Matt Ortega

TPM Election Central:

Clinton FBI Director Endorsing Rudy
Louis Freeh, who served as head of the FBI under the Clinton Administration, is endorsing Rudy Giuliani. Freeh has been a critic of Bill Clinton, alleging that there was not a sufficient focus on security in his government. “Until 9/11, we lacked the political leadership and more important the political will to do what had to be done,” Freeh wrote in his 2005 book, My FBI.

In the GOP presidential debate from earlier this month, Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) was among the three to admit they don’t believe in evolution.

Today’s New York Times has a guest piece he wrote explaining his position.

Here are some quick numbers in Pennsylvania collected by Quinnpiac and released today. (Hat tip to TPM Cafe Election Central.)

TPM Cafe Election Central’s Eric Kleefield picked up on a recent poll that shows former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani trailing double-digits to two leading Democratic candidates in New York.

The poll finds that in New York, Giuliani certainly does better than the other Republican candidates. Nonetheless, he still loses to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by wide margins:

Clinton (D) 52%, Giuliani (R) 39%
Obama (D) 50%, Giuliani (R) 40%

Sure, Rudy would do better in east-coast blue states than his GOP rivals, but would he really put New York in play in any meaningful sense? Not according to these numbers.
Other Republicans, as Kleefield mentions, do much worse than Rudy.

Clinton (D) 54%, McCain (R) 36%
Clinton (D) 57%, F. Thompson (R) 29%
Obama (D) 50%, McCain (R) 33%
Gore (D) 56%, F. Thompson (R) 28%

With the news about Fred Thompson’s imminent campaign filling the last several posts here at TRF, I wanted to shift gears. –Matt

Soren Dayton has kept up on the consistent inconsistencies of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Romney stated last year that he supported the Bush agenda on immigration, as well as the McCain-Kennedy legislation that would put the 11 million undocumented workers on a long path to citizenship. Conservative anti-immigration groups are now blasting yet another Romney flip-flop. (Read more of Mitt’s “Mitt-representations” on immigration here.)

Supporters are trying to use a 1994 flier to show their man Mitt has always been a conservative, but it may not have the desired effect. Says Dayton:

[...] Romney’s image has several problems. The first one is that he’s a simple “flip-flopper”. But the second is that he’s a sleazy panderer. The car salesman thing. That he will tell you whatever you need to hear for you to support him. That he has no principles. That’s what really struck me with this.

And finally, Dayton asks, “Did Romney belittle a veteran on Memorial Day?” See for yourself.

Updated 5/31/07, 11:11am: Romney outlined his foreign policy stance from the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. Doubling the Guantanamo Bay detention center, however, did not make it in.