December: “I must tell you, I’m sleeping a lot better than people would assume,” [the president] said. This morning: NBC: Do you know the American people are suffering? Laura Bush: Oh, I know that very much. And believe me, no one sufferers more than their president and I do when we watch this. And certainly […]
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: * Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will officially launch his presidential campaign in New Hampshire today, under a cloud of questions surrounding his struggling effort. On the eve of the announcement, McCain fired his […]
David Ignatius has an interesting WaPo op-ed today on the Republican establishment unraveling due to the president’s failed leadership. I think Ignatius identifies the right problem, but recommends the wrong remedy. I spoke with a half-dozen prominent GOP operatives this past week, most of them high-level officials in the Reagan and Bush I and Bush […]
As far as corruption and criminal investigations go, Republicans haven’t had a good month. * FBI agents raided Rep. John Doolittle’s (R-Calif.) home, forcing him to step down from his seat on the House Appropriations Committee. * FBI agents also raided Rep. Rick Renzi’s (R-Ariz.) family business, forcing him to resign his committee assignments. * […]
It’s early, but Rudy Giuliani already seems to be getting a little desperate. He’s slipping in the polls, the religious right is organizing against him, he can’t talk about his domestic policy beliefs without infuriating the very GOP voters he needs to win, he’s burdened by a scandalous personal history that keeps bubbling to the […]
Yesterday, we talked about the Office of Special Counsel launching a broad investigation into Karl Rove’s political activities, with particular attention on the prosecutor purge, RNC emails, and fairly obvious Hatch Act violations in which Rove’s office politicized various federal agencies. “We will take the evidence where it leads us,” Scott Bloch, head of the […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. (This one’s a little longer than usual. Sorry; busy day.) * AP: “An Army Ranger who was with Pat Tillman when the former football star died by friendly fire said Tuesday he was told by a higher-up to conceal that information from Tillman’s brother. ‘I was ordered not to tell […]
Jonah Goldberg devotes his LA Times column today to a subject near and dear to my heart: the uninformed electorate. In this case, Goldberg acknowledges that most Americans express concern about the prosecutor purge scandal, but he makes an intellectually consistent case — public opinion doesn’t matter because people don’t know what they’re talking about. […]
Tom DeLay thinks Democrats’ criticism of the war borders, literally, on treason. In an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial board yesterday, former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) of “getting very, very close to treason” by opposing the war in Iraq. When a […]
According to a Republican with close ties to the White House, Bush and Gonzales are in denial about getting a new Attorney General. “They’re the only two people on the planet Earth who don’t see it.” And yet, there’s a small problem: Gonzales is still there. Slate recently created a “Gonzo-meter” to gauge the likelihood […]