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Novak: GOP insiders predict Hillary vs. Allen in 2008
From his syndicated column: Members of the inner circle of high-ranking House Republicans privately agree that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is an absolute lock for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination and will not be easy to defeat in the general election. The same lawmakers believe the Republican race to oppose Clinton is
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Another bad filibuster poll question
A couple of weeks ago I pointed out, via James Taranto, that the Washington Post used this terrible question to measure public support for the nuclear option (last link is PDF): Would you support or oppose changing Senate rules to make it easier for the Republicans to confirm Bush’s judicial nominees? The Post didn’t provide
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Missing white women and marginal viewers
Via Kevin Drum, here’s Douglas MacKinnon on how cable news focuses on missing young, white women like the “runaway bride”: Note to the news media — with an emphasis on the cable networks: Enough is enough. Your continual focus on, and reporting of, missing, young, attractive white women not only demeans your profession but is
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Bruce Bartlett: Reality-based conservative
Kudos to Bruce Bartlett for making the obvious but politically difficult case for fiscal sanity — see his New York Times op-ed and, via Andrew Sullivan, this National Review Online column. Here is the key passage from the NYT piece: After an initial effort at restraining Medicare spending – squelched by President Bill Clinton’s veto
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Limbaugh up to old tricks
Mickey Kaus catches Rush Limbaugh mashing together two Ken Starr soundbites to accuse CBS of distortion, when in fact it’s Limbaugh who’s distorting Starr’s position on the nuclear option (he opposes it). As Kaus writes, “When people on the left do that, people on the right call it ‘Dowdification,’ no?” Well, yes, but somehow I
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CBPP: Bush’s plan fails on solvency
A preliminary Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of President Bush’s proposals for Social Security shows that the combination of private accounts and progressive indexing would close only 30 percent of the 75-year actuarial deficit, move the date of trust fund exhaustion forward by 11 years, and add trillions to the national debt. Here’s
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George Lakoff: False prophet (part II)
Here’s TNR’s Noam Scheiber adding to the long list of what’s wrong with using George Lakoff as a message guru. The simple fact is that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about: Yet, by and large, once he strayed from the broader point about the role of values, Lakoff’s advice in these situations was
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McCrery’s ridiculous Social Security jargon
I’ll see your mumbo, and raise you a jumbo! Rep. Jim McCrery is challenging the White House in the race to see who can use the most engineered language possible on Social Security: One of the sharpest exchanges came when Representative Jim McCrery complained about the Democrats’ repeated use of the term “privatization” to describe
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Democrats put tactics over strategy… again
Via Rush & Molloy, Bill Clinton characteristically focuses on “tactics” as the way to defeat Republicans: “The guy [Max Cleland] left half his body in Vietnam,” he said. “They’re in the business to beat us. When they come out after you, it is a contact sport. “Get better tactics. Don’t wuss around. And quit saying,
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Media Research Center: Relativist hacks
Media Matters points out another ridiculous study by the so-called watchdogs at the Media Research Center: Since Election Day, network reporters branded politicians or groups as “conservative” 395 times, compared to 59 “liberal” labels, a greater than six-to-one disparity… MRC analysts used the Nexis database to examine each use of “liberal” and “conservative” on ABC,