×
- The big news today is Mitt Romney's speech on religion (see Ezra and Sarah's coverage below, watch it, or read the transcript). Shorter version: "There are two things I hate in this world -- religious intolerance and those damn atheists." Conservatives seem to be dived on how effective the speech was.
- Just in case yesterday's news didn't convince you that the Hucakmoon is over, John Chait joins the left-leaning male pundits who don't heart Huckabee with an article that points out that Huckabee talks a good game on poverty but seems to not actually understand his tax plan would make things worse for the bottom 80 percent of the population.
- Meanwhile, Josh Marshall points out how ridiculous Hucakbee's defense is in the Wayne DuMond affair and Matt Yglesias compares his fair-tax idea to the Communist Manifesto and finds that the Manifesto comes out ahead. Marc Ambinder points out that Huckabee's NIE flub shows that he doesn't really have a campaign so much as a personality cult (his words, not mine) and lacks many policy proposals except for the fair tax and his new immigration plan. Finally, more criticism from Arkansas journalists.
- John McCain (remember him?) is campaigning in New Hampshire with Curt Schilling.
- Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, launched a new Iowa ad yesterday starring Wes Clark. I like the guy, but the opening is ridiculous: "I see Hillary's opponents are attacking her, that's politics. What this country needs is leadership." Clinton has, at the very least, given as good as she's gotten so I can't imagine many people are going to find this convincing. "He started it" doesn't work on the playground and it doesn't work in campaigns.
- Barack Obama, meanwhile, today launched an ad in Iowa that mixes clips of his Jefferson-Jackson Dinner speech and positive quotations, all over music that sounds like it should be on the soundtrack of the West Wing. Cheesy, but oddly effective.
- Finally, in an update of a story mentioned here on Tuesday, Obama's staff has moved his event with Oprah in South Carolina on Sunday from an 18,000 seat venue to an 80,000 seat stadium, though they say they don't expect to fill it.
