A new chaser!

What are you doing here?  The Chaser has moved.  It’s new home is www.adailychaser.com.

Enjoy!

Welcome to the greatest show on earth!

Except there is nothing great about it, but it most certainly is a circus. Chalk full of monkeys, clowns, and circus sideshows…its the Spartanburg County Straw Poll!

Politico’s Jonathan Martin is reporting the final revalation of the results this afternoon. Come to find out, McCain won the whole shabang. Apparently, with the heavy national scrutiny and a rush to feed the media clowns; the Spartanburg GOP leadership forgot how to count and the leader of this three ring circus got on the TV and reported a bunch of crap. According to an email from Beltram, they actually scored McCain at 114 when it should have been 141. Way to put South Carolina up on the main stage!

So what does this Twilight Zone experience mean? We think it means, just wait till the real time to vote…it is actually 11 months from now!

50 votes over night?

The final Spartanburg numbers are in:

John McCain: 164

Rudy Giuliani: 162

Duncan Hunter: 158

Sam Brownback: 85

Mitt Romney: 80

Mike Huckabee: 21

It looks like John McCain found 50 votes over night while everyone else stayed the same. How exactly does happen?   

DeMint ranked as nation’s top conservative

Who is the nation’s most conservative United States Senator?

That would be our very own Senator Jim DeMint.

According to a new survey by the National Journal, Senator DeMint has a conservative score of 92.5, giving him the top spot.  He is also rated as the 99th  least liberal Senator with a liberal score of 7.5.

By comparison, Senator Lindsey Graham is ranked as the 32nd most conservative US Senator with a conservative score of 70.8.  He’s rank as the 67th most liberal US Senator with a score of 29.2.

Also of note is that Joe Wilson is ranked as the 5th most conservative Congressman.

Click here for pdf of DeMint and Graham scores.

Click here for pdf of DeMint v. Durbin comparison – the most conservative v. the most liberal.

Click here for pdf of SC House delegation scores.

Roger Milliken wins straw poll

So how does a no name 5th tier California congressman pull a near win in a straw poll in the heart of South Carolina Republicanism?

It’s actually pretty simple. Score one the area’s largest employers.

It’s no secret that Roger Milliken is supporting Duncan Hunter for President. Now we aren’t conspiracy theorists. But, Hell did just freeze so we are going to go out on a limb here and say Mr. Milliken got a few of his employees to show up at their precincts with a valid voter’s registration card.

And the winner is…

As the vote rolls in, a couple of interesting things are coming to light.  First Rudy Giuliani, a preceived social liberal, clearly is enjoying the big Mo even in conservative Spartanburg County.  Second, Duncan Hunter should feel really good tonight, no matter how short lived.  They clearly put together a solid ground game.  Here are the numbers with most of the precinct results reporting:

Rudy Giuliani: 123

Duncan Hunter: 110

John McCain:  86

Sam Brownback: 68

Mitt Romney: 59

Mike Huckabee: 18

Tom Tancredo: 4

Jim Gilmore: 4

Ron Paul: 1

John Cox: 1

Spartanburg County leaders were expecting a large turnout; allowing anyone with a license to cast a ballot.  However the massive down pour and tornado warnings keep many would-be voters at home.  It is interesting to see the dichotomy between the win for a more liberal Giuliani and the respectable showing by uber-conservatives Hunter and Brownback. 

Comparing this to The Hotline’s benchmark for news:

1) Giuliani gets 1st

2) Hunter and Brownback

3) McCain gets 3rd

Thoughts on South Carolina’s first straw poll?

Lindsey Graham holding up judicial nomination?

Confirmthem.com, a division of redstate.com, is reporting that Senator Lindsey Graham is holding up judicial nominations for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.  According to the site:

The backlog in Fourth Circuit nominations is being caused by Senators Webb and Graham. Webb is a first-class jackass, and refuses to work with Senator Warner to get these vacancies filled. Graham apparently wants some liberal, life-long democrat or a left-leaning intellectual lightweight to be nominated to the South Carolina seat, and the president is refusing to go along to get along. Good for him.

Speaking of Graham, he was on Fox News again today backing John McCain.  Check it out here.

More Trey Walker email issues

This morning we learned of anonymous attacks on Mitt Romney for the Spartanburg straw poll.  We were also reminded of McCain state director Trey Walker’s past email problems, SLED investigation, and near prosecution.

We now learn that that Trey has been using Henry McMaster’s state campaign for John McCain’s federal campaign.  From the email below we see that an email sent from Trey, with no disclaimer, is actually paid for by the McMaster for Attorney General state campaign.  We do not know the legalities of McCain-Feingold and using state campaign dollars for federal campaigns, but we will find out for you as soon as possible.

Per request, we have hidden the person’s name who sent us this email.  Explanations below screen shots.

First we see the email sent from Trey and a pro-McCain article.

We then see the attack.  Notice, there is no disclaimer. But when we click on the little link at the bottom of the screen that says “update profile/email address” the next screen pops up.

Notice the email was sent to Henry McMaster’s listserve, paid for by McMaster for Attorney General.

[TIM CAMERON]

Gettin’ ready for the rumble

 

The Hotline gives a good lead up to the Spartanburg County straw poll taking place tonight.  Check it out:

By most measures, tonight’s Spartanburg County GOP WH ’08 straw poll is not a big deal, despite being the first of its kind in South Carolina. Party leadership expects between 1200 and 1500 to show up tonight (what one local activist called “the core of the base”), but that only boils down to a handful of people at each of Spartanburg County’s 92 participating precincts. Nonetheless six campaigns have sent out mailers, some have bought advertisements, and others have sent campaign staff to the area in preparation for tonight’s event.

So what would make news at tonight’s straw poll?

Check out the full article here.

A trip down Memory Lane with McCain’s state director

Aaron Sheinin published an article this morning about anonymous letters and emails targeting Mitt Romney in Spartanburg for tonight’s straws poll.

One email titled “Mitt Romney has a family secret he doesn’t want you to know” said:

 “Those dark suspicions you hide deep inside yourself about Mormonism are trying to tell you something. Trust your instincts! The light of truth will burn through the smoke and mirrors of Mitt Romney’s movie star looks and crafty words!”

Although neither Sheinin nor the Romney camp placed blame on the McCain camp, Sheinin did note that McCain’s state campaign manager Trey Walker was once investigated by SLED and nearly prosecuted for the same type of anonymous emails during Henry McMaster’s 2002 campaign for Attorney General:

“In June 2002, McCain’s current S.C. campaign manager, Trey Walker, was working on Henry McMaster’s attorney general campaign when he sent party loyalists a copy of an article from The State that accused a McMaster rival of accepting a bribe. Walker admitted he made the e-mail appear to have come from an opponent’s campaign.

The State Law Enforcement Division investigated, but Walker was not prosecuted.”

Well, that was a long time ago and we couldn’t remember all the details, so we did a quick archive search on The State and here are the first three articles we found:

Graham Faces Enmity From Right

Here’s an interesting article from this morning’s Roll Call. 

March 1, 2007
By Matthew Murray,
Roll Call Staff

Despite taking moderate positions on certain issues that conservatives loathe, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) long march to Election Day 2008 may be a lonely one.

Conservative Web sites in South Carolina have begged Republicans like state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel and U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins to challenge Graham in the GOP primary, but neither seems inclined to do so. And Democrats don’t appear likely to produce a top-tier challenger.

“Folks in the conservative wing of Republican party are extremely upset with some of the stances that [Graham] has taken,” said one state GOP operative. “But it’d be tough to beat him.”

John McCain loses some friends

Yeah, this sucks.  Don’t laugh…it could happen to you too. From Wolf Blitzer:

Click here for video.

JACKI SCHECHNER: Senator john mccain’s ecampaign tried to set up a myspace account for him. They wanted to use that address myspace.Com/johnmccain. They found out it was already used. The mccain people reached out to myspace and asked to take over the page. They misunderstood. And they ended up removing all of the pro-senator mccain profiles on myspace. All of them off the site. The mccain campaign takes full responsibility for the miscommunication. They’ve apologized and offer to set the profiles up again. Right now, the mccain campaign has 72 friends. We’ll see if that picks up.

McCain announces candidacy on Letterman

Click here for video.  We will find a YouTube clip tomorrow morning so that you won’t be so tempted to donate to the McCain campagin.   Come on Senator…we gave you mad props this morning for your new YouTube page.  Why don’t you use it?

McCain announces on Letterman that he is running for President and will make a “formal announcement” in April.  Paul jokes that the formal announcement will be on Jay Leno.

The title of this email was “I’m running.” We really want to reply back “no crap, really? I had’nt heard that yet.”

Email from McCain:

Tonight, I will be appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman on CBS.  During this broadcast, I am going to announce that I will be a candidate for President of the United States.  As one of my closest and most loyal supporters, I wanted you to see this announcement first on my website.  I will make a formal announcement and embark on a tour in April.    

This is an exciting announcement and I hope you will watch CBS tonight at 11:35 PM-12:37 AM, ET/PT. 

Thank you for your support, your generosity, and your ongoing involvement in this campaign. We have a lot to look forward to and I promise you this campaign will make us all proud. 

Sincerely, 

John McCain

[UPDATE] When asked if he would consider the Vice Presidency, McCain jokes “‘You know, I spent all those years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, kept in the dark, fed scraps – why the heck would I want to do that all over again?” 

Who would have thought you could make a joke out of that?

Hunter Drops Two S.C. Co-Chairs

 

The ink is hardly dry on the Bonnie Blue PR and Presidential hopeful Congressman Duncan Hunter’s consulting contract, but Robert Cahaley and Company are already making some major moves to hopefully improve the chances for their “dark-horse” candidate.

Paul Hyde is reporting on his Greenville News blog that Hunter will no longer have Lois Eargle and Dr. Henry Jordan serve as state Co-Chairs for his campaign. This move comes days after Eargle, the Horry County Auditor and County Republican Party Chairman Emeritus, made some disparaging comments concerning an abused illegal immigrant who she told to “go back to Mexico”. Dr. Jordan, a former candidate for Lt. Governor, is widely considered to be a loose cannon. This assumption is based on a number of “culturally insensitive” remarks from Dr. Jordan.

Despite the loss of these hardworking activists, this was probably a good move for Hunter. As a person who appears to be taking his candidacy serious, he really shouldn’t be associating himself with such extreme views. Especially if those views are not his own.