This week was a relatively quiet one on the campaign trail. We are getting closer to the end of Q2 fundraising and I am starting to think candidates are getting tired already! But there was still moving and shaking and here is a recap of where we stand.
Clinton & Obama
Bill & Hillary Clinton divested a good deal of their stock portfolio this week releasing them from some potentially embarrassing conflict of interest charges for the election. Most people reported on it and then moved on, but not the Barack Obama campaign which prepared two memos detailing everything it could find in the hopes of hitting Clinton hard. Score one for Obama? Actually, not so much.
Despite recent questions about his vote attendance the only big “winner” this week was Sen. John McCain. The senator had basically imploded up until now and seemed to be on the wrong side of every issue, on the low end of fundraising and heading out the door in polling. Somehow though he turned things around this week.
Part of that was because he turned up the heat on his opponents. He attacked Mitt Romney pretty heavily, attacked Sen. Clinton & Obama and he even blew up on the floor of the Senate attacking one of his own Republican colleagues who had pointed out his lackluster voting record. It was a reminder of the old calls of his “temper” getting the best of him BUT it was McCain doing something after months of him doing almost nothing.
Will this surge last? Probably not. Like the surge in Iraq it is a temporary solution to an otherwise longterm set of problems, but it was a good reminder that if he wants to be the Senate is a force to be reckoned with.
(To hopefully become a weekly column on here where I look back on the week and see who gained & who lost. Just have to remember each week to actually do it!)
Most of the attention this week went to Rudy Giuliani who has just been getting hammered for his stances on abortion, illegal immigration etc. Giuliani had an appearance this morning on FOX news (interviewed by Chris Wallace) where he was grilled over his stances and on past decisions he made while mayor of NYC. The transcript is now available.
Giuliani decided to come out this week with his true feelings on abortion after months of what many saw as “trying to have it both ways” on the issue. Giuliani admitted his own beliefs are different then those of Republican voters and repeated his message that national security trumps almost everything else. Sad to say Giuliani was one of the big losers this week.
It is nice to see the former mayor finally owning up to his abortion views and accepting that Republican primary voters might not go his way because of it. With that said, why didn’t he just do this from the start? Giuliani may not have run a national campaign like this but he has people around him who have, not realizing this fact was one of the biggest blunders thus far (and that is keeping McCain’s continued problems in mind) and I wouldn’t be surprised if it hurts him in the long run.
People don’t want to be lied too. You can argue whether or not Giuliani was being deceitful or clever but either way he tried to be something he wasn’t and it backfired.
There was, however, another candidate facing some hard luck this week and that was Senator Barack Obama who faced a bevy of criticm & some big gaffees.
