Month: April 2010
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -News that Jake Tapper won’t be reporting fact-checks on air makes This Week/Politifact arrangement far less important than it might have been -Rachel Maddow again hacks it up with claim that GOP is “already pledging to filibuster” Obama’s Supreme Court nominee -Republicans who didn’t believe in Iraq WMD or 9-11 ties
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Fleming latest to smear Obama on national security
Via Steve Benen, Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) has joined the chorus of figures on the right who have smeared Barack Obama’s loyalty to this country. In a short article for The Daily Caller, Fleming alleges that Obama is “undermining this country’s national defense on purpose” — a grave charge to issue against the President of
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Electoral politics is a zero-sum game
In yet another 1994/2010 comparison piece, the New York Times suggests, as I once did, that the Republican Party’s image problems might limit its gains in November: Moreover, the Republican Party has a different image than it did in 1994. At that time, Republicans had been out of control of Congress for long enough that
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -Jon Chait on the conservative misinformation feedback loop and cracks therein -Which “very high-ranking Republican member of Congress” told TNR circa 2000 that Bill Clinton stole the 1996 election? -GW’s John Sides summarizes why significant spending cuts are politically impossible in one simple graph -Good news for naming and shaming: PolitiFact
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Tom Coburn counters health care misinformation
It’s great to see a Republican standing up to misinformation about health care reform: Sen. Tom Coburn, a staunch conservative from Oklahoma, is doing what seems almost unthinkable in this polarized political climate: Defending his Democratic colleagues from critics at Fox News. At a town hall meeting, Coburn suggested that a woman who said “they
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -Rush Limbaugh claims Obama has created an authoritarian regime –Very bad generic ballot news for Democrats -GW’s John Sides on how media overstated importance of dramatic campaign events during Obama campaign here and here (see also this post on hype of debates) -Slate’s Tim Noah debunks some new myths about the
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When anonymous sourcing attacks
Props to David Carr for this mocking attribution of a silly blind quote from a representative of Sarah Palin about her new TV show: “It’s not the kind of thing that’s going to excite you guys on the East Coast, but everyone else is dying to hear stories like these,” said one of her representatives
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The disappearing Democratic brand advantage
Back in October, I noted that the GOP’s brand (as measured by its favorable/unfavorable ratings) was in much worse shape than any opposition party at that stage in the previous four midterm election cycles. That stigma, I suggested, might limit Republican gains in the November midterm elections relative to a 1994-style scenario. Things have changed,