The top three McCain campaign operatives are out.

The LA Times reports on Fred Thompson’s not so distinguished conservative record in the Senate: “During his eight-year Senate career, his only stint in elected office, Thompson was far from a champion of the party’s conservative core.”

The Boston Globe reports on Giuliani’s unconventional campaign: “Giuliani is not devoting the same level of staff or resources in [early] states as other candidates. Even a lesser-known foe, Kansas Sen. Brownback, has more staff in Iowa.”

Apparently Giuliani made a poor choice for a state chairman in South Carolina. Thomas Ravenel was indicted on a cocaine charge on Tuesday. From The Greenville News:

[Larry] Sabato said the incident reflects on Giuliani, who accepted Ravenel’s aid when he was first putting his campaign together and most of the state’s top Republicans had committed elsewhere.

Giuliani, he said, has “egg — no, omelet — all over his face. To say this was a poor choice for his state chairman is an understatement,” Sabato said.

Hat tip to South Carolina ’08.com.

The Politico has an incredibly in depth story on Romney’s Race towards the White House.

First is Romney’s plan to game the primary system, in other words, play it smart:

Republican primaries are winner-take-all. Whoever wins statewide gets all the
delegates at stake. This favors front-runners, who, with their early money and
early support, can wrap up the nomination quickly.
But, in a barely noticed move, California Republicans have changed the system. Now it is winner-take-all by congressional district.
That means a candidate no longer needs to win the whole state to get delegates.

This means that California’s primary is now 53 individual contests and the candidates will be able to cherry pick which districts they want to be competitive in, limiting the expense of advertising in CA.

Romney also plans to bring a new kind of politics to CA:

he intends to treat California as if it were a “retail” political state instead of a tarmac state. (Because California is so large geographically, candidates spend most of their time flying from airport to airport, standing on the tarmac, doing a sound bite for local TV and then flying on.) Romney intends to emphasize more intensive, face-to-face campaigning in select congressional districts in which he has the best chance of winning delegates.

He is going to spend money.

He will exploit the differences between him and his chief rivals:

Romney intends to exploit what he perceives as two of McCain’s great vulnerabilities in the Republican primaries: the McCain-Feingold law, which restricts campaign contributions, and the McCain-Kennedy bill, which would change immigration laws and allow for a guest-worker program. And while Romney disagrees explicitly with Giuliani on issues such as abortion, gun control and gay rights, he implicitly draws distinctions between Giuliani’s rather turbulent personal life — he has been married three times — and Romney’s own marriage of nearly 38 years.

In Iowa he is going to go all out at the Ames straw poll August 11th

Finally, he is going to try to talk about the Mormon issue thusly:

Romney intends to recast the issue by emphasizing that he is a person of
faith and that that is more important to voters than what faith he is. Second,
his Mormon faith has been fundamental to his commitment to family, which he
believes people of all faiths can respect.

And realize he can be funny about it:

Romney quoted Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a Mormon, telling other senators the
difficulty he has raising money among members of his own faith.
“You’d have had trouble raising money, too, if all the people you were asking money from were sober,” Hatch said.

Mormons generally do not drink.

Of course, Mittheads, he can’t do it alone. If you haven’t already please go to Mitt’s Website and sign up to volunteer and prepare for the battle ahead. There is much to do and barely a year to do it in. Also make sure all of your friends and family who support Mitt have done the same. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!

The New York Times is reporting that Mitt Romney hit a homerun with his speech at CPAC whereas Giuliani left the attendees a bit lukewarm.

Mr. Giuliani arrived to a rousing reception, but the room grew silent and restless as Mr. Giuliani wandered through a speech that lasted 40 minutes. By contrast, Mr. Romney arrived to a much more subdued reception but left to rousing applause.

“The governor knocked this speech out of the park,” said Paloma A. Zepeda, a marketing consultant and conservative blogger who said she came into the room with “serious doubts” about Mr. Romney, and left saying she was leaning toward supporting him. By contrast, she said, Mr. Giuliani “took a risk by coming to C.P.A.C., and he managed to not allay a single conservative fear about a Giuliani candidacy.”

In an interview with KDKA TV News out of Pittsburgh, PA and an interview with The Politico my former boss and Senator Rick Santorum said the following on John McCain, signing onto the ABM(Anybody But McCain) idea:

Rudy Giuliani has promised to appoint judges in the mold of Roberts and Alito. This is to assuage conservative fears over his pro-abortion and pro civil union views.

The Politico took a look at his 75 appointments to the judiciary in New York City.

Their findings are interesting.
Bullets from the article:

• Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 8 to 1
• One of his appointments was an officer of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Judges.
• Another ruled that the state law banning liquor sales on Sundays was unconstitutional because it was insufficiently secular.
• A third, an abortion-rights supporter, later made it to the federal bench in part because New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a liberal Democrat, said he liked her ideology.

Further, Giuliani won praise from NYC NARAL head, Kelli Collin:

“They were decent, moderate people,” she said.

In the mayors defense, he had to choose from only 3 candidates. From the article:

Under the system, the mayor appoints members of an independent panel. Aspiring
judges apply to the panel, which recommends three candidates for each vacancy.
The mayor chooses among the three.

Yet, surely, the mayor could have avoided those applicants whose records and pedigrees were that of extreme judicial activists.

Giuliani’s pledge to appoint judges like Roberts and Alito comes under question when you consider his record of appointing extreme judicial activists onto the New York courts.

Consider that one judge:

Charles Posner, a Brooklyn judge appointed by Giuliani, made the kind of
decision that keeps conservatives up nights when he was asked to levy a fine
against a shopkeeper, Abdulsam Yafee, who had illegally sold beer at 3:30 a.m.
on a Sunday. In an unusual, lengthy 2004 ruling, Posner found that “there is no
secular reason why beer cannot be sold on Sunday morning as opposed to any other
morning.”
Noting that Sunday is only the Christian Sabbath, Posner continued,
“Other than this entanglement with religion, there is no rational basis for
mandating Sunday as a day of rest as opposed to any other day.”

Yet another:

Sonberg’s other affiliation: When he was appointed in 1995, he was already an
officer of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Judges, a
professional group. After his appointment, he became the group’s president.

Two were appointed to federal seats:

one of them, Richard Berman, by President Bill Clinton. The other, Dora
Irizarry, was a Bush nominee considered so liberal that (Chuck) Schumer pushed
her nomination through….
“Temperament is not at the top of my list,” Schumer explained at the time, when asked why he supported the former Giuliani appointee. “Ideology is key.”

Giuliani spent a great deal of time with his nominees:

“He took it very seriously — he spent a lot of time with these candidates,”
recalled Paul Curran, a Republican and former U.S. attorney who chaired
Giuliani’s Commission on Judicial Nominations.

Yet he allowed these wreckless nominees through? This is troubling and hopefully answers can be provided when he speaks tomorrow at the CPAC conference.

From Pajamas Media:

Rudy Giuliani criticizes Al Gore for being soft on global warming. This is very good news for Mitt Romney. Apparently Giuliani’s strategy is to not try and win the conservative vote.

Here are a few global warming links you won’t find in the mainstream press:
A Canadian climatologist with Ph.D. says global warming is not man made.

Oregon wants to strip state climatologist of title. Donald Trump to defend?

The sun has greater role than man in global warming.

Drudge recently had a flash about the President of the Czech Republic questioning Gore’s sanity. Drudge’s flashes tend to roll off so Mick at Sad Bastards captured the post

You can read excerpts from all these articles at my blog.

The Hotline Blog reports:

“The Hotline confirms a Fox News report that ex-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani will file a statement of candidacy with the FEC today. He’ll run as a Republican”

All I can say is… it’s about time!

Today the Romney Campaign announced that James Bopp, Jr. Esq., has endorsed Mitt Romney for President and that he will serve as a special adviser on Life issues.

This is a major pickup for Romney. Let’s take a look at it:

WHO IS JAMES BOPP, JR. ESQ. (View full Bio here)

• General Counsel to National Right to Life Committee (1978-present)
• General Counsel to James Madison Center for Free Speech(1994-present
• Special Counsel to Focus on the Family(2004 – present)
• President of National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled, Inc(1984-present)
• Practice area: Constitutional Law; Civil Litigation; Non-Profit Corporations Law; Election and Campaign Finance Law; Civil Appeals; Administrative Agency Practice
• RNC member

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT

This is important on two levels. First, James Bopp is a trusted figure in the Pro-life movement. Hundreds, if not thousands of local pro-life leaders have used James Bopps legal memos in their activism. He has spoken at many pro-life events and conventions, including three that I’ve been at. This will go a long way in gaining the trust of the pro-life movement.

It is also important on another level. James Bopp is one of the leading opponents of Campaign Finance Reform Laws, or put another way: McCain-Feingold.

Consider the following:

Bopp’s actions at the RNC Winter Meeting:

Members of the Republican Nat’l Committee passed on Thursday a
strongly-worded resolution rebuking a signature accomplishment of their party’s
frontrunner, Sen. John McCain — his Bipartisan Campaign Finance Act, known as
McCain-Feingold.

The 13-paragraph resolution, sponsored by RNC member and campaign finance
litigator James Bopp Jr, urges Congress to “adopt common sensereforms of BCRA“

Bopp’s latest legal actions:

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take another look at the federal ban on
naming specific candidates in “issue ads” immediately before elections.

The ban, which applies 30 days before primaries and 60 days before general
elections, is a key provision in the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act. The court
upheld the act three years ago, when Sandra Day O’Connor was still an
associate justice.

She has since retired and has been replaced by Samuel Alito.

FINAL ANALYSIS:

Giuliani is completely unacceptable to Pro-Life issue voters. McCain, though, isn’t as obvious in his threat to the Pro-Life movement. Romney’s latest endorsement gives him a forceful, pro-life voice to remind the movement why McCain has been a threat to the movement.

It’s a two-for-one deal for the Romney Campaign: burnishing Romney’s pro-life credentials and tarnishing McCain’s.