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Obama takes the lead.....


Magnum

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New blood in the White House. It's desperately needed.

Let's hope they don't rig it so that the Republicans steal another one. Check out Huckabee on Canada:

http://video.canadiancontent.net/16321139-talking-to-americans-capitol-building-is-an-igloo.html

"Mike Huckabee may have won the Iowa primary, but does he really think that Canada's Parliament resides in a "national igloo?" Rick Mercer's comedic Canadian TV show "Talking to Americans" (asking people on the streets of US cities nonsensical questions about Canada to see if they call shenanigans or whether they become genuinely alarmed at the idea that, say, the Canadian elderly are set adrift on ice floes instead of being sent to retirement homes) caught Huckabee on video during his days as governor of Arkansas and asked him to send a message of support to Canada and its struggling "national igloo," a notional ice-sculpture scale replica of the White House in which the Canadian Parliament meets and debates.

Huckabee gave a stirring endorsement to the igloo, presumably after ascertaining that the igloo was not used by homosexuals."

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From the Globe & Mail

LAWRENCE MARTIN lmartin@globeandmail.com The last thing the Stephen Harper Conservatives need is Barack Obama.

They'll be feeling better knowing that, following one of the most embarrassing performances by pollsters since Dewey/Truman, the Obama express has stalled in the snows of New Hampshire.

While the formidable Hillary Clinton is of the old guard, Senator Obama represents a liberal generational shift. As such, he is one of the biggest threats to conservatives on this continent in a long time.

He is a movement kind of politician with rare oratorical, inspirational and pluralist powers. Movement politicians shatter the status quo, not necessarily because of their policy platforms but, because of the ideals they represent and their capacity to sell them.

Ronald Reagan was the liberals' nightmare in North America in the 1980s. John F. Kennedy was anathema to conservatives in the 1960s. They weren't elected because of bold or innovative ideas.

What they brought on - and Mr. Obama is capable of the same - was a renaissance of the American spirit.

In each case, the power of words played a paramount role. Ms.

Clinton, who is a pedestrian orator, belittles the importance of Mr. Obama's eloquence. Too bad she couldn't consult one of those two late presidents. Or Winston Churchill.

Observing the Illinois senator in New Hampshire was to get a sense - the voter turnout there and in Iowa was huge - of the magnitude of his impact. There were so many young people in the lines, more than I had seen at any time since first coming to the New Hampshire primary in 1980. They rose up when he said, "We are ready to take this country in a fundamentally new direction." That direction, a turning away from the politics of confrontation, could be a boon to Canadian parties of the left. The Obama movement could finally, thankfully, wrest power from the aging and banal baby boomer cohort. Though our Mr. Harper, 48, is post baby-boom, it often doesn't seem that way. Mr. Obama at 46, somehow, makes him appear much older.

If the Canadian election, expected this year, comes at a time when the Obama wave is rising, it could be one of the best breaks the opposition parties have had in a long time. It will be easy for the government to look retrograde.

Young Canada, in many ways, is what Barack Obama is all about.

Young Canada, like him, is diverse, cosmopolitan, internationalist, multiethnic, multilateralist, less ideological, more anti-war.

Young Canada, as well as aging segments of the population turned off by politics for so long, has been waiting for someone to light the fuse. He could be the one.

Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire will make it much more difficult for him to win the Democratic nomination. Mr. Obama's challenge brought her out of her shell - that of a concocted politician.

It showed Americans her heart, her appealing human side. It reawakened her old reformist spirit.

The picture of the dinosaur in New Hampshire belonged to the Republican, John McCain. He appeared at Dartmouth College. There were about 180 of us in the audience, but I counted only about 10 undergraduates.

The 71 year-old senator is admirable for the courage with which he holds his convictions. But, on foreign policy, he comes across as a paranoid American nationalist who would only perpetuate George W. Bush's culture of fear. He said - this is not made up - that the disparate band of Islamic terrorists represent the greatest threat to America in its history. Worse, that is, than Communism, which once ruled about half the world, and Nazism that almost did the same.

He and all the other leading Republican candidates are following the Bush code, something that two-thirds of Americans reject. With the economy starting to tumble, the likelihood is that the Republicans will be walloped in the fall and the United States will have its first black or first woman president.

Most Canadians will relish the occasion. Our progressive spirit will be reawakened. How delightfully ironic, given that we tend to see ourselves as more progressive than our neighbour, that it will be an American who does the deed.

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