Month: January 2008
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An Obama ceiling in white support?
The pundits are trying to figure out if or when John Edwards will drop out of the Democratic race and which candidate would benefit if he did so. Given his apparent leanings toward Obama, one reason for Edwards to stay in, as the New York Times notes today, is that he splits the white vote
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Why Tom Brokaw makes the big bucks
Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press this morning: I’ve just gotten back from Florida. Rudy Giuliani’s ads on the air don’t mention terrorism. He’s the man who reduced the corporate taxes in the city of New York, created new jobs, reduced crime and also took a lot of people off the welfare rolls. Rudy’s new
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Obama: I actually have a weakness
This riff by Barack Obama on the Democratic debate in Nevada is great stuff: But there’s nothing subtle about Las Vegas. With a high-stakes match on the line Saturday, Obama embraced local traditions by debuting a biting political standup routine Thursday night that mocked his rival. Obama began by recalling a moment in Tuesday night’s
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The racist/panderer distinction
Kevin Drum quotes from the Reason article delving further into Ron Paul’s ugly past: Ron Paul may not be a racist, but he became complicit in a strategy of pandering to racists — and taking “moral responsibility” for that now means more than just uttering the phrase. It means openly grappling with his own past
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Draft Bloomberg has 817 signatures!
As expected, two co-founders of the Unity ’08 debacle launched another ill-fated movement yesterday — a committee to draft Michael Bloomberg, the one man who can purchase the third party infrastructure they failed to create, into the presidential race. And it’s already setting the world on fire — 817 signatures on their petition so far!
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Ron Paul’s defense falls apart
TNR’s Jamie Kirchik summarizes the collapse of elite support for Ron Paul in the wake of his story documenting the racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and conspiratorial content contained in decades of newsletters put out under Paul’s name. Most devastating to Paul, though, is this post from Matt Welch, the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine (the flagship libertarian
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Norman Podhoretz: “What’s a Kurd, anyway?”
Another reason to be thankful for the collapse of Rudy Giuliani’s potentially disastrous presidential campaign: Nor were neoconservative ideologues—who had the most-elaborate visions of a liberal, democratic Iraq—interested in the Kurdish cause, or even particularly knowledgeable about its history. Just before the “Mission Accomplished” phase of the war, I spoke about Kurdistan to an audience
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The missing Brooks correction
In his column yesterday, David Brooks apparently confused Ward Churchill (the controversial leftist professor) and Ward Connerly (the African American critic of affirmative action) in his column yesterday. The mistake has been fixed in the online version, but oddly there’s no disclosure of the correction. Brooks’s mistake comes only days after Bill Kristol led off
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Rudy Giuliani: Polarizing and unpopular
The new ABC News/Washington Post poll reveals that support for Rudy Giuliani’s potentially disastrous presidential campaign is collapsing. He’s not even well-liked any more, which destroys any rationale for why Republicans should accept his heterodox social views: Giuliani for the first time has slipped under 50 percent favorability among all adults, down steeply from a
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George W. Bush: Obsessed with exercise
How obsessed is President Bush with people’s exercise habits? Bush, who prides himself on his ability to judge character, seems to use exercise as a proxy for discipline, complaining about former economic aid Lawrence Lindsey’s failure to exercise before firing him and asking possible Supreme Court nominee J. Harvie Wilkinson III about his workout habits.