by WonkoKevin

Most politicians are not policy wonks, in the same way that most modern baseball players could not tell you who holds the major league record for most doubles in a season, post WW2 (Todd Helton, 59, in 2000).  Hillary Clinton, who led Democrats in Wonkosphere buzz share amongst liberal bloggers yesterday (38% to Obama’s 25%), gave a speech at the Carnegie Institute on science that got science policy wonks out in force.  Liberals loved it and conservatives ignored it (they were busy with Sandy Berger story).  Let’s take a look at what she had to say.

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by WonkoKevin

In what has to be a first in the political blogosphere, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee invited candidate-on-the-edge-of-announcing Newt Gingrich to guest-post on his blog.  Conservative bloggers responded well, keeping Huckabee over the 10% line in Wonkosphere buzz share yesterday.  As I discussed yesterday, Huckabee’s buzz share is important not only because it means attention to him, but is also tends to mean attention away from Thompson and McCain, which is what happened yesterday: McCain continued to plummet in buzz share.  

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by WonkoKevin

Wonkosphere’s own WonkoSteve and WonkoKevin announced today that they were inching closer towards a formal announcement that they will run for co-President in 2008.  On the community access show “Name this Wonk”, WonkoKevin said, “We’ve been reading the blogs, and we think there’s room for an 18th or 19th candidate in either party.”  In a unique move, if they decide to do it, they will be running for both Democratic and Republican nominations: “We’re uniters,” said WonkoSteve.  When asked what would lead to a final decision they said, “I think the odds are very high, if we ended up with $300 million in pledges over the next three weeks, we don’t see as wonks how you could turn that down.”  

Welcome to the horse race Newt!

by WonkoKevin

Oh man I love the horserace.  The Republican race is so wide-open, anybody could surprise.  Rudy, Fred, or Mitt–sure, no problem.  Mike and John looked poised for a good stretch run.  Do I hear whispers of RonMo?  Duncan, Tom, and Sam, watchout for Newt.  I even hear Condi has been freeing up her schedule…

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by WonkoKevin

Well, I guess Fred Thompson’s honeymoon is over.  Yesterday in Wonkoblog I talked about how the tone of Thompson’s buzz has gone steadily down since the day after his formal candidacy annoucement.  Today Wonkosphere shows that Thompson’s buzz share dropped below 10% for this first time in a week.  And the mud keeps coming.

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When all is said and done, perhaps the political lesson of 2008 campaign will be there’s danger in starting too early.  While the declared candidates suffer early burnout and go broke, The Undeclareds rest on the bench waiting for the fourth quarter–rested, untainted, and ready to roll.
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