News Digest, 1/30/08: Off the Florida Primaries

I suppose that considering the primary season we've had so far, having a primary turn out as everyone expected is a nice change of pace. The Florida primaries were held yesterday, and as expected, Clinton and McCain were the winners.

What that means for Clinton apparently isn't much; the Florida Democratic Party was stripped of its delegates by the DNC due to their holding their primary earlier than DNC rules allow, so unless Clinton succeeds in her bid to have their delegates seated anyway, the victory in Florida just gets her some free press — and even then, the press doesn't seem to be too enthusiastic about giving Clinton much credit for the victory, so the benefit she gets is questionable.

That's not the case on the Republican side. McCain's victory solidifies his front-runner position just before the critical Super Tuesday primaries, and gives Romney another one of his "silver medals" — and as the saying goes, second place is first loser.

Giuliani's third-place finish in the state he'd set up for himself as a must-win means he goes into Super Tuesday without a single primary victory — or, well, he would be, except he's apparently smarter than to put himself through that. Giuliani is declaring today that he is dropping out of the Republican race and endorsing John McCain, as NBC and CNN report.

The $150 billion bipartisan stimulus package passed the House yesterday, with the support of the Bush administration. The bill headed off to the Senate, where they quickly proposed some significant changes, including making the rebate amounts $500 across the board, removing caps on who receives them, and extending unemployment benefits and upping food stamps. How much of this gets into the final Senate bill, and how much of that survives the conference committee, remains to be seen. With Bush's backing for the House bill and his characteristic refusals to find compromise in things like this, we may be looking at a more drawn-out process than first anticipated.

The ex-Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, may have made a very problematic slip for the Bush administration. Negroponte, in an interview with the National Journal, admitted that the United States had, indeed, used waterboarding as an interrogation tool. The White House has already tried to spin its way out of that allegation once, when Cheney made a similar but less direct slip a few months back. So it will be interesting to see what Dana Perino has to say about this today.

And finally today, Republican State Senator Kyle Janek has announced he is resigning effective June 2, not March 10 as was originally reported by the Chron. It is likely that the date was changed to avoid what would have been the likely election date of May 10; with a June 2 resignation, it is more likely that the special election for the unexpired term would be held on November 4, barring a declaration of an emergency election by Perry — meaning that state representatives interested in filling the unexpired term would not be able to run for their seats in the state House at the same time, as they would have been able to had the election been held earlier.