College Republicans to Welcome Senator Evan Bayh, Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign to RI on Post Road outside of T.F. Green Airport at 3:30 PM Today.

Group plans to gather to thank Hillary for voting for war in Iraq, pledging to keep combat troops there to fight Al Qaeda.

Warwick, RI – Today at 3:30 PM the College Republican Federation of Rhode Island and its chapter members on six campuses throughout the state will gather on the corner of Post Road and Airport Road (Staples Parking Lot) with signs and banners to welcome Senator Evan Bayh and Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign to Rhode Island, and to thank her for voting for the war in Iraq and for pledging to continue the presence of troops to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq if she is elected President.

Senator Hillary Clinton, who served as College Republican President when she was a student at Wellesley, will benefit from a fundraiser held at 6 PM tonight in Warwick, Rhode Island.”From one former College Republican Chapter President to another, I would like to welcome the campaign of Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton to Rhode Island and thank her not only for the vote she cast in 2002 that authorized the war in Iraq, but also for her recent commitment to keep combat troops in Iraq to fight Al Qaeda if she is elected President next year,” said State Chairman Ryan Bilodeau.”The average Rhode Islander should be proud to have Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the state today,” added Bilodeau. (more…)

  Second poll in a week showing Clinton losing her Iowa lead, seemingly for the right reasons — with emphasis on militancy towards Iran.

Obama, an Illinois senator, leads for the first time in the Register’s poll as the choice of 28 percent of likely caucusgoers, up from 22 percent in October. Clinton, a New York senator, was the preferred candidate of 25 percent, down from 29 percent in the previous poll.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who led in the Register’s May poll, held steady with 23 percent, in third place, but part of the three-way battle.

Obama’s lead is even stronger among women:

In the new poll, Obama leads with support from 31 percent of women likely attend the caucuses, compared to 26 percent for Clinton. In October, Clinton was the preferred candidate of 34 percent of women caucusgoers, compared to 21 percent for Obama.

On another front — I’m not that good at knowing what people are going to think about things, but am pleasantly surprised that reaction to Clinton’s interview on CBS this week is a strong as it’s been. The interview where she denied ever even considering the possibility that she might lose.

“The Iraqis will greet our troops as liberators with flowers and candy…”

Wait — sorry, that was somebody else, expressing intense hubris in light overwhelming evidence of potential fallibility. Here’s Hillary, being as mindlessly self-aggrandizing as GWB’s ever been, in her own special, uber-maipulative way:

“If it’s not you, how disappointed will you be?” Couric asked.

“Well, it will be me,” she said….

Clearly, she has considered the possibility she won’t be the nominee?

“No, I haven’t,” Clinton said.

I posted last week about the possibility of candidates teaming up to beat Clinton in Iowa.

So this statement by Edwards (now a few weeks old) caught my eye today:

“The differences between Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) and myself are much more dramatic than the differences between Sen. Obama and myself,” Edwards told reporters after receiving the endorsement of the progressive group Caucus for Priorities, which seeks a reallocation of defense dollars into social programs.

“Down the line,” Edwards said, on issues such as “What we would do in Iraq? What we should be doing about Iran. What we should be doing about corrupting influences in Washington and a broken system, (there are) really big differences between Sen. Clinton and myself.”

I don’t read too much into it — Perhaps the statement was just a condition of the endorsement, or maybe Edwards is trying to steal some of Obama’s thunder. But it gives me hope that they’re trying to figure out some way to work together.

Tuesday evening, local big-wigs lined up to pitch their candidates to college students and political observers at the RIC primary.

Wednesday, the civic jubilation continues at RIC with a day of faux-voting, registration, action, panel discussions, and pizza.

7:00am-5:00pm – STUDENT UNION LOBBY & ALGER HALL Room 110
RIC Presidential Primary Voting & VOTER REGISTRATION DRIVE

Students will be encouraged to register to vote in the next election and will try out the ballot box when they cast their votes for their favorite candidate in the “RIC 2008 Presidential Primary.”

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  The Clinton team keeps on pretending that there’s reason to think she’s the only Dem who can win the general election. There’s a mounting body of evidence that this just ain’t the case.

Today there’s this new Zogby poll that shows Clinton trailing the top Repubs, with Obama and Edwards still leading them. Will Dem primary voters develop some guts, or are they gonna put up yet another smarmy middling candidate, in the Gore ‘00 and Kerry ‘04 molds?

There are a couple of points that I think are deserving of more prominent mention in the debate about the Governor’s proposal to layoff 500-plus state workers.

1) In spite of rampant assertions that Rhode Island’s government is especially bloated, we already have very few state employees per capita:

Yet when viewed in proportion to our population, the number of state workers in Rhode Island is the smallest among the six New England states and just the 40th-largest in the country, according to US Bureau of Labor statistics used in an analysis compiled by Governing magazine.

In contrast to regional leader Vermont, which has 301 state employees per 10,000 residents, the magazine’s sourcebook found, Rhode Island has 164 state workers per 10,000 residents. The comparable numbers for the other states: Maine (221); Connecticut (196); New Hampshire (188); and Massachusetts (187).

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