Speaking of the madness of campaign debates, that’s how many the candidates for governor of Minnesota have had so far. Seriously.
Two were held yesterday alone. One debate, in January, featured 20 candidates.
And apparently Rhode Island has held about as many gubernatorial debates and forums, prompting this recent local headline:
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The closing days of the midterm campaign have brought us a plethora of debates between the candidates. And as is so often the case, these late-hour showdowns seem to all sound and fury but produce almost nothing useful for a confused voter. In fact, they mostly contribute to the relentless silliness of our campaigns and the impulse …
When you think of an ideal Republican candidate to run in rural North Carolina against a seven-term Blue Dog incumbent Democrat, a few qualities don’t spring to mind. Among them are:
–A Manhattan-born former Goldman Sachs trader
–Someone who has only lived in the district for six years
–Once accused of premeditated …
An apparent first from Republican challenger Van Tran in a nasty California House race:
Tran is sending out a scratch-and-sniff direct mail piece attacking [Democrat Loretta] Sanchez that features a hideous odor emanating from it.
Much like magazine perfume advertisements, the mailer says, “Open for a fragrance sample of
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To follow up on Mark’s Afghan update, we are in a strange phase of the war right now where news accounts–sometimes within the same outlet in the same week–paint contradictory pictures of whether we’re winning or losing. A few days ago we were hearing that peace talks with the Taliban were growing more serious, in part because we were …
Lots of people are picking up on this memorable statement by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to National Journal:
The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.
Pretty clear, right? But there’s more to it. Later in the same interview (available online for subscribers …
My colleague will be too modest to brag, but a new GQ profile of Robert Gibbs singles out someone on Barack Obama’s reading list with whom Swampland readers may be famililar:
Obama does reserve a certain respect for opinion writers such as Tom Friedman and David Brooks of The New York Times, Jerry Seib of The Wall Street Journal, E.
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She can always run again in 2012, when Delaware’s other Senate seat, held by Democrat Tom Carper, is up for a vote.
But it won’t be much easier: Carper won with 70% of the vote in 2006.
Update: This, from commenter acameronw, seems likelier:
“Dancing With the Stars,” here she comes!
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay briefly redefined his public profile from ruthless Houston Machiavelli to goofy bad dancer. But it’s back to hardball politics now that the Hammer begins his Texas trial on conspiracy and money-laundering charges that could land him in jail for more than 100 years.
The charges against DeLay …
Readers will know that a central debate in the closing weeks of the 2010 campaign has to do with anonymous campaign contributions to independent political groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads, and whether the names of people and corporations giving those cash donations ought to be made public. That would …
Hamid Karzai, confronted with an extremely embarassing story, angrily lashes out against the U.S.:
Mr. Karzai made his remarks during a rambling, sometimes incoherent appearance at a news conference during which he accused the United States of funding the “killing” of Afghans by paying thousands of gunmen at private security
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The WSJ looks past next Tuesday to what the Tea Party, such as it can be defined, wants from the next presidential election:
[T]he movement’s rise has complicated matters for potential 2012 candidates by dividing the GOP into three camps.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, one third of Republicans say they
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The NYT‘s excellent Peter Baker writes today about the silver lining for Barack Obama if the Congress should go Republican. A GOP Congress, after all, could be a useful foil for an embattled Democratic president (much as Bill Clinton stepped on the back of the Gingrich-Dole Congress as he climbed back to popularity after 1994).
The …
