Politics | Barack Obama Sizing Up the Seismic Shifts Journal's Peggy Noonan calls this year's races confounding and exciting By John Johnson Posted Feb 1, 2008 6:52 PM CST Copied John McCain speaks at a campaign rally in Chesterfield, Mo., Friday, Feb. 1, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (Associated Press) Like politics? If so, "you are waking up each morning with a spring in your step" because of this year's political hayride, Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal. The conservative essayist sizes up the shifts—Democrats rebelling against the Clintons; Republicans thumbing their noses at conservative leadership—and declares it "the most exciting and confounding election cycle of my lifetime." Noonan lauds the "principled" courage of Ted Kennedy for backing Barack Obama and thus dissing the Clintons. "All parties, all movements, need men and women who will come forward every decade or so to name tendencies within that are abusive or destructive." As for the GOP, conservative honchos prefer Mitt Romney over John McCain—but "Republicans on the ground" believe McCain "earned it." Read These Next Details trickle out on 2 more victims of the Minneapolis shooting. Isolated tribe members show up in an unexpected place. The Air Force has changed its tune on Ashli Babbitt. Trump fires regulator before vote on rail merger. Report an error