Political Bulletin

CAMPAIGN NEWS

Clinton Looms Over GOP Debate

She may not have been on the stage, but Sen. Hillary Clinton was clearly on the minds of the GOP presidential candidates at a lively debate last night in Orlando. The Orlando Sentinel reports that the GOP hopefuls "battled in a nationally televised debate Sunday night over who is the most conservative and capable of beating likely Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton." Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain "took the toughest shots -- at Clinton and each other -- as they sought to surge ahead in a crowded Republican field." Giuliani "was singled out by Thompson for his support for gun control and federal funding of abortions, saying Giuliani 'sides with Hillary Clinton on each of those issues.'" Giuliani "fired right back," saying, "I mean Fred was the single biggest obstacle to tort reform in the United States Senate. He stood with Democrats over and over again."

The New York Times reports that the debate "stood out for the intensity and personal nature of the exchanges, as Republicans tried to distinguish themselves two and a half months before the first votes are cast - a tactic that risks exposing some of the flaws that Republican voters say they see in the leading candidates." But "even as they scrimmaged, the leading candidates took even stronger aim at just one Democratic candidate," Clinton, "with a series of attacks that may not only have earned them points with Republican voters but could have the effect of helping her earn points with Democrats."

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that Clinton "became the common cause that united squabbling Republicans. 'She hasn't run a corner store. She hasn't run a state. She hasn't run a city. She has never run anything,' Mitt Romney asserted in a typical comment. 'And the idea that she could learn to be president, you know, as an internship just doesn't make any sense.'" The Palm Beach Post reports, "The candidates got the strongest reaction from the partisan audience of about 3,500 whenever they mentioned Clinton," who "was accused of being a high-taxer and a big spender who would be a weak commander in chief. Even Clinton's sincerity as a New York Yankees fan was called into question. 'I became a Yankee fan growing up in New York,' Giuliani said. 'She became a Yankee fan growing up in Chicago. Do you believe that?'"

The Washington Post reports in a front page story that the Republicans clashed "sharply over abortion, immigration and their readiness to challenge" Clinton "in a general election." Giuliani and Romney "were quickly put on the defensive, fending off criticism leveled by" Thompson, "who questioned their conservative credentials." Within minutes, McCain "joined the fray, aiming his fire primarily at Romney as someone he said had repeatedly changed his own positions and was attempting to distort the records of his rivals."

USA Today reports Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee "stressed their executive experience, while" McCain and Thompson "focused on curbing federal spending -- and most took shots at the presumed Democratic frontrunner." The debate "capped a weekend meeting of the Republican Party of Florida designed to promote the Jan. 29 primary, which is timed so that the state could have an impact on deciding the party's standard bearer." The Washington Times, in a report headlined, "GOP Debate Signals Race To The Right," that after Thompson "took a swipe at Mr. Giuliani, saying the former New York City mayor supported federal funding for abortion, gun control and creating havens for illegal aliens," the "attempt by the three other candidates to adhere to Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment -- 'Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican' -- was quickly jettisoned."

The New York Times runs a transcript of the GOP debate.

Democrats Tee Off On Clinton In Iowa

Hillary Clinton isn't just being targeted by Republicans; her Democratic rivals aren't ready to cede the nomination to her just yet. McClatchy reports roughly "10 weeks before Iowans cast their influential votes for presidential nominees," Clinton "is about to become a pinata." Clinton has the "edge among top candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in the state, polls show. But her lead in Iowa is smaller than it is anywhere else in the country," and chief rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards "probably have to stop her there if they're going to stop her anywhere." McClatchy adds, "Both teed off on the New York senator's recent vote encouraging President Bush to declare Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist foreign organization, calling the Senate's 76-22 approval of the resolution a 'blank check' for war like the one that preceded the war in Iraq."

Iowa is particularly vital for Edwards. ABC World News reported Clinton, Obama, and Edwards "will all be traveling back to Iowa this week. A true sign on just how crucial the first in the nation caucus will be. For John Edwards, who has been visiting Iowa for years now, there is hope time spent will be worth more than money spent." Edwards has "already spent about 50 days in Iowa this year. The campaign will tell you everyone has spent time here. But it was Edwards who laid the groundwork here even before he was a candidate. Ten visits last year, six the year before. Having raised far less money than senators Clinton and Obama, Edwards needs his investment in time to pay off." Mike Glover, political reporter, Associated Press: "He needs something to get his campaign jumpstarted. And the bet he's making is that it's going to be Iowa."

Jindal Elected Nation's First Indian-American Governor

Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal was elected governor of Louisiana Saturday, receiving 54 percent of the vote in the first round and avoiding a runoff. His closest rival among 11 opponents, Democrat Walter Boasso, garnered just 17 percent. Jindal will become the nation's first Indian-American governor, Louisiana's first non-white governor since Reconstruction, and, at age 36, the state's youngest governor since Huey Long in 1928. The AP says the "Oxford-educated Jindal had lost the governor's race four years ago to Gov. Kathleen Blanco. He won a congressional seat in conservative suburban New Orleans a year later but was widely believed to have his eye on the governor's mansion. Blanco opted not to run for re-election after she was widely blamed for the state's slow response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005," and political analysts "said Jindal built up support as a sort of 'buyer's remorse' from people who voted for Blanco last time and had second thoughts about that decision." The New Orleans Times-Picayune said on its front page that Jindal's campaign "had the air of both the inevitable and the historical." By winning more than 50 percent of the primary vote, Jindal "became the first candidate to win an open gubernatorial seat since Louisiana adopted its nonpartisan primary system in 1975." Turnout for an election "that featured statewide, legislative and local races was only 46 percent." The Los Angeles Times says the "election of Jindal, who is a conservative, underscores the fast-fading fortunes of the Democratic Party in Louisiana after the hurricanes."

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WASHINGTON NEWS

Cheney Vows Iran Will Never Have Nukes

In a speech he gave yesterday at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, Vice President Cheney warned, in reference to Iran's nuclear program, that the US and the international community "cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions." The AP reports Cheney also said "Iran's efforts to pursue technology that would allow them to build a nuclear weapon are obvious and that 'the regime continues to practice delay and deceit in an obvious effort to buy time.'" Cheney "made no specific reference to military action," but his remarks "seemed to continue an escalation of U.S. rhetoric against Iran over the past several days." USA Today and the Washington Times run truncated versions of the same AP story.

All three of last night's network news broadcasts reported Cheney's remarks. ABC World News claimed "many Washington observers say the rising rhetoric signals that...Bush has moved one step closer to taking military action on Iran's nuclear program before he leaves office." NBC Nightly News noted that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "who has been in a very public tug-of-war with the Vice President over Iran policy, did see his remarks in advance. For a year and a half, as you know, she's been pushing for a diplomatic solution, with little success."

The New York Times noted Cheney referred to Iran's government as "a growing obstacle to peace in the Middle East" and promised "serious consequences" if Iran doesn't give up its nuclear program. Conference attendees said that Cheney's speech "represented a significant step toward increasing pressure on Iran" and "seemed to lay the groundwork for the threat of military action."

Sanctions Target Revolutionary Guard U.S. News and World Report reports that "as the Bush administration aims to step up pressure on Iran," it is "focusing on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps." However, "taking action is proving tricky. Officials allude to a painstaking interagency effort to uncover the Guard's concealed web of economic interests and to detail its suspected role in nuclear matters." According to an accompanying piece in U.S. News and World Report, "It is the IRGC foreign operations wing, the Quds Force, that is drawing the most scrutiny. U.S. officials assert that the Quds Force is supplying sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs and other weapons, along with training, to Shiite radicals in Iraq as well as to insurgents in Afghanistan."

Petraeus May Seek Iran Incursion Also yesterday, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, appearing on Fox News Sunday, contended that "it looks like the Iranian government is going for the full hard line on their nuclear program. And I think we are going to have to be serious about dealing with both their intervention in Iraq -- which is now the only real threat, I think, incidentally, to relative success in Iraq -- and their nuclear program." Asked if he is predicting war, Kristol replied, "I think there could be a use of force. ... There has to be the credible threat of force both on the nuclear issue. ... I think the short- term question is does [Gen. David] Petraeus think he needs a little help across the border to secure our successes in Iraq. And if so, I think the president will give it to him. We can't let them just build IEDs and train Iraqis with impunity across the border."

The Washington Post, in a front-page article buttressing Kristol's analysis, reports that Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker "have concluded that Shiite extremists pose a rising threat to the U.S. effort in Iraq, as the relative influence of Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq has diminished drastically." Petraeus and Crocker's "judgment forms part of the changes that [were] approved last week to their classified campaign strategy." The "updated" plan "anticipates shifting the U.S. military effort to focus more on countering Shiite militias -- some backed by Iran -- that have generated new violence as they battle for power in the south and elsewhere in Iraq."

Is Bush Overstating Threat From Iran? On the Sunday morning talk shows, influential Democrats expressed concern over the Administration's rhetoric regarding Iran. Asked on CNN's Late Edition if she believes President Bush's contention that a nuclear armed Iran would lead us closer to "World War III " is realistic, Rep. Jane Harman, Democratic chairwoman of the House Homeland Security Committee's Intelligence Subcommittee, answered, "I think the language is very dangerous. We heard about mushroom clouds and other images before the military action in Iraq. I wish the president would avoid that. ... I think that economic sanctions more coercive than the ones we have now are the way to go. The sanctions we have are working. There is evidence they're destabilizing the regime." Asked the same question, GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said, "This is a case where I probably agree a lot more with Jane's approach to this issue than I would with the president."

Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joseph Biden, appearing on ABC's This Week, said, "If anybody thinks you're going to be able to stop Iran because you're going to invade them or you're going to -- you instigate an air war with them, they're crazy. All that would do was solidify every single Iranian -- and they're divided right now with their leadership -- to be united in their opposition to us and to the West."

Newsweek 's Fareed Zakaria writes, "The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality." According to Zakaria, Iran "has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order?"

Iranian Moderate Resigns Post The New York Times reports that Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator until he resigned Saturday, "will accompany his replacement," deputy foreign minister Saeed Jalili, "to nuclear talks in Rome on Tuesday with Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief." According to the Times, "Analysts viewed the resignation as an indication of the growing rift between Mr. Larijani, viewed in the West as a moderate," and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "who has been less interested in negotiating over nuclear issues."

The Financial Times reports that Larijani's resignation "was greeted with dismay in Tehran political circles amid concern that a power struggle at the highest levels of the regime has exploded into the open." The AP reports that "though it was not clear whether Larijani left his post under pressure, his departure was interpreted by many...as giving Ahmadinejad a free hand in dictating his views to the less-experienced Jalili." The Christian Science Monitor runs a similar report under the headline "In Nuclear Chief, Iran Signals Harder Line."

Bolton, Powell Clashed On Iran In 2004 In an article based on passages from former U.N. ambassador John R. Bolton "soon-to-be-published" memoir, the Washington Post reports that just prior to the 2004 presidential elections, Secretary of State Colin Powell "secretly attempted to shift U.S. policy on Iran by telling key allies he wanted to offer 'carrots' to the Islamic Republic to halt its nuclear ambitions." Bolton, then undersecretary of state, "says that he worked hard to thwart Powell's plans -- only to discover, to his dismay, that Powell's replacement, Condoleezza Rice, would pursue the same approach in President Bush's second term." The Post adds that Bolton "criticizes Rice and one of her top aides, Undersecretary R. Nicholas Burns, for what he considers poor diplomacy."

Plame Explains Husband's Niger Trip

In her memoirs, Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA agent whose outing led to the downfall of Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, offers her account of how her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, was dispatched to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq had sought to purchase yellow cake uranium. The Washington Post notes that in the book, "My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House," Plame Wilson says "a 'midlevel reports officer' suggested in a hallway conversation that the agency could send Joe Wilson to investigate." Plame Wilson "and the midlevel officer brought the idea to their boss, who liked it and asked her to send an e-mail up the chain of command." Thus, "by her own account, Valerie Wilson neither came up with the idea nor approved it. But she did participate in the process and flogged her husband's credentials." And USA Today reports Plame Wilson said "Senate Republicans 'obscenely twisted' facts and testimony from other CIA officers to falsely accuse" her "of sending her husband on a fact-finding trip to Africa that produced strong criticism of the Bush administration's basis for attacking Iraq."

White House Withholding Wiretapping Docs

The New York Times reports that during a June phone conversation with Vice President Cheney, Senate Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller "set down his conditions for revising the law governing the National Security Agency's eavesdropping. Only when the committee got access to secret administration documents authorizing surveillance without court warrants...would it consider such legislation." According to the Times, "That vow paid off this week when...the committee got to see the documents and then on Thursday night passed a bipartisan bill." However, the House Intelligence Committee, and the Judiciary Committees of both the Senate and the House, "have not been allowed to see the secret documents," and White House officials are "being coy about whether those committees will get access."

UN Chief Pestered Bush To Throw Him A Party

U.S. News and World Report's Washington Whispers reports, "It has puzzled some in the diplomatic community since it occurred on Dec. 5, 2006. Why, after being undercut for years by the former United Nations secretary general, did President Bush host a lovey-dovey retirement dinner for Kofi Annan?" In his new memoir former UN ambassador John Bolton "explains that Annan pestered Bush until it happened." Bolton "reveals that during a September 2006 trip to the U.N., Bush 'vaguely offered an invitation to a farewell event at the White House.' Bush probably dropped that thought immediately, but Annan didn't. Bolton...says Annan's office 'harassed [the White House] unmercifully ... to schedule something.' It gets worse: Annan wanted former Clintonites invited."

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POLITICAL HUMOR

The Latest From Late Night Comedians

Jay Leno: "More bad news today for Barack Obama: He just found out he's related to Bill O'Reilly, too. The guy can't get a break!"

David Letterman: "Congratulations to Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I thought this was sad. Al had the Nobel Peace Prize less than a week, and O.J. broke in and stole it."

Conan O'Brien: "This week, the 12th International Clown Convention is being held in Mexico City. Apparently, the Mexican clowns' most popular routine is stuffing 30 clowns in the trunk of a car and heading north to Los Angeles."

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