Well, since Rudy Giuliani dropped out last night, and John Edwards  is dropping out today. It seems to be a race between Clinton and Obama, for he Democrats and McCain and Romney for the Republicans. McCain and Clinton are the current front runners.

Many questions will have to be answered the next two weeks. Will it be the Kennedy family against the Clinton machine in California? Will the conservative Republicans hold their nose and line up behind the candidacy of John McCain?

CNN and MSNBC devoted about 90% of their coverage to the Republican primary, since their delegates counted. I had to freeze frame my television set to get the Democratic turnout. Amazing, the Democrats did not campaign in Florida, yet Hillary received 856,944 votes to John McCain's 693, 425 votes with 96% votes counted. Democratic voters have outnumbered the Republican voters in every primary so far.

Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, is an obvious Mitt Romney supporter ,and he really showed his anger, last nights as the results were coming in, showing McCain about to win the state of Florida. He said "I can't believe it, McCain is running on; your jobs won't come back and we'll be in many wars campaign."

John McCain is showing the strain of campaigning (72 yrs old) and is nearly broke. Last night's win in Florida saved the McCain campaign. Mitt Romney can continue writing himself a check, but while Mike Huckabee remains in the campaign, his votes take away from Mitt Romney.

Mike Huckabee will continue campaigning in the South visiting states like Georgia and Arkansas and Tennessee. If the John McCain campaign had any money they could pay off Mike Huckabee campaign debt and assure him a job in the McCain administration.

John Edwards talked with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama last week, so I am not sure he will endorse anyone. John Edwards would make an excellent attorney-general. He could go after the crooked lobbyist in Washington.

Although I am not a Republican,I am going to watch tonight's debate. Mitt Romney has  promised to cut taxes down to zero,switched all his positions,but continues to lose the important primaries to John McCain. Will Romney go after McCain on immigration? The GOP primary is in California,the home state of Reagan who actually gave amnesty.Will it be a Huckabee -McCain tag-team? David Brooks ,conservative columnist for the New York Times said “Can we please stop pretending that immigration is a good issue for Republicans?Florida Republicans do not support a deport-only plan.,58% want a plan to citizenship. McCain won the Hispanic vote going away. It's all about the hate rhetoric. 

The Dem's will finally have a one on one debate  between Hillary & Obama.. So,far I favor Hillary's health care plan over Obamas but I trust Obama to get our troops out of Iraq more I do Hillary, because she came to the table at a much later date. Bill Clinton will remain in the shadows ,because Hillary will not need help to win in California or New York.

The Republican debate last night seemed like a social club, singing to the tune of “let’s cut taxes”. The only variation was McCain wanted to cut spending and Ron Paul wanted to eliminate everything except the Washington Monument maybe.  My conspiratorial feeling about MSNBC favoring Mitt Romney in last night’s debate has some merit.  Overnight polls placed Mitt Romney ahead in Florida. Was it because Mitt Romney received the most questions?  Mitt Romney had 21 questions, and Ron Paul had six.  I think John McCain had 18 questions.

I thought Rudy Giuliani seemed timid and was not willing to engage. Rudy may just have 9/11 himself out of this contest.

Tim Russert asked this one important question of all the candidates was it a good idea to go to war in Iraq and “worth the price of blood and treasure?”  All, but Ron Paul said yes. This will be huge  in the general election. I guarantee we will have that debate.  Do we continue to stay?  Or do we make it responsible withdrawal.  A case could be made for staying if the political reconciliation is just around the corner.  Democrats will argue that we are creating a state of dependency.

Florida has a huge retirement population, so candidates tread lightly when the subject of Social Security reform comes up. I don’t think Mitt Romney or Ron Paul, picked up senior vote last night.

A lot of people think that cutting taxes puts more money into the pockets of ordinary citizens. This is only true if tax cuts are structured toward the middle class. Newt Gingrich once said “We should let Medicare wither on the vine.”  Ever since the era FDR, the Republican’s goal is to keep reducing taxes, to force the government to eliminate the entitlements of FDR namely Social Security.  If you watched the debate last night. you heard a lot of cutting corporate taxes, and only Mike Huckabee talked about at taxe cuts for the middle-class. Mike Huckabee hurts his case when he proposes the Fair Tax, which is unfair to the working poor.Conventional wisdom: Huckabee and Rudy support John McCain when they drop out ,making outside Washington Romney against beltway McCain.

Many Republicans such as, David Frum and Newt Gingrich are trying to change the GOP of old. The working middle class is not asking anyone to feel their their pain anymore, they want the pain to go away. The corporations of the past would come back and tell their workers “we’ve added a 401(k) to our pension plan and we will match your savings up to 6%” today the same corporations come back and say “We have eliminated your pension plan and increased the portion that you have to pay in your health benefits.”  Then they read  due to layoffs and benefit cuts  their CEO got a hefty 20 million dollar raise.  The corporations of today are not our father’s companies, they will take all the tax cuts and continue to shelter their profits in offshore accounts .

Tim Russert brought out a charge against Rudy Giuliani and the same could be said of Mitt Romney. If those candidates are running on a “English only” platform, why are so many of their ads in Spanish?  Are they saying it’s okay if it’s to pander to the Spanish-speaking Cubans in Florida?

Tax Cuts down to zero, while calling for increase in military spending and adding weather castrophy insurance for coastline taxpayers; is like saying lets cut the Democrat programs and replace them with ours. No wonder the taxpayers are tired of both parties.

I started out supporting John Edwards, but I can see he is not going to get the Democratic nomination. Lately I’ve been going back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama.

I became aware of Mr.Obama when he gave the keynote address at 2004 Democratic National Convention.  He talked about living in United States of America, rather than red state or blue state.  His life story impressed me, born poor, went to Harvard and excelled. He had a lucrative career waiting, but chose to be a public servant. When the presidential race kicked off, I didn’t think Mr. Obama had enough experience to lead this great nation, but as he eloquently pointed out “Cheney and Rumsfeld had many years of experience, look how that turned out.”  Recently I have been impressed with his endorsements by established Democrats such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Patrick Leahy of Vermont.  Barak Obama impressed with huge crowds and electrifying speeches, but did not do well in the debates against the established candidates.  Lately he has shown he can think on his feet and answers a spontaneous question with clarity.  A quick look at the numbers shows that he can go neck and neck with John McCain, when it comes to securing the votes of the independents.  This will be a huge factor in the upcoming election.

As far back as a year and a half ago, I did not think Hillary Clinton would run because of her high negatives, and I thought she wanted to be Harry Reid’s replacement;  when he retired.  Shows how much I know.  Not much to say about Hillary that has not already been said and known. Her high poll numbers made her run as the inevitable candidate but the Iowa caucuses brought her back down to earth.  She knows the issues and is an excellent debater, but I genuinely think she will bring out Republicans voters that would have stayed at home because of their choices, just to vote against her.  If Hillary is a nominee, I have no doubt that she goes toe to toe with the Republican nominee but if she wins, I don’t see the congressional coattails.

I still wish Bill Clinton would sit this one out and just wait for the general election, because the ultimate politician is having a definite effective on Obama. Barak Obama was riding high after the Iowa caucuses and has lost three straight primaries since.  Barak Obama is expected to win South Carolina, but it’s off to Super Tuesday after that.

Both candidates have over a hundred million, so money will not be an issue.  Perhaps the Bill and Hillary Clinton tactics will toughen up Barack Obama, I am sure the GOP will not lay out a red carpet for Barack Obama, and they will bring out their heavy arsenal of political attacks. 

I have come a long way from trusting everything in the print media, to double sourcing just about everything I read. Jayson Blair and Judith Miller of the New York Times  made me a big-time skeptic. With this new 24/7 news cycle, some mainstream newspapers have resorted to gossip, instead of investigative journalism.  Two good examples: Why was yesterday’s argument between Romney and a reporter about whether Mitt had a lobbyist on staff, newsworthy? Same with Bill Clinton’s argument with a television reporter about whether casino workers could vote at their workplace.

The chain letter about Barack Obama’s Muslim past, and using the Koran to take his oath of office was taken for truth and circulated in this on-line forum. Earlier, some try to say that Obama refused to put his hand over his heart during Pledge of Allegiance.  A picture revealed that one time, he did forget to place his hand over his heart to the Pledge of Allegiance, but several other pictures show him his hand over his heart, and actually reciting the pledge.  Republican or Democrat, these candidates are not anti-American.I thought my fellow Victorians knew that.

Recently, Bill O’Reilly has been attacking John Edwards, over his 200,000 homeless veteran stump speech statement. O’Reilly even said that Fox would pay to shelter and feed these homeless veterans, if one could prove Edwards right.  Someone might have put a bug in a

bug in O’Reilly ear because last night he changed his whole attack message. O’Reilly is now saying that John Edwards tied the 200,000 homeless veterans to the economy.  John Edwards, “ Two Americas speech” is about America’s priorities, not the economy. I know what the Edwards attack it is really about. John Edwards convinced the other Democratic candidates not to debate on Fox news. Of course, John Edwards did not have to twist any arms.

South Carolina is known for his brutal politics, but I hope they do not question John McCain’s war record, as has been rumored.  America does not need to tear down its war heroes for a stinking primary win.  McCain is already on unsteady ground with the South Carolina social conservatives on many other issues.

Perhaps, Chris Matthews finally got it. Yesterday, his show led off with his apology to Hillary Clinton over his remarks about how she became senator from New York.  He claimed it was because Bill Clinton had an affair, leaving out the part that Hillary had been to every county in New York, even strong GOP counties, to try to convince the voters to vote for her.  Again, if the pundits would stay out of the race and just report the facts; apologies would not be needed.

The headline in today’s Victoria advocate was about, Sheriff Michael O’Connor’s being left out of the loop. This was revealed on the day of the plea bargain several days ago to why does it warrant a headline today?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for freedom of the press, but this election is about the candidates, not the pundits.  We don’t need Chris Matthews or Bill O’Reilly trying to be the story. I was disappointed with Tim Russert Sunday when he tried to get Hillary to say, she injected race into her campaign. I thought Brit Hume of Fox news Sunday, gave the best explanation of what Hillary said about how it took Lyndon Johnson, along with Martin Luther King to get the civil rights legislation passed.  Turn it upside down or right side out and you cannot come up with racial implications in her statement. Tim Russert tried to make her defend Bill Clinton’s fairytale statement about Obama’s record on the Iraq war; he purposely tried to imply that Bill Clinton was talking about Obama’s campaign.

To be fair Barack Obama had campaign workers trying to use Hillary’s and Bill‘s statements to their advantage, in South Carolina. The Democratic Party put a stop to that nonsense.  Therefore, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have a racial truce.

I never thought I would say this, but in my opinion, Bill Clinton needs to find a rocking chair and just cool it until after Super Tuesday.  Right now, this primary is about Hillary Obama and Edwards. Bill Clinton will be a factor in the general election for the Democratic Party, but the people need to hear what Hillary will do for this nation, not what Bill Clinton thinks she will do.

The Republican Party is topsy-turvy, broken up into three parts, the social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and defense conservatives.  They do not have a Ronald Reagan to unite the party. I cannot believe Mike Huckabee said we need to make the U.S. Constitution more compatible with the bible.  That’s really throwing out red meat to the social conservatives in South Carolina. Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh was having a fit trying to convince his listeners that John McCain is not a conservative.  Last week he was saying the same thing about Mike Huckabee. Sean Hannity is doing the same thing, so I guess the talk radio pundits are backing Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, or Fred Thompson.

They will be interesting to see who wins the Democratic primary in Nevada and the Republican primary in South Carolina this week-end.

My world was turned over upside down last night, because the polls,media ,and I were flat wrong.  57% of the New Hampshire electorate are women, and they said “No you don’t” and showed up in droves to vote for Hillary Clinton. In the  25 years of being a political junkie, I have never seen anyone turn, a 15% deficit  into a victory in just 24 hours.

I will be happy no matter who the nominee, but I am glad Hillary was knocked down off her high horse,ate a little humble pie and I hope she becomes a better person for it.  Democrats do not want their  primary to be over. The Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton camps were shocked last night, that’s a good thing, because the Republican nominee will not go down without a fight.

The New Hampshire independents voted for John McCain assuming Barack Obama had it all wrapped up, and did not need their help. Even though the independents voted in the Republican primary, they did not vote for Ron Paul as expected.

John McCain and Mike Huckabee are in dire need of cash, even though they have small campaign staffs ,they cannot afford advertising of the Romney and Rudy Giuliani campaign . They will have to resort to that  free left wing media.  Mitt Romney’s loss is huge, because the New Hampshire is the neighboring state of Massachusetts where Romney was the governor,.even Henry Cabot Lodge won in that state ,in his run for the presidency.  I still think the GOP primary will go down to the wire without a clear front runner.

What a weekend Tivo to the rescue.  All my passions, Houston Rockets ,NFL playoffs, three presidential debates and a Bill O’Reilly meltdown.(More on this later)as a bonus……on at the same time.

The Democrats.

The ABC debate seemed like a cordial event, except when Hillary thought she needed to forcibly explain her vision of change.  It was like; she was quoting Elizabeth Browning, “Measure not the work until the day is out, and the labor done.”  A good example is when the ABC moderator asked John Edwards to talk about a great senate accomplishment of his; Mr. Edwards said he worked with John McCain and Ted Kennedy on the Patient’s Bill of Rights.  Like a corner back jumping the route, Hillary quickly pointed out that the Patient’s Bill of Rights never passed George W. Bush’s veto.

It did seem like it John Edwards and Barack Obama teamed up against Hillary Clinton in an effort to point out that she did not stand for change. Poor Bill Richardson, he seemed to be the referee, but for the most part was ignored.  I was surprised, because only Hillary brought up the prospect of  a recession.  This will be a selling point for the Democrats in future debates.  Basically, all four candidates agreed on the major issues, unfortunately, Clinton has to go negative, in order to get back in this race.  This morning, Obama is enjoying a double-digit lead.

The Republicans

It was Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee and John McCain against Romney in the ABC debate. If this was a company locker room, John McCain was looked up to as their leader, Fred Thompson was just there, Rudy Giuliani was admired for his 9/11 work in New York City, but nothing else, Mike Huckabee was a popular one,  Ron Paul was the nerd, and everyone just hated Mitt Romney.

The highlight of the ABC debate was the Romney v McCain face-off on the definition of amnesty, this led to the funniest line of the night by Rudy Giuliani  “Ronald Reagan actually gave amnesty, I could see of Mitt Romney’s attack ads aimed at the hero of the Republican Party.”(sic).

Ron Paul used his time to say the others were just giving lip service to the Constitution., money would have been available for health care and education; if we would not have thrown the money away in Iraq.  He basically said we can’t talk about domestic issues with Iraq bearing down on us.

The Fox debate minus Ron Paul was a sleeper, it was more of candidates playing nice to each other,and backing off the negative things, they said about each other on the morning shows. It was more of a laundry list resume with the same old stale jokes.  Interestingly enough, the focus groups said that Mitt Romney won, and  they were put off by Mike Huckabee, wearing his religion on his sleeve.

Saturday night Bill O’Reilly and camera crew appeared at a Barack Obama rally at Nashua, New Hampshire high school gym.  Of course the uninvited O’Reilly tried to shove his way up front to get a good camera shot.  When confronted by Obama’s security, O’Reilly tried to force his way through calling security an SOB.  Secret Service had to intervene and order O'Reilly back ,but the egotistical O’Reilly extended his hand to Obama begging him to appear on his show.  I cannot imagine any other talk show host, doing that.

The Iowa primary is over, but.. it left its mark.

Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd  dropped out, of the presidential campaign.

Biden, knowledge of foreign policies, and Chris Dodd’s expertise in the domestic issues.  never did get them into the double digits.

Barack Obama did what everyone thought was impossible.  He brought a lot of new young voters into the process.  The young voters made up 22% of the electorate.  Mr. Obama got 57% of that vote.

John Edwards is about done, because he does not have the money to linger on much longer.

Even though Chris Matthews wanted Iowa, to be the deciding factor for the Clinton demise, she has a good chance of winning New Hampshire. Hillary cannot afford to lose New Hampshire, because then Barack Obama is sure to get the black vote in South Carolina, because if Obama wins in two predominately white states and you can throw electability out the window, it will no longer be a hindrance.

Mike Huckabee stomped Mitt Romney, with 39,814 votes to Romney's 29,405.  It looks like 34,240 of Mike's votes came from the evangelicals.  The evangelical vote will not help Mike Huckabee in New Hampshire, but it will in South Carolina.

McCain and Thompson practically tied for third.  Perhaps Thompson will drop out and support McCain in New Hampshire because it will be a dogfight between McCain and Huckabee in South Carolina.

Can't count Mitt Romney out because if he wins New Hampshire,he is most likely to win Michigan and the race goes on.

The GOP race will go on for a long.long time, because they have not settled in on a candidate yet. It may be the Wall Street Republicans versus the Religious Republicans. 

In my opinion, Giuliani's big state gamble will be a flop.