Last night, when chatting with a friend of mine who is a much more prominent political author than I, I engaged in some speculation about who Rudy's big endorsement of the day was going to be. Given that it coincided with the Club for Growth's big do in DC, our joint money (you might have said) was on it being someone who we know commands a lot of respect with the Club, and who is probably rather DC-based. We speculated about it being Judd Gregg (which would have been fantastic), and commented that although it was wholly unlikely, an endorsement from Mark Sanford would be even better.

It was neither. In fact, the big endorsement was Texas Gov. Rick Perry. And here's the YouTube:



This is certainly big, because it should help move Texas-- a massive state-- towards Rudy (perhaps I should say further towards him, since Rudy already has Pete Sessions, a pretty big figure in Texas politics, on his side). It's also big news because, as Fox points out, Perry is the first sitting governor to endorse a candidate.

However, I have to say that I would have been somewhat more excited by a Gregg endorsement. That's probably just because I like Judd Gregg a lot, though.

UPDATE: I'm a dolt. As a reader points out, obviously other sitting governors have endorsed other presidential candidates. The sentence above should have read "to endorse Rudy AS A candidate." Whoops!

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Today, there's an election going on in MA-5! Yes, yes, I know, significantly less exciting than presidential politics, but still-- the MA-5 race represents an opportunity for the GOP to pick up a seat in the bluest of states and-- what's more-- it's not complete pie in the sky.

Here's the latest on the race. From the Politico:

The most recent polls in the race show Ogonowski trailing by narrow margins. A SurveyUSA poll released last week shows Tsongas maintaining a 51 percent to 42 percent lead over Ogonowski. The automated poll surveyed 457 likely voters from Oct. 8 to 10.

Allegedly, there are other polls in circulation which show the two candidates running within the margin of error-- meaning this race could be even tighter.

Even if Ogonowski loses, if it is by less than 15%, it could represent a victory of sorts for the GOP. As the Politico also notes, "As a Republican running in a solidly Democratic district that hasn’t elected a Republican since 1972, Ogonowski faces a decidedly tough challenge. He lost the fundraising battle by at least 4 to 1: As of Sept. 26, Tsongas had raised $1.93 million, compared with $434,000 for Ogonowski."

I'll be watching as returns for this race start coming in-- and you should be, too.

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I was away over the weekend, attending (and speaking at) CLC 2007 in Reno, so I haven't been online too much in the past few days. But, sifting through my email, I saw a link that had been sent to me to this YouTube clip relating to Ron Paul's candidacy-- together with a mention that Jon Stewart and Bill Maher both back Paul.

So, I checked it out (note to readers: put "Jon Stewart" anywhere in an email, where gmail will pick it up without me opening the message, and I'll probably read it). And despite its length (8 minutes or so), I think it's worth readers checking out as well, simply because it provides a good roundup of coverage of Paul and his campaign in one tidy piece.



I am not supporting Ron Paul for president (let me make that clear before I get thousands of emails from Paul supporters on the subject). I don't quite share his position on items like immigration, free trade agreements, abortion, or indeed the war (I'm one of the more war-skeptical righty bloggers I know, and I think I can safely say that I definitely do want troops out by 2013-- possibly putting me in a more anti-war camp than the three leading Democrats-- but I'm also not someone who's on board with immediate, full withdrawal of troops, and I did support the initial action against Iraq, though not quite for the reasons espoused by the administration).

But there are many things I like about Paul, too-- his position on taxes, his interest in dramatically cutting the size of government, not just tinkering at the edges, his position on the PATRIOT Act (I think the way we've worked it no...

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