The following piece was produced through the Huffington Post'sOffTheBus. Edited by Richard Riehl and Denise Wheeler. Reported by Kirsten Anderson, River Curtis-Stanley, Jodi Lampert, Julie Pierce, and Debbi Plummer.
"The McCain Update: The Fleece is Back": That's the title of Friday's email from the comeback candidate's campaign. "Get Your McCain Fleece Today. With contributions of $200 or more, we will send you a McCain fleece jacket to keep you warm well into the fall at campaign and sporting events all over the country." It seems right that the war hero candidate is the only one with the courage to admit to fleecing his supporters.
"Mitt's message: resonating or evaporating?": In Saturday's urgent fundraising email from Mitt Romney, "Our strong position in the early primary and caucus states illustrates that my message of conservative change in Washington is resonating." Three days earlier the Salt Lake Tribune reported Mitt's lead in NH had "evaporated," dropping ten points from July's 33 percent to 23 percent today. At this rate there may not be much left of his message to resonate by the time the polls open in New Hampshire.
"Fred says he'll be a uniter after trashing his opponents": At a breakfast fundraiser in Clarksville, TN, Fred Thompson said he hopes to unify America by not "playing into partisan politics." Hm-m-m. A uniter, not a divider? That sounds familiar. And so does his insincerity. A few days earlier, as reported in Roadkill, a campaign video showed him comparing his more liberal political opponents to bloodsucking bats, claiming Democrats feared choice in health care like vampires fear the cross.
"They'll be coming around any time now...any time...": On Radio Iowa, Chris Dodd suggested that he is lagging behind the other candidates because Iowans are "slow to decide." Thanks Chris -- we'll make sure not to stand in line behind a flock of Hawkeyes in a Macdonald's at lunch hour.
"You may lead in the polls, but my children like me": At a Ron Paul rally in New Hampshire, Rand Paul, one of Ron's sons, took a "phone call" onstage, saying, "Oh Rudy Giuliani, how are you...oh what's that? You don't have any members of your family who want to campaign for you and you want to borrow ours?" Ouch! Don't worry, Rudy--they love you in London.
"Dennis the Silent Menace": Dennis Kucinich usually complains about being shut out of campaign coverage. But now he seems to be giving a cold shoulder to his home state paper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer. No returned calls, no press releases, nothing. The result? A Plain Dealer article about how Dennis isn't responding to the paper's queries! Woo hoo! As they say, the only bad publicity is no publicity.
"Does he do his own laundry, too?": From his latest email, which is titled, "Tonight at Midnight," it seems as if Chris Dodd's been doing all his own phone fundraising. "You know, if it were up to me I'd spend every minute on the trail talking about restoring the Constitution, Iraq, and the issues that matter most to you." Get some sleep, Chris! He goes on to say online contributions allow him to spend less time on the phones and more time earning support on the ground." He's also upped his request for last minute third quarter contributions from $23 two days earlier to $25. All of which begs the question, do we really want a financially desperate, sleep-deprived man in the White House with his finger on the nuclear button?
"They're just good smokes, ya'll": Fred Thompson told Miami Cuban-Americans on Radio Mambi on Friday in Little Havana that he'd be tough on Fidel Castro's Cuba. "We definitely would maintain sanctions, would maintain the embargo." When asked about the many boxes of Havana cigars in his office, Thompson explained, "If I have a friend that occasionally passes me a cigar, I don't check its heritage," he said. "...if it's good, I smoke it." That could be a problem with law-and order supporters. On the other hand, it might win him the stoner vote.