National Republicans
Big Spenders
Polls suggest that President Obama is losing independents who are concerned about federal spending and rising debt. In North Carolina, Governor Perdue and Democratic legislators fear the political consequences of the coming combination of budget cuts and tax increases. Democrats don’t need to panic yet. The honeymoon had to end, and Obama had to…
Read MoreMcCain’s Folly
Nearly a year later, we now see how reckless John McCain was to pick Sarah Palin for Vice President. Suppose McCain had won. Suppose he had died in office or become incapacitated. The woman who made that incoherent and incomprehensible statement last week – so strange it made Mark Sanford look sane – would…
Read MoreThe New Ad Wars
Two “issue” ad campaigns caught my eye this week. They show where this kind of media strategy is going. One ad was about U.S. Senator Kay Hagan and the others, state Senator Doug Berger. When I first saw the ad about Hagan, I thought: She’s already running a campaign ad? It sounded just…
Read MoreLaughs
Two of the best lines I’ve heard this week re John Edwards and Mark Sanford: “The definition of narcissism is thinking you’d look good in a sex tape.” “Now we know why Mark Sanford rejected the federal stimulus package. He already had all the stimulus he needed.”
Read MoreDeep Throat
My guess is hardly anyone reading this blog remembers when the movie Deep Throat came out 37 years ago – but there was an article about it in the paper last Saturday. Some sleuth has figured out that back in 1972 (when I was nineteen) the FBI moved heaven and earth to keep the…
Read MoreHaving Our Cake and Eating it Too
No one seems to drive a true-blue liberal up the wall like Dick Cheney;—just about all Cheney has to do is walk into a room and say, Hello. How are you? and folks like columnist Rick Horowitz go wild-eyed and lose control. The other day Horowitz lit into Cheney, first giving former President Bush…
Read MoreThe Love Gov
What are they serving these days at governor’s conferences and Senate caucuses? Viagra? Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, David Vitter, John Ensign and now Mark Sanford. One story has it that Sanford’s staff merely misunderstood him. They thought he said he would be “on the Appalachian Trial,” but he actually said “on some Argentine…
Read MoreTobacco and 1994
Big Tobacco’s big defeat in Congress this month just goes to show that in politics there are no final victories. Turn the page back to 1994. That’s the year Congressman Henry Waxman hauled the top tobacco-company executives before Congress – lining them up and administering the oath like they were Mafia dons. …
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