BREAKING NEWS: South Carolina GOP Shakes Up Race

Candidates' strategies shift as states scramble to have the first vote and the last word in presidential nominations.

WASHINGTON — Campaigning for the 2008 presidential election started earlier than any year on record.  And now it looks like voting could actually have already begun, as states continue to maneuver to be the earliest to hold nominating contests. 

An election calender that had finally appeared settled was jolted Thursday when South Carolina Republican Chairman Katon Dawson announced that he would move up the Republican primary from early September to tomorrow afternoon.

Dawson's announcement triggered a provision in New Hampshire state law dictating that its primary must come at least seven days before any other.  This means New Hampshire will now have to move its primary to no later than last Wednesday. 

Mark McKinnon, an advisor to GOP presidential contender Sen. John McCain of Arizona, expressed concern about forcing voters to trudge to the polls in the past.  "It may be recent," McKinnon said, "but the past is still the past."

"You don't even have a very good sense of what the issues were when you pick the nominee last week," he continued.  "The news cycle spins so fast the average American can hardly remember what was important yesterday, much less last Wednesday."

Kevin Drum, of the liberal blog Political Animal, believes this decision may spell the end of the line for Barack Obama.  "Last Wednesday was when Obama delivered that disastrous foreign policy speech about invading Pakistan," he said.  "People may not remember it now, but everyone was talking about it last week."

The Chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, Ray Buckley, agreed with Drum's assessment during a press conference announcing the winner of last Wednesday's Democratic primary, Dennis Kucinich.  "My chief of staff told me to go to this high school to give a speech," Kucinich said, "but when I got there, the auditorium was empty."

Ten minutes into his speech, Kucinich spotted an old voting booth in the corner.  "So I did what I always do," he said.  "I scribbled my name on the ballot and slipped it in the slot.  As luck would have it, mine was the only write-in vote."

Republican officials in New Hampshire have called a press conference for earlier this afternoon.  Although there has been no official announcement on who won the Republican contest, both Sam Brownback and Ron Paul canceled scheduled events and are rumored to be arriving in Concord yesterday.

Comments

[chris lawton]

GO RON PAUL! GO RON PAUL! GOD BLESS RON PAUL!
RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT 2008!

Ron Paul "Dream On" Video!!!!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=IWfIhFhelm8
Ron Paul "Don't Tread On Me" Video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FG_HuFtP8w8

Ron Paul is a constitutionalist.

Ron has never voted to raise taxes.
Ron has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
Ron has never voted for the Iraq War.
Ron has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
Ron has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.
Ron has never voted to raise congressional pay.
Ron has never taken a government-paid junket.

Ron voted against the Patriot Act.
Ron votes against regulating the Internet.
Ron voted against NAFTA and CAFTA.
Ron votes against the United Nations.
Ron votes against the welfare state.
Ron votes against reinstating a military draft.

Ron votes to preserve the constitution.
Ron votes to cut government spending.
Ron votes to lower healthcare costs.
Ron votes to end the war on drugs.
Ron votes to protect civil liberties.
Ron votes to secure our borders with real immigration reform

Listen To Ron Paul Speeches: http://www.ronpaulaudio.com
Review over 100 Articles Ron Paul Authored by Subject:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul-arch.html

How can you not love this guy listen to him he is truly a man who
tells the truth "We The People" are taking our country back and
restoring the original Constitutional Republic and returning Amerika
back to America not the Homeland.
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot
survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable,
for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor
moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling
through all the galleys, heard in the very hall of government itself.
For the traitor appears not a traitor---he speaks in the accents
familiar to his victims, and wears their face and their garment, and
he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He
rots the soul of a nation---he works secretly and unknown in the night
to undermine the pillars of a city---he infects the body politic so
that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.

--- Cicero: orator, statesman, political theorist, lawyer and
philosopher of Ancient Rome.

"In the time of universal deceit, telling the truth
is a revolutionary act" GEORGE ORWELL

"None are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
-- Goethe

[SEK]

There's no need to get so excited. He may have already won.

[Ahistoricality]

If the vote was/is held after Obama's speech, but before the other campaigns try/tried to spin it as a problem, Obama would/did probably win.

Punditry is already screwy enough: can you imagine David Broder or David Brooks trying to parse temporal shifts? "Democrats are the party of Tuesdays; Republicans are the party of Fridays....."

[SEK]

I knew Guiliani was cooked the moment Hoverboardgate broke. His waffling was just pathetic:

"Time travel into the future is always the extrapolation of currents events in the immediate present," said a beleaguered Guiliani. "I left this time at a moment before this hoverboard incident took place — yet I returned after it occurred. Just as the past affects the future, the future reverberates in the past. I cannot be held accountable for ripples in the space-time continuum."

[Sisyphus]

Schroedinger's candidate?

[Wrongshore]

This was very funny.

That is all.

[old]

SEK for newest front page reporter for The Onion!

[Nullifidian]

Ron Paul is a constitutionalist.

Read: Ron Paul doesn't believe in the principles of common law, and instead thinks that we should interpret the constitution as "strict constructionalists", which are to legal theory what Christian fundamentalists are to Christian theology: people who believe firmly in the plain reading, which means whatever they wish it to mean, neither more nor less. Any attempt to dispute with them about the "plain reading" of the text in question will be met with an anti-intellectual wave of the hand and the statement that they don't need all that fancy intellectual lit-crit as long as they have the original text.