Something's weird about the Wyoming Caucus

But I can't figure it out. Here's the story and here's the discussion at Free Republic. Maybe you can figure out how their caucus works and why Romney won.

The Blogging Caesar predicts a McCain, Obama win

Though he has it pretty close between McCain and Romney.

Romney's campaign was the source of Thompson rumor

According to Novak:

Published reports that Fred Thompson soon will withdraw from the Republican presidential contest and endorse Sen. John McCain have been traced in part to Mitt Romney's campaign, trying to stir up strife between McCain and Thompson.

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Huckabee did not support the surge before Romney

Video proof here.

Early Results from Wyoming

First delegate of the twelve went to Mitt Romney:

The first delegate from Albany County in southeastern Wyoming went to Mitt Romney. Results were expected to trickle in throughout the day.

More results as I get them.

Update:

The former Massachusetts governor won eight delegates, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson got two and California Rep. Duncan Hunter won one, meaning no other candidate could beat Romney. Caucuses were still being held to decide all 12 delegates at stake.

Did the market want Romney?

Hewitt appears to think so:

The market is tanking, allegedly because of the jobs report, with the Dow down 244 and the NASDAQ off 92 (3.5%) at this writing.

How much of the decline is due to the investor class rejecting the idea that any good news comes out of either Obama-McCain or Obama-Huckabee? Neither matches up well against the youthful, "politics-of-hope" Illinois populist with Oprah at his side. Both Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee are identity politicians who leave part of the Reagan-Bush coalition cold without adding any significant new groups to make up for their loss.

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Huckabee wins???

Sounds like Romney is conceding. Crap! Though it looks like Thompson may be third.

Romney to Ed Rollins: "Don't touch the hair"

Pretty funny:

ABC News' Matt Stuart and Teddy Davis Report: Mitt Romney made a tongue-in-cheek plea Thursday for Ed Rollins, the Huckabee campaign chairman who recently said that he wanted to knock Romney's teeth out, to keep his hands off his well-quaffed hair.

"The politics are getting interesting," said Romney. "The polls show it is just neck and neck. Down to a razor wire. Tensions are getting high and comments are being made that are really quite questionable. I saw just yesterday the chairman of Gov. Huckabee's campaign said that he would like to knock my teeth out."

"My only comment on that," he added, "is don't touch the hair."

The former Massachusetts governor made his comments while speaking at Principal Financial Group in Des Moines just a few hours before the Iowa caucuses were set to get underway.

Romney's new ad against McCain

Brilliant ad by Romney! Hitting McCain on two of the issues that have been the most irksome -- taxes and amnesty -- and using actual voters in NH to criticize McCain. Who does McCain hit for lying about him then? The voters?

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Chuck Norris vs. Huckabee's record

According to Allahpundit, it's a Romney ad:

FNS perdicts who will win in Iowa

I hope they're wrong! The consensus seems to be Romney, Huckabee and McCain.

New Attack ad against Romney by a Huckabee supporter

I don't see how helpful it is to the Huckabee campaign to put out an attack ad of this quality. The laugh track is very annoying and seems random (when I played it the first time I thought something was playing on another browser window). And the flip-flop charge is one that could be turned against Huckabee given his own flip-flop on immigration.

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Hypocrite Romney accuses McCain of not supporting Bushes taxes cuts

Ugh! Here is what happens when you don't appear to have core values and change given the circumstances. From 2003:

Governor Mitt Romney refused yesterday to endorse tax cuts at the heart of President Bush's economic program, but he told members of the state's congressional delegation during a private meeting he also would not oppose the cuts because he has to maintain "a solid relationship" with the White House.

Here is what he had to say about his hypocrisy:

Turning back to 2003, Romney told the man: "You see, I wasn't a U.S. senator. I didn't have to vote on this, didn't get a choice to. I was running my state, so I didn't have a comment on their position. And I said, `I'm not weighing in on federal issues.' But Senator McCain was a senator. He had to vote. He had to decide, `Am I in favor of pursuing these tax cuts or not?' and he voted against the tax cuts — twice. That's a very different position."

If he actually believed in supply-side economics, he would have defended Bush's tax cuts in 2003 and his reply to the question makes it obvious that he doesn't get it now.

I wonder if National Review realized this before they endorsed him. Why would a conservative magazine endorse a candidate who doesn't believe in supply-side economics?

Romney: It depends on what the meaning of the word "saw" is

How Clintonian!

Mr. Romney said today that he had been using the word “saw” in a “figurative sense.”

“If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term ‘saw’ includes being aware of in the sense I’ve described,” he said. “It’s a figure of speech and very familiar and it’s very common and I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort.”

Sometimes you've just got to admit when you've made a mistake and move on. That makes so much more sense than to do mental gymnastics coming up with a plausible excuse.

Tancredo Endorses Romney

I didn't even know he dropped out of the race:

Tom Tancredo endorsed Mitt Romney at a press conference at the Mariott Hotel in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, today. Tancredo said that he met with Romney this morning and that he is convinced the former Massachusetts governor is committed to securing the borders and ending sanctuary cities.

[...]

Tancredo hinted in his opening remarks that the timing of his endorsement was meant to slow the rise of Mike Huckabee and confirmed this later in response to a question. "It was important in making a decision," he said. "You bet your life it was."

Well, I'm glad he's gone! He hung in way too long and it clears out another competing conservative.

Here's Scott Ott's take.

Romney attended Planned Parenthood event

OOPS!

Mitt Romney was fully aware of a $150 donation to Planned Parenthood made by check in his wife's name and indeed himself attended the Massachusetts Planned Parenthood fundraising event in 1994 in connection with the donation, according to former Massahcusetts Planned Parenthood President Nicki Nicholas Gamble. This contradicts previous statements by the Romney campaign.

In April of this year ABC news reported that Romney's wife Ann had made a $150 donation to Planned Parenthood in 1994. The story reported that Romney spokesman Kevin Madden contended that " an internal review of Romney's personal records has not turned up any instances in which Romney, a Massachusetts Republican, himself sent money to groups that supported expanded abortion rights." Madden also said that "he did not know whether the former governor was aware of the donation, but he noted that Romney had been publicly committed to upholding a woman's right to an abortion until late 2004." In August ABC reported that Mrs. Romney said "I don't even remember writing the check."

[...]

Romney Spokesman Kevin Madden responds that Romney when asked earlier in the year had no recollection of the check or the event and still does not. He indicated that since Romney was pro-choice in 1994 it would have been logical for him to attend such an event but even with the photo does not recall his attendance at this particular gathering.

Ed Rollins might want to talk to his candidate about Reagan's eleventh commandment

Huckabee, who has admitted he doesn't know what he's talking about, criticized Bush's foreign policy. He sounds just like the left:

Mike Huckabee, who has joked about his lack of foreign policy experience, is criticizing the Bush administration's efforts, denouncing a go-it-alone "arrogant bunker mentality" and questioning decisions on Iraq.

Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor now running for the Republican presidential nomination, lays out a policy plan that is long on optimism but short on details in the January-February issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, which is published by the Council on Foreign Relations. A copy of his article was released Friday.

"American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out," Huckabee said. "The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States' main fight today does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists."

In one specific criticism, Huckabee said Bush did not send enough troops to invade Iraq. And he accused the president of marginalizing Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, who said at the outset of the war that it might take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to control Iraq after the invasion. "I would have met with Shinseki privately and carefully weighed his advice," Huckabee said.

[...]

Separately, Huckabee also named Republican political strategist Ed Rollins as his national campaign chairman. Rollins was national campaign director for Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election.

Romney had the same take:

Mitt Romney accused Republican presidential rival Mike Huckabee of "running from the wrong party" for criticizing President Bush's foreign policy as an "arrogant bunker mentality."

Romney defended Bush against Huckabee's charge, which the former Arkansas governor leveled in the January-February issue of the respected journal Foreign Affairs.

"I can't believe he'd say that," Romney said to a gathering of about 100 supporters in a restaurant here. "I had to look again—did this come from Barack Obama or from Hillary Clinton? Did it come from John Edwards? No, it was Governor Huckabee."

It's clear to me that Huckabee is the most anti-Reagan candidate in the pack.

Huckabee comments on Mormonism

It's amazing! This race has become a fight between Christianity and Mormonism. This is what happens when you bring your religious distinctives into the political arena.

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks in an upcoming article, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"

The article, to be published in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, says Huckabee asked the question after saying he believes Mormonism is a religion but doesn't know much about it. His rival Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is a member of the Mormon church, which is known officially as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The authoritative Encyclopedia of Mormonism, published in 1992, does not refer to Jesus and Satan as brothers. It speaks of Jesus as the son of God and of Satan as a fallen angel, which is a Biblical account.

A spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Huckabee's question is usually raised by those who wish to smear the Mormon faith rather than clarify doctrine.

If I were Huckabee, I wouldn't talk about Mormonism at all because you know anything he says will be twisted into bigotry. Though I think it would be very hard to say, "Let's keep religious beliefs out of this race," with a straight face.

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Romney's new ad knocks Huckabee on illegal immigration

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Former Romney supporter now push-polling for Huckabee

This race just keeps getting weirder:

A group has claimed responsibility, a self-described "grassroots independent organization committed to educating voters to support Governor Mike Huckabee for the Republican Nomination for President of the United States" and notes that they aren't "authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee." Huckabee says he doesn't approve of their tactics.

The firm making the calls, ccAdvertising, has also done about $53,000 worth of work for the Romney campaign. Gabriel Joseph, the head of ccAdvertising, donated $1,000 to the Romney campaign on June 11.

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