Per McCain's campaign, here are some excerpts of his speech on immigration today. "I do not question the sincerity of their convictions or their purpose in proposing other ways to address the problem,' he will say. "There is one premise most of us agree on: the status quo is unacceptable… [T]he choice is between doing something, imperfect but effective and achievable, and doing nothing.  I would hope that any candidate for President would not suggest doing nothing.  And I would hope they wouldn't play politics for their own interests if the cost of their ambition was to make this problem even harder to solve. To want the office so badly that you would intentionally make our country's problems worse might prove you can read a poll or take a cheap shot, but it hardly demonstrates presidential leadership." (Think he's talking about Romney?)

Apparently it's not a subtle shot at Romney, but a direct one, so says the New York Times.

"The attack, in a speech Mr. McCain is to give today, marks a sharp escalation in the war of words between two of the leading Republican presidential contenders. It also represents a risky gambit by Mr. McCain to right the course of a presidential campaign that has been consumed by attacks on his immigration stance, with Mr. Romney among his most vocal critics." 

On Sunday, the New York Times front-paged the backlash Bush is receiving from conservatives on immigration. 

The Washington Post: "Congress's week-long Memorial Day recess was expected to leave the bill in tatters. But with a week of action set to begin today, the legislation's champions say they believe that the voices of opposition, especially from conservatives, represent a small segment of public opinion. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who led negotiations on the bill for his party, said the flood of angry calls and protests that greeted the deal two weeks ago has since receded every day."

More: "Public opinion polls seem to support Kyl's contention that Americans are far more open to the deal than the voices of opposition would indicate. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll released today, 52 percent of Americans said they would support a program giving illegal immigrants the right to stay and work in the United States if they pay a fine and meet other requirements. Opposition to that proposal was 44 percent."

The Washington Times follows up its report that notes the RNC's fundraising has been hurt by Bush's support for the immigration proposal, a charge the RNC disputes. "[B]ut fierce grass-roots opposition to the legislation is helping several state Republican parties. Tina Benkiser, chairwoman of the Republican Party in the president's home state of Texas, says raising money has been successful 'in large part to our principled stance against illegal immigration.' Since the beginning of 2006, when substantial immigration debate began, she says, 'the Republican Party of Texas has experienced an exponential increase in direct-mail donations from supporters statewide.'"

And Human Events surveys key state GOP leaders from around the country and finds and unhappy GOP base.

A Sunday New York Times analysis noted that, for the first time, "the Bush administration is beginning publicly to discuss basing American troops in Iraq for years, even decades to come, a subject so fraught with political landmines that officials are tiptoeing around the inevitable questions about what the United States' long-term mission would be there." 

Meanwhile, in today's NY Times, the paper gets its hands on some internal military assessments indicating that the surge is not working as well as hoped.  "Three months after the start of the Baghdad security plan that has added thousands of American and Iraqi troops to the capital, they control fewer than one-third of the city's neighborhoods, far short of the initial goal for the operation, according to some commanders and an internal military assessment." 

Meanwhile, the L.A. Times says "Democratic congressional leaders … plan a summer of repeated Iraq-related votes designed to force Republican lawmakers to abandon the White House before the fall. At the same time, antiwar groups are expanding their campaign to pressure GOP incumbents in their home states." Dem Cong. Leaders, "whose efforts to force a withdrawal from iraq were stymied last month, plan a summer of repeated Iraq-related votes designed to force Republican lawmakers to abandon the White House before the fall."

CLINTON: The Wash. Post notes how the campaign is trying to remind voters of her Chicago roots. "Introducing biographical information about her childhood and early adulthood, her advisers hope, will flesh out the familiar caricature of Clinton as an overly ambitious careerist who leaves scandal in her wake. After 15 years in Washington, she is also seen as an inside-the-Beltway figure; underscoring her Midwestern upbringing is, they believe, one way to shift that view (while also, not coincidentally, appealing to voters in Midwestern swing states such as Ohio)." 

 OBAMA: NYT's Krugman likes, but doesn't love, Obama's health care plan. "On the whole, the Obama plan is better than I feared but not as comprehensive as I would have liked. It doesn't quell my worries that Mr. Obama's dislike of "bitter and partisan" politics makes him too cautious."

IOWA: Five of the six major Democrats rallied Iowa Dems at the party's annual Hall of Fame dinner with Clinton and Edwards showing off their superior resources and organizations. Obama did not attend. 

BTW, don't miss Joe Biden's decision to take a shot at Edwards during the dinner proceedings.

Biden, ended his speech "on a light note, firing a gentle shot at Mr. Edwards, who has spent considerable time explaining an expensive haircut he paid for with campaign money earlier this year. "I wish my hair was worth $400," said Mr. Biden, who was quickly drowned out by the crowd's laughter.

ROMNEY: The NY Times profiles Romney's years at Bain Capital, the company that made him rich. "Romney's Bain career - a source of money and contacts that he has used to finance his Massachusetts campaigns and to leap ahead of his presidential rivals in early fund-raising - also exposes him to criticism that he enriched himself excessively, sometimes by cutting jobs to increase profits. Romney, in an interview, acknowledged that Bain Capital's acquisitions had sometimes led to layoffs but said that he could explain them to voters.  "Sometimes the medicine is a little bitter but it is necessary to save the life of the patient," he said. "My job was to try and make the enterprise successful, and in my view the best security a family can have is that the business they work for is strong."

The L.A. Times examines Romney's campaign to win the Ames Straw poll. He's spending A LOT of money. But is it too much to the point of scaring away the other frontrunners?

Did you know there was a Mormon legend that states a Mormon will one day save the Constitution? We didn't either.

F. THOMPSON: The big news today is the start of Thompson's fundraising. As of this weekend, the campaign planned no "visual" for today's fundraising proceedings. 

Before his speech to the Virginia GOP on Saturday night, Thompson sat down for a co-exclusive interview with AP and NBC. Some highlights:

-- On his qualifications post-9/11: "Since I've been out of the senate I've had a chance to chair an advisory board of the State Department on international matters. I served on the China commission for a while, so I've maintained my interest in what goes on in the world, but it's ultimately up to the American people.  What they think about it. There are probably an awful lot of people who think they'd make a good president. … I've never desired to hold the office particularly, in fact, not at all, but at this stage of things, I sometimes think I do desire the opportunity to do some of the things that only a president can do.

-- On his lack of ambition for the presidency: I think that if a person craves power for the sake of power or craves the office for the sake of holding the office, then he's got his priorities mixed up. You cant be totally uh dragged kicking and screaming into the office, you've got to desire to do the things to hold the office but its a desire to do something not to be something

-- On the "lazy" charge: Well, you know, that's one rap that you can cure, so we'll just have to wait and see.

-- On "greatest" senate accomplishment: Well, I facetiously said 'leaving the Senate' the other day, when somebody asked me that question. But, I don't guess I ought to say that again.  There are a lot of things, you know..uh … I would take a while, I guess, in discussing all of that. Doesn't always have to do with putting your name on a piece of legislation. There's an awful lot of bad legislation that i had to stop, for one thing. I managed the Homeland Security bill when it was on the Senate floor, and several other things.  We'll get a chance to get into all of that when I start talking to everybody about what a wonderful person I am. But we're not quite at that stage yet.

The New York Times covers Thompson's speech to the Virginia GOP: "In a preview of the themes he is likely to emphasize in a presidential campaign, Fred D. Thompson tossed some red meat to Republicans here Saturday night, assailing the immigration bill in Congress and warning of a mushroom cloud he said radicals around the world were waiting to see rise over the United States."

Thompson backers are pushing back on this "laziness" attack, so reports Newsweek. "Anyone who says he's not a hard campaigner doesn't know what they are talking about," Tenn. GOP chair Bob Davis, a former Thompson aide, says. "I was there, they weren't." Still, it's true that Thompson is preparing to mount a somewhat untraditional bid for the GOP nomination. "Aides say he will spend less time on the road than his competitors and will instead rely on new forms of communication with voters, including blogs, online videos and other Internet tools. Thompson allies acknowledge that might not always fly in early-primary states where candidates are often judged as much by their ability to flip a pancake as on policy issues."

Who will sign on with Thompson in South Carolina.

BTW, if you missed "Meet The Press"' new "Take Two" feature available EXCLUSIVELY on MSNBC.com, you missed Mary Matalin outing herself as a Fred Thompson person, calling herself a "volunteer" for now.

The New York Times writes how Michael Bloomberg "has emerged as the face of gun control in America."

Meet Karl Rove's new deputy, political dir. Jonathan Felts, who replaced Sara Taylor. Felts comes from Cheney's side of the White House.

Speaking of new staffers, Politico is reporting on speculation that current Va. GOP chair and ex-RNC Chair Ed Gillespie is among those in the running to replace outgoing WH Comm. Dir. Dan Bartlett.

"After promising unprecedented openness regarding Congress' pork barrel practices, House Democrats are moving in the opposite direction as they draw up spending bills for the upcoming budget year.

Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify ``earmarks'' - lawmakers' requests for specific projects and contracts for their states"

From NBC's Chris Donovan
As I waited for my plane at Manchester airport, I noticed the TVs in the gate area were not tuned to the Democratic debate just a few miles away -- but to the pre-game coverage of the rubber game of the Red Sox/Yankees series on ESPN.

From NBC's Mark Murray
Here are the final times each campaign received, per the Dodd campaign: Obama spoke the longest (16:00 minutes); Gravel the shortest (5:37).

Biden: 7:58      10 questions
Clinton: 14:26   15 questions
Dodd: 8:28         9 questions
Edwards: 11:42     13 questions
Gravel: 5:37     10 questions
Kucinich: 9:02    9 questions
Obama: 16:00    16 questions
Richardson: 10:48    11 questions

From NBC's Mark Murray
MANCHESTER, NH --As usual, the post-debate spin room -- where reporters, campaign aides, and even some of the candidates gather to get comments after the debate -- was an interesting sight to see. The first thing we noticed was Kucinich flanked by his (at least) six-foot-tall wife, Elizabeth. Addressing TV cameras, the still-affectionate couple wrapped their arms around each other's back and also held hands.

We also spotted journalist Mark Shields fielding questions from a couple TV camera crews. One of the biggest media hordes surrounded Elizabeth Edwards, and Obama media consultant David Axelrod also attracted a sizable crowd.

Besides Kucinich, Richardson and Biden were the other candidates we saw in the spin room, and each of them drew larges crowds of reporters.

From NBC's Chuck Todd:
Edwards told The Des Moines Register on Dec. 20, 2003: "Yes, we're safer. We're not as safe as we need to be."

A rival campaign believes this contradicts what Edwards implied tonight regarding whether we are safer now than on 9/11.

From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum:
Watching the debate tonight, one distraction throughout the entire two hours was a constant chatter from other microphones that had not been turned off. It was especially apparent during the second hour, when WMUR anchor Jennifer Vaughn brought questions from the audience. While candidates were still answering the previous question, we heard her talking with the audience members. At the conclusion of the debate,  you could hear Anderson Cooper  start speaking a bit before he was supposed to. In post-debate coverage, while Larry King was interviewing Elizabeth Edwards, Cooper  could be heard having small talk.

From NBC's Chuck Todd
As I noted in a previous post, the three front-runners did nothing to lose their slot in the top tier. More importantly, no one else on stage made the case to get into the first tier. Now, the format may have hurt Dodd, Biden and Richardson since none got the amount of time that Clinton, Obama and Edwards received.

Most improved performer: Clearly Obama. He seemed much more at ease answering 60 second questions than he was during the first debate. There are still times when he "ums" too much which can give the viewer the sense that he's meandering, but that's a style point. He was clearly at ease and more comfortable than last month and looked and sounded as presidential as anyone on stage.

Strong Performer: John Edwards seemed very engaged and clearly carved out opportunities to engage Clinton and Obama. The press coverage will reflect this which the Edwards campaign will see as a victory. Bottom line, it was Edwards best debate performance to date (and I'm counting the one from this year and the ones from 2003-4). 

As for Clinton, she was good tonight but not quite as impressive as she was in the first debate. She didn't shake either Obama or Edwards. She is very good at not taking the bait but sometimes one wishes she would directly engage one of her first tier rivals. BTW, I was surprised at how much she references her husband's administration. She did it quite a bit.

The rest: Gravel was much more well-behaved. Kucinich wasn't a rabble-rouser either. Biden showed the most emotion (on the Darfur question) but he yelled and dial-testers never like yelling. Dodd is doing a great job at keeping his cool. Because the guy knows every issue up and down, that's crystal clear, but he gets very little chance to chime in. My only criticism of both Dodd and Biden: they speak in Senator-ease a tad too much. Richardson also tried to distinguish himself but seemed to fail to grab any moments.

From NBC's Domenico Montanaro:
Edwards and Richardson raised their hands to say they would consider boycotting the 08 Olympics in China if Beijing does not do more about Darfur.

From NBC's Chuck Todd
First good question from the audience: Define rich... It's a great question and one I bet NO ONE on stage wanted to answer. Obama, to his credit, didn't duck the answer.

BTW, 15 minutes until Sopranos.

From NBC's Mark Murray
Giuliani's communications director just released this statement on tonight's Dem debate, the first GOP campaign to do so. "Tonight the leading Democrats once again proved they are out of the mainstream on the important issues facing our country - whether it's being in denial about the terrorists' war against us or calling for a massive tax increase.  It couldn't be more clear that America needs a strong leader like Rudy Giuliani who understands we need to be on offense in the war on terror and provide tax relief to grow our economy."

From NBC's Chuck Todd
The frontrunners are the frontrunners for a reason. Edwards, Clinton and Obama have stood out and had more so-called presidential moments than the rest of the field. Maybe it's the format, but the three frontrunners have definitely kept their distance from the rest of the field.

From NBC's Mark Murray
The Dodd campaign, which has been keeping track of the time for each candidate, just released these numbers:
BIDEN 4:45, 5 questions
CLINTON 9:25, 9 questions
DODD 4:00, 4 questions
EDWARDS 7:06, 8 questions
GRAVEL 2:59, 5 questions
KUCINICH 2:28, 3 questions
OBAMA 8:19, 9 questions
RICHARDSON 7:23, 6 questions

From NBC's Chuck Todd
Bill Richardson just threatened an Olympic boycott if China doesn't help with the Darfur situation.

From NBC's Mark Murray
In April's debate, Obama didn't initially sound tough when he was asked about a scenario under which terrorists had detonated two nukes in the US. This time, when asked about Osama bin Laden and the possibility of assasinating him, Obama immediately said: "You take him out."

From NBC's Domenico Montanaro and Andrew Merten:
To clarify, here's what was said about English as an official language. Gravel was the only one to raise his hand to say English should be the official language. But Clinton makes an interesting distinction, calling English certainly the national language, but "if it becomes official," she said, "that means in a place like New York City, you can't print ballots in any other language."

Gravel:  We speak English.  That doesn't mean we can't encourage other languages, I speak French and English, and people speak Spanish and English.  But the official language of the United States of America is English.

Obama: This is the kind of question that is designed percisely to divide us.  You know, you're right.  Everybody is going to learn to speak English if they live in this country.  The question is not whether or not future generations of immigrants are going to learn English, the question is how can we come up with both a legal, sensible immigration policy.  And when we get distracted by those kinds of questions, I think we do a dis-service to the American people.

Clinton:  Wolf, let me add that we faced that in the Senate last year, as to whether we would or would not vote for it.  The problem is, if it becomes official instead of recognized as national, which indeed it is -- it is our national language.  If it becomes official, that means in a place like New York City, you can't print ballots in any other language. That means you can't have government pay for translators in hospitals, so when somebody comes in with some sort of emergency, there's nobody there to help translate what their problem is for the doctors.  So many of us, I did at least, voted to say that English was our national language but not the official language because of the legal consequences of that. 

From NBC's Chuck Todd
Not to sound critical, but this debate just came to a screeching halt. Things were really moving in the first hour of this debate but now, not so much.

 

From NBC's Mark Murray
...comes more than hour into the debate, in the audience Q&A session

From NBC's Chuck Todd
The spacing of the chairs is a bit weird... Poor Mike Gravel looks like he's on an island, while Clinton and Obama look like they are seated together on a couch.

From NBC's Chuck Todd, Andrew Merten, and Domenico Montanaro:
Earlier we asked the question, "Did Clinton change her Iraq war vote answer?" It does appear she hasn't changed the answer much.

Here's what she has said:

Tonight:

You know, that was a sincere vote based on my assessment that sending inspectors back into Iraq to determine once and for all whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and using coercive diplomacy, was not an unreasonable act.  What I did not count on, and what none of us did, who voted to give the president authority, is that he had no intention to let the inspectors finish their job.

And if George Bush had allowed the inspectors to finish the job they had started, we would've known that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD, and we would not have gone and invaded Iraq.
I was thoroughly briefed.

From the NBC debate in South Carolina on 4/26:

SEN. CLINTON:  Well, Brian, I take responsibility for my vote. Obviously I did as good a job I could at the time. It was a sincere vote based on the information available to me. And I've said many times that if I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way.

But I think the real question before us is, what do we do now? How do we try to persuade or require this president to change course? He is stubbornly refusing to listen to the will of the American people. He threatens to veto the legislation we passed, which has been something that all of us have been advocating for a number of years now. And I can only hope that he will not veto it.

And I can only end by saying that, you know, if the president does not get us out of Iraq, when I'm president, I will.

From Davenport, Iowa, January 2007:
"If we had known then what we  now know, there never would  have been a vote, and I never would have voted to give this president the authority."

From NBC's Mark Murray
Another difference from the first debate -- we're getting many more email statements from the campaigns. Team Edwards has issued several statements, and we've also gotten some from the Biden and Richardson camps.