Today’s Reading List – August 8, 2006

Posted by: John Schroeder at 05:55 am, August 8th 2006 — Comment on this post »

The Governor will need to do significantly better than “Honorable Mention” if he is going to make an ’08 impact. Lowell adds: Well, of “mentioned” potential presidential candidates, Romney got 5 votes, George Allen got 6, Giuliani got 20. (Newt Gingrich got 12.) And this from conservative bloggers! Once people start looking at where the candidates stand on the issues that the poll below identifies as motivating the base, Giuliani’s going to fade and Allen/Romney will surge. As for Newt, like many conservatives, I hope the leading candidates are listening to him, but I hope he doesn’t run.

Hil not doing so hot in NY polling. Lowell: I wish Rudy would have run against her, beaten her, and knocked her out of the presidential race. It would have been a better use of his talents, as he will not get the GOP presidential nomination and would have been a fine Republican voice (and vote) in the Senate.

Pure, utter, baseless speculation about Romney’s political position in re: ’08. This is a puff piece if ever there was a puff piece – which leads to a difficult question – it’s out of Utah, a website that carries an “LDS Newswire” on Page One, sooo . . . . Are we seeing “Mormon rooting” here? Lowell: Actually, it looks like it’s out of Las Vegas, which has a very large LDS community. But it reads like a newsletter directed at LDS readers. And yes, I think it’s Mormon rooting. We’ll see lots of that, and it’s not surprising: In the days of the blogosphere, everyone’s a publisher, and no one’s got an editor!

Let’s see, the GWOT is THE biggest issue to Republican base, and health care has limited appeal. I’d say Romney will be very happy to be out of the statehouse at the end of the year and free to pursue presidential aspirations apart from the agenda that such an office would impose upon him. Lowell: No doubt. He is pretty good on the social issues, which motivate the base second only to the GWOT. He’s been pretty quiet about the war, however.