memeorandum: Monitor poll: Romney +13 (Primary Monitor/yourconcord.com)

3:40 PM ET, December 14, 2007

Top Items:

Election 2008: Florida Republican Primary — Florida: Huckabee 27% Romney 23% Giuliani 19% — Mitt Romney's strategy for winning the Republican nomination was to win the early states and build momentum. Rudy Giuliani's plan was to accept defeats in the early states and come back strong …

Discussion: Weekly Standard, Associated Press, HorseRaceBlog, RealClearPolitics, The Corner, Hot Air, Riehl World View, TPM Election Central, The Caucus Cooler, eyeon08.com, Below The Beltway, Pollster.com, PoliGazette and Taegan Goddard's …

CNN Political Ticker:

S.C. poll: Huckabee bolts to top of GOP; Obama cuts into Clinton lead — WASHINGTON (CNN) - Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee surged to the top among Republican presidential candidates in South Carolina, while Sen. Hillary Clinton's lead over Sen. Barack Obama among Democrats narrowed since July in that state, according to a new poll.

Discussion: Captain's Quarters, Open Left, Outside The Beltway, Ben Smith's Blogs, Balloon Juice, The Carpetbagger Report, The Swamp, Comments from Left Field, TPM Election Central, Below The Beltway, Reason Magazine, Riehl World View, PoliBlog (TM) and Marc Ambinder

Sarah Liebowitz / Concord Monitor:

Obama edges Clinton in poll — Romney well ahead in 'Monitor' survey — December 14. — Barack Obama has come from behind to turn the Democratic presidential race in New Hampshire into a toss-up, according to a new Monitor opinion poll. The results - which show Obama with a one-point edge …

Discussion: Obama HQ, Wall Street Journal, michellemalkin.com, USA Today, CNN Political Ticker, MyDD, MSNBC, Washington Post, TIME: Swampland, TIME, TPM Election Central, Pollster.com, Blue Hampshire, Taegan Goddard's … and Raising Kaine

Ed Tibbetts / Quad City Times:

Obama, Huckabee lead new Iowa poll — Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee hold 9-point leads in Iowa with less than three weeks to go before the Jan. 3 caucuses, according to a new poll conducted for the Quad-City Times and other Lee Enterprises newspapers.

Discussion: Pollster.com and TPM Election Central

Peggy Noonan / Opinion Journal:

The Pulpit and the Potemkin Village — Would Reagan survive in today's GOP? And is Mrs. Clinton in for a fall this winter? — What is happening in Iowa is no longer boring but big, and may prove huge. — The Republican race looks—at the moment—to be determined primarily by one thing, the question of religious faith.

Discussion: Ross Douthat, The Moderate Voice, PoliGazette, The American Scene, Political Machine, The Anchoress, No More Mister Nice Blog, Liberal Values, Real Clear Politics, Stop The ACLU, QandO, Eunomia and Below The Beltway

Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News:

New polls in the Michigan primary campaign — Two new independent polls of Michigan primary voters out today add to the evidence for a surge for Mike Huckabee in Michigan, a decline for Rudy Giuliani and the possibility of a John McCain surge if the GOP contest draws lots of independents and Democrats.

Discussion: The Corner, The Campaign Spot, eyeon08.com and RIGHTWINGSPARKLE

Primary Monitor / yourconcord.com:
Monitor poll: Romney +13

Discussion: The Daily Dish and Jonathan Martin's Blogs

Associated Press:
How the 2008 candidates chill out

Discussion: Hot Air

Krooney / The Page: Two Sets of Iowa Numbers With Different Dem Snapshots

Blue Texan / Firedoglake: Peggy Noonan: Ronald Reagan Wouldn't Make It In Today's Fundie GOP

CNN:

FISA Bill With Telco Immunity To Be Debated Monday — WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday that debate on the legislation underpinning the government's warrantless wiretapping program will begin Monday. — Speaking in the Senate, Reid said he would bring forward …

Discussion: TalkLeft and TPM Election Central

E. J. Dionne Jr / Washington Post:

Plan B For Pelosi And Reid — Congressional Democrats need a Plan B. — Republicans chortle as they block Democratic initiatives — and accuse the majority of being unable to govern. Rank-and-filers are furious that their leaders can't end the Iraq war. President Bush sits back and vetoes at will.

Discussion: Washington Times, Corrente, Brilliant at Breakfast, The Glittering Eye and Bark Bark Woof Woof

Al Kamen / Washington Post:
Instead of Plum Appointments, Maybe a Lump of Coal

Discussion: New York Times, AMERICAblog and The Democratic Daily

Scarecrow / Firedoglake:
Will the Senate Gut the Constitution and FISA Again?

Discussion: Salon, Booman Tribune, The Newshoggers, Hullabaloo, The Strata-Sphere and Corrente

Dan Froomkin / Washington Post:

Bush Demands Freedom to Torture — President Bush's repeated insistence that "we don't torture" appeared even more transparently bogus yesterday as the White House threatened to veto a House bill that would explicitly ban a variety of abhorrent practices. — The bill would require U.S …

Discussion: West Virginia Blue, Political Machine, Washington Wire, normblog, Daily Kos and AMERICAblog

Rich Lowry / National Review:

Huckacide — Editor's note: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext 246). — The ghost of Howard Dean haunts the pundit class.

Discussion: Redstate, Eunomia, The Anonymous Liberal, Blogometer, Swords Crossed, Balloon Juice, Riehl World View, Hugh Hewitt's TownHall Blog, The New Republic and Sadly, No!

Michael Hirsh / Newsweek:

Why Isn't Gore Running? — The White House is the place to battle global warming. — There he was again on the world stage—in Oslo this time—celebrating his Nobel Peace Prize with singer Melissa Etheridge and actress Uma Thurman, the Hollywood hottie who called him "adorable" …

Matthew Yglesias:
The Case for Gore — Michael Hirsch says Al Gore should run for president.

Discussion: Washington Monthly

BBC:

Iraqi oil exceeds pre-war output — Iraqi oil production is above the levels seen before the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). — The IEA said Iraqi crude production is now running at 2.3 million barrels per day, compared with 1.9 million barrels at the start of this year.

Discussion: Gateway Pundit, Dean's World and macsmind.com/wordpress

Scott Shane / New York Times:

House Passes Restrictions on Interrogation Methods — WASHINGTON — Defying a veto threat from President Bush, the House of Representatives voted Thursday to prohibit waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods used by the Central Intelligence Agency against high-level prisoners from Al Qaeda.

Discussion: TPMmuckraker, Think Progress, Booman Tribune and War and Piece

Matthew Yglesias:

Class Warfare — Here's a chart based on Paul Krugman's writeup of data from the CBO's new "Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates" report. Naturally, the only solution is tax cuts.

Discussion: Paul Krugman, Washington Monthly, ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES and Shakespeare's Sister

Gateway Pundit:

MULLAHS PUNKED— So Much For That Modesty Campaign — Sadly, someone played a video switcheroo on the Iranian hardliners. — This probably didn't sit too well with the mullahs and their battle against immodesty and women. — The billboard video display was certainly not cleric approved …

Discussion: The Jawa Report and Say Anything

Paul Kane / Washington Post:

Rove, Bolten Found in Contempt of Congress — Senate Committee Cites Top Bush Advisers in Probe of U.S. Attorney Firings — A Senate panel found former presidential adviser Karl Rove and current White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten in contempt of Congress yesterday for refusing …

Discussion: Buck Naked Politics, Norwegianity, Daily Kos, The Newshoggers, Comments from Left Field, The Democratic Daily, Crooks and Liars and Shakespeare's Sister

Michael Crowley / The New Republic:

Hillary's New Pitch: "No Surprises" — Johnston, Iowa— Hillary just held an extraordinary press conference here after taping an interview with Iowa public television in which she introduced a provocative new theme to her candidacy: "[T]here are no surprises."

Discussion: Matthew Yglesias

Scarce / Crooks and Liars:

Huckabee congratulates Canada on preserving its National Igloo — In this classic bit from April 2001, Canadian satirist Rick Mercer travels down to Arkansas to ask some good folks about Canada's efforts to protect their national capitol building from the effects of global warming.