Last night’s debate was particularly fraught for Newt Gingrich, but I don’t know if it was for good or ill. Will Iowans remember him fumbling around trying to rationalize his $1.6 million relationship with Freddie Mac in the first half of the debate…or will they remember the red-meat eloquence of his second-half answers about the …
18 Days Till Iowa: 4 Important Answers From Thursday’s Debate (Part 1)
Last night’s Fox News debate in Iowa was a far more complicated thing than previous sessions. Most of the candidates had nice moments, Newt Gingrich had some tough ones. I have no idea how it will impact the race. But there were 4 moments, 4 answers to questions posed by the rigorous Fox News moderators, that deserve some further …
Hitch Gone
My reaction is similar to Andrew Sullivan’s, though I wasn’t as close to Christopher as Andrew was. Hitch and I had several memorable–to me, at least–sparring sessions. When we debated in England, just before 9/11, he attacked me from the left. When we debated in America, after 9/11, he attacked me from the right. His “inconsistency” …
Wyden-Ryan: A Move Toward Health Care Sanity
With all this presidential politics going on, it’s hard to keep up with some of the subtler and wonkier public policy developments. The always-excellent Matt Miller has a fascinating column in the Wapo today on the proposed health care compromise backed by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Paul Ryan. This could be a big deal.
19 Days Till Iowa: Previewing The Zany Debate
The Republican presidential debates have been a fabulous spectacle, wildly entertaining, often substantive, absolutely great for democracy–and, now, symmetrical. Tonight’s Fox News debate, the last before the Iowa precinct …
20 Days Till Iowa: The Paul Boomlet
This is one of those days when you can feel the zeitgeist twitch–is it possible that Republicans are already cooling on Newt Gingrich? Well, yes. Newt is the ultimate political impulse buy. He’s terrific at the periphery of the Republican debate, but when he starts moving toward the middle of the stage, and getting more time, and saying …
21 Days Till Iowa: Watching the Lincoln-Douglas Debacle
Silly me. I’d been hoping for a real, substantive debate on foreign policy issues between Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich on Monday. The format was capacious; there were no silly gotcha questions–just mutually agreed upon topics for discussion. It was similar to the way Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated the most profound topic …
22 Days Left: Betcha $10
This will be a brief post. I’m in New Hampshire, waiting for Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman to engage in a 90-minute Lincoln-Douglas style debate about national security–which should be fun. Meanwhile, though the news of the day is the contretemps between Mitt Romney and Gingrich.
Romney slammed Gingrich for taking $1.6 million from …
23 Days Till Iowa: Betcha Million Dollars!
It is difficult, given his demeanor, to imagine Mitt Romney as a creature of the playground, but he must have been once. And last night, to his misfortune, an elementary school recess version of Romney suddenly burst forth. “$10,000!” He said, extending his hand to Rick Perry, demanding a bet on the subject of the Romney health care …
Campaign Countdown: 24 Days Till Iowa
Well, we are down to it now–down to the most intense month in any presidential campaign, the month before the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. Some would argue the month before the general election is equally intense–sometimes yes, often no: by the time October rolls around, the nominees are familiar characters and the voters usually …
Osawatomie On My Mind
Ah, class warfare! Here’s my favorite example, so far, of right-wing Soviet-style agitprop. It comes from the minimally talented, but maximally gaseous, Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal. He writes that Obama’s was a speech that could have been delivered in Caracas, by Hugo Chavez presumably. He actually writes this, although I …
The Newt Balloon
My print column this week, which can be found here by TIME subscribers, is about Newt Gingrich–who is, without doubt, one of the more interesting specimens in American politics, a combination of vile rhetoric and occasionally interesting policy ideas. What can you make of a guy who, on the one hand, called President Obama the purveyor …
The Opposite of Morbidity
Christopher Hitchens is attacking his terminal illness with the same intellectual rigor he has applied to every profound moral problem and stray annoyance that life has tossed his way. It is an exhilarating spectacle.
