WASHINGTON - Near the end of his second term in office, President George W. Bush tried to offer some encouragement to his fellow Republicans who have seen control of the Congress and many state governor mansions end up in the hands of rival Democrats.

After mostly playing nice during the day when governors of both parties were in town, he offered some juicy red meat politics to a Republican gubernatorial gala that raised about $10.6 million for their upcoming campaigns.

“I’m confident we’ll hold the White House in 2008. And I don’t want the next Republican president to be lonely, and that is why we got to take the House, retake the Senate, and make sure our states are governed by Republican governors,” Bush said.

He seized on the latest battle with Democrats in Congress over his administration’s warrantless wiretapping program and a looming fight over whether to extend tax cuts set to expire in 2010 to try to energize Republicans.

“Those are the two big issues facing us: who best to protect America, and who best to keep taxes low. I’m looking forward to this campaign. I’m excited about taking our message to the American people. With your help and hard work, there’s no doubt in my mind — no doubt — that we’ll win,” he said.

At the moment, polls diverge over whether the likely Republican presidential nominee John McCain will prevail or be beaten by either Democrats seeking to be their party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

But analysts see Democrats holding their grips on the House of Representatives because a large number of Republicans are retiring and in the Senate where Republicans have more seats to defend this election season.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Bush with his wife Laura at the Republican Governors Association gala.)

CLEVELAND - John McCain has a curious recipe for success in Ohio: tell voters their jobs aren’t coming back, and embrace the free trade pacts that are despised here. It’s an approach that led to defeat last month in Michigan, another Rust Belt state that has seen manufacturing jobs disappear. Now that the Republican nomination is all but assured, McCain hasn’t changed his tune.

“Some of those manufacturing jobs are not coming back and you know it and I know it,” the Arizona senator said at a town hall meeting in Rocky River this morning.

Ohio has lost nearly one quarter of its manufacturing jobs in this decade, and many voters here say free trade is to blame. Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, still battling for the Democratic nomination, have been trying to distance themselves from pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement as they campaign here.

Not McCain, who suggested today that high tariffs were a cause of World War Two.

“The economists that I know and trust and the history that I study, and I study a lot of history, says that free trade is the best thing that can happen to our nation. When we have practiced protectionism it has had devastating consequences,” he said on his campaign bus.

No presidential candidate since 1964 has taken the White House without winning Ohio, and the state proved to be the crucial battleground in the 2004 matchup between Republican President George W. Bush and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. Will McCain’s support of free trade come back to haunt him this November?

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Aaron Josefczyk (John McCain at a town hall meeting in Rocky River, Ohio on Feb. 25.)

Reports last week in the New York Times and the Washington Post about CIA operations against al Qaeda inside Pakistan -- with or without the permission of the Pakistan government -- have got everybody asking what exactly is going on. Let's rewind and look at what the United States asked for immediately after 9/11 when it demanded President Pervez Musharraf's cooperation in hunting down al Qaeda.

In his book "In the Line of Fire", Musharraf says the Americans presented him with a list of demands on Sept. 13, 2001 which included a requirement Pakistan "provide the United States with blanket overflight and landing rights to conduct all neccessary military and intelligence operations". Musharraf says that though he agreed to cooperate with the United States, this particular request was turned down.

That begs the question of just how the Americans responded to the rejection. Did the world's sole superpower, who in Musharraf's own words had just threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if it did not cooperate, simply say "Ok fine. Sorry to trouble you" or words to that effect? Or did the Americans think even then that al Qaeda and Taliban militants would flee from Afghanistan into Pakistan and extract a promise to let the CIA go after them? In other words who knew what, when?

The question is interesting in the context of the U.S. presidential election, with Barack Obama saying he would be willing to go after al Qaeda inside Pakistan and John McCain accusing him of inexperience for threatening to invade a U.S. ally -- comments that are attracting a fierce debate among U.S. bloggers.

A blog called World War 4 Report calls Obama's comments "alarmingly bellicose". On the other side of the debate, Juan Cole challenges McCain's own record on U.S. Pakistan policy, accusing him of being an enthusiastic supporter of the Islamist mujahideen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s - a movement that spawned al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Commenting on the reports of CIA operations inside Pakistan, the Seminal asks how Americans would feel if Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, set up shop in the United States and struck a secret deal with George W. Bush allowing them to target suspected Islamists there. A Pakistani who commented on my last post on U.S. policy towards Pakistan was more sanguine. Writing about Obama's threat to go after al Qaeda in Pakistan, he wrote: "Here is a guy who is truthful and is playing no games. We in Pakistan can live joyfully with the likes of him. No double-speak and therefore no contradictions."

Lots of questions then. Should America be going after al Qaeda aggressively inside Pakistan? Is Obama just being honest, stating a policy that is already being carried out by the CIA, albeit in secret? Have your say by posting a comment here.

DALLAS - America’s evangelical movement is still growing and winning converts — with political implications that will likely be felt in this election cycle and beyond.

A new and extensive survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released on Monday found that 26.3 percent of U.S. adults or one in four count themselves as evangelical Protestant.

That is higher than the widely cited one-in-five figure which is based on what denominations report to the National Council of Churches USA (NCC). But surveys and polls such as the one conducted by Pew can also catch people affiliated with churches that don’t report to the NCC.

Pew’s “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey”, based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, also shows that evangelicals outnumber Catholics who accounted for 23.9 percent of the survey’s respondents.

“The evangelical Protestant tradition is still growing but also becoming more diverse … so it may give them more clout in politics but because of their diversity it not be used in the same way,” John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, told journalists during a conference call about the survey.

White evangelical Protestants have emerged in the past three decades as a key base of support for the Republican Party, which has galvanized them to go to the polls by taking hardline stances against abortion rights and gay marriage.

But as Green and others have noted, they may in fact be splintering politically and moderating as their ranks grow –  perhaps because they are attracting more people with different priorities.

Having said that, all the available evidence to date suggests that most remain firmly in the Republican camp, even if the movement’s agenda is widening to embrace other Biblical concerns such as the environment.

Pew plans to follow up in the spring with a report on other findings from the survey which will look specifically at Americans’ religious beliefs and practices as well as their social and political views.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder

    
LORAIN, Ohio - Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama shot down suggestions at a news conference on Sunday that the Republican Party could paint him as deficient in the area of patriotism - a sensitive charge in the United States.
 
The “evidence”: his wife Michelle made controversial remarks about her pride in the country, he did not wear an American flag pin on his lapel, and he had not put his hand over his heart while singing the national anthem.
 
How would he respond to these charges?
 
“The way I will respond to it is with the truth-that I owe everything I am to this country,” he said. 
 
He took each example one by one.
 
Regarding the pledge:
“The notion that I am disqualified because at one event I was singing the national anthem, but failed to put my hand over my heart while I was singing.  If that were the case that would disqualify about three quarters of the people who have ever gone to a football game or a baseball game.”
 
Regarding Michelle:
“My wife’s comment-I think she already clarified herself.  She was very clear about it.  She simply misspoke because what she was referring to was the first time she had been proud of politics in America and that is true for a lot of folks who have been cynical and disenchanted. ”
 
Then he got to the pin - and let loose.
“As far as the American flag pin, I mean, when we start getting into those definitions of patriotism, that’s a debate I am happy to have, because what I will come right back to them is: a party that resided over a war which our troops did not get the body armor they needed or were sending troops over who were untrained because of poor planning or not fulfilling the veterans benefits that these troops need when they come home or undermining our constitution with warrantless wiretaps that are unnecessary.  That is a debate I am very happy to have.” 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

Photo credit: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook (Sen. Barack Obama is given a tour at the National Gypsum plant in Lorain, Ohio, Feb. 24) 
    

PROVIDENCE, R.I . — Hillary Clinton can work a crowd too — especially when she takes a jab at her rival Barack Obama whose rallies sometimes resemble a rock concert or a megachurch service.

At a rally in Providence, Rhode Island, that organizers said drew some 5,000 people to an indoor track at Rhode Island College, Clinton fired up her supporters by mocking Obama’s passionate rhetoric.

She said the problems facing the next president would not be easily solved.

“I could just stand up here and say ‘Let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified.’ The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,” she said.

“Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be,” she said, adding that a president can’t just “wave a magic wand” and get things done.

Rhode Island holds its primary on March 4, the same day as Texas and Ohio where the results could be crucial to Clinton’s White House hopes.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Claudia Parsons (Hillary Clinton talks to reporters on her campaign plane during a flight from Washington D.C. to Providence, Rhode Island, Sunday, Feb. 24)

HOUSTON - The Clinton marriage was back in the spotlight when a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s White House bid said he was looking forward to having “two presidents in the same bed,” and she remarked that politics make strange bedfellows.

A minister named F.N. Williams was among a string of religious figures on stage at a town hall meeting Clinton held late on Saturday ahead of the March 4 primary in Texas.

“It would really be wonderful to have two presidents in the same bed,” he told the crowd, drawing a mixture of laughter and cheers.

When the former first lady took the microphone, she thanked those who made the introductions and said: “I’ve never quite stopped to think about that two presidents in a bed before. ”

“I’ve read about how politics makes for strange bedfellows,” she added.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (The Clintons with supporters on Super Tuesday)

NEW ORLEANS - Locked in a tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton defended the right of superdelegates to exercise their own judgment in deciding which candidate to support at the party’s national convention, and not be bound to the candidate who won the vote in their district.

“Otherwise Sen. (Edward) Kennedy would have endorsed me by now,” she said, noting that she won the Massachussets primary despite the influential senator’s endorsement of her rival Barack Obama.

Obama has taken a lead in the battle to win the 2,025 delegates needed for the Democratic party nomination but neither candidate looks able to hit the target with only those delegates allocated according to primaries and caucuses.

A certain number of delegates at the conventions are set aside for members of Congress, elected state officers and other leading party officials.

Asked at a conference in New Orleans on Saturday whether a member of congress who supported Clinton should change their position if their district voted for Obama, Clinton said the superdelegates should exercise “independent judgment.”

She said independent judgement was bound to be affected by “the evolving nature of the campaign,” and acknowledged that her supporters were being aggressively pursued by the Obama campaign.

“I’m aware of the fact many people supporting me have been under tremendous pressure and that pains me, it really does, because I have long and deep relationships,” she said, adding that members of Congress and other superdelegates often knew the candidates better than voters.

She said while the popular vote was “an important part” of the process of choosing a nominee, the system of also giving members of Congress, governors and party leaders a say was meant “to give due recognition to their different experience.”

“I have every confidence that this is going to be worked out,” she said. “We will have a nominee and we will unite behind our nominee.”

As estimated by MSNBC, Obama has 1,183 delegates so far and Clinton has 1,031.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi (A member of the secret service closes the door for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Clinton in Fort Worth, Texas)

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, far behind in his bid for his party’s nomination, may be in contention for another job — the king of late-night television.
 
Huckabee, known for his wit, has sought platforms such as late-night TV talk and comedy shows to try to sell his campaign, including appearances on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “Late Show with David Letterman” and “The Colbert Report.”
 
His rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, is near clinching the nomination but that hasn’t stopped Huckabee from continuing his campaign or making new plans to go on more shows. 
 
The former Arkansas governor is slated to appear on “Saturday Night Live” tomorrow. It remains unclear whether he will angle for his own show if he fails to win the nomination or be on the ticket as the vice presidential candidate.  And, no word if he’ll jam with the band on his bass.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

Photo credit: Reuters, Chris Keane.  (Republican Mike Huckabee plays the bass guitar with the band Detour at a campaign stop in Greenville, South Carolina, Jan. 9, 2008)

Could Oscar shine his powerful beam on health care reform this year as he did last year on global warming? Filmmaker Michael Moore, whose documentary "Sicko" is nominated for an Academy Award, would like that.

"I think a number of people out here hope the film wins," Moore said from Hollywood on a conference call with patients from his film. "They talk about 'An Inconvenient Truth' last year really putting the issue of global warming much more strongly on the political agenda. If that can happen Sunday with 'Sicko' -- all the better."

Moore says that Hollywood actually has quite good health care coverage. "I am a member of the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild and we actually have, as far as American insurance goes, pretty good insurance," he said.

Moore says that the Hollywood movers and shakers he has encountered in what he called "Oscar week craziness" want to help him in his crusade for government-supported universal health care, like Canada's system. His advice: use their influence with Democratic presidential contenders Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama. "Please talk to them about this and get them on the right path. They are having nutty debates about who is going to mandate, how many people," he tells the power players.

If Moore wins a second Oscar Sunday, he promises to have a safer acceptance speech than in 2003, when he was "booed off the stage" for coming out against the war in Iraq after winning best documentary for "Bowling for Columbine."

"If I win, I am going to stick to thanking my stylist, my rolfer and my pedicurist and leave it at that."