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 […]
Long-time readers know that I take a certain amount of pleasure in mocking Florida, where I was born and raised. There’s just something … unique about it. Take, for example, a Tampa-area school firing a substitute teacher for doing a magic trick for his students. The telephone call that spelled the end of Jim Piculas’ […]
It sure would make political attacks easier if we could take interviews from people we don’t like, rearrange their words to make them say what we want to hear, and then attack them for it. Sure, it would be deceptive and unethical, but just think how much more efficient smear campaigns could be. Why wait […]
The Republican establishment was surprised this week when John McCain passed over Paul Manafort as his national convention manager, instead tapping Doug Goodyear, CEO of the Washington-based DCI Group lobbying/consulting firm. It was part of a disconcerting pattern — McCain rails against the influence of powerful corporate lobbyists, but surrounds himself with nothing but powerful […]
Shortly before the Republican South Carolina primary in 2000, John McCain and George W. Bush got into a rather heated exchange at a debate over abortion and the GOP platform. McCain caught Bush in an uncomfortable contradiction — the then-Texas governor opposed abortion rights, supported an exception for rape, incest, and a woman’s health, but […]
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) sat down the WSJ’s James Freeman this week, and noted, after more than a year of record-breaking obstructionism, he’s rather pleased with himself. (thanks to V.S. for the tip) “When I woke up after the election in November 2006,” Mr. McConnell says, “I realized I was going to be […]
Last night, at an Obama town-hall event in Oregon, Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-Ore.) was rather candid in his criticism of John McCain, and broached a subject we generally hear very little about. DeFazio, an Oregon superdelegate who endorsed Obama today and introduced him at the event, went on an extended critique of McCain, saying voters […]
John McCain appeared on The Daily Show this week, and Jon Stewart raised a point that conservatives generally don’t want to hear. “Don’t you think, these past few years, in terms of a recruiting tool for bin Laden and al Qaeda, I mean, let’s say al Qaeda is trying to fire up their base,” Stewart […]