To date, the traditional media’s coverage of the Democratic presidential candidates has been discouraging, to put it mildly. CNN ran a segment comparing Obama to Ahmadinejad because the senator wasn’t wearing a tie in New Hampshire. The Washington Post ran a bizarre front-page story about John Edwards selling his house. Reports about Hillary Clinton have […]
Monday’s Mini-Report
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Here’s an unexpected twist from House Minority Leader John Boehner: “[Boehner] and other key House Republican leaders who support the president’s proposal for a surge, will demand that the president report every 30 days to Congress the progress that the Iraqi government and the administration is making in the […]
Luntz tells Dems to be nice
GOP pollster Frank Luntz has been advising conservative Republicans for years on how to exploit language to smear Dems and win elections. It was Luntz, for example, who teamed up with Newt Gingrich to shape the Contract with America in 1994. And now, Luntz has taken to the pages of the Huffington Post to offer […]
Hewitt asks, ‘Can the Republicans Still be Trusted?’
We’ve noted several times of late that the Republican coalition, particularly in Washington, is slowly splintering over the war in Iraq. Particularly those who are concerned about their short-term futures are suddenly discovering that standing with Bush is a losing proposition. Whereas the president demanded and could depend on unflinching support for his policies from […]
Stem-cell debate heating back up (again)
After the president used his first-ever veto to block federal funding on stem-cell research, the issue lost some of its political saliency. Nevertheless, the broader debate remains as important as ever — the public approved several statewide measures on the research, Dems included funding as part of their 100 Hour agenda, and polls continue to […]
The third-deadliest day since the war in Iraq began
Readers no doubt heard about the series of attacks in Iraq over the weekend that led to 27 U.S. deaths on Saturday, the third-deadliest day for United States forces since the war here began nearly four years ago. But if you haven’t seen the details about how the attacks unfolded, they’re worth reading. New details […]
If he’s lost John Warner….
In October, then-Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) said, “In two or three months, if this thing hasn’t come to fruition and if this level of violence is not under control … I think it’s the responsibility of our government, internally, to determine: Is there a change of course that we should take? […]
Monday’s political round-up
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: * Though the news was easily overshadowed by Sen. Clinton’s announcement, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) announced over the weekend that he will seek the GOP presidential nomination. It sounded as if James Dobson […]
So much for not passing problems onto the next president
The president sat down for a lengthy interview with USA Today’s White House reporter David Jackson, the transcript of which was published today, which covered some pretty familiar ground. It was interesting, however, to see that the president has no expectations about leaving Iraq anytime soom. Q: Now I’ve often heard you say during the […]
‘The dog ate my national intelligence estimate’
As Slate’s Fred Kaplan explained a while back, a [tag]National Intelligence Estimate[/tag] ([tag]NIE[/tag]) “is not an ordinary report. It marks the one occasion when the Central Intelligence Agency warrants its name, acting as a central entity that pulls together the assessments of all the myriad intelligence departments, noting where they agree and where they differ.” […]