Whether you are a Repub or Dem your front-runner’s poll numbers are collapsing quicker than a dynamited Vegas casino. What gives?
With Hillary it is all about likability. She may be the most tactically skilled politician of her generation but she is far from the most natural. That allowed Obama, who IS a natural, to make his move. Paul Krugman has been writing for months that Obama’s positions strongly slant right. When Hillary says attacks are “straight out of the republican play book” that is what she means. With Karl Rove’s love letter to Obama now on open display in the Financial Times and available to use in Hillary's counter-attack things are set to get nasty. Stay tuned; Edwards could be the big winner in this dust up.
On the Repub side Giuliani’s campaign has always been a train wreck waiting to happen, but his signature sneer and swagger plays well in the clinches so he might still pull it off. Mitt Romney’s problems are more hard-core. The Repub spin machine spent twenty years associating the words “liberal” and “Massachusetts.” Even a master like Frank Luntz would find it hard to reverse field now. And the simple fact is that Mormonism is not fundamentalist Christianity. There is no Book of Mormon in the King James Bible. For some, like Florida preacher Bill Keller, pretending otherwise is flat out Satanic. Keller may be extreme, but in the Republican South Carolina Primary, extreme is normal.
Mitt made things worse by electronically stuffing the ballot box at the Value Voters Summit. We think that is what really kicked church-based social networking into high gear, fueling the Huckabee surge in Iowa. We said at the time it was going to be trouble. Hell hath no furry like a born-again scammed.
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