In light of some of Barack Obama’s religiously-based appeals, we talked a bit yesterday about where the line is, and whether the senator has a reasonable defense (he’s the target of a coordinated smear campaign) to justify more religious rhetoric than Democrats are accustomed to hearing. If the comments section and reader emails are any […]
I suspect all politicians, to some extent, are concerned with their personal appearance, but this example, from Texas’ 22nd, is simply hilarious. Some politicians talk about cutting the fat, but this one was serious. Congressional candidate Dean Hrbacek appears slimmer than usual in a new campaign brochure because a photo of his head was affixed […]
Over the last 10 or so days, supporters of the administration’s Iraq policy have insisted, repeatedly, that Iraq’s new “de-Baathification” law is proof of long-awaited political progress. John McCain, who’s been wrong about every aspect of the war for six years, said the law is evidence that “we’re succeeding politically.” Fred Kagan, an architect of […]
Two weeks ago, Rudy Giuliani’s campaign was humiliated when we learned that it was so broke, senior campaign aides would not get paid for the month of January. Now, Giuliani isn’t the only one suffering from serious financial difficulties. Some of Mike Huckabee’s top advisers are working without pay and some field directors have been […]
The notion that the Bush White House took the nation to war under false pretenses is not exactly a new concept. I suspect most of us can rattle, off the top of our heads, a variety of jaw-dropping whoppers that the president and his team told about Iraq before we invaded nearly five years ago. […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Market watching today, as you might imagine, was not for the faint of heart: “Stocks ended lower, but off the worst levels of the session as worries about a global economic slowdown eased and investors continued to sort through the implications of the Fed’s emergency interest-rate cut. The Dow […]
As soon as “six months” became a ridiculous cliche overused by supporters of Bush’s Iraq policy, I’d hoped we’d have a moratorium on the phrase. No one should ever be able to say, “We need six more months” in relation to the war again, without being laughed at. Too harsh? Tell you what, take a […]
TNR’s Brad Plumer had a line this afternoon that immediately made me chuckle. His headline read, “Does a Financial Crisis Help Romney?” and Plumer said: Yeah, I know, this post plays into all the worst stereotypes about political journalists (there’s a market meltdown happening, and we just want to talk about the horse race…). The […]
I have a small confession: I really believed that Fred Thompson would be a major force in the presidential campaign. When Thompson was still in the “testing the waters” phase, he was generating quite a bit of excitement, while the rest of the GOP field was faltering. While each of the major GOP players had […]
One need not look too hard to find a “moderate” pundit projecting his or her own desire for a third-party presidential campaign onto the public. This became especially fashionable a couple of weeks ago, when NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a bipartisan group of allies chatted in Oklahoma about some kind of independent bid. (Unity08 […]