Uncategorized
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Nancy Pelosi channels Cuba Gooding Jr.
Apparently House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been watching “Jerry Maguire”: Democratic leaders in Congress sidetracked legislation to bail out the auto industry Thursday and demanded the Big Three develop a plan assuring the money would make them economically viable. “Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.,
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Matt Bai: Wrong on demand for government
In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai made the data-free assertion that “the American public doesn’t seem to move very much in its basic attitudes about government”: The cautionary note here, for jubilant Democrats, is that there is little reason to believe that the electoral trend in their favor actually reflects any widespread ideological
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The benefits of the Lieberman decision
Yesterday, Senate Democrats made the decision I predicted back in May and June and let Joe Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship. The reason is simple. As the New York Times notes, “Democrats want to avoid driving Mr. Lieberman into the Republican fold.” Lieberman’s voting record currently puts him in the middle of the Democratic caucus.
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Hertzberg’s fable about Obama’s race speech
Writing in The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg novelizes Obama’s race speech into the act that won him the presidency: In his Philadelphia speech of March 18, 2008, prompted by the firestorm over his former pastor, he treated the American people as adults capable of complex thinking—as his equals, you might say. But what made that
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House GOP leadership moving right
Despite the election results, it looks like House Republicans are going to shift their leadership in a conservative direction. My friend and colleague Mike Brady, who studies Congress, put together a nice graph illustrating this point (the line represents DW-Nominate estimated ideal points on a left-right ideological dimension): House GOP Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and
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The white Democratic vote in the South
I know the South is racially polarized and hostile to Democrats but I was still shocked that Obama only received 10-15 percent of the white vote in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana: Maybe I’m naïve, but I would have said 25-30 percent.
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Sarah Palin = Yoda?
TNR’s Noam Scheiber has an amusing post on the grammatical similarities between Sarah Palin and Yoda: [H]ere's something I can't resist–an outtake from Palin's recent publicity tour that the Times highlights today: Ms. Palin used the term “Sarah-centric” to describe her campaign rallies, arguing that fans were responding to her more as a symbol than
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Paul Broun stands by Obama/Hitler rhetoric
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), who compared President-elect Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler in seemingly record time for a member of Congress, has released a statement that largely defends his words. On the other hand, Broun did semi-apologize for calling Obama a “Marxist” in a local talk radio interview [MP3] — he actually just thinks Obama
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Hatch dissembles on Obama’s agenda
Senator Orrin Hatch has written a NRSC fundraising email that misrepresents Barack Obama’s position on the Fairness Doctrine and defense spending (ellipses in original): Barack Obama and MoveOn.org need Jim Martin to seize complete control of government. And to thank them, Martin has promised to rubberstamp Obama’s far-left agenda… … Liberal activist Supreme Court justices,
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Tracking Obama hatred: Hitler comparisons
It’s worth noting just how quickly Barack Obama is being compared to Adolf Hitler compared to past presidents. Call it the Hitler index of political polarization. During the campaign, numerous conservative pundits likened Obama to the Nazi dictator, including Jonah Goldberg, Ann Coulter, and Ben Stein. But it’s still shocking to see that a member