This week, we’ve learned the greatest enemy the Republicans can think of is Joseph Wilson. The GOP talking points issued earlier this week included six principal arguments, literally all of which sought to undermine Wilson’s credibility. Now, however, it seems the right-wing machine is shifting gears towards a new enemy: Time’s Matt Cooper. From a […]
For reasons that I’ve never fully understood, the president has excelled in recent years as someone people trust. Even when voters don’t agree with him on an issue, the idea goes, Bush is at least credible and consistent. A “say what you mean, mean what you say” type. This has never made any sense, but […]
One interesting part of the Rove defense strategy is its similarity to the approach Rove used during the presidential election: Play to the base. When it was Bush on the campaign trail, that meant ignoring outreach to anyone who wasn’t a Republican, creating a partisan bubble around the president, and rallying the hard-core sycophants. The […]
Arnold Schwarzenegger has picked enough fights and been just incompetent enough to drive his approval ratings down and dim his re-election chances, but it’s recklessness like this that makes one wonder if he’s completely lost his mind. Two days before he was sworn into office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted a consulting job paying an estimated […]
Even though the White House refuses to comment publicly on the Plame scandal and Karl Rove’s involvement in it, the White House press briefings continue to offer some interesting comments. Yesterday, for example, Scott McClellan started feeling sorry for himself. Q: The Washington Times editorial page this morning published a cartoon comparing White House correspondents […]
Newt Gingrich may not be particularly athletic, but you, too, can watch with amazement as he moves goal posts while barely lifting a finger. June 2004: Q: Given — given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney’s discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months […]
Now here’s a name we haven’t heard for a while: Ari Fleischer. Bloomberg reported today (via Froomkin, Holden, Atrios) that our old friend Fleischer may play a role in the Plame scandal as well. Rove is not the only potential subject for Fitzgerald’s probe…. People familiar with the inquiry say Fitzgerald also is reviewing testimony […]
Let’s pause for a moment to take stock of the political landscape as it related to the Plame scandal. Dems on the Hill are expressing outrage and demanding hearings, the White House press corps is berating the press secretary during daily briefings, there are front-page articles running in the major dailies, Karl Rove is a […]
The fact that right-wing critics are leaping to Karl Rove’s defense is not surprising. The lengths to which they’re going to make things up is. The two myths I’ve seen the most often are the idea that Valerie Plame was not really an undercover CIA agent and that identifying Plame is legally permissible so long […]
There’s plenty of speculation about possible Supreme Court nominees and who various constituencies would like to see Bush nominate. But to get a sense of the kind of jurist the far-right GOP base is looking for, consider this: an hour ago, Alan Keyes, Howard Phillips, Stephen Peroutka, and other right-wing activists held a news conference […]