Month: June 2007
-
Ailes smears Democratic candidates
Via Josh Marshall, Fox News head Roger Ailes suggested that Democratic presidential candidates dodging his network’s debate are going to be afraid of Al Qaeda: And he had some choice words for Democratic candidates who have decided not to debate on Fox. “The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face Al Qaeda,” said Mr. Ailes.
-
Maureen Dowd: Mind-reader
Once again, Maureen Dowd is allowed to pretend she’s omniscient in the pages of the New York Times (faux mind-reading in italics): When Hillary admitted that she had not read the National Intelligence Estimate before voting to authorize the president to go to war, Senator Obama had a clear shot. The woman who always does
-
Which general is Fred Thompson like?
Recently, bloggers have been comparing the movement to draft Fred Thompson to the Wesley Clark boomlet in ’04. For instance, TNR’s Jason Zengerle writes that “the highpoint of his campaign will be the day he gets in the race, because once he’s a serious candidate–and not just the fevered daydream of a dissatisfied base–voters will
-
Yglesias sours on debate pap
Matthew Yglesias is asymptotically approaching my position on debate commentary (short version: it’s a pointless exercise that forces you to act like a McLaughlin Group panelist). After the Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire, he suggested that debates don’t actually change anyone’s mind and disavowed “going meta or just doing amateur theater criticism”: I’m trying
-
Kaus: Bush’s immigration bill is like Iraq
I’m not a huge fan of the “counter-intuitive” style that Slate’s Mickey Kaus usually practices, but this LA Times op-ed about similarities between President Bush’s approach to the issues of Iraq and immigration is surprisingly convincing: Mainstream editorialists like to praise President Bush’s immigration initiative as an expression of his pragmatic, bipartisan, “compassionate conservative” side,
-
Zakaria and DeLong on the GOP
Brad DeLong quotes Fareed Zakaria’s depressing review of the state of the GOP presidential race: The presidential campaign could have provided the opportunity for a national discussion of the new world we live in. So far, on the Republican side, it has turned into an exercise in chest-thumping. Whipping up hysteria requires magnifying the foe.
-
Pete DuPont bangs the supply-side drum
There appears to be some sort of unwritten rule that the Wall Street Journal has to publish supply-side nonsense like this every week or two: So what are the facts? Did the tax rate reductions of the Bush administration spur or diminish economic growth? Grow or diminish federal tax revenues? Were they good or bad
-
Why I have no comment on the debate
A reader asked recently why I haven’t blogged about the presidential debates. One reason is that they don’t matter very much at this point, so I have a hard time forcing myself to sit through them. In general, though, I frequently don’t have anything interesting or new to say about debates, which are over-analyzed to
-
The problem with new ideas, part 2
The New Republic’s Jon Chait wrote an excellent piece last year titled “The Case Against New Ideas,” which explodes a series of myths about the supposed power of new ideas to shape political outcomes. (See also my post on new ideas and the “gridlock zone.”) The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein now offers a more mundane
-
GOP continues to link Iraq to 9/11
Via Josh Marshall, the Boston Globe reports that Republican presidential candidates are following in President Bush’s footsteps by implying links between Iraq and 9/11: In defending the Iraq war, leading Republican presidential contenders are increasingly echoing words and phrases used by President Bush in the run-up to the war that reinforce the misleading impression that