Friday, October 05, 2007

Mark Towner's Spyglass Spots: So Far Rudy's Run Going According to Script


October 05, 2007
So Far Rudy's Run Going According to Script


Of all the candidates in the Republican field, no one has a right to be happier with the way things have worked out thus far than Rudy Giuliani. Here's a quick look at where things stand:
- After nine months of campaigning, Giuliani remains atop the national polls (to the astonishment of many pundits); he has closed the gap with Mitt Romney to under 4 points in New Hampshire; and he is leading the field in South Carolina and Florida.


- Yesterday Giuliani reported raising $11 million in Q3, putting him atop the Republican money race for the second consecutive quarter. Furthermore, Giuliani has $16 million cash on hand - including more than $11 million available for the primary - which is more than $2 million more than what his nearest competitor has in the bank.

Beyond those numbers, however, recent developments may have made the last month Giuliani's best yet. First, Fred Thompson's performance has been decidedly average since entering the race in early September.


Not only has Thompson failed to set the base on fire but, more importantly, he has generated a recent round of squabbling among religious conservative leaders as to his acceptability. This has prevented Thompson from consolidating the evangelical vote - at least so far.


The result is almost exactly what Rudy would have hoped for if he had drawn up a best case scenario a month ago: Thompson is running well enough to draw votes from others in the race - keeping the social conservative vote split and hurting Romney, Rudy's other major threat, - but not running so well as to have grasped the mantle of the sole conservative option to Giuliani.
The other factor that is working in Giuliani's favor - and one that has gone nearly unnoticed - is the media-fueled strengthening of Hillary Clinton's grip on the Democratic nomination.


One of Giuliani's strongest selling points to conservative voters who may be at odds with him on social issues is the promise that he can run the strongest general election campaign of Republican in the field. Giuliani continually harps on the fact that he scrambles the electoral map, putting states into play that no other Republican can.


But Giuliani's "electability" argument is enhanced considerably when Republicans envision - as most already do - Clinton winning the Democratic nomination. Case in point: in the NBC/WSJ poll released this week Giuliani holds a 7-point lead over Thompson (30% to 23%) among Republican voters. However, when those same Republican voters were asked which candidate had "the best chance of beating Hillary Clinton in the general election," Giuliani's lead over Thompson balloons to 31 points, 47% to 16%.


So long as Clinton rides high and appears to be the "inevitable" nominee of her party, she will buoy Rudy's chances of winning the GOP nomination precisely because a square-off with Hillary, in particular, brings out all the qualities Republican voters find most attractive in Rudy: he's a tough guy, a fighter, and a reliable partisan on the most important issues of the day.
Nowhere was this displayed more fully than when Rudy jumped at the opportunity to mix it up with MoveOn.org, the New York Times, and Hillary Clinton over the "General Betray Us" ad controversy. And when the counter attacks came from MoveOn, Rudy turned them into a badge of honor, reinforcing the very things Republicans like most about him.


Clearly, the first nine months of the campaign are a prelude to the real deal, which has only just gotten underway and becomes more real with each passing week. Many, if not all the dynamics I've written about today could, and perhaps will change before the first vote is cast. But while other candidates have had their struggles, Rudy has confounded the conventional wisdom with a surprisingly smooth ride that has gone more or less according to script. Whether or not there's a happy end to Rudy's story remains to be seen.


Tom Bevan is the co-founder and Executive Editor of RealClearPolitics.

Jesse Harris is a Liar and a thief (Updated)

Below is another accusation from liar and thief blogger Jessie Harris.

What amazes me again is that he has again admitted "remember that I snagged a copy" downloading my email list from a proto website I was trying to get going to better handle my free newsletter distribution.

Additionally other parties downloaded this list and I have their IP addresses and time stamp when this happened.

It was in fact Jessie Harris that posted to the Utah Blogosphere about the list and where to find it.

Jessie’s big revelation that I’m involved with the Voucher War Blogsite is no news at all.

In fact if Jessie had been reading The Political Spyglass like my other subscribers, I indicated that I created the site some time ago to focus on the voucher battle, so the spyglass can continue posting about other events.

There are several Pseudonym authors on the site, just like there are many bloggers here in Utah that use pseudonym names like Utah Conservative, Part of the Plan, Voice of Utah, annonoymous on Utah Amicas, the list goes on and on. I'm sure these people do not what their identies exposed for many reasons.

Mr. Harris has provided a link to another sockpuppet website called "against utah vouchers" that claims they have some evidence to support Jessie’s claim.

Here is the exact quote “A friend of mine far more sopisticated at the technology end of the Internet found that Utahns for Public School (singular) - host of the offensive, deceptive e-mail -redirects to a site called www.thespyglass.us/.”

Well whoever your friend is (probably Harris) is an idiot. No email was sent by http://www.thespyglass.us/ The site is parked and has been inactive for weeks.

Anymore Lies?

Here is what Jessie Harris posted today

Was Mark Towner Behind the Voucher News E-mail?
That depends on who you talk to. It seems that a fair number of Utah bloggers (like Marshall over at Wasatch Watcher) believe it to be so. The Deseret News reported on the deceptive spam e-mail in today's edition. What's suspicious is that the contents of the e-mail linked to a pair of Towner blogs and, for some odd reason, to the Utah Democrats blog. Why the link to a blog that supports vouchers when the purpose of the e-mail is to "tell these pro voucher people what

Utahn’s for Public School really think"? Simple answer: it's a red herring.

But how do we know that Voucher News is linked to Towner? Check out the following screenshot:

That post is by The Political Spyglass, the name of Towner's main blog. (There's also classic Towneresque spelling and grammatical errors in the e-mail message.) Given his long and sordid history of spamming (read more here and here), it doesn't take Dick Tracy to stick two and two together and suspect that Towner used his large e-mail list to boost blog traffic and try and stir the pot a bit. I can't prove it yet…. but you can.

If you have been the recipient of one of these e-mails, please forward the entire message to me (with headers) so I can analyze them and see what correlation there is between his spam list (remember that I snagged a copy?) and the recipients of this message. I've also sent e-mails to the Deseret News and Utahns for Public Schools to let them in on our suspicions. (Hey Mark? I have the screenshot of the site, so no changing the author of the post, m-kay?) I may be pro-voucher, but I feel much more strongly about being anti-spam.

UPDATE: There's no maybe about it. The e-mails are from Mark Towner. Busted!

A Previous Post on the Spyglass
Jesse Harris is a Liar and a thiefAnti 1st amendment jack ass Jesse Harris http://www.coolestfamilyever.com/has shown his true colors. First he calls me a liar saying I did not have anywhere near the 10,000 subscribers I claimed for the Spyglass Newsletter. Now after stealing 5800 edited down email addresses his fist accusation is debunked.

Do I receive and apology, no just more attacks and statements of how he plans on revealing the contents of the stolen email list.

Additionally by posting on his own website how he subscribed to my email list and agreeing to the terms, which included not downloading information without permission, chose to suggest other bloggers to duplicate his unethical if not illegal behavior.

His blog sites and his open support of UTOPIA, and distain of Comcast and Qwest takes a “holier than thou” attitude because I continue to “spam” thousands of email addresses with a link to my free Political Newsletter The Spyglass.

The Spyglass is nothing more than a place for me to post articles that interest me and for others to read what is happening in the world of politics. Additionally it provides me an easy archive of thoughts and stories.

Additionally I sometimes write commentary or comments to get other bloggers feedback on issues or events.What part of the First Amendment does Jesse Harris not understand?

I guess this is what you can expect from a Liar and thief.

Mark Towner,
Publisher

Bill Clinton considers role if Hillary elected president

1 hour, 5 minutes ago
LONDON (Reuters) - Former President Bill Clinton said on Friday he could take a role promoting the United States around the world if his wife Hillary becomes president.

Clinton said the government had "squandered" widespread global support after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
"There was a period after 9/11 when we decided on a go-it-alone, my way or the highway approach which I think really alienated a lot of the world," he told BBC Radio.
Asked what role he might take if his wife became President, he said: "I'd be of most use to her doing something to try to help restore America's standing in the world and build more allies and get us to work together again."
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Hillary Clinton pulling away from her Democratic rivals for the nomination with 53 percent support compared with 20 percent for Senator Barak Obama and John Edwards with 13 percent.
Bill Clinton stressed he knew who would be boss if she wins the presidency.
"In the end she would make her own decisions just as I did when I was President," he said.
"She would be a great president and I would be the happiest person on earth if she could get elected," he added.