Month: September 2008
-
Adam Nagourney reads minds
Josh Marshall flags another example of a political reporter pretending to read people’s minds — here’s what Adam Nagourney of the New York Times wrote about the bogus “lipstick” controversy (more on that soon): Here in Lebanon today, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois also made his own lipstick allusion, drawing on a very old aphorism
-
Frum cracks the inequality divide
I’d have to see a lot more research before I was convinced by David Frum’s argument that high inequality leads to more Democratic voting. What’s important about the article, though, is that he presents a political rationale and a substantive argument for Republicans to take inequality seriously: In short, the trend to inequality is real,
-
David Brooks on McCain & “systemic change”
I have no idea what David Brooks means when he calls the Obama campaign the “champion of policy change” and the McCain’s campaign “the champion of systemic change”: Now the campaign has become a battle between two different definitions of change. The Obama camp has become the champion of policy change — after eight years
-
Reassessing the GOP’s base strategy
The meme late last week was that Sarah Palin’s speech was an appeal to the Republican base that wouldn’t play well with independent and crossover voters (see: James Fallows, Matthew Yglesias, Mike Murphy, Josh Marshall). In a Democratic year, several of them argued, the GOP’s traditional anti-elite rhetoric won’t work. That may yet prove to
-
Gail Collins vs. numbers on earmarks
In her column on Saturday, Gail Collins of the New York Times makes the important point that earmarks aren’t a pressing national priority: McCain hates, hates, hates earmarking — the Congressional habit of sticking appropriations for special back-home projects in the budget without going through the normal priority-setting process. He talks about it with an
-
Brokaw suggests Hillary as Reagan Democrat
Back in the 1990s, if you had predicted that journalists would suggest using Hillary Clinton as an emissary to Reagan Democrats, people would have laughed in your face. And yet here’s Tom Brokaw interviewing Joe Biden on Meet the Press yesterday: Will you send Hillary Clinton into those working class states that she won and
-
Convention smear watch
One of the most offensive spin tactics is to associate your political opponents with hated foreign leaders and groups (Nazis, Communists, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, terrorists, etc.). For instance, in a post last night, Josh Marshall smeared Rudy Guiliani by suggesting his speech was Nazi-like and comparing his hand gestures to Joseph Goebbels: With Rudy’s
-
McCain/Palin adopt Bush tactics
Kevin Drum notes that Sarah Palin repeated the misleading claim that she opposed the so-called Bridge to Nowhere in her speech last night: Palin repeated her lie from Friday about standing up against the Bridge to Nowhere. There have been days and days of coverage thoroughly debunking this, showing beyond doubt that she was an
-
Will Democrats take the bait on Palin?
Ross Douthat is surely right that it does not benefit the Democrats to have “a debate (which the McCain campaign plainly wants to have) over the relative qualifications and accomplishments of Barack Obama and the Republican vice-presidential nominee.” It’s particularly problematic because Palin’s critics are repeating many of the same charges that were directed at
-
McCain embraces “Alaska is big” talking point
Following in the footsteps of Pat Buchanan and Fred Thompson, John McCain has suggested yesterday that Sarah Palin is especially qualified to be president because Alaska is really big: With Ms. Palin facing a torrent of inquiries from reporters, Mr. McCain joined other Republicans in assailing news outlets when he told ABC News in an