First off, their's still a large number of republican die-hards, waiting for a frontrunner to emerge. They don't want to fund the infighting, they want to fund the fight against the dems.

Second off, it's natural that Clinton would appeal, now, to the people who funded Bush. The Bush and Clinton families are very buddy-buddy. Also, Clinton has been abroad more than other dem candidates, so she will handle the iraqi pullout a bit more delicately. The saudi relationship could be damaged if we pull out rapidly and leave iraq in chaos, for instance. I can see Clinton have slightly more finesse in that regard.

The rich fear Obama beause they don't know him and don't own him, and he doesn't have the longstanding foreign policy relationships.

The real game hasn't begun yet. This is the warmup.

But there is no compelling reason to believe that the GOPers who are "wating for a frontrunner to emerge" are in any way a larger precentage of the GOP than their counterparts in the Democratic party.

And while you might argue that HRC is that sort of frontrunner, there clearly has been infighting between her and Obama, and Obama has on occaision out-fundraised her.

Which means that HRCs frontrunner status is not that secured yet either.

Which is a long way of saying, the GOPers that are "waiting for a frontrunner" - aren't statistically meaningful when it comes to the unprecedented occurance of the Dems dramatically outraising the GOP. What I think is really going on is that for the economic GOPers, HRC is actually a more viable and believable candidate than Romney or Giuliani.

"But there is no compelling reason to believe that the GOPers who are "wating for a frontrunner to emerge" are in any way a larger precentage of the GOP than their counterparts in the Democratic party."

You only think that because you are a douchebag without a clue.

Why are you still here, troll? No one cares about what you say.

"But there is no compelling reason to believe that the GOPers who are "wating for a frontrunner to emerge" are in any way a larger precentage of the GOP than their counterparts in the Democratic party."

Sure there is! Republicans and democrats alike can't help but know that the democrat, be it Obama or Hillary, is the most likely to win. Why waste dollars to fight Mitt Romney when you can use those dollars to fight Hillary later?

Seriously, many would-be republican donors represent the anyone but Hillary vote. They want a republican frontrunner to emerge from the primaries with an intact reputation, ready to do battle with Clinton.

The democrats, too, know that the republican will likely loose. In their mind, the real election is Clinton vs Obama, and whoever wins that will sail into the whitehouse.

In short, everyone running except Clinton is trying to figure out how to beat Clinton. That's pretty compelling to me.

San, if you want to be a dick to someone other than me, don't pollute my threads with your crap to do so.

I'm not sure about the "ABH" vote. First off, only Giulliani has any traction against HRC, yet if you listen to Rush, Sean et. al. you find a strong strong strong Anyone But a Pro Choicer. Which means that there should be a strong level of support from the core for the ABG vote. Sure it might get spread across Romney and "pastor" Huckabee, but the net $$ should be up there.

That they are not suggests that the "Values" conservatives are

1. Not that big a movement
2. not that well off

And it also suggests that the Business as Usual types feel they can live with an HRC win (which arguably they could since HRC is essentially a Rockafeller Republican).

You're not sure about it because they've been laying low. They want to strike when it does the most damage. If Clinton loses the primaries to Obama, the ABH vote will have shot their wad, and now have to face "The Man Who Beat Clinton"

If they want to end Hillary's presidential aspirations once and for all, she has to loose to a republican. She needs to be Goldwatered.

Once the hate machine gets going, they'll scare up dollars pretty easily. She has a looong record of public statements, many which are pretty outrageous.

Hardly someone unknown to the "rich". Hardly what we need when following up the oil hogs running things these days. Changing from oil to coal just doesn't sound much like the kind of change we need...

supporting coal is just a matter of realism. Even ignoring electricty, it is chemically essential to solar cell production.(as well as iron and aluminum)

Solar cells are made of silicon. In nature, silicon is typically bonded to oxygen(common sand&quartz). There is only one way to break the silicon-oxygen bond-- heat the sand in the presence of coke or or charcoal to over 2000C. Coke is purified coal, charcoal is to wood what coke is to coal.

That can get you 99% pure silicon. Electricity is essential for achieving the 99.9999% pure silicon required by the solar industry. One common way to purify silicon is to use hydrochloric acid, which is readily produced from common table salt if you have the machines and the electricity.

So, even if we go "100%" solar, we'll still need carbon-rich feedstocks. In the meantime, coal makes up 50% of electricity generation, and we will need to produce over 5 square miles of solar panels per year in the US to replace coal for good as an electricity source.

As wood is more versatile than coal, wood nearly always will command a higher price than coal, BTU for BTU. Ergo, when coal is available for coke, it will always be used in place of charcoal.

5 square miles of solar panels will take a lot of silicon, which will take a lot of carbon, which will take a lot of coal.

The coal industry will not go away in our lifetimes, no matter what we do. Get over it.

You may be overstating the use of carbon for solar cell manufacturing. I assume that, basically, you are referring to a process like:

SiO2 + C + heat -> CO2 + Si.

Note that the atomic weight of carbon, which comprises more than 90% of highgrade coal, is only half that of silicon. Thus, assuming that something other than coal provides the needed heat, the weight of the carbon used will only be half of the weight of the silicon which is separated and, correspondingly, the weight of the CO2 produced will be somewhat less than the weight of the sand which is processed. Considering that the substrate does not have to be pure siicon,I really think we are talking about a pretty modest amount of coal.

Granted, well over 90% of coal mined today in the US is used for electrical generation. So, If we go solar, we might need less than 10% as much coal as we do now. But, we won't need 0%, no matter what.

You are not addressing the issue of the Anyone But Pro Choice. The ABPC crowd is a large part of the core ABH crowd. And if in fact there was a large movement in this crowd, it would turn out AGAINST Giuliani - after all for this crowd, Giuliani is only a small step better than HRC.

yet no such $$ support is forthcoming, and instead you have much of the Hannity and Limbaugh audiences regularly calling in opposing Giulliani and you have folks like the Family Research Council threatening to run an independent candidate if Giuliani gets the GOP nod, and its pretty clear that the "hate machine" is already having a hard time getting the movement behind the Anything but HRC

You bring up a good point. Republicans might have a low base turnout without a pro-life candidate. Republicans are probably going to loose the next election no matter how much they attack Hillary.

However, I still think the worst is yet to come as far as mud&money against Hillary. Let's consider the swiftboaters. They went public on may 4, 2004, and aired their first ad on august 5, 2004. In that short time, this attack group got money pouring in. They got some major donors lined up, and just three people gave them over $9 million dollars combined. I bet there's at least $20 million earmarked to be used against Clinton to be donated and used in a similiar attack group in the time frame between may-october 2008.

The groups formed will pay fines a few months after the election, but as you know, such fines will be a slap on the wrist, and gladly paid to try to stop Hillary.

On this we agree. The worst IS yet to come. But I don't see the GOP being able to gain that much traction against her. Its a bit of a repeat of the 1996 Gubenatorial election in WA - the Dems ran a centrist-leaning-right candidate that was controversial (Chinese American), vs a gung-ho anti-choicer.

And the GOP went down in flames.

In this case the GOP is faced with either picking Giuliani - who is moderate enough to win the general, but has lots and lots of dirt/mud issues.

OR

They can pick a religious conservative. And that has too many echoes and ties to the current administration. And of the bunch, you have Romney - with enough mud to be dug up (and HRC will have no problem slinging mud), or Huckabee et. al. who are wacked enough that it will be an issue.