Brendan Nyhan

Month: February 2007

  • Ari Fleischer spins from the witness box

    For those of you who haven’t seen it, Ari Fleischer’s testimony in the Scooter Libby case is hilarious. As context, start with Jonathan Chait’s classic account of Fleischer’s tactics: [W]hat Fleischer does, for the most part, is not really spin. It’s a system of disinformation–blunter, more aggressive, and, in its own way, more impressive than

    read more

  • The latest hype of third parties and “right-left synthesis”

    Shorter New America Foundation event: “Will A New Right-Left Synthesis Transform American Politics?”. Answer: No. In related news, conservative direct mail guru Richard Viguerie is hyping a third party challenge to Rudy Giuliani if he is the Republican nominee, though Viguerie warns that voting for a third-party candidate would tip the election to the Democrats.

    read more

  • Kyl and Cornyn attack dissent in resolution debate

    During the debate over President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq, two Republican senators are the latest members of their party to suggest that dissent encourages the enemy and hurts the troops. John Cornyn said, “To offer nonbinding resolutions which encourage our enemies and undermine our allies and deflate the morale of our

    read more

  • The lurid Hillary fantasies of Dick Morris

    According to Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff, former Clinton strategist turned professional Clinton hater Dick Morris, who is working on an anti-Hillary documentary, is already making bizarre claims about what she’ll do as president: Morris believes that Hillary’s presidency will be dominated by a left-wing social and domestic agenda, and a Nixon-like assault on her political

    read more

  • Tracking the Obama madrassa smear

    Media Matters has a nice piece up tracking the dissemination of the Obama madrassa smear. As we showed at Spinsanity with our coverage of the the Ken Lay/Lincoln Bedroom myth and the NEA/9-11 myth, these things are hard to stop once they start spreading. PS You know a hit piece on a black liberal is

    read more