When pressed on his differences with George W. Bush, John McCain now relies on a three-prong answer: McCain is more committed to cutting spending than Bush has been, McCain disapproved of the Rumsfeld strategy, and McCain cares more about the environment. All three struggle under scrutiny. McCain talks about spending, but comes up short when […]
A couple of months ago, Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and former chairman of the NRCC, told the WaPo, “The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they’d take it off the shelf.” GOP leaders probably didn’t care for the comparison, but they’ve been worried about […]
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: * A few more superdelegates fell off the fence over the last 48 hours or so. If my count is right (and I may have missed one or two), Barack Obama picked up […]
I think it was a couple of weeks ago when McCain aide Mark McKinnon, who said he’d step aside if Obama won the Democratic nomination, suggested the two presidential candidates are respectful and high-minded enough that they could travel across the country, holding un-moderated debates. As I understood it, McKinnon wasn’t making a serious proposal, […]
What’s the top message priority for Democrats hoping to win this year’s presidential election? When it comes to defining John McCain, it’s pretty obvious: he’d offer more of the same. On the key issues, McCain and George W. Bush share a script. McCain is aware of the dangers here — no one wants to be […]
When Indiana passed a voter ID law, it was ostensibly to protect the integrity of the voting process. What better way to prevent voter fraud than to require those participating in an election to produce identification? Was there any evidence of a voter-fraud scourge in Indiana? No. Would the law make it harder for “certain […]
Last week, after Barack Obama suggested that John McCain had “lost his bearings,” the McCain campaign responded with a lengthy memo that, among other things, went after campaign reporters for not favoring McCain enough. As Mark Salter insisted, Obama is “hopeful that the media will continue to form a protective barrier around him, declaring serious […]
Following up on an earlier item, John McCain had to accept the resignation of Doug Goodyear, the man he tapped to manage the Republican National Convention, after reports surfaced that Goodyear’s lobbying firm represented Burma’s brutal military junta. But Goodyear simply ran the firm. What about the specific lobbyist who actually worked on the junta’s […]
Given every metric, Barack Obama is obviously well positioned to win the Democratic presidential nomination. And yet, on Tuesday, he’s going to lose the West Virginia primary by a very large margin. A week later, he’s going to lose the Kentucky primary by a whole lot of percentage points, too. Polling is a little sketchy, […]
When it comes to analyzing the seriousness of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, Michael Sheehan seems like the kind of guy whose perspective should matter. He’s fought guerrillas in Central America as a U.S. Army Green Beret in 1980s; he was an NSC official under both H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; and he was […]