Iran, Uran

Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. Gov. Bill Richardson has just been handed an urgent and horrifying foreign policy statement. I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen:

"Cannonballllll!!"

Ah, to be a campaign speechwriter. Alas, Richardson's "major speech" (BR4P's words, not mine) tomorrow in D.C. will almost certainly be very serious and very presidential. El Gobernador will discuss his position on Iran to the Center for National Policy tomorrow around lunch time. Suffice it to say, "Nuke 'em all!" or "Let's just send Ahmadinejad some kittens" will not be phrases included in the speech.

Here's a guess: Big Bill will satisfy the hawks by talking heavy about imposing tough sanctions, perhaps along with an idle threat like not taking "any option" off the table (i.e. Fat Man and Little Boy circa 2009), if Iran doesn't discontinue its nuclear program. But he will also offer an olive branch to the doves by insisting that hard-nosed international diplomacy (sugarcoated with economic incentives) should be the first option, complete with an anecdote about former UN Ambassador Bill talking to Saddam, Castro and/or Mussolini after Bill Clinton said "Let's send Richardson. Bad guys love Richardson."

Bing. Bang. Boom. I just saved you an hour of your life, Center for National Policy. You can thank me later.

In the meantime, The Guv is in Iowa City this morning/afternoon before heading to NYC for fundraisers this evening. Tomorrow morning is Boston (fundraising) and the rest of the day is D.C. (Iran/fundraising). Thursday is the next Democratic Presidential Debate (this one held at Howard University in D.C., aired by PBS and moderated by Tavis Smiley). Friday will be spent either popping champagne or licking wounds after the debate while raising cash in El Paso and Las Cruces. And, with a little more than two weeks before the next FEC campaign finance report deadline, the heat is on to raise dinero.

After all, more cash means more BR4P-generated polls like the one unveiled yesterday by campaign headquarters that shows Richardson inching up to 13 percent favorability among likely Iowa caucus-goers. The campaign even went one step further (with the help of polling hired hand Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin and Associates) by surveying the "likeliest" voters, which moved Richardson past Barack Obama into the rarefied air of third place and 18 percent.