With the end of the primaries in sight, the Great Polarization has begun. John McCain talks about Barack Obama’s “most liberal” ranking in the Senate, while Hillary Clinton and Obama describe McCain as the 100-year warrior. “We just have fundamental difference in philosophy,” McCain explained Friday in Indiana. “I’m a …
And I think he gets it right:
A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an
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Sometimes it can be shocking to remember that politics actually involves real people. This was posted Wednesday night, just as the New York Times story broke, by Meghan McCain on her blog, McCainBlogette.com:
Life is all about perspective. Having grown up in politics, I know it’s an industry that, for all intents and purposes, is known
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With the world still sorting through the implications of the lady lobbyist sorta-scandal, John McCain got back on the trail today as if nothing had happened–a 30-minute town hall in Indianapolis, followed by about 30-minutes of questions from the audience, and nary a mention of the New York Times story. (Before he was introduced, …
Every now and then, the New York Times writes a story that requires Cliffs Notes. It is a story that doesn’t exactly say what it is saying, or only says part of what the reporters seem to believe, or seems to be saying something it is not, or something like that. No doubt the story is beautifully written and edited, but one can read the …
For days now, the national media has treated Mike Huckabee as a third wheel, the extra man on a two-person contest between John McCain and Mitt Romney. “The problem we have had to fight over the last week and a half is every major media pundit saying it’s a two man race,” says Chip Saltsman, Huckabee’s campaign manager. But as the early …
Yesterday in Nashville, Mitt Romney was losing his voice. This morning in Charleston, West Virginia, he was losing his ability to speak. “By the way, you will hear me saying the wrong word on occasion,” he told a group of Republican delegates, who had gathered for the state’s nominating convention. “The reason is lack of …
Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, is back in the mix–big time. Over the weekend, he was out in Missouri, stumping for Mitt Romney, who he describes as the only true Reagan-coalition conservative left in the Republican race. As Jon Martin reports over at the Politico, Santorum has also volunteered his services as an attack …
On Thursday afternoon, political reporters across the country received a gushing email from the Republican National Committee, with a big picture of Barack Obama next to the words “Obama: Most Liberal Senator In 2007.” It was a reference to the National Journal, Washington’s big-deal political trade magazine, which released its …
Over the last year, I have talked to hundreds of voters, Republican, Democrat and independent, at dozens of rallies in nearly as many cities. More than any specific issue or ideological slant, there is one thing that I heard over and over again. The American people want a president they can trust, someone who will do what he or she says, …
Time on the campaign trail is slippery–a day is a week is a month. The only thing you notice, after a while, is how nice the bedsheets are in your new hotel room. That said, I have vivid memories of late-night barroom conversations with both journalists and campaign aides in South Carolina. And the calendar says that happened a little …
Over the weekend, I wrote about an online video candidate guide for Christian voters that incorrectly described Mitt Romney’s religious beliefs. The guide, which is distributed by Focus on the Family Action, the political arm of James Dobson’s organization, said that Romney had acknowledged that Mormonism is not a Christian faith. In …
I think we can all agree on what was going on in the spring of 2007, when Mitt Romney spoke about the surge in Iraq. He was taking what looked like the safest political position for a Republican. He supported the president’s policy, but he left open the possibility that it would fail. He said over and over again that he wanted to bring …
