Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

CAN JOE BIDEN SURVIVE THE ODDS? MORE HERE.

For the GOP, Iowa has apparently become a two man race between Romney and Huckabee. Is Huckabee really up by 6 points? Sometimes you can tell more from the candidate’s behavior than you can published polls. They are reacting to internal polling which measures support a little differently than public polls. And the way Huckabee and Romney have been acting would seem to suggest that it is Romney on the rise with Huckabee trying to stop a slide.

For Fredheads, the only good news is that Thompson is the only GOP candidate whose support rose during the entire polling period. But 10% won't cut it by any means and if that's the best the candidate can do, I would expect him to drop out on Friday morning.

If polls are considered snapshots of a moment in time, there's plenty of mud on these photos making it difficult to read. We may as well resign ourselves to the idea that we’re just going to have to wait until late Thursday night to find out the winners and losers.

-- RICK MORAN

America doesn't belong to any one group. I honestly cannot think of a more profound disqualification for the American presidency than the failure to acknowledge that liberty and justice for all aren't mere words, but a basic principle of this nation the president swears to defend.

-- MELISSA McEWAN

In Obama, the Democratic party has a chance for a landslide in the 2008 election, something they will immediately forfeit with the divisive, cynical, hollow candidacy of Hillary Clinton. In Obama, disaffected Republicans also have a chance to punish their own party for its abandonment of conservatism, embrace of dumb authoritarianism abroad and spendthrift liberalism at home. The logic is overwhelming to me, but it's good to see it echoed in the Washington Times. If the Democrats throw this opportunity away in favor of a corrupt dynasty, it will be the biggest self-inflicted blow since . . . well, John Kerry and Harry Reid.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

Independent polls released Sunday show Romney in a statistical deadlock with Mr. Huckabee in Iowa and in a tie with Senator McCain in New Hampshire. A month ago, Romney was leading McCain in New Hampshire by 19 points.

Romney has responded with a good cop, bad cop strategy, speaking in sunny terms about America's future during a bus tour across Iowa this past week while simultaneously launching a blitz of attack ads against Huckabee and McCain.

-- ARIEL SABAR

The leaders of the Republican coalition know Romney will lose. But some would rather remain in control of a party that loses than lose control of a party that wins. Others haven't yet suffered the agony of defeat, and so are not yet emotionally ready for the trauma of transformation. Others still simply don't know which way to turn.

And so the burden of change will be thrust on primary voters over the next few weeks. Romney is a decent man with some good fiscal and economic policies. But in this race, he has run like a manager, not an entrepreneur. His triumph this month would mean a Democratic victory in November.

-- DAVID BROOKS

Iowans have noticed that Democrat Hillary Clinton has not been taking public questions from audiences during most of her final-push campaign rallies.

Seventeen-year-old Paul Collier said a man approached him at a rally for Democrat Barack Obama in Fort Madison Saturday to tell the teenager that Clinton "doesn’t take questions anymore."

"His opinion was, like, she says she listens to people but yet she doesn’t take questions," Collier said, who will be old enough to caucus because he turns 18 before the November general election.

Out of her 21 campaign rallies in Iowa since Christmas, Clinton has done three audience Q&As.

-- JENNIFER JACOBS

In my sourer moments I find myself persuaded that Bertie Wooster's verdict on aunts also applies to politicians: "It is no use telling me that there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof."

Never is this more the case than during a Presidential campaign. The sheer ghastliness of the front-runners is something to behold. Or not, as the case may be.

Try as I might, for instance, I find it hard to warm to Hillary Clinton even as I acknowledge that some of the hysteria surrounding her is absurdly overblown. And yet, there's something to it too. . . . Still, it's undeniable that there's something about Hillary's demeanour that puts people off. It's not as simple as her being a woman, though that doubtless disqualifies her in some folks' eyes, but that she's a particular type of woman.

As always Wodehouse is an invaluable guide to matters of the heart. Dipping into The Inimitable Jeeves last night, it struck me that, for a certain kind of chap, Hillary is the Honoria Glossop of the presidential campaign. It's not just that Hillary's now infamous "cackle" is dangerously reminiscent of Miss Glossop's laugh "that sounded like a squadron of cavalry charging across a tin bridge."

No, it's more that Hillary too often gives the impression of sharing Honoria's horrifying determination to mould a fellow.

-- ALEX MASSIE

I'm worrying a lot that Obama might win the Democratic nomination. This has nothing to do with my personal feelings about the weakness of Obama’s . . . platform, I guess, for lack of a better word–the whole feel-good "I will bring this country together again by the magnificence of my rhetoric and the magnetic force of my personality" thing.

I'm worried because there's only one scenario under which I see one of the Republican candidates-from-hell sitting in the Oval Office on January 20, 2009. And that scenario is that Obama wins the Democratic nomination, and then in November 2008 too many Americans vote the racism that I very much fear still bubbles just under the skin in large swathes of the country, the racism that these voters will never admit to a pollster in any way, shape or form.

-- SARABETH

John Edwards lied about the cost of his haircuts. Fred Thompson lied about lobbying for a pro-choice outfit. John McCain insists that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation." Mitt Romney concocted the story about how his father marched with Martin Luther King Jr. And Rudy Giuliani is a one-man fib machine -- everything from why he had to provide police protection for his then-mistress to the survivability rates for prostate cancer in Britain. . . .

-- RICHARD COHEN

Photograph by Brian Ray/The Gazette via The Associated Press