Wednesday, February 6, 2008

White house plays down talk of recession

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - The White House played down talk that the United States might be headed for a recession and said a report on fourth-quarter gross domestic product released earlier on Wednesday did not change its outlook.

"I have not heard at all that we have changed our outlook, and we are not forecasting a recession," White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters traveling with President George W. Bush to California for the start of a tour of western states.

U.S. GDP in the fourth-quarter grew at a meager annual rate of 0.6 percent, the Commerce Department said. That reading was weaker than 1.2 percent rate forecast by private economists.

The report also said GDP increased by 2.2 percent in all of 2007, the slowest pace in five years.

Fratto also urged the U.S. Senate to move quickly to pass a $150 billion stimulus package aimed at boosting the economy.

"I think the only thing we can do is help remind them that America is expecting action and they are expecting it quickly and the only way for an economic growth package to have the desired impact is to do it quickly," he said.

(Reporting by Caren Bohan; Editing by Neil Stemplema

McCain: A serious candidate

If Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is having fun in his second run for president, he sure has a strange way of showing it.


John McCain on Monday addressed a Washington think tank about the issue of energy security. (Getty Images)In a speech Monday on energy security -- the last of three major policy addresses in the lead-up to the formal announcement of his presidential bid on Wednesday -- McCain projected an air of somber seriousness that showed little of the fun-loving maverick that voters (and the media) fell in love with in 2000.

It's worth noting that McCain's subject matter -- how American dependency on foreign oil is undermining national security -- is something short of hilariously funny. And it didn't help that McCain read the speech from a huge teleprompter in the back of the room, which led many people in the audience to crane their necks to see the TV screen.

But, whatever the circumstances, McCain's speech sparked little energy among the crowd gathered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The lone highlight was when he pulled out a huge and cumbersome cell phone from the 1980s and modern model to show the power of American ingenuity. In general, the speech was extremely heavy on policy proposals and light on uplifting rhetoric.

The press conference afterward was more of the same. McCain answered a series of questions with his voice soft and his hands clasped in front of him. Asked about the Supreme Court hearing set for Wednesday on a legal challenge to the 2002 campaign finance bill that bears his name, McCain said quietly, "I would hope that most people would recognize we have eliminated one of the most corrupting influences in Washington ... soft money."

Even a semi-antagonistic question on whether putting a lobbyist -- former Rep. Tom Loeffler (R-Texas) -- in charge of his national fundraising effort undermined his reform message didn't excite McCain. He recounted that he had known Loeffler since the early 1980s, adding: "He is one of a large number of people helping me with fundraising."

McCain has shown flashes of his trademark wit and biting sense of humor -- especially during a recent bus tour of Iowa and New Hampshire. But McCain version 2008 is considerably more restrained than the 2000 model.

It would seem that McCain's change in attitude is part of a broader effort to paint him as a serious man for serious times. McCain allies believe he is the only candidate in the Republican field with the experience to handle the tough challenges facing the nation domestically and internationally. Showing his serious side, the theory goes, is essential to proving to people that McCain and McCain alone is prepared to walk into the Oval Office in January 2009 and begin governing.

It also reflects the belief within his campaign that while the fun-loving McCain may have been an appealing figure to many voters in 2000, it didn't win him the primary. McCain has gone to great lengths to become the frontrunner/establishment favorite in this race, which means less bomb throwing and more statesmanship

Still, flashes of the "old" iconoclastic McCain still peep out from time to time. Witness the minor outcry over his warbling of "Bomb Iran" last week. Could McCain -- now no longer burdened with the "frontrunner" tag -- shift back to a more freewheeling approach to the campaign?

Maybe.

Asked Monday about last week's Iran controversy, McCain had this advice for his critics: "Lighten up and get a life

Mc Cain emerges as front runner while democrats spin super Tuesday wins

Fresh off impressive coast-to-coast primary wins, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain laid claim Wednesday to front-runner status, while Barack Obama declared delegate superiority over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

But the Democratic outcome was not immediately clear, with hundreds of delegates still being tallied. Even though Clinton took eight states to Obama’s 13, preliminary numbers showed her in the lead in the delegate race, as she added heavy-hitting Democratic states to her list of victories — including California, New York and Massachusetts — leaving the nomination to be decided another day.

Arizona Sen. McCain put more distance between himself and his closest rival Mitt Romney taking coast-to-coast wins, and Romney lost more ground to Mike Huckabee, whose campaign’s fundraising pales in comparison to the other two GOP candidates, but whose Christian conservative credentials gave him badly needed wins in southern states.

“We’ll be hitting the campaign trail tomorrow morning, flying back this afternoon, and hopefully we can wrap this thing up, unite the party and be ready to take on the Democratic nominee in November,” McCain told reporters Wednesday in Phoenix.

The Democratic race was too close to call well into Wednesday. In New Mexico, FOX News affiliate KASA reported that results won’t be known until at least midday Wednesday. The Associated Press reported that provisional ballots won’t be counted until noon local time, or 2 p.m. ET.

The latest numbers from the Land of Enchantment had Clinton and Obama with little more than 100 votes separating them after 98 percent of precincts reported early Wednesday morning. More than 6,000 provisional ballots were being kept for a review.

But Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the outcome was already clear.

“By winning a majority of delegates and a majority of the states, Barack Obama won an important Super Tuesday victory over Senator Clinton in the closest thing we have to a national primary. … Obama showed that he can win the support of Americans of every race, gender, and political party in every region of the country.”



In Missouri, Clinton was thought to have pulled out a win until Obama managed to scrape out an victory in vote tally. The state’s delegate count — which must be translated from precinct totals into congressional districts — wasn’t complete Wednesday morning, but the two were likely to split Missouri’s 72 delegates.

Click here to read Campaign Carl Cameron’s blog on how John McCain’s campaign regrouped after last summer’s downward spiral.

Clinton was able to hold on to victory in the delegate-rich states, capping off the night with a win in the major battleground of California, ceding ground to Obama only in smaller and mid-sized states and convincing political pundits that she had gained solid ground.

“Hillary won enough. She won the states she had to win. Obama did well, but Hillary comes out of this ahead and is the favorite for the nomination,” said Martin Frost, a former Texas congressman and a FOX News contributor.

The Illinois senator did well throughout the country and in areas that are known as red Republican states, including Alaska, Idaho and Alabama.

He also won the Connecticut, Utah, Georgia and Delaware primaries, and the North Dakota, Kansas, Colorado and Minnesota caucuses. He captured Illinois, where he is a senator but which is also Clinton’s native state.

“If there is one thing on this February night that we do not need the final results to know — our time has come,” Obama said in his hometown of Chicago. “And change is coming to America.”

Click here for a photo essay of Super Tuesday.

Clinton notched the California victory alongside critical wins in Democrat-heavy New Jersey and New York, her home state. She won primaries in Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas, where she served as first lady when Bill Clinton was governor.

“Tonight in record numbers you voted not just to make history but to remake America,” Clinton said from New York, where she repeated her claim that she’s the more experienced candidate. “We know what we need is someone ready on day one to solve our problems.”

Clinton also took Massachusetts, one state where Obama would have liked to have pulled an upset — it’s the home of Sen. Ted Kennedy and springs roots for many of the Kennedy clan who endorsed Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination last week.

As a result, the Democrats are still in a delegate dogfight since all of the Tuesday contests award Democratic delegates proportionally. The weekend brings Democratic races in Louisiana and Nebraska. Tight polling in coming primary states of Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia next Tuesday make predictions frivolous.

The upside for Clinton, Frost said, is that her lead “is made up almost entirely by the superdelegates, but she has a real advantage among superdelegates, among party officials, elected officials, and if she can kind of play this out, if she can break even, come close to break even in this next round of primaries … and if she can then run the table in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, she’ll be the nominee. And it’s Obama’s job to prevent her from doing that.”

On the GOP side, McCain took the bulk of the contests, winning New York, Missouri, Arizona, Oklahoma, Delaware, Connecticut, Illinois and New Jersey before rounding out the night with a win in California.

Nine of the day’s 21 GOP primaries and caucuses are winner-take-all, and McCain won six of those races compared to two for Mitt Romney and one for Mike Huckabee.

“Tonight I think we must get used to the idea that we are the Republican Party front-runner,” the Arizona senator told a crowd of cheering supporters in Phoenix. “And I don’t really mind it one bit.”

Romney won seven races total, five of them caucuses — Alaska, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota. He also won primaries in Utah, where he once lived and where his Mormon church is headquartered, and Massachusetts, which he governed for one term.

Huckabee won five states, including primaries in Arkansas, where he was governor for 10 years, and Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. Earlier in the day, he swiped victory away from Romney during the second round of ballots cast in West Virginia’s Republican convention.

His strong performance seemed to prove that he’s more than just a spoiler for Romney, as he had suggested.

“A lot of people have been trying to say that this is a two-man race,” Huckabee said in Little Rock Tuesday night. “Well, you know what — it is, and we’re in it.”

Wednesday morning, speaking with FOX News, he again brushed aside suggestions that he was running for the vice presidential nomination on McCain candidacy, as well as suggestions that he and McCain are cooperating on the campaign trail.

“I’m staying in the race because I still want to be president, and until somebody gets 1,191 delegates, we don’t have a nominee,” Huckabee said.

He added: “People see this alliance between McCain and me. What it is is both of us acutally believe that the process of politics ought to be civil, and I think that’s what’s going on. And we like each other but we’re opponents. We’re not colleagues in this thing.”

Despite the limited prizes, Romney showed confidence in Boston, telling supporters, “One thing that’s clear is this campaign is going on. … We’re going to keep on battling. We’re going to go all the way to the (Republican national) convention, we’re going to win this thing and we’re going to get in to the White House.”

Despite the heavy focus on Super Tuesday, no candidate was able to clinch the nomination.

On the Democratic side, 1,681 delegates were up for grabs Tuesday and 2,025 are needed to secure the party’s nomination. For Republicans, 1,023 delegates were being decided Tuesday and 1,191 are needed to win the Republican nomination.

No candidate had enough delegates banked already to reach those majorities.

Obama Wins Kansas

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Obama wins backing of Kansas governor Tue Jan 29, 3:36 PM ET



TOPEKA, Kan. - Gov. Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday endorsed Barack Obama for president, a Super Tuesday boost in a GOP-leaning state that Democrats hope to reclaim in the White House campaign.

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"I think he represents the kind of leader that we need for the future of the country," Sebelius told The Associated Press. "I think he brings the hope and optimism that we really need to restore our place in the world, as well as to bring this country together and really tackle the challenges that we have."

Her announcement came hours ahead of Obama's rally in El Dorado, the hometown of his grandfather on his mother's side, and one week before the Kansas caucuses, which are part of the multistate contests Feb. 5. Sebelius said she would attend the event to "welcome him back to Kansas and join the campaign."

Democratic presidential candidates long had sought Sebelius' backing in a state that George W. Bush carried by large margins in the 2000 and 2004 elections. No Democratic nominee for the White House has won Kansas' electoral votes since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

But Sebelius, now in her second term, has shown an ability to triumph in GOP territory. She won re-election in 2006 with nearly 58 percent of the vote. In Kansas, less than 27 percent of the voters are registered Democrats.

She said her two "20-something" sons and 86-year-old father, former Ohio Gov. John Gilligan, already were backing Obama, and that the Illinois senator had the ability to bridge generations for the betterment of the country.

Sebelius has taken the governor's office by wooing moderate Republicans and independent voters. Obama hopes to do the same in Kansas. Democrats will have caucuses at 50 sites on Super Tuesday to split up 32 of their 41 delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer in Denver. Sebelius is one of the remaining nine delegates who will represent the state.

For Obama, it was another in a string of high-profile endorsements in the past two days, following on those from Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.; his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I.; and Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President Kennedy.

The campaign of Obama's chief rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, sought to play down the impact of Sebelius' endorsement.

"It's just going to be who's going to work the hardest and get their people out," said Dan Lykins, the state Democratic Party treasurer and co-chairman of Clinton's Kansas campaign.

Sebelius has impressed Democrats nationally by election success, and party leaders let her give the Democratic response Monday night to Bush's State of the Union address.

She is coming off a year as head of the Democratic Governors Association, a group that Bill Clinton once led. The governor made Democrats' lists of potential vice presidential running mates for nominee John Kerry in 2004, and while there's less of the same talk this year, she is seen as possible Cabinet appointee in a Democratic administration.


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