Ed Brayton has an interesting post examining whether Ron Paul is a Dominionist. The best he can come with is maybe yes, maybe no. Among other things, apparently Rep. Paul has close ties to someone named Gary North who was on his staff for a period of time. North is a wingnut who declared:

So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.

Brayton acknowledges that guilt by association is not compelling evidence. It raises red flags, but nothing more. At worst, so far, Rep. Paul says things that can be read as Dominionist code for less palatable opinions or as a more moderate point of view that recognizes that the government must accommodate non-Christian thought.

Maureen Groppe, writing for the Gannett News Service, has an article about Hoosier contributions to Presidential candidates. Of the $1.5 million Hoosiers donated, $267,000 went to Barack Obama. Giuliani was the top Republican recipient with $255,000. Hillary Clinton raised $246,000. John Edwards raised $201,000. Mitt Romney was the second highest Republican recipient with $195,000. And, John McCain came in 6th overall in Indiana with $120,000.

That’s pretty interesting that the top 3 Democratic candidates raised $722,000 while the top 3 Republican candidates raised $570,000. . . in Indiana. Hillary Clinton raised almost as much as the leading Republican while competing with significant numbers of dollars against Obama – in Indiana. Does George W. Bush just suck that bad or are the Republican candidates just that lackluster? Because, as a Hoosier, I can’t believe that Hillary is catching fire amongst the people of Indiana.

MyDD has the preliminary fund raising numbers for the 2008 Presidential Candidates. In order of funds raised for the quarter they are:

Barack Obama – $19 million
Hillary Clinton – $17 – 19 million
Rudy Giuliani – $10 million
Fred Thompson – $8 million
Mitt Romney – $8 million (The MyDD story has him at $15 million, Oliver Willis has him at $10 million including $7 million self-donated. So, I’m just using the $15 million as a total and the $7 million as a donation).
John Edwards – $7 million
Bill Richardson – $5.2 million

Kos has a post up suggesting that Edwards is making a poor strategic decision to opt for public funding in the primary and general while Obama is making a poor strategic decision to say that he will take public funding in the general if the Republican candidate does the same. Because the Democrats are killing the Republicans in fund raising this time around, Kos suggests, it shows a lack of the killer instinct to give the Republicans any quarter in this respect.

The Associated Press reports that most Hoosiers favor bringing the troops home from Iraq within the year even if civil order is not yet restored there. Meanwhile, John McCain was in Indianapolis calling us names. If you support a timetable for withdrawing the troops, then you’re in favor of surrender according to the Senator. According to McCain (and I paraphrase), Congress should just shut up and pay for the war.

Left in Aboite flags Giuliani’s Iraq scandal. Giuliani may have made a mistake in attracting MoveOn.org’s specific attention to himself. Obviously MoveOn was never going to be a friend of the Giuliani campaign, but he may have been wiser to hold his fire until the general election instead of encouraging MoveOn to make him their special whipping boy.

Giuliani didn’t like MoveOn’s take on the White House’s surge propaganda, so he lashed out at them. Their response: tar Giuliani as a big old money-grubbing terrorism profiteer. In March of 2006, Congress apparently created the Iraq Study Group to which Giuliani was appointed. Problem was, he never showed up to the meetings. The Study Group told him to show up or get out. Giuliani chose the latter, citing “time constraints.” A review of Giuliani’s financial records show that those constraints were imposed by the necessity of making million dollar speeches.

Now, I’m not going to knock a guy around for making money. Confronted with a choice between government meetings and easy money, I suspect I might have taken the money. What I wouldn’t have done, however, is turn around and run for President primarily selling myself as the guy who can make America safer. If you are a dedicated public servant, convinced that you know best about America’s security, and want to be President because of your devotion and expertise, then you have to turn down the money and do the scut work.

Furthermore, if you have this kind of soft spot in your armor, you probably want to avoid poking the MoveOn.org public relations bear in the eye. While you are still in the Republican pack, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than one or two of your fellow travelers.

Doghouse Riley has a post up entitled The Thompson Candidacy: A Post-Mortem. As you might expect from the title, it’s about “Hollywood” Freddie Thompson’s entry into the Republican primary and Doghouse’s confusion as to what Thompson adds to the race besides a “Hey, look! It’s that guy from the teevee” quality.

But, it was one of his comments about Mitt Romney that really grabbed me:

One can never discount entirely the power of soulless mediocrity.