Trailhead: A campaign blog.

The Hunter Hall of Fame

News is crossing the wire that Duncan Hunter is dropping out of the race. We hold a special spot in our heart for the wily California congressman, so here are a few posts to remember him by:

Duncan Hunter Gets Hacked - Relive Hunter's most dramatic moment, when Turkish nationalists messed with his web site.

The Hunter Who Cried Wolf - Dunc teases us and pretends to drop out, only to tell us he's in for the long haul. Looks like he changed his mind.

Just Give Up - Analyzing his barren, unkempt website.

It appears Fred Thompson may be joining him this evening. Thompson is in 4th in exit polls and early returns and John King on CNN says Thompson advisers think he'll pull out this evening. They can share tears in political heaven. 

Exclusive! Duncan Hunter Gets Hacked

In a rare occurrence, I visited Duncan Hunter's Web site today to see if it still hadn't been updated in months. Surprisingly, it had. By a hacker. 

In the scrolling news marquee, a team of hackers who go by the handles clientcode, undertaker, and theghost left a message for all of Hunter's American fans: "Kiss You Babyyy yeahhh (:"  

Is that the best they could come up with? How about, "Duncan Hunter is a one-delegate farce," "Duncan Hunter supports an Iraq war that's killed hundreds of thousands of people," or "Duncan Hunter, you're a God-fearing slimeball. Drop out of the race." If you're going to hack the man's site, at least do it with a little panache.

This isn't the first time Hunter's site has been hacked, according to campaign manager Roy Tyler. He told me that a few days ago, Turkish hackers got into the site and left a message in Arabic that blasted Hunter for his pro-Iraq record. It was also hacked about a year ago. Tyler said the campaign expected to be a hacker target, so they took extra security precautions, but to no avail. When I called, Tyler said the campaign was unaware of the latest hack, but I later found out his tech team was already on it, and it was fixed it a few minutes later. 

Trailhead found people on the Internet bragging about the hack that occurred earlier this week. A hacker congregation site, Turk-h.org, seems to suggest that someone going by "ayyildiz" attacked the site because of "politik sebepler" or "political causes" (according to a Turkish-English translation done by a friend). But it looks like different hackers (clientcode, undertaker, and theghost) got into the site this time. If my very uneducated assumptions are correct, it looks like ayyildiz is a prolific hacker, defacing over a thousand sites according to his profile on turk-h.org. The names "clientcode" and "undertaker" also appear frequently on various hacker forums.

But of all the sites on the Internet, ayyildiz picked Hunter's to defame. He now joins the illustrious ranks of topsexxxlinks.com and turtle-pictures.de. But look on the brightside, at least somebody somebody cares about Hunter's political beliefs.

With Chris Wilson.

Michigan: Gravel vs. Hunter

Of the many story lines to pay attention to this evening: Who gets more votes, Mike Gravel or Duncan Hunter? As of now, Bill Kristol and company on Fox News tell me that Gravel has seven more votes (51 to 44) with 2 percent of precincts reporting.

Can Hunter stun the Alaskan and roar from behind? Remember, he's already got a delegate. Gravel better watch out.

UPDATE 8:41 p.m.: Hunter pulls ahead!!! By 11 votes!!! He has 10 percentage points more than Gravel. Three percent of precincts reporting. Stay tuned for regular updates.

UPDATE 8:45 p.m.: They're tied!!! But Gravel has one more percentage point's worth of precincts reporting, so Hunter actually has the edge.

UPDATE 9:18 p.m.: Hunter is up by over 100 events. I'm going out on a limb and calling this race. Hunter will win (more votes than Gravel). You heard it here first.

The Hunter Who Cried Wolf

In an act of desperation, Duncan Hunter resorted to Aesop to get people to pay attention to him. In a presidential reenactment of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," Duncan Hunter—the 27-year congressman from California who is (sort of) running for president—held a press conference today to talk about "the future." The morbid press corps (guilty as charged) turned out for the presser, where he proceeded to say he was pissed off about not getting invited to the FOX debate. A candidate playing "gotcha" with the press. How poetic.

This following a bizarre appearance on MSNBC this morning in which he gloated about his one delegate haul in Wyoming—a primary that nobody cares about. Armed with one delegate, Hunter says he's doing better than Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Therefore he should have been allowed into the debate. Booyakasha! 

But this stunt means Hunter has now spent his withdrawal capital. CNN was the only cable network to carry the presser live, and you can be sure they won't be doing it again. The national press corps doesn't like being toyed with, and I bet they won't feel guilty if they don't come running next time Hunter wants to talk about "the future." Maybe Hunter thinks he can fight off the political wolves armed with his one puny delegate.

P.S.: No matter what we wrote on this matter, nothing would top the magnificent post Red State put together. Kudos.

Debate By Numbers

Using transcripts from CNN and the New York Times debate analyzer, I crunched some stats from last night's GOP debate.

• 3: Number of times Hillary Clinton was mentioned
• 4: Number of times Bill Clinton was mentioned
• 2: Number of times Mitt Romney mentioned health care
• 0: Number of times any other candidate mentioned health care
• 5: Number of times Rudy Giuliani said "Islamic"
• 3: Number of times any other candidate said "Islamic," "Islam," or "Muslim"
  
• 4: Number of times Duncan Hunter addressed Anderson Cooper as "Cooper." No other candidate followed suit.
• 2: Number of times the candidates mentioned President Bush
• 26: Number of times, according to CNN's transcript, the audience laughed
• 5: Number of times the audience laughed after watching a question from a YouTube user
  
• 7: Number of times the audience laughed after a Fred Thompson joke
• 4: Number of times the audience laughed after a Mike Huckabee joke
• 0: Number of times the audience laughed after Ron Paul or Duncan Hunter said something

Also, a breakdown of which candidates speak the fastest. Mitt Romney's mouth was a-flappin', while Fred Thompson, unsurprisingly, was the slowest talker.

If you'd like, feel free to compare the words-per-second statistics to the Democrats'.

Just Give Up

Is Duncan Hunter even trying any more? Examples A, B, and C:

• His home page has "60 second Daily Updates" that purport to be daily podcasts of what's happening in the Hunter campaign. The date above the play button changes every day, but the content does not. The feature hasn't been updated since October.
• The "Iowa Virtual Headquarters" page has a countdown timer that says it's counting down to the Iowa caucuses. Unfortunately, it's counting down to the wrong date. The Iowa GOP is holding its caucus on Jan. 3, not Jan. 15. Unsurprisingly, New Hampshire's countdown is also incorrect.
  
• The "Bloggers for Hunter" page is empty. As in, there are no bloggers who support Duncan Hunter. Don't worry, it's "Coming Soon !!"
  

Not to be harsh, but when you can't keep track of the primary calendar, it's time to wave the white flag.