No More Incumbents Blog

For a couple of guys that are not running Fred Thompson and Michael Bloomberg are doing pretty good.

Fred Thompson is coming in third in the Republican primary beating out John McCain if you exclude the margin of error potential.

Possibly even more impressive, Michael Bloomberg would take 17 percent of the vote if an election were held today against Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giulian and Michael Bloomberg.

Pundits are saying that he would suck votes away from Clinton, however, I think that he would also take votes away from Giuliani too.

Like Ross Perot, Bloomberg has a lot of money.  He’s worth about $5 billion.  He also has his won media empire which never hurts when you are running for office.  He could definitely keep up with front runners out of his own pocket alone.

The thing that impresses me is that he is the first person to get a true pulse of the country and realize that people are sick of Democrats and Republicans a great deal.  The only thing they are more disgusted with than the two parties is the amount of fighting between the two parties.  Something has got to give to turn this country around.  Maybe Bloomberg can give us our country back and take it away from the Lobbyists that control the two party puppets.

Disclaimer: I got the poll information from CNN.  CNN gets polling information from a company that employs Bill Clinton.  I do not trust CNN’s polls, but we are really just speculating at this stage of the game anyway.

Giuliani’s First Problem This Week

A local South Carolina Cocaine Distributor lost his job this week.  He had been working as the elected Treasurer of the State of South Carolina.  The governor suspended Thomas Ravenel after a grand jury brought in an indictment against him for distributing less than 500 grams of cocaine since 2005.

His indictment also forced Rudy Giuliani to can his South Carolina money man.  Many people remember Giuliani as the mayor of New York that moved drug distribution off of the streets where they later resurfaced on the internet in New York enabling people to buy marijuana much like they buy chinese food literally. 

Giuliani’s Major Problem this Week - Michael Bloomberg

This was only a small problem for the Giuliani campaign compared to the growing threat of a more popular New York City Mayor that appears to be preparing himself for a run in 2008.  Michael Bloomberg shed himself of the albatross known as the Republican party.

He had shed himself of a former albatross known colloquially as the Democratic party to run for Mayor of New York.  He spent $73 million to win that election.  He has the money to spare as he is worth $5 billion.  His campaign war chest for a presidential run combined with his established political credentials and a popularity rating higher than Giuliani’s in New York City make him a real threat and it explains why politicians known to be on the edge of independency are courting him left and right. 

Chuck Hagel the senator from Nebraska the sole Republican that has been against the Iraq war from jump tried to woo Bloomberg into taking a VP role in an independent run.  Governor Schwarzenegger seems to have attempted a similar gambit as well.  Michael BLoomberg however doesn’t want to settle for Vice President.  He wants to be The President and he just might have the right stuff to pull it off.

Link to WRDW - CrimeTeam12 - Crime Headlines for Augusta, Georgia and the CSRA

The Wall Street Journal and NBC have recently taken a poll that indicates that Americans are not satisfied with either Political Party nor any of the politicians working in those parties.

Recent Polls take George Bush’s approval rating below 30%.  They also show that Americans are just as upset with the Democratic led Congress as they were with the Republican led Congress.  It would appear that neither party can show leadership in Congress in a way that reflects the will of the people.

Furthermore, all of the political candidates from both parties that are running for President are doing very poorly when it comes to gaining support.  Hillary Clinton leads the dems but she is under 40% and Rudy Giuliani leads the Republicans with his support under 30%.  To look at it another way 70% of the people polled did not support the leading Republican contender and 60% of the people polled did not support the Democratic front runner.  This disenfranchisement with the two parties might definitely tranlsate into an independent movement both in Congress and possibly led by an independent move for President.

Only 19% of Americans say the U.S. is now “headed in the right direction,” and 68% say things are “off on the wrong track” - the most pessimistic level in the history of the poll.

Just 23% of Americans approve the performance of the Democrat-controlled Congress, the same level reported a year ago when Republicans who held House and Senate majorities were heading toward defeat in the November elections.

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s support dropped to 29% in May from 33% in April. Former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, who hasn’t entered the race, now is in second place with 20%, while Sen. John McCain of Arizona has slipped from 22% to 14%, into a tie with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Among Democratic presidential candidates, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York has increased her support to 39% from 36% in April, while Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has dropped to 25% from 31% and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has dropped to 15% from 20%.

Source: Bush has lowest-ever approval rating: WSJ/NBC poll - MarketWatch

Chuck Hagel is dienfranchised with the Republican party and especially upset with President Bush’s leadership or lack there of.

He recently met with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  These two politicians have something very interesting to talk about.  Chuck Hagel has been making strong indications that he is thinking about making an independent run for the White House.  Michael Bloomberg has a personal wealth factor in the $20 billion range and most New Yorkers feel that he is done a better job of Mayor Dan Rudy Giuliani did.

Chuck Hagel is from Nebraska and Bloomberg is from New York, a ticket filled with candidates from the Midwest and the Northeast running on an independent platform could spare both these candidates the derisive infighting that happens during primaries.  They could run for president and vice president and dedicate their money entirely towards the election in 2008 as opposed to the primaries.

They both have strong credibility and Chuck Hagel’s anti-Iraq war stance would give him very good standing with independent-minded voters against the war that don’t truly aligned with either Democrats nor Republicans.

It is definitely likely that if they ran they would spoil the election for the Republicans.  The question would become could they get far enough to the middle and actually win an election with their political capital, antiwar stance, and very large Bloomberg bankroll.  Ross Perot used his personal fortune to place very well in 1992.  Michael Bloomberg and Chuck Hagel both have better political connections and better political track records and Ross Perot plus they have the fortune to match.

Ross Perot benefited significantly from people that were tired of politics as normal.  The United States seems to be headed towards a course that by 2008 will provide an extremely large number of voters that are completely fed up with both Republicans and Democrats.  It is very possible that 2008 could be the year of the independent presidential candidate.  It has never been done before, but politics haven’t been this broken for about a hundred years when Teddy Roosevelt, a veterran of another war initiated on false premises, ran under his own party.

Could it be that America needs a small revolution every 100 years? 

Something to stir things up and set the political parties straight.  Something that possibly even shakes up the chessboard and resets the game without destroying the country.  The country was founded at the end of the 1700s and went through a civil war in the mid-1800s.  We then experienced political upheaval at the turn of the century in the early 1900s.  World politics brought us together through World War II and the Cold War, but as those old motivations have waned over the last 20 years lesser problems and started to grow out of control and it might be time to reset once again.  It might be time to scratch America’s 100 year itch and vote in an independent candidate.