratic presidential pack. By the time he was formally nominated in Atlanta the following July, he’d opened a 17-point lead over Vice President George H.W. Bush.
Though I have never been much of a Mike Dukakis fan he does reflect the sentiments I have been putting forward in this blog. Democrats are running around as if they already have the White House. It won’t be that easy.
We are reaching a pretty important moment in Iraq politically next month so I am going to start keeping a closer eye on the country here in the blog of major developments both on the ground and in regards to political ramifications in ‘08.
- 14 of our soldiers are reported dead in the country after a helicopter crash.
- Separately, at least 28 people were killed and 91 wounded when a suicide car bomb detonated outside a police building in the Iraqi town of Baiji, north of Baghdad, in Salaheddin province, police said.
- Hillary Clinton is now receiving scorn from the left after suggesting that the surge in Iraq is working but that it is too late. This is another tightrope for Clinton who seems to have recognized she will not court the far-left as well as Obama or Edwards because of her Iraq strategy but instead believes a moderate position on the subject will better serve candidates in the general election.