Part of me got my hopes up, just a little, a couple of weeks ago about the Iraq Study Group. I thought that maybe, just maybe, the White House was looking for a face-saving way to get out of Iraq, and that James Baker was going to come riding in to rescue him. “It’s not […]
Josh Marshall raised a good question over the weekend: “Is it just me or has George W. Bush checked out of the stumbling national crisis we know as ‘Iraq’?” [S]ince the election he seems to have disappeared from the conversation entirely. Like he’s just checked out. It’s not his thing anymore. […] Back when he […]
Plenty of polls can tell us who has a high approval rating, and plenty more can show which political figures can beat other political figures in hypothetical election match-ups, but I’ve always found Quinnipiac’s “National Thermometer” poll a bit more useful. The poll, released quarterly, measures what the public feels generally towards various leaders. The […]
The Republican Party, which used to dominate the region’s politics, has now officially lost New England. The transformation evolved fairly slowly, but this year, it became complete — of the 22 U.S. House seats spanning New England’s six states, Dems lead the GOP, 21 to 1. There are a variety of explanations for this, but […]
I noted over the weekend that the Los Angeles Times broke new media ground with regards to covering the war in Iraq: the paper decided to stop playing semantics games and call the conflict a “[tag]civil war[/tag].” Today, NBC did the same thing. From this morning’s MSNBC broadcast: “The news from Iraq is becoming grimmer […]
Any top 100 list is intended to be a conversation piece. It’s an entirely subjective exercise to name the top 100 best movies, or football teams, or albums, so when some magazine pulls a list together, it’s supposed to spur debate. With this in mind, The Atlantic has a cover story ranking the top 100 […]
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: * While the House race in Florida’s 13th remains unresolved, Rep. [tag]Katherine Harris[/tag] (R), who gave up the seat to run for the Senate, has a plan. Roll Call reported today that if […]
Both the NYT and the WaPo have major articles today on how Bush might try to salvage what’s left of his presidency. As Jim Rutenberg sees it, some kind of triangulation strategy is under consideration. Senior Republican staff members in Congress have voiced the fear that Mr. Bush will now put his legacy over the […]
We’ve had some fun this year taking note of the president’s alleged reading habits, his alleged book-reading contest with Karl Rove, and his demonstrably ridiculous summer reading list, which included some French existentialism. George W. Bush is many things, but “bookworm” isn’t on the list. That won’t stop him and his supporters, however, from creating […]
I mentioned on Friday that congressional Dems are getting ready to start flexing their oversight muscles in 2007, and a fair amount of their attention will be directed at a certain Vice President’s office. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, noted over the weekend that […]