Whether you are a Repub or Dem your
front-runner’s poll numbers are collapsing quicker than a dynamited Vegas
casino. What gives?

With Hillary it is all about likability. She may be the most tactically skilled politician of her generation
but she is far from the most natural. That allowed Obama, who IS a natural, to
make his move. Paul Krugman has been writing for months that Obama’s positions strongly slant right. When Hillary says attacks are
“straight out of the republican play book” that is what she means. With Karl
Rove’s love letter to Obama now on open display in the Financial Times and available to use in Hillary’s counter-attack  things are set to get nasty. Stay tuned; Edwards could be the big winner in
this dust up.

On the Repub side Giuliani’s
campaign has always been a train wreck waiting to happen, but his signature
sneer and swagger plays well in the clinches so he might still pull it off.
Mitt Romney’s problems are more hard-core. The Repub spin machine spent twenty
years associating the words “liberal” and “Massachusetts.” Even a master like Frank Luntz would find it
hard to reverse field now. And the simple fact is that Mormonism is not
fundamentalist Christianity. There is no Book of Mormon in the King James
Bible. For some, like Florida preacher Bill Keller, pretending otherwise is flat out Satanic. Keller may be extreme, but in the
Republican South Carolina Primary, extreme is normal. 

Mitt made things worse by electronically stuffing the ballot box
at the Value Voters Summit.
We think that is what really kicked church-based social networking into high
gear, fueling the Huckabee surge in Iowa. We said at the time it was going to
be trouble. Hell hath no furry like a born-again scammed.