Another one of J-Ger’s highly-placed anonymous sources on the mirage of Rudy Giuliani’s inevitability:

“If the Republican party nominates a pro-choice candidate, we’re entering uncharted territory… The trick to winning is get as few states in play as possible, and to put the conservative states to bed early. The CBS poll was pretty telling – Rudy’s up by twenty, and leads among evangelicals and conservatives for whom family life and the character of the candidate are most important. That tells you how disengaged voters are in most states. That’s not going to continue. Rudy’s just not going to continue to be the first choice of those folks.”  

The source has an equally dim view of Rudy’s electability: 

“Now, the whole base won’t stay home in a Rudy vs. Hillary matchup, but the question is, how much of the base can he afford to have stay home? Didn’t we recently learn that it’s about five hundred votes in Florida on the right day?

The CBS poll is crap, by the way.  However, even reliable national surveys are trending in Rudy’s direction as respondents grow increasingly bored with Fred Thompson’s reticence.

Of course, we don’t (officially) have a national primary, and Mitt Romney continues to lead in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Since the early winner in primary season usually gets the instant inside track, a national lead - whether it’s five points or twenty - five months beforehand is still largely a reflection of name-recognition rather than true preference, and thus an exercise in vanity.

On the other hand, Rudy could easily pass Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire between now and the first snowfall.  But how likely is that?  How many conservatives will really be willing to put their noses in a vice until their nostrils fuse together to punch the chad for a candidate who would be on the left side of the Democrat party on moral issues?  When has the GOP base ever been so partisanly unified that they were willing to chuck core principals overboard for the sake of a victory that would quickly become pyrrhic?  It sure didn’t happen in last year’s midterm election, and there are rumblings that 2008 will be more of the same, at least at the congressional level.  It’s hard for me to see that same rock-ribbed Republican electorate being so ideologically flexible in selecting a presidential standardbearer, Hillary or no Hillary.

We keep hearing that the Democrats will be more unified and more rabidly energized than ever next year.  And we keep hearing from Team Rudy that he can put large “blue” states in play without losing any “red” states.  So I pose the question: which is the more credible assertion?

Jenber gags at the “mainstreaming” of Markos Moulitsas.  I think he’s going to have to insulate this attempted new image sufficiently from the rage-fueled antics of his lunatic, Kool Aid-swilling followers for plausible deniability to be more than a lame punchline.

Much as it may pain “pork-busters” to hear this (and you’ll find my name on that list), the truth simply cannot credibly be denied: crusading against earmarks is, for the center-right, an endeavor as pointless and futile as King Kanute’s denial of the sea.  Yes, pork is corrupt; yes, the whole process stinks like the month-old tapioca you forgot to take out of the trunk of your car during the recent heat wave.  But tighty-righties kicking their own party out of power last November has not, and clearly never will, “teach them a lesson,” at least not the one we wanted them to learn.  And entrenching the pork-crazy Democrats further in power by continuing to devour our own for their fiscal fallibility would be a backfire slightly less powerful than the one at Trinity.

Karl “The Architect” Rove rides off into the sunset.  Or could this just be an intermission?

Here’s another little illustration of how Democrat national security grandstanding can have potentially devastating real-life consequences.  God only knows how much longer these tutorials will continue to remain this “affordable.”

The Bush boom, and accompanying tsunami-like influx of taxpayer dollars into federal coffers reducing the federal budget deficit just as happened a decade ago under the future First Gigolo, continues to be the greatest economic expansion nobody’s ever heard of.  If the success of the “Surge” strategy in Iraq can no longer be blacked out, why hasn’t the untrammeled prosperity and productivity unleashed by the President’s tax cuts burst through the Enemy Media blackout as well?

Do you read The American Spectator? It’s a political and cultural monthly, which has been published since 1967. And it’s one of my favorite online sites because of its wickedly witty prose and fascinating observations about the people who inhabit the weird world of politics.

Among those wielding a razor sharp keyboard is its founder and editor in chief R. Emmett “Bob” Tyrrell Jr. — my guest tonight on “A Conversation with Andrea and…” at 9 ET on Blog Talk Radio.

Bob Tyrrell is a nationally syndicated columnist, whose articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Washington Times, National Review, Harper’s, Commentary, The (London) Spectator, Le Figaro (Paris), The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, and elsewhere. He is also an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute and a contributing editor to the New York Sun.

Tyrrell’s written several books, including his most recent — The Clinton Crack Up. We’ll be talking with him about what the former president has been doing since leaving the White House, and get his take on the current field of presidential hopefuls, including the other Clinton — Her Royal Pantsuit.

Join us tonight at 9 for the “dish”. The Live Chat Room VIP section will be open. We’ve got a plush seat with your name on it. I’m anticipating tonight’s will be quite an interesting conversation… Listen to it by clicking here:

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