Although trailing in the polls, John Edwards is "casting himself as the candidate of rural voters," writes the Washington Post's Anne Kornblut. Edwards' recent rhetoric, Kornblut writes, reflects "the argument that he is the sole Southern Democrat and cultural conservative in the Democratic presidential field, making him the only top-tier candidate in his party who can appeal easily to white men." By appealing to rural voters as someone who understands the plight of farmers, Edwards is painting himself as the opposite of Hillary or Obama: someone who can attract culturally conservative voters in states like Iowa and Virginia.
In an interview on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer yesterday, Edwards again stressed the importance of withdrawing troops from Iraq regardless of what Gen. David Petraeus might say in his September report to Congress. "I think they should not submit a single funding bill to the president for the war that doesn't have a timetable for withdrawal," Edwards said, adding that as president he would remove 50,000 troops immediately and redeploy the rest over the following nine months.
In an interview with the AP's Mike Glover, Edwards proposed a national cancer strategy aimed at both treating and preventing the disease. Planning on officially announcing his proposal at a forum today sponsored by Lance Armstrong, Edwards said it would include increasing federal research funding, expand testing of carcinogenic chemicals, and promote lifestyle changes to reduce people's risk.
Marking the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Barack Obama visited New Orleans yesterday promising to quicken the pace of rebuilding the city, reports the Times-Picayune's Kate Moran. "For all our wealth and power, something was not right in America," Obama said, adding that the devastation caused by Katrina exposed the Bush administration's failure to focus on domestic problems as it pursued an expensive war in Iraq.
Obama's recovery plan includes using the federal government to alleviate the cost of homeowners insurance by creating a "national catastrophic insurance reserve," Moran reports. Obama also said as president he would expand the presence of the Drug Enforcement Agency and make grants available to help the city hire more prosecutors and police officers to stem the crime epidemic.
The Washington Post's Perry Bacon Jr. has a profile of Obama's chief of staff Peter Rouse, the "Outsider's Insider." Rouse, a fixer "steeped in the ways of Washington," is also a "meticulous workaholic" who "rose through three decades of unglamorous legislating to become arguably the most influential Democratic aide in the Senate when he worked for then-Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle," Bacon writes.
The "public image of the impartial, 'let the chips fall where they may' prosecutor that [Fred] Thompson has cultivated masks a more nuanced reality," writes the New York Times' Jo Becker. In an interview, Thompson talked about the "up close, classic education" he received over his investigative career, beginning with the Watergate committee, continuing on through the Reagan administration and culminating in his years as a senator. Thompson said his career "had cemented his belief that government should not be given any more authority than it absolutely needs," Becker writes.
Getting back to his unofficial campaign, Thompson held a fundraiser in Indianapolis on Saturday, reports McClatchy's Margaret Talev. Reaction from the crowd however was mixed. On the one hand, "many of the party activists attending the conference from a dozen heartland states said they were seriously turned off by what they saw as Thompson's ambivalence about whether to run months after other presidential hopefuls have been hard at it," Talev writes. On the other, "there was an undeniable curiosity and affection for Thompson at the gathering."
Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, took advantage of his rising national prominence to take a good-natured shot at Thompson in an interview with Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace. "Let's just hope Fred decides it's just too hot this summer to even do this. Maybe he won't get in," Huckabee said. But the Arkansas governor also had some nice things to say about his soon-to-be conservative rival as well: "I think he's going to suck a lot of the oxygen out of the room when he first comes in. But I'm not sure I'd want to be in his position where the expectations are simply just sky-high for him to be able to perform."
Finally, USA Today's Susan Page looks at the "chaos" caused by the states' game of "me first" in the primaries. "Florida's decision to move its primary, which violated Democratic Party rules that allow only four small states to vote before Feb. 5, was like a domino falling," writes Page. Nevertheless, Iowa and New Hampshire, committed to their "me first" role, "are likely to be more important than ever."
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