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All three networks turned to Campaign 2008 and all three focused on the Republican field. NBC's Ron Allen is still at the Iowa State Fair in Ames where the straw poll for GOP faithful is held this weekend: it is "non-binding like a pre-season exhibition game, a scrimmage to see who can get their people out to vote." Mitt Romney is "hoping to slingshot forward" having spent $2m on TV advertising "more than the rest of the field combined." There are three candidates for failure to show strongly means early elimination--Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee and Tommy Thompson--and two candidates who have discounted a poor performance in advance by declining to participate--Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain.
ABC's Jake Tapper (subscription required) examined Giuliani's record on immigration on Wednesday, now he turns to his claims about his record after the World Trade Center collapsed. Tapper (subscription required) noted that the former mayor "has staked his political reputation on his performance during 9/11." So one claim--"I was at Ground Zero as often, if not more than, most of the workers…I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense I am one of them"--was replaced by a more modest one when contradicted by workers who inhaled toxic fumes working 16-hours-a-day in the debris. "What I was trying to say is: 'I have exactly the same concerns,'" he clarified on Mike Gallagher's talkradio show.
Romney's religious faith was examined by Jeff Greenfield on CBS after his network published a poll showing the just 25% of American voters have a positive impression of the Mormon Church. Greenfield's explanation was that weird theological belief systems in world religions that date back millennia are not perceived as "unusual enough" to give voters pause. The doctrines of Latter Day Saints, however, are from 1827, what Greenfield calls "the recent past." So believing in golden tablets in upstate New York, and in Jesus Christ's American ministry, and in the location of the Garden of Eden near Kansas City--not to speak of their onetime polygamy--may not pose difficulty for Romney among western voters where the religion is based, "but in a national election Mormonism may be a key issue."
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