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More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low [...]
Dear Diary, Still stressed. I know I shouldn’t watch Fox, but Hannity seems more smug than usual lately. Doesn’t he ever get sick of Jeremiah Wright? I’d feel better if the gay marriage thing had gone better. (Thanks for nothing, Joe.) Well at least Ellen DeGeneres will have my back. Still, I keep thinking about [...]
Fox News is slightly less predictable than its reputation–there’s Shep Smith, and Bill O’Reilly can surprise–but nothing on television resembles authoritarian state-run media quite like Hannity. Nothing about Sean Hannity’s nightly show is either fair or balanced; much of it feels like the product of the Republican National Committee, and some of it feels like [...]
Joe, the Romney campaign’s control-freakery makes for bad democracy, but I suspect it’s a smart strategy. Consider the way Mitt’s personal approval rating has bounced back over the past several weeks. As the GOP primaries wrapped up, Romney was roughly as unpopular as late-era George W. Bush. Now he’s about even with Barack Obama. Since [...]
I’ve seen some recent praise for the discipline of the Romney campaign, which has generally proven effective at hewing to its core message and preventing internal strife from leaking to the media. David Sanger’s fascinating Sunday New York Times story on Romney’s foreign policy vision is a dramatic exception. I was grabbed right away by [...]
I’m not sure what to think about the charge that Mitt Romney bullied and maybe traumatized a student at his prep school. It’s a terrible story–but it was a long time ago.Today Romney seems like a solid family man who, from what I can tell, treats people well, even if he might have a latent [...]
Everyone understands that Tea Party-era Republicans have moved right on domestic policies like taxes and entitlements. At the same time, there’s a sense that In the Tea Party era, there’s a sense that Republicans have mellowed on foreign policy—that the post-9/11 neocon-hawk moment has passed, and restraint has taken over among conservatives. The Tea Party has a [...]
By now everyone knows that Mitt Romney doubted back in 2007 whether killing Osama bin Laden was really worth the trouble. The Romney camp has dredged up a more bloodthirsty quote that muddies the issue, but if we’re going to rewind the tape, a couple of other interesting quotes turn up. Like the way that, [...]
The Obama White House’s relentless gloating over the killing of Osama bin Laden may or may not be exploitative (or “despicable,” as Arianna Huffington puts it). As a moral proposition it does seem that a little more credit sharing, with the countless military and intelligence personnel who conducted or contributed to the years-long hunt, might [...]
