IOWA
PRESIDENTIAL WATCH
Iowa...
Where Presidents Begin
click
on each candidate to see today's news stories
(caricatures by
Linda Eddy)
Weekend Report April
12-13, 2008
GENERAL NEWS HEADLINES with excerpts
Barack shock: slams small town
folks:
"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they
cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who
aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or
anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their
frustrations."
Opponents paint Obama as an elitist:
Clinton, McCain camps react:
McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt said that Mr. Obama's
initial remarks, made at a fundraiser in San Francisco,
"shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking
Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking."
"Pennsylvania doesn't need a president who looks down on them," Mrs.
Clinton said...
'Bittergate'
continues:
Obama defends small town slam
"No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on," Mr.
Obama said...
Clinton, McCain camps react:
"Instead of apologizing for offending small town
America, Senator Obama chose to repeat and embrace the
comments he made earlier this week," Clinton spokesman
Phil Singer
said. "It's unfortunate that Senator Obama didn't say he
was sorry for what he said."
"Instead of apologizing to small town Americans for dismissing their
values, Barack Obama arrogantly tried to spin his way out of his
outrageous San Francisco remarks," said McCain spokesman Tucker
Bounds. "Barack Obama thinks he knows your hopes and fears better than
you do. You can't be more out of touch than that."
Huckabee signs with talent agency
... CAA represents more than 2,000 clients, including George Clooney,
Brad Pitt, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore and
Tony Bennett.
Gore has personal stake in global
warming campaign
Gore spoke in Monterey, California, at a March 1 TED (Technology,
Entertainment, Design) Conference, which bills itself as "an
invitation-only event where the world's leading thinkers and doers
gather to find inspiration." He admitted to having "a stake" in a
number of green "investments" that he recommended attendees put their
money into," according to NewsBusters.
Conservative group 'Freedom's
Watch' eludes expectations
THE CANDIDATES:
John McCain... today's headlines
with excerpts
McCain to Obama: keep your word
...“I am the presumptive Republican nominee; I will take public
financing. Keep your word to the American people. He’s always talking
in his speeches about how we need to keep our word to the American
people. Please keep your word to the American people on the commitment
you made in writing.’’
see also:
McCain may take public funds
Marketing McCain
campaign plays up a political brand that stands for independence from
the Republican Party...
... McCain's advisers attribute this seeming contradiction to what
they believe is McCain - a political brand that for over a
decade has stood for strength, experience, straight talk and
independence, qualities they believe help buffer him from many of the
ills of his party.
Hillary Clinton... today's
headlines with excerpts
Err apparent: Bill's fibs keep campaign from
gaining ground
Former president Bill Clinton is the latest to hand out a juicy fib
-- circling back to Bosnia to cram four falsehoods into 23 words: His
wife, he said, "one time late at night when she was exhausted,
misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in
Bosnia in 1995."
More calls for Penn to be fired
A powerful coalition of labor unions and a Clinton adviser ramped up
their comments that Mark Penn should be totally removed from Hillary
Rodham Clinton's campaign team...
Clinton aide's databank venture breaking ground
in politicking
Hillary looks to cut U.S. murder rate
Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday courted urban voters with a call to
cut the nation's murder rate in half with a $4 billion-a-year
crime-fighting plan she announced in her rival's stronghold of
Philadelphia.
The New York Democratic presidential aspirant said the price tag for
hiring 100,000 new police officers, setting up re-entry programs for
convicts and cracking down on the methamphetamine scourge pales in
comparison to the cost of the Iraq war and would be paid for by nixing
some corporate subsidies.
Barack Obama... today's headlines with excerpts
Obama's 'bitter' gaffe could
reshape campaign
***Many Americans (especially potential "Obamacans," as
he calls his Republican supporters) embrace religion not
because they're bitter but because they believe it, and
because it brings them daily purpose and comfort.
Ralph Nader... today's headlines with excerpts
clinging to religion, guns, xenophobia
"You
go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a
lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been
gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them,"
Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton
Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each
successive administration has said that somehow these
communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. 
Former
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has signed
a contract with one of the largest talent agencies in
Hollywood, Creative Artists Agencies (CAA). 
Al
Gore, alarmist-in-chief of the anti-global warming
campaign, stands to make money from his investments in
"green" firms selling various climate change remedies.
...after
a splashy debut last summer, in which it spent $15 million in a
nationwide advertising blitz supporting President Bush’s troop
escalation in Iraq, the group has been mostly quiet, beset by internal
problems that have paralyzed it and raised questions about what kind
of role, if any, it will actually play this fall...
Senator
John McCain – who thought he had an agreement with Senator Barack
Obama that they would both accept public financing if they faced each
other in the November election – called Friday for Mr. Obama to keep
his word.
As
the saying goes, if you want political reporters to eat their
vegetables, it helps if they have nothing else on their plate. The
Clintons, meanwhile, are serving whoppers. 
Harold
Ickes is president of Catalist, a for-profit databank that has sold
its voter files to the Obama and the Clinton presidential campaigns
for their get-out-the-vote efforts. With his equity stake in the firm,
Mr. Ickes stands to benefit financially no matter which candidate
becomes the Democratic nominee...
THE
DAMAGE: The swipe at small-town voters hurts with the
former Reagan Democrats, a promising voters group for
Obama, and antagonizes the very people who would have
been worried about Rev. Wright. And it will allow the
Clinton campaign to argue that she hasn't cornered the
market on divisiveness.
view more past news & headlines
paid for by the Iowa Presidential Watch PAC
P.O. Box 171, Webster City, IA 50595