Friday Weirdness

J: Ah, Friday afternoon. A political aficionado's favorite news time. Some nice strange stories are floating around out there.

First, Fox News' latest poll shows McCain with a 7 point lead on Huckabee in South Carolina- 25/18. Personally, I think it's similar to the polls showing Obama leading Hillary right before NH. McCain's getting a little bump right now from his win, but long-term polls tend to be better to gauge public opinion. I'll say this, though- if McCain wins SC, or is within, say, 1 or 2 percent, then McCain will be competitive nationally. The Huckster ought to be the ideal guy for an SC Republican to support, and if Johnny Mac beats him in the Palmetto State, expect to see massive upheavals in Huckabee's strategy. Remember, the best position to be is the expected nominee come Super Tuesday. It gets your supporters to the polls, keeps the demoralized supporters of your opponents at home, and puts a lot of the undecideds in your column.

Then, we get into the good stuff- The (U.K.) Guardian is reporting that around a dozen members of Rudy Giuliani's senior staff are foregoing their January salaries. Now, there are several reasons why this may be the case, from "we want to report higher cash on-hand to the FEC in this quarter's report" to "We're running really low on cash", but the reasons don't matter. When staff starts going without pay, it's generally a good sign of a candidate being dead in the water. I'd expect to see "America's Mayor" out of the GOP race by the final bell on Super Tuesday. Somehow, his message of relating everything to 9/11/2001 never seemed to catch on with the general public. At this point, I think he's running for a cabinet position, with a very outside shot at the VP nomination.

C: The South Carolina foray is your area of expertise. Gaming the roles of veterans, African-American women, evangelicans, NRA'ers, relocated Nor'Easterns and legacy Southerners is over my head. And pollsters have collectively shit in their hat. Will the Rove-monkeys burn down the McCantankerous again? Chucklebee on Leno, Letterman, et. al. cracking funny. I'm fairly certain American doesn't want a 'funny' President. Well, trying to be 'funny' on purpose. Mittster pulled his SC ad money, what a crapshoot. Nevertheless, I would like a low-country boil.

Rudolpho is screwed, Florida strategy my ass. Katherine Harris is nowhere to be found. The Cuban Mafia cannot twist enough arm to make this pollo fly. And the Driving-with-my-turn-signal-on crowd ex-NY snowbird doesn't know what day it is. Jeb hasn't said nothing. Hang my chad. And now Rudy can't pay his staff? That's gotdam hysterical.

Good call on the Friday afternoon news cycle. Only perverts like us pay attention to Friday news. Wall Street, the Feds, a boss who's going to can one's ass...Friday is the under radar 'bad' super slimy news day. The month of August follows similar guidelines.

J: Your description of South Carolinians is fairly dead-on. The odd thing is that the state has a substantial Democrat population. You want to make real inroads in Carolina? Just show up wearing either a garnet-and-black Gamecocks ensemble, or a purple-and-orange Clemson outfit. Sure, you'll alienate half the state, but the other half will strongly embrace you. Yes, college football is that important there.

C: Okay. That's frightening and amusing. The Gamecocks would be my obvious choice. I nearly applied to grad school at UC Santa Cruz just so I could be a Banana Slug.