News Roundup, 2/15/08: A Straight Talk Express, Racing Against the Past

Mitt Romney endorsed John McCain yesterday, thus delivered a potential 280 delegates or so. This presents a difficulty for Huckabee, who doesn't even have as many delegates as Romney had to give, but who also swears to continue on undeterred.

Despite the good news on the delegate front, McCain is still battling a reticent, grumpy conservative bloc. They are so grumpy, in fact, that the idea of conservatives picking someone else to be their nominee won't die. Sure, he in all probability has the nomination locked up; but if he thinks he can motor on full speed ahead and start going after moderates and conservative Democrats for the general before he takes care of this problem and gets the conservatives to line up behind him, well... then there may be very rough days ahead on the Straight Talk Express, where all the press asks him about is how the 2008 version of Ross Perot makes him feel.

Huckabee and McCain are not the only ones who can't seem to get the message: Alan Keyes continues his crazy tilting at crazy windmills, deciding that Texas will be where he makes his stand and wrests the Republican nomination from John McCain and History. What that means, essentially, is that we have until March 4th to purposely avoid reading stories about him. I imagine that won't be hard to do. In fact, I'm doing it right now.

Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers received a dubious distinction yesterday, becoming the first people in a very long time to be held in contempt of Congress. This House action stems from their refusal to cooperate with the House after they were called to account for actions and roles in the US attorney firing scandal and chose to ignore requests and subpoenas under a claim of executive privilege. Somehow I feel like the limits of executive privilege are going to be hammered out in the coming years, even under a Democratic president, because House Judiciary committee chair John Conyers takes this stuff to heart.

In other exciting news, the Pentagon announced plans to shoot a missile at a satellite as it begins to fall to earth, and Democratic Senate candidates Rick Noriega and Ray McMurrey debated on Wednesday evening. These are obviously exciting for different reasons — while the satellite story offers the potential for atmospheric fireworks, it does not carry any useful policy information or positions about health care. We also threw the issue of superdelegates to the floor for discussion, and we've already received some interesting ideas on it.

Lastly, on this week' episode of Who's Blue, I was joined by House Democratic Caucus Chair Jim Dunnam to talk about the situation in which we currently find ourselves in Texas politics, in regards to primaries, increased Democratic turnout, and prospects for 2008 in light of these new developments. If you enjoy discussions about Texas politics and / or national politics — and here I will assume that since you are here, you do — then this show has plenty to entertain you.