I've done perhaps 1700 surveys and focus groups.  Generally, I've maintained that published polls affect pundits, insiders, and donors - not voters.  But I've been saying for awhile that this year (the way the primaries are clustered and with the hyper-media coverage) would be different, and it is. 

What happens in each primary is affecting national numbers.  And national numbers are affecting what happens in each primary.  There is a momentum effect, and people are looking for validation.  That's why I have long predicted Rudy's collapse, and how national polling numbers would change, and even when they would change. 

Yet I find it easier, at this point, to count out winner Huckabee than no-show Rudy.  Anything is possible in this volatile environment, including a brokered convention.  So here are a few thoughts on where the main candidates are on the eve of the South Carolina primary (1/19), and where I am, and why I continue my view from last year that McCain has the inside track.

Last May, French voters elected Mr. Sarkozy as president because he had promised to restore the authority of the Republic over France's 751 no-go areas, the so-called zones urbaines sensibles (ZUS, sensitive urban areas), where 5 million people live - 8 percent of the population, almost all Moslem immigrants or their children.
 
Eight months later, the situation in the ZUS has remained as "sensitive" as before.
 
People get mugged, even murdered, in the ZUS, but the media prefer not to write about it. When large-scale rioting erupts and officers and firemen are attacked, the behavior of the thugs is condoned with references to their "poverty" and to the "racism" of the indigenous French.  
The French media never devote their attention to the bleak situation of intimidation and lawlessness in which 8 percent of the population, including many poor indigenous French, are forced to live. Moslem racism towards the "infidels" is never mentioned.
 
Xavier Raufer, a former French intelligence officer who heads the department on organized crime and terrorism at the Institute of Criminology of the University of Paris, thinks that bribes from organized crime has a lot to do with the indifference of the French establishment.

As you read these lines on January 11, 2008, our troops are in the midst of Operation Phantom Phoenix, a "mini-surge" to squeeze al Qaeda and its fast-dwindling band of allies out of their few remaining safe havens in Iraq.

Iraqi troops fight beside us against a common enemy. Vast swaths of the country enjoy a newborn peace. Commerce thrives again. At the provincial and local levels, the political progress has been remarkable.

As for Operation Phantom Phoenix, our commanders expected terrorist dead-enders to put up a fight. Instead, they ran, leaving behind only booby traps and disgust among the Iraqis they tormented far too long.

The headlines at home? "Nine American Soldiers Killed." No mention of progress or a fleeing enemy on the front pages. Just dead soldiers.   Determined to elect a Democrat president, the "mainstream" media simply won't accept our success.

As I edited this column while watching the South Carolina debate last night (1/10), I was struck by the sparse coverage of President Bush traveling abroad.   It is surreal that an American President can visit Israel and coverage is relegated beyond the first page. 

Yet if we can escape a recession, foreign policy and defense could be back in the national debate.  Regardless, we remain in a situation where results in states like Iowa and New Hampshire set in motion events that can profoundly affect Super Tuesday (2/5). 

This is such a volatile year that the unthinkable could happen:  a virtual two-way race among Democrats could end up divisively, and a multi-candidate Republican primary could end up unified.

In my last column two weeks ago, The GOP Race One Week Before Iowa, I explained why a win by Huckabee in Iowa would help assure, via downward momentum for Romney,  a McCain victory in New Hampshire. 

Further, I predicted the media spin off New Hampshire would enable McCain to pass Rudy in the national polls, and I still feel that way.  Let's quickly summarize the candidates, from the beginning to now.

In Iraq, as military and security conditions continue to improve, American war politics enters one of its stranger moments in our history. Certainly it is historically odd for war reporting to diminish almost to the point of public invisibility -- just as our troops are starting to gain the upper hand.

Typical of recent polling is the Pew Research Center poll from Dec. 27, which shows that about half the country thinks the military effort is going very or fairly well (up from 30 percent).  Despite such optimism, by 54 percent to 41 percent (virtually unchanged from February's 53 percent to 42 percent), the public wants our troops to come home rather than stay!

This polling data suggests that if the Democrats don't see the war as a winning issue, neither can President Bush - for the public now tends to think we are succeeding, but it doesn't think it is worth the effort and would like us to leave pretty soon, anyway.

There would seem to be no higher communications task for the president and his supporters during the coming months than to make a better case that the success that may well be within our grasp is not only worth persisting over now but also that, even knowing what we know now, the war was worth the effort from the beginning.

As 2007 drew to a close, embarrassed journalists sought to play down American military successes and avoided questioning Democrat presidential contenders about their predictions of inevitable failure in Iraq.

Magically, Iraq disappeared from the headlines - except on those rare occasions when a problem could be reported. At the close of a year of stunning progress, media stories on New Year's Eve leapt to report that 2007 had been the deadliest year for US troops.

You had to read deep into the columns to learn that those casualties occurred in the first half of 2007, as we battled and defeated the terrorists and militias - or that, in recent months, American and Iraqi casualties have plummeted as a relative peace broke out.

The greatest media story of 2007 was the one you never read (unless you read To The Point):

2007 was a strategic catastrophe for Islamist terrorists - and possibly a historic turning point in the struggle against al Qaeda and its affiliates.

[We welcome legendary political strategist Arnie Steinberg to TTP, whom we hope to have as a regular columnist advising us throughout the 2008 campaign. I have known Arnie since 1966 when he helped me lead Youth for Reagan  during Ronald Reagan's triumphant campaign for governor.

Arnie has created or advised hundreds of political campaigns at all levels, written two graduate texts on politics and media, and is an expert in every phase of campaigns, especially free/earned and paid/advertising media. 

He has produced, written and directed television and radio commercials for many candidates, ballot measures and issues.  He has conducted more than 1700 surveys and focus groups.  I asked him to set the Republican parameters as we go into Iowa and New Hampshire.  We are privileged to have him be a part of To The Point.  ---JW]

Once the Republican nominee is chosen, we will be told what the turning point was in his campaign.  And history then will be rewritten about how inspired it was.  The reality is there are few brilliant campaigns; typically, the winning campaign  is the least bumbling. 

So let's handicap the GOP aspirants a week before Iowa - Paul, Huckabee, Romney, Thompson, Giuliani, and McCain - from a campaign standpoint.  I can tell you there'll be some surprises.