Continuing my series documenting the turn toward postmodernism on the right, here’s a disturbing quote from a Fox News executive that was flagged by Jon Chait at TNR: “The fact that our numbers are up 30 plus in the news arena on basic cable I’d like to think is a sign that we are just

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Did the world really need a Washington Post profile of almost 2500 words on the “charming but ferocious tenacity” of crazed birther activist Orly Taitz? It is, as the Washington Independent’s David Weigel points out, “possibly the least critical thing ever written about this severely disturbed person who’s encouraging the military to rebel against the

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Back on Sept. 9, I predicted that President Obama’s speech to Congress on health care was “not likely to change much in terms of public opinion” based on previous political science research. A few days later, I noted weak and inconsistent evidence of an effect (a claim that was disputed by Nate Silver). University of

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Dan Rather may have lost in court against CBS, but he can still toss off his trademark “Ratherisms”. Here’s what he told Lloyd Grove about the news that his former 48 Hours CBS colleague Joe Halderman had tried to blackmail David Letterman: Frankly, I couldn’t be more astonished that this guy was involved in something

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[Update (6/30/10): Serious questions have been raised about the validity of Research 2000’s polls. The results discussed below should thus be viewed as potentially suspect until the matter is resolved.] Josh Tucker (a political scientist at NYU) emails to ask if there are significant regional differences in the data on the state of the GOP

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How weak is the Republican brand right now? This issue came up yesterday when a Media Matters criticized The Hill for failing to mention the GOP’s poor polling numbers in a story on the 2010 elections. Similarly, I recently suggested that that the damaged Republican brand might limit the number of seats that the party

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