Month: August 2007
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Unity ’08: 2008 is like 1860
TNR’s Britt Peterson presents the right take on Unity ’08 — a third-party presidential candidate has no chance: Of course, Unity ’08’s coherence problem may be the least of their hurdles. As John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader can attest, the deck is stacked against third-party candidates. Getting on the ballot in all 50
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Ron Fournier’s advice to Barack Obama
It’s great to see Barack Obama reminding voters that he has more experience as an elected official than Hillary Clinton or John Edwards: On the campaign trail, Obama gently reminds voters that Clinton and Edwards are not so experienced: She is a second-term senator who has never run a government or business. Edwards served one
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White House using “Defeatocrat”?
The Guardian reports that Bush administration officials refer to anti-war Democrats as “Defeatocrats”: The speech was aimed primarily at what White House officials privately describe as the “Defeatocrats”, the Democratic congressmen trying to push Mr Bush into an early withdrawal. If true, it’s another indication of this administration’s poisonous attitude toward dissent. PS Maybe the
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Jon Chait on Bill Kristol’s intellectual thuggery
Jon Chait smacks down Bill Kristol’s anti-dissent agitprop in the latest issue of TNR (sub. req.): Kristol’s sensibility is perfectly summed up in one representative passage from a recent issue. The topic was The New Republic’s decision to publish an essay by Scott Beauchamp, an American soldier serving in Iraq, detailing some repugnant acts he
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Did Bush’s education push in 2000 work?
Ross Douthat picks up a potentially misleading Karl Rove talking point from Josh Green’s Atlantic story: As Josh Green notes, quoting Rove, “people who named education as their top issue voted for the Democrat over the Republican 76–16 percent in the 1996 presidential election, but just 52–44 in 2000.” The problem is that this change
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Bush’s “USA”-chanting “rally squads”
The Washington Post has a disturbing report today on the White House manual on how to deal with protesters during President Bush’s speeches. The worst part, I think, is this passage, which deals with how to counter those demonstrators who do get in: To counter any demonstrators who do get in, advance teams are told
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John McCain’s new, sh***y bus
John McCain’s new campaign manager has some straight talk about the stripped-down bus that is replacing the lavish Straight Talk Express they used earlier in the campaign: John McCain’s new steward of the Straight Talk Express, campaign manager Ricky Davis, says that he’s been uncovering old bills and invoices for extravagant purchases that just don’t
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Edwards draft scare tactics
It’s depressing to see the Edwards campaign sending out an email (PDF) with the subject line “Stop the Draft Before It Starts”: This is an obvious exaggeration of an offhand remark by a general (though Bonior does at least clarify that the “Pentagon is now denying” that a draft is being considered). Using the prospect
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The high cost of bipartisanship
Matthew Yglesias reminds us of the racial apartheid that made the bipartisanship of mid-20th century America possible: [I]t really is remarkable that for all the bellyaching about the decline of bipartisan behavior in DC there’s very little attention paid to the fact that there are actual reasons this has happened beyond Newt Gingrich being a
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1/2 Hour News Hour no more
I knew the reviews for Fox’s “1/2 Hour News Hour” were bad, but I didn’t know they were this bad: When the “1/2 Hour News Hour” made its debut in February, the weekly satire was panned by critics, gaining the unwelcome distinction of being the worst-rated program ever on MetaCritic.com. But it was well-received by