I don’t know about you, but to me, it seems like sometime in the last couple of weeks, it seems like someone flipped a switch and the 2008 Presidential primary has begun! Here in California, 
Democratic Presidential contender Barack Obama and GOP Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani are both making multi-day swings. Of course the other front-runners – Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain and Mitt Romney – have all been out campaigning in the Golden State, and all have plans to return here again soon. Of course, with the high likelihood of Californian’s Presidential primary moving up to next February (the bill has already passed the State Senate on the fast-track and is now awaiting action in the Assembly), these visits will increase even more as all of theses candidates will need to visit not only to raise money from our donor-rich state, but suddenly our delegates become more meaningful in the quest for each Party’s respective nomination.
Looking at the GOP Presidential primary, it will be interesting to see which of the candidates ultimately benefit from the early California primary. Conventional wisdom would be that the candidates most advantaged would be Senator John McCain, and Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Both enjoy higher name identification, which is important in a big state like ours. Of course, the other ‘top tier’ GOPer, Mitt Romney, while relatively unknown to California Republican voters, has a very healthy fundraising machine and would likely commit upwards of ten or twenty million dollars to secure delegates here (under new rules, California delegates are award by Congressional District, instead of statewide, leading to the likelihood that our delegation will be somewhat split). The big losers of this super-charged first Tuesday in February are those aspirants for the GOP nomination who don’t have massive fundraising operations — candidates like Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, retired Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and several House candidates — Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul, and our own Californian, Duncan Hunter (it would also include potential candidates such as Newt Gingrich). With the exception of Congressman Duncan Hunter’s name ID in his own San Diego County, none of these ‘2nd Tier’ candidates have any appreciable name ID, and will not have the funds to pay for the advertising necessary to create it.
Which really then makes you wonder where conservative Republican primary voters will go — given that all three GOP frontrunners have issues that, under other circumstances, would be extremely harmful to their nomination hopes.
Or put another way, on this Valentine’s Day, do any of the three front runners have what it will take to win over the hearts of conservative Republican voters?
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