Giulliani is out of Race-Supports McCain

Mr. McCain scored a slim but decisive victory over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. With 92 per cent of the ballots counted, the Arizona senator had won 36 per cent of the vote, five points ahead of Mr. Romney, who told supporters after the polls closed he had called Mr. McCain to congratulate him. Mr. Giuliani stood at 15 per cent.

"Our victory might not have reached landslide proportions but it is sweet nonetheless," a jubilant Mr. McCain told supporters in Miami.

Earlier, he told The Associated Press his victory shows, "I'm the conservative leader who can unite the party."

John McCain's hopes of carrying Republican colours in the U.S. presidential election were given a huge boost by his victory yesterday in the Florida primary. And he will confirm his front-runner status headed into next week's Super Tuesday if, as expected, also-ran Rudy Giuliani drops out of the race and endorses him.

In remarks to his supporters, Mr. Giuliani repeatedly referred to his campaign in the past tense and added "win or lose our work is not done. ... We'll stay involved and together we'll make sure that we do everything we can to hand our nation off to the next generation better than it was handed to us.

"The responsibility of leadership doesn't end with a single campaign," he said.

Asked about the reports that he would endorse Mr. McCain, Mr. Giuliani said only, "We're heading to California, we're heading to California."

Mr. McCain's victory gives him 57 delegates to the nominating convention in September. He, along with all candidates from both parties, will now turn his attention to next Tuesday, Feb. 5, in which 22 states hold primaries. If Mr. McCain does well in those contests, he could secure his party's nomination.

In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton used her popularity among Hispanic voters to trounce Barack Obama. Incomplete results showed her with a 20-point margin of victory.

Exit polls showed that Mr. McCain did well among seniors, moderate Republicans and those with Cuban ancestry.

"I want to thank my dear friend, Rudy Giuliani, who invested his heart and soul in this primary, and who conducted himself with all the qualities of the exceptional American leader he truly is. Thank you, for all you have added to this race."

His victory is something of a surprise on a couple of counts. First, it showed he can do well in a state that allowed only Republicans to vote. His previous victories, in New Hampshire and South Carolina this year, and in two states in 2000, came in elections open to independents.

Also, he won the state in spite of polls that showed that voters saw the economy as the most important issue, a strong suit of Mr. Romney's, a former venture capitalist. Mr. McCain, who served in Vietnam, emphasized issues of national security.

No delegates will be awarded to Ms. Clinton, because the national Democratic Party is punishing Florida for holding an early primary. But the victory will give her a much-needed boost after losing last weekend's South Carolina primary to Mr. Obama and watching him secure the endorsement of Senator Edward Kennedy.

Still, Mr. Romney was not letting go of what he clearly sees as one of his advantages in the race. "I think it's time for the politicians to leave Washington and for the citizens to take over," Mr. Romney told supporters in St. Petersburg last night.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who had emerged as a national figure after his surprise victory in the Iowa caucuses in early January, trailed Mr. Giuliani. But he said he wasn't discouraged by his poor showing and vowed to stay in the race. "We're playing all nine innings of this ball game," he told supporters in Creve Coeur, Mo.

State of the Union Address

With the presidents final State of the Union Address we saw him make many promises in regard to the economy and a statement saying that we should see a budget surplus by the year 2012. Well sir this came right after your proposal to make the current tax cuts permanent. I am not in office but I am pretty sure that the concept of trickle down theory never actual worked. Your rebates to the rich are only filling the pockets of the wealthy and not encouraging them to spend. In times such as these where markets fluctuate too much to predict with any level of certainty.
Next our president claims to have achieved great results and high levels of success with his NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT. According to our president we are seeing record levels of reading and math scores with predominantly low income demographics. Well I think quickly we should take a look at how long this testing has been mandated and recorded. 8 years. I hope we start see improvement every year. That means that our educational system is doing something. BUT it does not mean that your bill has increased the quality of these schools. When a teacher is forced to teach a test we are encouraging our students to memorize and study only small examples of problems and reduce the level of critical thinking that takes place. We need to also find ways to increase the qualitative data as well as the quantitative data. Look at the amount of students attending college and the current GPA of those students. Are they prepared for the curriculum or were they only prepared for a standardized test?
On to Energy security. According to our president we need to invest more in entrepreneurs and research and development for clean energy. Then he proceeds to say we need to invest in Clean Coal, Nuclear, and Batteries. Well all of those things are both hazordous to the environment and still use fuel sources that are NOT renewable. Then our president discusses the importance of reducing our green house gas emissions but yet still refuses to accept the idea of GLOBAL WARMING but rather encourages this Global Climate Change which is his way of saying well I wasn't wrong on the Globabl Warming thing it's just that it's called Global Climate Change. Semantics sir Semantics. Then you profess trusting our scientists yet at the same time ignore the overwhelming scientific proof that Global Warming does exist. Nowhere is it getting colder sir only warmer so drop your semantical arguments and get with the program. No more double speak sir.
"On matters of Justice we must trust in the words of our Fore Fathers." He wants us to believe what our constitution says. Ok I will say I agree with you sir. DROP THE PATRIOT ACT. When did our Forefathers ever say that warrantless search and seizure was a good idea? When did it state that the use of a very ambigious label such as terrorist should be used in every possible scenario to invade the privacy of any citizen who dissents or distrusts in our current leadership? Sorry I must have missed that part of class. No I do not love Terrorists, I hate them as much as any other person, I will wait and hope for the safety of all of my friends and family in Iraq. But I do not think that it is necessary or constitutional to prey on people by labeling them without just cause. Drug Dealers are not terrorists, dissenters are not terrorists, protesters are not terrorists. You may not agree with the actions of many but treat them with a level of respect demanded by the Constitution of the United States.
Our president professes that when given the chance people will choose freedom over everything else. Well if that is the case then let them choose. Do not force democracy down the throats of the religious extremists. If they wish to rule their country by religious doctrine then help those who want to leave and let the rest stay. This would require us to open our borders though. If we wish to be the embodiment of freedom then we must allow ANYBODY to be free if they please. No I do not like the fact that many potential jobs will drop in their payment do to immigrants but this should force many of us to rise above a level of mediocrity.
On Iraq our president still insists that we are the victors thus far. A claim that our surge has worked and that we are ensuring that the "enemy does not return." We are supposedly improving the daily life in Iraq and will not abandon the Iraqi's who depend on us. I agree that we have helped a number of Iraqi's in the wake of our invasion but we have also ruined the lives of many for reasons that did not exist. We are spending billions of dollars on a war that CAN NOT BE WON. "The American and Iraqi surges are achieving results that few of us could have imagined possible just a few months ago." said our president. Sorry sir but I do not see the outcome you see. Our troops may be critical to the future of their country as you stated but they are also critical to the future of OUR country. They are critical to the future of OUR economy. They are critical to OUR safety. You say Al Qaeda can be defeated but it is not in Iraq where this will take place.
Beyond the rhetoric I am glad that we did not see a lot of nostalgia. I was not forced to sit through a dreamy afterthought of how our President viewed his presidency. We also got the good news of 20,000 troops coming home in the following months. Very good news. Just make sure that these troops are guaranteed their health and insurance upon their return. Do not ignore them and do not FAIL them. And I swear to God DO NOT SEND OUR TROOPS TO IRAN. The comments you made regarding Iran and the address you made to their leaders sound Eerily similar to the comments you made regarding Iraq. If you have any respect for our country sir PLEASE do not start another war. I do think it is great though, that you will allow the passing on of troops unused money for education and the like, to his family. This will encourage not only further education with our troops but to their families as well.
Also to those republicans who were in attendance tonight, I give you permission to skip the workout plan you had scheduled for tomorrow. I am sure that you achieved your target heart rate this evening while standing and sitting nearly 20 times. Not to mention the incessant applause you provided as white noise to the lulling sound of Bush's voice. We as viewers greatly appreciated you extending the Address by another 15 minutes.

Kennedy Endorses Obama in 08

Obama beamed as first Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy, then Caroline Kennedy and finally the country's best known liberal took turns bestowing their praise. "Today isn't just about politics for me. It's personal," Obama told a boisterous crowd packed into the American University basketball arena a few miles across town from the White House.

It was also about politics, though, and a rapidly approaching set of primaries and caucuses across more than 20 states on Feb. 5, with more than 1,600 national convention delegates at stake.

Summoning memories of his brother the slain president, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy led two generations of the First Family of Democratic politics Monday in endorsing Barack Obama for the White House, declaring, "I feel change is in the air."

Obama is a man of rare "grit and grace," Kennedy said in remarks salted with scarcely veiled criticism of the Illinois senator's chief rival for the presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as her husband, the former president.

So strong is the Kennedy family's hold on some Democrats that as word spread on Sunday about the elder Kennedy's plans, Clinton announced that she had the backing of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, Townsend lost the gubernatorial election in Maryland five years ago.

In his remarks, Kennedy methodically sought to rebut many of the arguments leveled by Obama's critics.

Kennedy's endorsement was ardently sought by all three of the remaining Democratic presidential contenders, and he delivered it at a pivotal time in the race. A liberal lion in his fifth decade in the Senate, the Massachusetts senator is in a position to help Obama court voting groups who so far have tilted Clinton's way. These include Hispanics, rank-and-file union workers and lower-income, older voters.

Kennedy is expected to campaign actively for Obama beginning later this week, beginning in Arizona, New Mexico and California. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, will also make campaign appearances, officials said.

David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said strategists also hope Kennedy can help blunt Clinton's charges that Obama's health plan would not provide coverage for all. "I don't think anybody believes that Ted Kennedy would endorse a candidate who wasn't thoroughly committed to the goal of universal health care," he said.

Clinton betrayed no disappointment at her rival's gain.

"We're all proud of the people we have endorsing us," she said in a conference call with Arizona reporters. Addressing Kennedy's criticism of politicians who pit groups against one another, she said she was "strongly in favor of getting to where our politics can be about the real issues, trying to find common ground."

In his remarks, Kennedy methodically sought to rebut many of the arguments leveled by Obama's critics.

"I know he's ready to be president on day one," Kennedy said, taking on one of Bill Clinton's frequent talking points.

"From the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq. And let no one deny that truth," he said, an apparent reference to the former president's statement that Obama's early anti-war stance was a "fairy tale."

"With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion.

"With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay," Kennedy said.

The Massachusetts senator had remained on the sideline of the presidential campaign for months, saying he was friends with Obama, Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, as well as several Senate colleagues who are no longer in the race.

Kennedy began by paying tribute to Sen. Clinton's advocacy for issues such as health care and women's rights. "Whoever is our nominee will have my enthusiastic support," he said.

But he quickly pivoted to a strong endorsement of Obama, who he said "has extraordinary gifts of leadership and character, matched to the extraordinary demands of this moment in history."

"I believe that a wave of change is moving across America," Kennedy said.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the senator's son, completed the family tableau onstage with Obama. The congressman said, "In times such as these, we need, as we had with my uncle, a leader who can inspire confidence and faith in our government. A sense that our government can be good again."

Lately, according to several associates, Kennedy became angered with what he viewed as racially divisive comments by Bill Clinton. Nearly two weeks ago, he played a personal role in arranging a brief truce between the Clintons and Obama on the issue.

Obama, 46, is nearly 30 years younger than Kennedy. "I was too young to remember John Kennedy, and I was just a child when Robert Kennedy ran for president," he said. "But in the stories I heard growing up, I saw how my grandparents and mother spoke about them, and about that period in our nation's life — as a time of great hope and achievement."

Kennedy usually refers only sparingly to his assassinated brothers, John and Robert, in his public remarks, and his endorsement of Obama was cast in terms that aides said were unusually personal.

"There was another time, when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a new frontier. He faced criticism from the preceding Democratic president, who was widely respected in the party," Kennedy said, referring to Harry S. Truman.

"And John Kennedy replied, 'The world is changing. The old ways will not do. ... It is time for a new generation of leadership.'

"So it is with Barack Obama," he added.

Obama versus Clinton and Clinton in 08

The benefits of having Mr. Clinton challenge Mr. Obama in the 2008 election so forcefully, over Iraq and Mr. Obama’s record and statements, they say, are worth the trade-offs of potentially overshadowing Mrs. Clinton at times, undermining his reputation as a statesman and raising the question among voters about whether they are putting him in the White House as much as her.

Advisers to Senator Hillary Clinton in the 2008 elections say they have concluded that Bill Cinton's aggressive politicking against Senator Barack Obama is resonating with voters, and they intend to keep him on the campaign trail in a major role after the South Carolina primary.

After three weeks of nearly nonstop campaigning, set off by Mrs. Clinton’s third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Clinton has shown as much ability as his wife — or even more — to stir public and news media skepticism about Mr. Obama’s position on Iraq and his message of nonpartisan leadership, Clinton advisers say.

They also see benefits in Mr. Clinton’s drawing the ire of the Obama camp, predicting that there will be a voter backlash against Mr. Obama if the former president looks like a victim in the cut-and-thrust of the race.

“He’s the most popular Democrat in the country; he is the most successful president in recent memory, and attacks on him by Senator Obama and his surrogates will be rejected by voters,” said a Clinton spokesman.

Mr. Clinton is deliberately trying to play bad cop against Mr. Obama, campaign officials say, and is keenly aware that a flash of anger or annoyance will draw even more media and public attention to his arguments. He will continue campaigning full-time for Mrs. Clinton after South Carolina in states with primaries on Feb. 5 where he is especially popular, like Arkansas, California and New York, they say.

The Clintons have come full circle: They are truly two-for-the-price-of-one in this presidential race. Mr. Clinton used that phrase when he first ran in 1992, only to back off after voters raised eyebrows, but now the Clintons are all but openly running together as a power couple ready to take office in 2009. Mrs. Clinton views him as a full partner, her advisers say, relying on him over the last few weeks to salvage and steer her campaign.

Yet some Democrats and political analysts see downsides in Mr. Clinton’s outsize role. Given his stature, the former president is potentially sowing deep divisions within a party that until now has been remarkably enthusiastic and unified about the 2008 election. He dispensed this week with any pretense that he was above it all.

“Bill Clinton seems to not be in his traditional mode,” said Jack Bass, an authority on Southern politics at the College of Charleston, who has observed Mr. Clinton for more than 30 years. “I’ve just never seen these negative emotions in public before. I know he has a temper, but this confrontational attitude with journalists, and the anger itself, is surprising to me.”

Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, has stuck largely to the role of good cop this week, sounding more like a general election candidate as she attacked President Bush over the economy and mostly ignored Mr. Obama. In a speech on the economy on Thursday, she repeatedly attacked Mr. Bush but barely referred to her rival.

President Bush, she said, “has stayed at a comfortable cruising altitude, well above the realities of people’s lives, delegating responsibility to his advisers, hoping the buck would stop somewhere else.”

David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, said in an interview Thursday that the Clintons were “throwing everything into winning South Carolina,” though he added that he was disturbed by “inaccurate” attacks on Mr. Obama. Mr. Plouffe cited a Clinton radio advertisement in South Carolina that suggested Mr. Obama liked Republican Party ideas in the 1990s. (The commercial stopped running Thursday; officials said it had been meant only for a 24-hour run.)

“This is not just a spouse or an average surrogate,” Mr. Plouffe said. “He’s a former president, and I think that comes with a little higher responsibility about what he says and how he says it.”

Mr. Clinton’s political strategist in 1992, James Carville, said that the jousting between the two camps had hardly turned toxic, and that the stakes of this election were too high to have a milquetoast campaign.

“This is not Williams College students electing a commencement speaker. This is a huge deal,” Mr. Carville said. “Does the president risk going overboard? Sure. But Obama runs a risk of being wussified.”

Mr. Clinton, meanwhile, has treaded onto far more combustible ground, like race. He says that people in his audiences “never” raise race, but several have. At a forum Wednesday in Kingstree, for example, a black pastor declared, “Black America is voting for Mr. Obama because he is black.” Mr. Clinton said he hoped that, for the country’s sake, that would not be the case. He also said that he thought no one would be voting against Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton on the base of race or sex.

And yet earlier in the day, in Charleston, he suggested that his wife might lose the primary because of race. “They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender,” Mr. Clinton said, “and that’s why people tell me that Hillary doesn’t have a chance to win here.”

It was not clear if Mr. Clinton was lowering expectations for her in South Carolina, but the polls have done that. Most show her losing the black vote overwhelmingly to Mr. Obama; the question for Mrs. Clinton will be the degree to which white voters turn out and the degree to which they vote for John Edwards in these 2008 Elections.

Huckabee in 08 Race is riding low on Resources

"We're there every day," Huckabee told MSNBC on Wednesday. "There are some news reports that are totally false -- I don't know who's fueling them -- that say that we are pulling out of Florida. And that's total nonsense."

Despite his lack of resources, Huckabee said he is ready to compete in Florida.

Huckabee's inability to turn his under-financed Iowa campaign, backed by a motivated network of evangelicals and home-schoolers, into a broad-based groundswell of support means he is short of campaign cash as he heads into the Florida Republican Primary January 29.

Mike Huckabee is working hard to keep his "scrappy little army" on the march, but with a disappointing second-place finish in South Carolina and in the middle of a resource-draining fight in Florida, the former Arkansas governor is having difficulties keeping his troops moving forward.

"And I think it's just one of those things that we're having to battle back, because we think Florida is in play," Huckabee said. "But we also know there are a whole lot of states out there."

On the campaign trail, Huckabee said he was comfortable with his position.

"Nobody thought we would even be in the game," Huckabee said Tuesday during an anti-abortion rally in Atlanta, Georgia. "People are talking about us in every national poll at either number one or number two. I'd call that a pretty good momentum for us.

"Our scrappy little army's doing pretty well out there on the battlefield," he added.

The signs the Huckabee campaign is starting to hurt for resources, however, are beginning to mount.

On Monday, the campaign announced it had grounded a chartered airplane it had provided to members of the press covering him, and Tuesday, Huckabee's campaign chairman Ed Rollins said Huckabee's top advisers are either working without pay or have left the campaign, according to The Associated Press.

"Most people are staying on," Rollins told the AP, but he said "a number of people, including myself," are forgoing their salaries to allow the campaign to buy television advertising.

Huckabee said the cutbacks just mean he is being prudent financially.

"The reason we cut some cost is because we've always operated in the black, we don't borrow money, unlike some of the other candidates who can write a big fat personal check and pay for everything -- I can't," Huckabee said Tuesday. "So what we recognized was that our primary goal right now is to get nimble, to get quick, to get where we can get from place to place as quickly as possible."

"I think a lot of folks would like to see the next president treat the taxpayers' money as frugally as we're treating campaign money," he said.

The departure of former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson from the Republican presidential race Tuesday may provide new momentum to Huckabee, but there is no guarantee.

With Thompson out, Huckabee is the only Southerner among the top-tier Republican candidates, but the social conservatives who were drawn to Thompson's advocacy of "traditional" social values are just as likely to back former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has diligently courted social conservatives, as Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher.

"Fred Thompson really made an appeal to social conservatives, and those folks might naturally like Mike Huckabee," said Gloria Borger, CNN senior political analyst. "But Huckabee's campaign is running on fumes right now, and conservatives know it."

Thompson's decision to leave the race after his third place showing in Saturday's Republican primary in South Carolina may have been too late -- at least for Huckabee. Huckabee's loss to McCain, a senator from Arizona, in South Carolina was due to the social conservative vote being split between him and Thompson.

"It would have been helpful if he had done this before. Now if the rest of them will drop out, we'll really be happy," Huckabee joked Tuesday.

"I'm in much better shape than some of the candidates who've spent tens of millions of dollars, and they're way behind us," Huckabee said. "I'd much rather be where I am with the amount of resources we've had than where some of these guys are with the kind of resources they've spent."

While Huckabee supporters hope his message, which mixes conservative social values with economic populism, will spawn another surprise in Florida, the best bet for Huckabee may be for the Republican race to stay jumbled after the Florida primary, when the race moves to the the Super Tuesday contests that include less expensive Southern states such as Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and his home state of Arkansas.