Month: December 2007
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Inappropriate headline alert
Who decided it was a good idea to headline Howard Kurtz’s online Washington Post column “Huckabee Becomes a Big Fat Target” yesterday?
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The emerging anti-Huckabee backlash
Not very long ago, Huckabee was the Republican underdog that Democrats liked — the Bobos in Paradise-era David Brooks of the GOP primaries. He seemed like a nice guy, he was funny, he was something of a populist on economic issues, he refused to demagogue illegal immigration as much as the other candidates, etc. In
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The argument for actual filibusters
Apparently many House Democrats want to bring back old-school filibusters: Mr. Yarmuth said that he and many other House Democrats wanted their Senate colleagues to force Republicans to spend hours filibustering various bills, to illustrate for constituents why legislation is stalling. I’ve never understood this argument, which is popular among many liberals: (a) After the
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Breaking down Russert’s Giuliani interview
Tim Russert’s interview with Rudy Giuliani on “Meet the Press” is a perfect reflection of the scandal-driven priorities of the Washington press corps. Guiliani is a top presidential candidate with little knowledge of or experience in foreign policy. Norman Podhoretz, one of his advisers, wants to bomb Iran and thinks Iraq’s WMD are in Syria.
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Rudy on irresponsible people with nukes
An ironic Rudy statement from today’s Meet the Press (my emphasis): GIULIANI: …I don’t think the military option is the thing that we want. I mean, that isn’t the thing that we, we, we want to get to if we don’t have to. Again, we would only get to it if it was a last
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Rudy on Reagan and hostages
Despite my issues with the New York Times ad watch articles, yesterday’s installment on Rudy’s Reagan ad is pretty amusing. Rudy: I remember back to the 1970s and the early 1980s. Iranian mullahs took American hostages, and they held the American hostages for 444 days. And they released the American hostages in one hour, and
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The eloquence of Rick Santorum
During a speech last night here at Duke, Rick Santorum called for a war against radical Islam but in the process made the English majors cry: “Maybe [Islamic jihad] is a gathering storm that is a little shower, but the consequences of this could make World War II seem like a walk in the park.”
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Hillary polarization and why it matters
Ezra Klein objects to a John Sides post showing that Democrats and Republicans have the most divergent favorability ratings on Hillary: John Sides’ effort to quantify how polarizing the various candidates are is interesting but, ultimately, quite flawed. “Polarization” is not a quality intrinsic to the various candidates… Rather, candidates become polarizing as the press,
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Dan Bartlett: Media not biased
In a Texas Monthly interview, former White House adviser Dan Bartlett admits that Washington reporters are generally driven by professional incentives, not ideology: TM: Do you think the press corps is responsible for putting that word out—that the president was lying [about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq]? BARTLETT: I don’t think they’re purposely doing
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Mind-reading at Bush news conference
When you’re a journalist and therefore not an expert on anything substantive, attempt to read the President’s mind based on his body language — it’s swami time! Q Thank you, Mr. President. I may want to apologize in advance because — THE PRESIDENT: Please do. Q — I can’t help but read your body language