Month: January 2008
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The WSJ’s postmodern scare quotes
Wall Street Journal editorial page fans such as myself have come to love their use of scare quotes, which is as incoherent as their ideas about economics. Their two favorite subjects for scare quoting are, naturally, tax cuts and torture. As I wrote last year, drawing on the seminal work of TNR’s Jon Chait and
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The jargon of “Juan McCain”
A commenter on an old post of mine just referred to John McCain as “Juan McCain.” The nickname, a nasty reference to his previous support for comprehensive immigration reform, turns out be all over conservative message boards. (It’s the McCain equivalent of “Barack Osama/Barack Hussein Osama”, which is still circulating — it was just used
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David Rohde on Fresh Air
One of my faculty mentors at Duke, David Rohde, is interviewed on today’s edition of Fresh Air: Delegates, superdelegates, penalized states with half their delegates — or none. This year’s political primaries are putting renewed focus on the delegate system, but what does it all mean? Political scientist David Rohde joins us to unravel the
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Giuliani on formatting McCain adjectives
Rudy Giuliani forgets the old writer’s adage “show, don’t tell” in his McCain endorsement speech: He’s a man of honor and integrity, and you can underline both ‘honor’ and ‘integrity.’ Can I italicize them too? Maybe put them in bold?
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The search for Giuliani defeat narratives
In the same way that journalists attribute general election defeats to various quirks of the candidates rather than, say, the state of the economy (see Dole, Bob), there’s currently a rush to “explain” Rudy Giuliani’s collapse. The New York Times offers this litany: As Mr. Giuliani ponders his political mortality, many advisers and political observers
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Will liberals embrace dishonesty post-Bush?
It makes me sad to see Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein — two of the best young liberal pundits out there — soft-pedaling the dishonesty of Hillary Clinton’s recent attacks on Barack Obama. On January 14, Yglesias wrote that “the idea that Clinton would use dishonest political tactics to beat the GOP is, in my
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Two-candidate dynamics in the GOP race
John McCain has won Florida. As a result, Rudy Giuliani apparently dropping out to endorse him (hurray!). Though Mike Huckabee seems to be staying in the race, it should become something of a two-man showdown between Mitt Romney and McCain heading into Super Tuesday. Under these circumstances, we would tend to expect conservative elites and
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SOTU “average” tax cut stat
As Matthew Yglesias notes, the State of the Union (which I skipped) includes yet another misleading “average” statistic about the tax cuts: Unless Congress acts, most of the tax relief we’ve delivered over the past seven years will be taken away. Some in Washington argue that letting tax relief expire is not a tax increase.
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The missing earmark caveat
Kudos to David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times, who included this disclaimer in his story on President Bush’s quixotic effort to scale back earmarks: As lawmakers know, earmarks, which make up less up than 1 percent of the federal budget, have incalculable political value. Congressional leaders award or withhold them to reward or punish
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Rudy Giuliani flames out
Sad but fitting: The Giuliani campaign chartered a 727 on Monday for a day of barnstorming on the eve of Tuesday’s big primary, but none of the rallies at airports in Sanford, Clearwater, Fort Myers or Fort Lauderdale drew even a hundred supporters. …And Mr. Giuliani — who as mayor once told a man who