Political Buzz

I'm watching the GOP presidential debate in Florida on Fox News as I'm blogging. There's been a lot of political activity the last few days. A few highlights:

-The FRC Washington Briefing/Values Voter Summit which I attended was a quite interesting and successful event. All the candidates gave the conference participants something to applaud and were treated with respect, though some are favored more than others, as shown in these straw poll results. Mike Huckabee's strong address connecting on values across a range of issues won him over 50% of on site voters.

-Meanwhile, one of the most principled candidates, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, has withdrawn from the race.

-While the Hurricane Katrina aftermath has been portrayed nationally as a Republican failure due to shortcomings in the federal government response, it was the entrenched Democratic state and local governments that were upended this weekend by Bobby Jindal's historic victory in becoming the next Louisiana governor.

-In a delightful act of political ju-jitsu, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh turned a misguided effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and 40 other senate Democrats to wrongly discredit him into a win for the children of some true American heroes. Maybe Harry & co. will now get around to passing some overdue appropriations bills.

UPDATE: The debate's over. Some good points made by all of them. Fred Thompson helped himself at the end by listing his many accomplishments in response to the 'lazy' question.