It makes perfect sense that the McCain campaign would make at least cursory efforts to reach out to Hillary Clinton’s most ardent supporters. John McCain does, after all, have very little to lose. There are some lingering hard feelings after the longest and closest Democratic presidential primary ever, and even though the intra-party factions agree […]
Bringing a gun to a knife fight
What Barack Obama said: He warned that the general election campaign could get ugly. “They’re going to try to scare people. They’re going to try to say that ‘that Obama is a scary guy,’” he said. A donor yelled out a deep accented “Don’t give in!” “I won’t but that sounded pretty scary. You’re a […]
Why putting a woman on the ticket may raise the ire of Clinton supporters
At first blush, this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Many of Hillary Clinton’s supporters were women, many of whom were excited by the prospect of having a woman head a major-party presidential ticket for the first time. Clinton, of course, came up just short of her goal. Now, however, it appears that […]
McCain’s lobbyists continue to cause him headaches
A couple of weeks ago, the McCain campaign had to get rid of two top officials — including the man McCain tapped to manage the Republican National Convention, because they were both lobbyists tied to Burma’s brutal military junta. We learned at the time that McCain passed over a different lobbyist for the convention post […]
Giuliani wants to help GOP candidates — for a price
It’s routine for high-profile political figures to appear at fundraisers on behalf of congressional candidates nationwide. It tends to be pretty beneficial for everyone — the candidate benefits (he/she gets money and the credibility that comes with the association) and the VIP benefits (he/she helps the party, boosts his/her visibility, and knows that the candidate […]
McCain and his campaign really should learn more about ‘a Google’
This week, John McCain tacitly conceded his campaign’s shortcomings as they relate to research. It was, after all, the excuse they used when McCain cozied up to radical TV preacher John Hagee and Rod Parsley. We pursued them for a year, the campaign said, but we didn’t know anything about them. So, while talking about […]
This Week in God
Last week, The God Machine offered a story about religious activists, hoping to undermine confidence in modern biology by encouraging school districts to introduce “strengths and weaknesses” language into curriculum standards. This way, the argument goes, teachers wouldn’t literally be teaching creationism, they’d just be teaching why creationists don’t like evolutionary biology. This week, we […]
McCain ‘promises’ to get bin Laden — with ‘people who can swim in the water’
I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a presidential candidate who tries this hard not to be taken seriously. “I will look you in the eye and promise you that I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice,” McCain said in response to a direct question from one of the 2,000 people […]
The decline and fall of the Southern Baptists?
Guest Post by Morbo The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the largest Protestant denomination in America, claiming 16 million members. Thankfully, that number may be starting to go down. The Washington Post reported: The number of people baptized in Southern Baptist churches fell for the third straight year last year to the lowest level in […]
An Obama landside?: Let’s not get carried away
Guest Post by Morbo Like many of you, I’m quite excited by Barack Obama’s candidacy. It isn’t just the historic nature of it. There’s a feeling of something special about this campaign, like we truly might be on the verge of a defining moment of American politics. I laughingly call this sense of being carried […]