After Florida, Rudy Giuliani dropped his bid for president.  McCain came in big in this winner-takes-all state, slowly easing ahead of Mitt Romney, a former front runner.    Giuliani, after formally dropping out has endorsed McCain.  Adding to his growing list of endorsements is Governor Schwarzenegger of California.  California represents 170 republican delegates up for grabs.  Things seem to be going pretty well for this candidate whose campaign was once considered dead.  Schwarzenegger has been doing a pretty good job as the governor of California and I think his endorsement will make an impression on Californians who represent the most delegates in the nation.

Wednesday night, the remaining Republican candidates participated in their final debate before Super Tuesday.  The debate was mostly lack-luster and largely ignored everyone else on stage that wasn’t named Mitt or John.  Because of McCain’s win in Florida, he has changed the Republican race into a two-man battle.  At one moment, Mike Huckabee himself pointed out his seclusion on the left side of the stage.  I would guess that after Super Tuesday everyone else will drop out officially, but they should have already.

Thursday Romney accused McCain of using Nixon-like tactics.  CNN quoted Romney as saying, “I don’t want to see our party go back to that kind of campaigning.”  But a McCain advisor said Romney is just lashing out.  Romney does seem a little frustrated going into Super Tuesday.  I think he should be, Tuesday is fast approaching and McCain has been racking up some key endorsements.  Statements like the one I quoted from Romney indicate to me his growing fears with fewer and fewer days to try to ease McCain’s bounce coming out of Florida.

Two words come to mind with Mitt…fake tan.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cppsbv3UrZQ
The video of Schwarzenegger's endorsement of McCain.

Democrats and Republicans have agreed on an economic stimulus plan.  The plan will give people of the middle class hundreds of dollars, mostly contingent on the number of children a family has.  The plan would allocate $600 to individual people; $1,200 to couples who pay federal income tax.  To people who do not pay federal income tax but earn more than $3000, they would receive $300 dollars per person or $600 per couple.  There is an additional amount per child.  People who earn up to $75,000 per person or $150,000 per couple will be eligible for the plan.  According to Nancy Pelosi, up to 116 million Americans total will be eligible.

The package is supposed to stimulate the economy in wake of the recently plunging stock market and the housing crisis.  Most people think a recession is approaching.

This economic package is expected to pass within the next two weeks.  The entire plan will be formally introduced by President Bush during his state-of-the-union address on January 28^th.   According to The Economist, recent data has shown that the median home price dropped by 1.8%.

The best part of the plan is the plan for tax cuts for businesses.  This will help business to invest in growth and help the economy.

To agree on a plan together, concessions were made on both sides.  Congress would do anything to prevent a mounting recession.  Democrats wanted to expand food stamps and unemployment benefits.  Republicans on the other hand wanted to give rebates just to those who paid income taxes.  Both backed down in order to do something quickly.

Glenn Beck on his television show on CNN Headline News gave his opinion on the issue Thursday.  He believes that because of our capitalist system, the market will always bounce back without government involvement.  He cited the New Deal as evidence that government intervention can even slow recovery from a recession.  He has a hatred of socialism which is what he calls the basis of this economic stimulus plan.

Reportedly a former executive with market experience is responsible for pushing the package to congress.

The gloomy market forecast is an important issue to me.  A recession will hurt me the most as a graduating college student, struggling to find a job.  If Glenn Beck is right and congress isn’t, that means it may be awhile before I can find a good job and in the mean time I’ll be living with my parents.  But the pending recession means a lot to most middle class Americans.

The promised relief should be in American mailboxes in June.

This situation will make a difference in peoples’ decision in the presidential election; the economy is now the biggest issue on everyone’s mind.  My own parents are now waiting to sell their house, waiting for the market to turn from being a buyer’s to a seller’s.  My father wants to retire but now he’s thinking about waiting another year.  People should really pay attention to what path their government is taking to ease their economic burden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxXvsr9piLw

On the 17th (Thursday) Mitt Romney got into an altercation with a reported in an office supply store.  A visibly angry campaign said "He's not running my campaign" so many times I lost count.
"Don't argue with the candidate, that's so out of line."  Was my favorite part of the whole thing.

Ron Kaufman is a lobbyist?  I'm not sure I really care.  What's really interesting to me is if that was a good example of a journalist being tough and doing his job of reporting and holding people accountable to the public.

I really think this was also a great example of a political acting too political.  Romney had some kind of political-strategy-nerd-bodyguard too.

 

Are there lobbyists running Romney's campaign, I guess I still don't know.  The repetitive scuffle taught me two things...there's a guy named Ron Kaufman that may or may not have a lot of influence over Romney's decision making.  Unfortunately the information the reporter was unsuccessfully trying to dig up wouldn't sway my vote either way but Romney's three minutes of anger toward a reporter might.

Here are the fateful three minutes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8cHiEGLEls

Why would you even get in a fight in an office supply store anyway, Romney need pens and the AP just happened to be hanging around?

In the end, having the political bodyguard-type tell the reporter that arguing with a politician was a bad thing was a little too much for me to swallow.  Politics are way to political sometimes, that circular argument in an office supply store shouldn't have happened.  Maybe Romney strayed from the script.

A politician should know better than to be flustered by a side comment and a reporter should know better than to repeat himself over and over again, wasting time for the other reporters's questions.  Both laked political grace by miles.  So much so that the video clip aired on "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer.  As a fan of Wolf Blitzer I do not take the "situations" lightly.

The point is, America probably laughed at the expense of Romney no matter if he was right or wrong.

I'm a John McCain fan, but I guess it's for all the wrong reasons.  I care about his social issues and not his military experience.  I didn't realize military experience could make for an entire campaign and the only issue worth following.  This makes me feel almost unworthy of being a supporter.

This is what I think is worth supporting:

The NRA doesn't like him much compared to the love they give other republican candidates and I don't like the NRA.
He supports stem cell research which I care about very much.
Would create an option to divert some social security into private accounts.

I guess I don't see much of a reason to vote for someone who used to be in the military because they used to be in the military.

I remember watching an interview with McCain over the summer, his campaign was left for dead.  The interviewer was asking him if maybe it was because he was so old.  I thought that was a really stupid question to ask a man who's campaign was all but invisible but for obviously fixable reasons.

I guess my mind-set as a republican is all wrong.  Since I'm about to graduate from college and I want to have a job and with a recession mounting, that's all I really care or worry about.  Compared with McCain's war efforts and insights this could be considered selfish of me I guess.

Since the last poll, McCain has jumped 21 points.  I think he's destined to be the republican nominee and I think that would be a great race against either one of the democratic candidates currently fighting it out.  Even though I don't feel worthy of it, I'll continue to root for McCain as the rest of the competition dwindles down after super-duper Tuesday.