’08 Presidential Race Roundup

RUSH: ‘The AP’s latest national Republican presidential poll was underway on Monday night, and by yesterday afternoon, some raw numbers began rolling in, and analysts were surprised by the initial take. ‘If things keep progressing the way they do, some Republicans are in for a surprise,’ said an AP employee familiar with the statistics that are being broken down.’ Apparently Mitt Romney is moving into a strong number two position, knocking McCain out of it. We wonder why. By the way, McCain and Giuliani have decided to pass up the Iowa straw poll. Romney’s already 17 points ahead there, which may be why they’re doing it. They’re pulling outta there and not participating, and they’re trying to blunt Romney’s victory by saying, ‘Well, he had a victory over straw men because they weren’t there,’ but it could go the other way, too. It’s not the Hawkeye cauci. It’s just a straw poll, but the two front-runners are backing out of and not wanting to play ball because Romney has such a lead in Iowa right now.

‘The Congressional Black Caucus has dug in its heels in defense of the indicted Congressman William Jefferson (Democrat-Louisiana) and they expressed concerns of the House ethics investigation on Congressman Jefferson’s alleged corrupt activities could influence and even poison a future jury trial.’ This is reported in The Hill newspaper.

‘Newt Gingrich Says 4-to-1 Odds Against his Running for President.’ He has more to say about it. He’s making a speech, I think, tomorrow before the American Enterprise Institute.

There’s a lot of fallout that’s happening in the Democrat Party over Edwards. Now, get this. ‘Some Democrat Party regulars are starting to admit that…’ These are not candidates, but power brokers, consultants, this kind of thing. They’re starting to say that Edwards is making them mad. They don’t like him personally, because he’s going in a direction that they don’t want the Democrat Party to publicly go, and that’s this class envy business. The Democrats are that, but that’s one of the things they want to keep masked and camouflaged, and Edwards is being too visible and too open about this class envy campaign that he’s running, and it’s got some of them upset. So there’s all kinds of little things going on in the Democrat Party that are not making it into the mainstream of the Drive-By Media.

I mentioned earlier that Mrs. Clinton’s camp cannot be happy about the latest USA Today/Gallup poll that shows Barack Obama one point over. That’s a statistical tie, but I don’t think she ever thought — or Clinton, Inc. ever thought — that Obama would get this close, this soon. So it’s going to require some strategerical changes in the way they deemed with this guy.