Kucinich packs it in, and other political oddities

It’s been a tough week for the Presidential field. In the wake of a primary election in South Carolina and caucuses in Nevada, both Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson departed from the GOP field, leaving movement conservatives heartbroken.

So I’m sure the radical peaceniks haven’t even the heart to sing “Kumbaya” now that Dennis Kucinich announced his withdrawal as part of an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Yes, the man who brought you the idea for the “Department of Peace” has decided to focus his energy on maintaining his Congressional seat in Ohio against four opponents.

His wife, though, will be the one sadly missed from the national limelight. (Thanks to Bob McCarty for that link.)

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This is a sure way to tell a conservative from a liberal, at least as far as fiscal responsibility goes.

I’m still on the e-mail list for a number of departed candidates of both parties. So yesterday I was checking my political mailbox and got this appeal:

There’s one last issue I still need your help on before I can officially end my presidential bid. Right now we still have an outstanding debt.

We spent that money in those last few frenzied weeks in Iowa and New Hampshire trying to capitalize on the fluid poll numbers. Given how high the stakes were, I’m sure we would do the same thing given the same situation again.

Will you please make one final contribution to my campaign so we can officially “zero out” that debt?

I recognize that it’s a hard thing to do with the nomination no longer on the line. But I believe it is essential that the final act of our campaign is to meet every outstanding obligation.

That came from the campaign of Bill Richardson, whose “fluid” poll numbers never even made it to double digits. I’ll give him credit though – unlike the poster child for campaign overspending, John Glenn, he seems to want to make amends. Plus Richardson still has that governor gig in New Mexico.

But apparently there’s another candidate who remained fiscally prudent. In looking up a couple items for my post yesterday about Duncan Hunter, links that formerly worked on his website provided me with this message:

Congressman Hunter has dropped out of the race. Please do not send contributions.

Perhaps the timing of his announcement was pegged to the moment he would arrive back in his hometown of San Diego as his campaign assets zeroed out. I do believe that as a retiring Congressman with some seniority he is entitled to maintain his remaining campaign war chest; however, after the 2006 campaign that only amounted to a little over $50,000.

We’ll soon be able to find out just where these candidates really stand moneywise as FEC year-end reports are due at the end of the month.

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Talking about Duncan Hunter and finances provides me a nice segue into a story I came across about the man Duncan endorsed for the GOP Presidential nod, Mike Huckabee. The man who is not above asking contributors for “a buck for Huck” is apparently running low on funds himself. According to Eric Fiegel at CNN’s Political Ticker, Huckabee won’t be shepherding the dwindling corps of press following him from stop to stop anymore. (Come to think of it, that’s not a bad way to control your message.) While the press paid for the seats, there’s still overhead to consider and certainly the price was figured on having a fully loaded plane.

I suppose for the press it could be worse though – they could be on Air Hillary.

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Probably most odd of all is the fact that I’ll be on the AM Salisbury radio program with Bill Reddish tomorrow morning at 7:40 a.m. As one might expect, we’ll talk politics and I’m making my list of topics to go over as I write this post. (I sometimes have a hard time with the proverbial walking and chewing gum at the same time as anyone who’s ever watched me bowl can attest; however, I can multitask mentally.) Luckily, none of what I wrote about tonight will be on that list so enjoy the originality.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.