Townhall.com The Blogspot for Political, Conservative and Republican Blogs and Bloggers

It’s been a while since I’ve addressed the state of the presidential race.  It’s high time I return to the game.

We’ll start with the Democratic side since it’s so easy to summarize.  Hillary Clinton’s opponents once appeared attractive but have turned out to be seriously wanting.  John Edwards is obviously a fraud.  Everyone suspected he was a fraud during the 2004 campaign when he did things like thoughtfully salute the lesbianism of Dick Cheney’s daughter.  He’s spent this entire election cycle outing himself as completely unworthy of the office that he seeks.  Even the Nutroots have lost their ardor for the Silky Pony.  I spent a long time thinking that Edwards would be the Democratic nominee premised on the facts that: a) Democrats will nominate anyone (see Gore, A., and Kerry, J. for related details); and b) Edwards was the least flawed Democratic nominee.  In fact, he is the most flawed Democratic nominee and is going nowhere fast.

As far as Barack Obama is concerned, the only thing he’s proven himself capable of is giving a really nice speech.  Unfortunately for him, the only significant speech a presidential candidate gets to give is the one at his party’s national convention when he accepts his party’s nomination.  Obama is a lazy thinker prone to misstatements and the kind of general campaigning sloppiness that kills a candidate in the era of the non-stop news cycle. The quality of his performance has come as something of a shock.  He’s a smart guy, and yet keeps saying stupid things.

He also hasn’t offered a compelling rationale for his candidacy.  The man’s got no campaign narrative.  There was a lot of talk in the Nutroots several months ago that Obama was building a movement.  A movement for what, I wondered.  Now a lot more people are wondering precisely why this man is running for president.

THE REPUBLICAN SIDE IS WHERE THE ACTION IS.  We have three serious candidates, all with legitimate possibilities and difficult obstacles.  A couple of months ago, Fred Thompson not only looked like the frontrunner but actually was the frontrunner.  There was tremendous enthusiasm for his then-nascent campaign.  In the scheme of presidential politics, the Thompson campaign was born on third base.

It is a tribute to the disorganized and out-of-touch nature of the Thompson campaign that it has managed to so thoroughly squander these advantages.  Fred had a window of opportunity a few months ago when a ton of people were dying to hear from him. Back then, I would receive dozens of emails a day proclaiming Fred Dalton Thompson as the savior of both the party and the nation.  Those emails have stopped coming.

Somehow, the Thompson campaign got the impression that it could stealthily glide to the nomination by releasing the occasional blog-post and YouTube.  It doesn’t work that way.  Politics will always be about reaching people, and as of this writing the blogosphere reaches a pathetically tiny portion of the electorate.  Mitt Romney got in front of more people by winning Ames than will read this blog and Instapundit and Powerline combined over the next year and a half.  There aren’t any shortcuts to the presidency, a fact that surprisingly enough ambushed the Thompson campaign.

Fred of course remains a top tier candidate.  But his margin of error has been reduced to zero.  When the national spotlight first hit Romney and Rudy, they both made their share of errors.  Fred is one mediocre debate performance away from the second tier.  The flip side of that coin is that he’s one electrifying debate performance from solid front-runner status.  That’s what makes his candidacy so interesting and such a wildcard.

AND THEN THERE’S RUDY AND MITT.  I’m an avowed Romney supporter, so you can take this with a grain of salt if you’re so inclined, but I’m thrilled with where my guy stands.  Everywhere the voters have gotten to know Romney, he’s done extremely well.  If/when he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, he’ll get enough free media attention in every corner of the country to receive a great introduction to the general public on favorable terms.  Also, the most recent national polls show Romney in the 14% range, only a dozen or so points behind Rudy.  According to Rasmussen (the one pollster I really trust), Romney has hit 10% on South Carolina and only trails Fred by 13 points there.  

Mitt was at 3% in March’s Gallup poll.  That seems like a long time ago.

If Rudy’s the nominee, I’ll support him enthusiastically.  Rudy’s position, however, is sort of the inverse of Romney’s.  In the states where the campaign is most intense, Rudy is doing much worse than his national numbers.  There’s no inherent reason why Romney should be so thoroughly trouncing Rudy in Iowa.  Rudy’s positions on social issues may indeed turn out to be his undoing.  When the voters look at his campaign beyond his celebrity politico status, he fares worse.

So what will the outcome be?  A lot of it depends on Fred.  If Fred falls flat, it becomes a two-man race, with Rudy having a significant advantage in the national polls but Romney having prevailed every place the two candidates have actually jousted. 

If Fred soars, he’ll be tough to beat.  Fred soaring seems increasingly unlikely, but we’ll know a lot more about what he brings to the table in a few week. All signs point to Fred entering around Labor Day.  By the end of September, we’ll have a much better understanding about where this race is headed.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.