I suppose it was bound to raise eyebrows when, in the midst of the YearlyKos convention, John Edwards said, “We’re about to enter the seventh year of this phony war…and we’re losing.” What’s more, Fox News is bound to play up remarks from Barack Obama, who noted that a black male in Detroit is more […]
This morning’s Republican presidential candidate debate in Iowa was a relatively low-key affair, but this was one of the more unusual exchanges of the event. Following a question about ending the war in Iraq: “Just come home,” dissented Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the lone advocate of a quick troop withdrawal on a presidential campaign debate […]
From Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ interview on “Meet the Press” this morning: Russert: You mentioned that we misunderestimated [sic] some of the divisions between the factions in the [Iraqi] government, the Shiites and the Sunnis. Mr. Secretary, for Americans watching today, many are saying to themselves, “The administration was wrong about weapons of mass destruction, […]
Caroline Fredrickson, the Washington legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the other day that Democrats “have a Pavlovian reaction: Whenever the president says the word ‘terrorism,’ they roll over and play dead.” I’m beginning to think she has a point. Under pressure from President Bush, the House gave final approval Saturday to […]
I may not have made it to Chicago this year, but I’ve learned a few things from the tubes about what the Democratic presidential candidates were up to at YearlyKos: * Hillary Clinton’s defense of accepting contributions from lobbyists was probably the day’s most controversial comment. She seemed to get to the right answer, but […]
Occasionally, presidential candidates are going to embrace bad, unpopular ideas. That’s to be expected, I suppose; no candidate is going to get every issue exactly right. But Bill Richardson’s support for a Balanced Budget Amendment is just bizarre. He not only supports a bad policy, but he brags about it, as if he assumes others […]
A few weeks ago, Gallup conducted a national poll and found that three out of four Republicans (74%) believe Rudy Giuliani would make an “acceptable” GOP presidential nominee. None of the other Republican hopefuls came close. The conventional wisdom suggested that these results, mirrored in other polls, spoke to a key development in Republican politics. […]
We’ve known for quite a while that the political affairs office at the White House conducted partisan, political briefings, despite the Hatch Act’s prohibitions on politicking in government buildings with government employees. In April, we learned there were at least 20 private briefings on GOP electoral prospects before last November’s elections, for senior officials in […]
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) sat down this week with Salon’s Walter Shapiro, which was a bit of a surprise, given that the magazine and the senator don’t agree on too much right now. Most of Lieberman’s comments were about what you’d expect, but one exchange stood out. JL: I worry that whoever gets the Democratic […]
It’s disappointing, but not surprising. After the president scuttled a compromise between Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and congressional Democrats, Senate Dems did what many expected they would do: they caved. The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government’s terrorist surveillance laws, approving […]