Month: November 2006
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Richard Cohen: Violence is therapeutic
Via Atrios (can’t find the link), the pathologies of the Washington pundit class in one paragraph — Richard Cohen admits he supported the war in Iraq because he thought “the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic”: On the contrary, I thought. We are a good country, attempting to do a good thing. In a
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Third party fantasia watch: Mark Schmitt
Writing on Tapped, Mark Schmitt is the latest pundit to succumb to pointless third-party speculation, writing that it’s “quite obvious” that McCain and Lieberman will mount a third-party presidential campaign: It’s tempting to make fun of Marshall Wittmann’s newest guise, as Lieberman’s communications director, as if it were just another twist in one of the
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Thanksgiving break
I’m currently visiting family in California, so posts are going to be intermittent until next week…
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Krauthammer’s revisionism on Iraq
Andrew Sullivan catches the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer dissembling about the motivations for the Iraq war in his latest column, where he writes: Our objectives in Iraq were twofold and always simple: Depose Saddam Hussein and replace his murderous regime with a self-sustaining, democratic government. As Sullivan notes, however, something is missing from this list:
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David Rohde: The parties are back
One of my mentors at Duke, David Rohde, has an eloquent op-ed in the New York Times about the resurgence of the two major parties. Here’s how it begins: THE midterm elections have been widely viewed as a sudden change of direction, with Democrats seizing the wheel from Republicans. While that may be true, the
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Evan Thomas reads President Bush’s mind
I’ve written before about the problems with journalistic mind–reading and story-telling “analysis” about the president’s visual appearance. Via a journalist to remain nameless, here’s an especially egregious example of both from Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: At his post-election press conference, the president looked like a base runner trapped in a rundown, unable to go forward or
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Adam Putnam on “redneck” turnout
According to the Hotline On Call blog, Rep. Adam Putnam, a candidate for Republican conference chair in the House, cited a lack of turnout among “white rednecks who go to church on Sunday” as one of the factors contributing to the party’s midterm losses: “White rednecks” who “didn’t show up to vote for us” partly
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When regional summits attack
For an administration that micromanages its photo opportunities, going to Vietnam right now has to hurt: Thirty-eight years later, at age 60, Mr. Bush finally arrived in Vietnam Friday morning. His motorcade sped into the city past roads that Americans once bombed, at the start of a 72-hour visit linked to an annual Asian summit
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The Murtha/Hastings bribery double whammy
It’s increasingly clear that the Hoyer-Murtha leadership race is hurting the Democrats by diverting attention from the party’s election victories and creating strife within the caucus. But I think most observers still haven’t grasped just how damaging it will be to the party if John Murtha is chosen as majority leader and Alcee Hastings is
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David Sirota gets carried away
Liberal hubris alert! David Sirota, a disreputable lefty pundit, gets carried away in an online column for The Nation, suggesting that it was “a mandate election” that may be known as “the Great Democratic Realignment”: There is one more election that will happen in this, the year that history may one day call the Great