Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * Now that Gov.-elect Jon Corzine (D) is leaving the Senate, the positioning to be his replacement is almost ridiculous. Howard Dean and Harry Reid want Corzine to appoint acting Gov. Richard Codey […]
There’s been some debate — or at a minimum, ambiguity — over whether the president fully supports Dick Cheney’s efforts to protect the CIA’s ability to torture detainees. This week, a State Department official described Cheney’s camp as a “shrinking island,” with key administration officials, including Condoleezza Rice and John Negroponte, opposing Cheney’s position. Even […]
So much for the Republican leadership’s clever ideas. To briefly recap, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert announced Tuesday that they wanted a formal congressional investigation into the leak to the Washington Post about “black sites,” the CIA’s secret prisons in Europe. The idea, apparently, was to put Dems on the […]
What do you know, Bush’s national support can get worse. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released Wednesday night, finds that all five of Bush’s job approval ratings — on overall job performance, the economy, foreign policy, terrorism and Iraq — are at all-time lows in the survey. In addition, the CIA leak scandal […]
Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, is helping to lead a House investigation into what happened before and after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. As part of his work, he’s asked the White House and a few cabinet agencies to provide materials so that lawmakers can better understand the […]
The connections between disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the Bush White House were, not too long ago, relatively weak. Abramoff had established far more meaningful ties to congressional Republicans, most notably Tom DeLay, but the Bush gang could take some solace in the fact that the administration had not been caught up in Abramoff’s […]
Republicans clearly had a bad day on Tuesday, with key defeats nationwide. This is when GOP spin doctors, who can put a positive face on almost anything, prove their worth. Or not. TNR’s Franklin Foer obtained a copy of the talking points distributed yesterday morning by the National Republican Congressional Committee. It was the usual […]
Scott McClellan was asked today how he’d respond to Dems’ arguments that yesterday’s election results show that the president is a drag on Republicans. McClellan said campaigns tend to hinge on state issues, not federal. “I’m sure [Democrats are] going to say a lot of things like that, but I think the facts say otherwise. […]
A recent CBS News poll asked Americans whether they consider the Plame scandal a serious matter. Despite the fact that the leak controversy didn’t generate many headlines during most of the two-year investigation, the public responded strongly — 86% said it’s important, while only 12% said it’s not important, making it the most serious scandal, […]
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which does excellent non-partisan work, has published its latest report on public opinion. There are a lot of interesting details in there — Bush’s approval rating is down to 36%, a plurality believes the WH lied about Iraq, Bush’s support among Republicans has steadily declined […]