PrairiePundit

Jennifer Braceras: Who died and made Bill Richardson the judge of all things Hispanic? Last week, Richardson, the former Democratic governor of New Mexico, had the audacity to say that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) should not be “defined” as Hispanic because of his views on immigration. (Cruz does not support a path to citizenship for illegals). Cruz is half Cuban (on his paternal side). Richardson is half Mexican (on his maternal side). Both speak Spanish. So what gives Richardson his ethnic superiority? His membership in the Democratic Party, of course! Richardson’s comments are deeply offensive. Yet, when asked about them, Cruz took the high road. “In my view,” Cruz told Neil Cavuto on Fox News Channel, “if people ... are attacking your ethnicity, that tends to indicate they don’t want to engage in the substantive merits of the argument, and I certainly have no interest in getting into any sort of mudslinging.” Cruz may not wish to engage on the ethnicity question, but there are pl...

Washington Times: The political donor at the center of a corruption investigation that scuttled Bill Richardson's Cabinet nomination gave $28,500 to President-elect Barack Obama and the Democratic Party in September, one month after the existence of the investigation was already public, records show. The money from businessman David Rubin , chief executive of Los Angeles-based CDR Financial Products Inc., raised new questions Tuesday about how thoroughly Mr. Obama's campaign and the Democratic Party vet their donors, an issue that has dogged the party since a 1990s Clinton-era fundraising scandal. Mr. Richardson, the New Mexico governor, withdrew his nomination Sunday to be Mr. Obama's Commerce Department secretary, citing a federal grand jury investigation into whether any of Mr. Rubin's political donations in New Mexico influenced state government contracts awarded by Mr. Richardson's gubernatorial administration. Both Mr. Richardson and Mr. Rubin deny wr...

Politico: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson announced Sunday afternoon that he is withdrawing as President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee for secretary of Commerce because of unanswered questions about a federal grand jury investigation back home. "I have concluded that the ongoing investigation also would have forced an untenable delay in the confirmation process," Richardson said in an e-mailed statement issued by the transition. Obama accepted the withdrawal with regret, saying in an accompanying statement that he looks forward to Richardson's "future service to our country and in my administration." Richardson said he had told Obama that "eager to serve in the future in any way he deems useful." The grand jury has been investigating “pay-to-play” allegations concerning a New Mexico state contract awarded to a California firm that has contributed to three political committees formed by Richardson, The Associated Press reported last month. ... With the B...

NY Times: Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico is pulling out of the presidential race, after coming in fourth in both the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucuses, according to people with knowledge of his decision. Mr. Richardson made the decision after returning to New Mexico Wednesday and meeting with his top advisers, they said. He is expected to make an announcement on Thursday. His withdrawal removes a candidate who had a hard-edged message of immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq, but tempered it with humorous television advertisements that emphasized his wide-ranging résumé in a clever way. In New Hampshire on Tuesday, Mr. Richardson won less than 5 percent of the vote. In Iowa last Thursday, he finished with 2 percent of the caucus vote, having spent weeks campaigning in the state and flooding the airwaves with commercials that portrayed him as a job seeker in front of a bored interviewer, unimpressed with his extensive résumé. For a while, Mr. Richardson was in double-...

David Limbaugh: Quoted material removed. You may read the original at the link above. It is difficult to see how leveraging weakness will persuade someone to compromise or quit. That is also a problem with the Democrat approach to the problem with Iran. They are falling all over themselves to insure the Iranians there will be no consequence to the failure to reach an agreement on stopping their nuke program. Winning through weakness and wimpiness seems to be the Democrat strategy for success. It is hard to think of any historic examples where it has worked.

Rick Pearson and John McCormick: Believing that Hillary Clinton's campaign has shifted from promoting its inevitability to defending its electability, rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards on Sunday contended the Democratic presidential front-runner is dodging hard questions and not giving specific answers to Iowa's voters. But Clinton contended that she "probably answered 5,000 questions in the last 10 months" as she spoke to more than 300 people at a regional fundraiser for local Democrats in northwestern Iowa. It was her only reference to her opponents' criticisms as she delivered her basic campaign stump speech. With an eye toward an accelerated election calendar and Iowa's Jan. 3 leadoff caucuses, the rhetoric and the battle among the contenders seeking to become Clinton's chief rival for the Democratic nomination has become sharper and more intense. "It's now crunch time," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson told the five-county Iowa fund...

Michael Graham: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. — Abraham Lincoln G overnor Richardson, I’ve got a message for you from President Lincoln: “Too late.” All the Democrats in Sunday night’s New Hampshire debate had one thing in common: The more they talked, the worse they sounded. And the poster boy for this trend was indisputably Bill Richardson. Who’s been spreading the idea that Richardson is the “break out” candidate in this race? He was lousy in the last debate and worse in this one. Richardson’s rambling, ill-informed musings were so jaw-droppingly awful, the voters of New Mexico may be tempted to impeach their governor out of sheer embarrassment. Gov. Richardson may be the first presidential candidate in history to talk himself out of the vice presidency. From a performance standpoint, the indisputable winner was Sen. Joe Biden. But even he ended up talking away his own victory. Biden’s success came largely from his common sens...

Kevin Hassett: When eight Democratic candidates for president debated last week in Orangeburg, South Carolina, they took sides on almost nothing yet agreed unanimously that the U.S. should get out of Iraq. That was about it. If you want a Hollywood analogy, think of that scene in the movie ``Airplane'' where everyone takes turns slapping a hysterical passenger. Then let that passenger be President George W. Bush. If it's economic substance you were looking for, you went to the wrong place. John Edwards extolled the wonders of his health-care plan. Senator Barack Obama pretended impressively to have one (which he does not). New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson mumbled something about the minimum wage. Still, even with the wriggling and evading, the debate told us a lot about the Democratic campaign. Before the debate, everyone knew that the Democratic field has three tiers. The first tier (the Frontrunners) includes Senator Hillary Clinton and Obama; the second (the Challenge...

Robert Novak: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is viewed by Democratic insiders as rising to the top of the party's second-tier presidential candidates, becoming a leading vice-presidential prospect and an increasingly possible nominee for president. Richardson's past service as a member of Congress, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of energy makes him a more experienced public servant than any of the first-tier Democratic candidates: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. A Mexican-American and a Westerner, Richardson is seen as strong in the critically important bloc of states that include Arizona, Nevada and Colorado, in addition to New Mexico. While Richardson now trails his front-running Democratic rivals by a wide margin, his strategists consider him a strong competitor in New Hampshire. A victory in that state's first-in-the-nation primary could propel him to the head of the pack. ... Richardson is not only the most experienced of the ca...