NationStates Jolt Archive

[OOC: I will contribute to this thread as time and inspiration permit. International reactions welcome, but do try to keep OOC spam to a minimum. Reserve any unrelated diplomatic dealings with OMGTKK for this thread (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=454422). Thank you.]

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The Destructor: "Ready to take on any opponent."

Fighting for his political life
Manuelo Fernanda faces uphill battle in bid for re-election

PARADISE CITY --- Tanking in most national polls, and his Conservative Party having been dealt a serious blow (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13030598&postcount=21) in last year's congressional elections, President Fernanda (ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/manuelo_fernanda.html), the Federal Republic's pro-boxer-turned-politician, was determined this week to prove that he would not shrink from a fight.

He came out swinging as he formally announced his bid for re-election Wednesday, telling a crowd of supporters that he would not be intimidated by his political opponents in the Liberal Party. "They're complete losers," he said. "If I want to hear a lot of compulsive whining and second-guessing and knee-jerk criticism of every decision I make, I'd start listening to my secretary of state.

"Debbie, cancel my meeting with the secretary of state," he barked over his shoulder.

Though the election is more than two years away, sitting presidents, particularly politically troubled ones, have historically started re-election campaigns early, to dispel doubts about their political future and hopefully scare off potential challengers from within their own party.

And this president has certainly not been without his political troubles, facing serious criticism of his handling of the wars in Thessadoria, Tiki Taki and Chechnya, and his recent decision to allow the enemy (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=458061) to "crash on the couch (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13110844&postcount=122)" in the national capital's inner-city. Add to that accusations of corruption, cronyism, excessive drinking, partying, laziness, dereliction of duty, and sleeping with everyone from empresses to female ambassadors to women in the mail room.

He has faced impeachment multiple times, and federal prosecutors have not let up on hounding him on disappearances and mysterious deaths and drug overdoses of various callgirls with whom he's been known to frequent.

"They think they got a case this time," Fernanda defiantly told the crowd during Wednesday's announcement. "They say pubic hairs found at some chick's last known whereabouts prove I had something to do with her -- er, whoops! The prosecutor told my lawyers that was sealed evidence. Forget I said anything!"

Fernanda's personal and political transgressions have cost him dearly in the polls, with the most recent Town Crier survey pegging his job-approval rating at just 41 percent. In the same study, the president is statistically tied with his likely opponent in the 2010 general election, Senate Majority Leader John Thorne, each polling at 43 percent.

For a sitting president, polling so badly this early in a re-election campaign is very bad news.

Uncertainty in vice-presidential contest

Meanwhile, Fernanda's vice president, Antigone Morgan (ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/antigone_morgan.html), has refused to state whether she will run again, though it is almost certain that she will not be Fernanda's running-mate if she does run.

Fernanda and Morgan have shared a notoriously stormy (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Antarctic_Oasis/index.php?showtopic=137&view=findpost&p=4502273) relationship (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Antarctic_Oasis/index.php?showtopic=532&view=findpost&p=6843321) in their term in office. "You'd think they were married or something," once observed the late Karmicarian Queen Adrienne.

"I'm done with sitting around waiting for that bastard to die," said Morgan in a recent TV interview. "Even if it means shooting the asshole myself."

Rumors suggest Morgan could face a challenge of her own if she decides to run again. Conservative insiders say Secretary of State Alex Tehrani (ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/alex_tehrani.html), Fernanda's closest adviser and political ally, has been considering a run for the No. 2 spot himself. While Fernanda and Tehrani would most definitely campaign together, it doesn't necessarily leave Morgan out in the cold.

Sources in Thorne's inner circle claim the senator has made overtures toward the vice president, hinting at her coming on board as his second-in-command in 2010. "It should add something interesting to a race that is going to be so devastatingly boring, most staffers here are considering suicide just thinking about it," said a top aid, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Tehrani and Morgan are both still viewed favorably in the polls, though Morgan more so, boasting certain, uhh, physical attributes that even Palentine citizens rank on a par (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Antarctic_Oasis/index.php?showtopic=732&view=findpost&p=7185412) with that of their own beloved co-empress, Her Imperial Hottness Jhessan Spaulding.

Political impact of Iron Felix endorsement

Fernanda's campaign got a boost the same day of his formal announcement, when Iron Felix (www.nationstates.net/iron_felix), the Antarctic Oasis regional delegate, endorsed him for re-election.

"Kennyites are choosing not only the leader of their nation, but the leader of their region as well," the reanimated communist leader told a news conference at his regional enclave Wednesday. "Comrade Fernanda has been a tremendous asset to this region and he should remain in office."

While Felix is very popular among Kennyites, owing mostly to his repeated disruption of UN proceedings (usually by tossing random delegates out the window), the impact his endorsement will have on Fernanda's poll standings remains unknown.

Still, Liberals are downplaying the endorsement, insisting that Felix is simply paying Fernanda back for making his life in the Antarctic so good since the formerly communist zombie arrived in the region. Fernanda chose Felix as a regional charter member in the fall of last year, and made him delegate in December.

The Secret Service says the president and the delegate may have something in common: no one in the entire region receives more death threats per day than Fernanda and Felix. Secret Service agents have admitted Fernanda gets over 2,000 threats a day, 400 from Antigone Morgan alone.

Schweitzer mum on presidential bid
Many Conservative activists cold to renominating President Fernanda

PARADISE CITY (Allied Press) --- Former federal Judge Sandy Schwietzer Liebowitz (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13230243&postcount=243), the no-nonsense jurist, politician and commentator whom many dissatisfied Conservatives have been courting for a possible presidential run, refused to state whether she would challenge President Fernanda for the Conservative Party's nomination in 2010, but pledged, "We will have a Conservative president in 2010."

Appearing on Friday's edition of that obnoxious women's late-morning talk show, "The Outlook," Schweitzer, 52, said she was "touched" by the many calls for her to run for president, but claimed she has made no decision on whether to pursue a bid for Frowning Street.

"Right now, I want to focus on spending time with my family," the former governor of Thorland told the panelists and audience. "I'm finally done with being governor, and it's not like I have a lot of duties as ambassador to Pinguinium or wherever it is, so it frees me up to be there for my children. Our two daughters are preparing for college -- well, one is leaving for college this fall, the other is going to be a senior and is still looking -- and our son just proposed to his third wife, who's already pregnant!"

The audience "awwwed" and applauded.

Schweitzer, who as a federal judge authored the bestselling book "Don't Piss in My Cup and Tell Me It's Lemonade!", got another endorsement this week when Temperance Cökschmuncher, president of the women's morality group Kennyite Orthodox Puritans For Ending Excessive Libertinism (KOP-a-FEEL), told her organization's annual conference in Las Posas that she had "had it with Fernanda" and was shopping for a new candidate.

"I should have gotten the picture a lot sooner, but the arrest (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Antarctic_Oasis/index.php?showtopic=851&view=findpost&p=7359587) in Allech-Atreus for indecency really was the last straw," said Cökschmuncher. "We need a real Conservative, someone who knows how to keep their pants zipped, and Judge Schweitzer is the obvious choice for us."

Cökschmuncher said she had joined the Draft Schweitzer Committee, a group with rumored ties to Schweitzer herself, and which is suspected of coordinating with the judge in preparation for her Frowning Street run.

Schweitzer denied it to the ladies of "The Outlook": "I appreciate that many, many people in this country want a different kind of leadership, but this whole draft movement has been a complete surprise to me."

Yet the judge pulled no punches on Fernanda's scandal-ridden presidency. "With all the women he's been chasing lately, it's a wonder he hasn't come after me as well!" she said. "And it's a good thing, too. Any part of him that touches me he'd lose!"

She remained noncommittal, even when probed as to what she meant by "We will have a Conservative president in 2010," and if it was a slight at the president, whom Conservative activists have derided as "not a real Conservative." "I will do whatever it takes to make sure the Conservatives don't lose the presidency," Schweitzer said.

When confronted by Schweitzer's remarks Friday night outside Frowning Street, Fernanda -- drunk, disoriented and accompanied by two buxom blonde "friends" on either arm -- belched loudly, punched a reporter, and railed: "I already gave the bitch a fucking ambassadorship; what more does she want from me?!"

Attorneys later explained that the man seen outside the president's residence that night wasn't Fernanda, but a giant mechanical penguin dressed up to look like him in order to fool local terrorists (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=532484). May not be as creative an "explanation" as the classic "The president wasn't drunk and running around on the roof naked and urinating on pedestrians below last night; he was simply protesting the plight of orphaned children who don't have clothes by disrobing in solidarity with them, and urinating on pedestrians below," but it works for us.

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Patriotic San Andreas Xt'Tapolopaquetl demonstrators wave and wear native colors during a protest on Antarctic Oasis Day. The tree stands for Ameranta, the natives' homeland, the white for peace, which is deep down what the Xt'Tap really want, and the red for all the innocent blood they're willing to spill to get it. Polls show little movement among Xt'Tap voters from last election to this one.

Xt'Taps in happy little rut
Poll shows Fernanda clinging to statistically insignificant lead

PARADISE CITY (Town Crier) --- The Xt'Tapolopaquetl natives of Omigodtheykilledkenny passionately dislike their president, whom they accuse of using them as a "scapegoat" for his war on terror. They give him an approval rating way down in the 30s, one of the lowest for an incumbent president in polling history. They like Former President John Thorne, who is poised to challenge President Fernanda once again for the top job in 2010.

Yet at the same time, Fernanda's support for re-election among the Xt'Tap remains unusually high, for a Conservative.

The famously Liberal-leaning constituency backs Thorne over Fernanda 56 percent to 32 percent in the Town Crier's new poll on presidential preferences released Sunday -- a number mirroring exit poll numbers from 2005, when Fernanda defeated then-President Thorne with 32-percent support among Xt'Tap voters.

It's never good for a Liberal when a Conservative can garner 20-plus percent of Xt'Tap voters in a national election, but 32 percent is especially devastating. It was for Thorne, who lost his re-election bid by 26 million votes, and it may be again this year.

But why would a group of minority voters that so abhors a sitting president, and a Conservative one at that, continue to support him at disproportionate levels? Image is one easy answer.

"He's dark-skinned, he's of Catholic upbringing, he's Latino, he speaks Spanish (at least he can recite filthy limericks in that language), he has an Hispanic surname -- these are all ways in which Xt'Tapolopaquetl voters identify with their unpopular president," noted Justine Applebaum, professor of statistics at Our Lady of Perpetual Belligerence College. "He's also young and vigorous, which is very important when you consider that the Xt'Tap are much younger on average than white Kennyites."

"He's also unbelievably sexist, exceptionally horny, has an incredibly dirty mouth, and he too has a curious problem with discovering dead hookers in his bed; I imagine the Xt'Tap, primarily men, also identify with him that way as well," was the (arguably racist) assessment of John Peterson, a pollster with the Trotsky Organization. "His friend (Amb.) Susa Batko-Yovino has the same problems, and he's practically a folk hero among his own people," he added.

"(Batko-Yovino's) continued support for the president helps, as does that of his sister Susannah," observed Peterson. "But I suspect the Batko-Yovino factor is marginal at best."

The Batko-Yovinos, though having endorsed Fernanda for re-election, have not campaigned for him much as of yet. Susannah Batko-Yovino has pledged to help out as primary season draws nearer.

"It's basically a replay of the last election, with the same candidates running," said Applebaum. "Their opinions of the two men haven't changed very much, and they seem to be happy with the horses they rode in on."

Among all voters, Fernanda clings to a narrow lead, 47 percent to 45 percent in a hypothetical match-up against Thorne. Little has changed since last month, when the numbers were 47 Fernanda, 44 Thorne.

Fernanda does find resistance in his own party, however, considering that Judge Sandy Schweitzer, who hasn't formally announced a bid to challenge him for the Conservative Party nomination, pulls an impressive 36 percent of Conservative primary voters nationwide, compared with 50 percent for Fernanda. "For a sitting president, that's embarrassing," said Applebaum.

The poll considered the opinions of 3,217 registered voters over a three-day period, from July 24-26, 2008. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.5 percent.

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Town Crier poll shows Fernanda with slim lead over Thorne.