WP's Cillizza: Another Early Look at the 2008 Race

[DeepModem Mom]

The Fix, by Chris Cillizza
washingtonpost.com's Politics Blog
Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 05/ 5/2006

....Since the last time this blog rated the five presidential candidates from each party who are most likely to win the 2008 nomination, it's become increasingly clear that while the Democratic side offers as many as seven or eight legitimate contenders, the Republican field really only has three politicians who -- at this early point in the cycle -- are well out front in the race for their party's presidential nomination.

Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and George Allen (Va.), along with Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, are the three Republicans who are constructing the organization, raising the money and attracting the early buzz necessary to win the Republican nod. While it's impossible to predict what the field will look like a year or two from now, we are extremely surprised that there aren't more top-tier Republicans in the running -- especially since the nomination is wide open.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour would likely have earned a top-tier slot, but he removed himself from the 2008 race earlier this year. All-but-declared candidates like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Sam Brownback, Sen. Chuck Hagel, New York Gov. George Pataki and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford have potential, but for one reason or another haven't emerged yet as serious contenders for the nomination.

One potential entrant into the rarified air of frontrunners is former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who of late has been acting a lot more like a candidate than many people -- The Fix included -- ever thought he would. Even with Giuliani in the race, however, room remains for a socially conservative candidate (we're looking at you Huckabee and Brownback) to step up. (The Fix doesn't own the rights to this theory. The Hotline's Chuck Todd lays it out in his column on the 2008 White House race -- sorry, the link is subscription only.)

For now, The Fix continues to see McCain and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) as the frontrunners for their respective party nominations although we can't forget that we are still in the very preliminary stages of the 2008 race; anything can (and usually does) happen....

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/