In an escalating partisan showdown sparked by a Congressional investigation into a botched gun-trafficking sting, House Republicans voted to hold U.S. Attorney Eric Holder in contempt Wednesday for failing to comply with a …
2012 Election
Obama Campaign: Mitt Romney Is ‘Rooting’ for a Worse Economy
An Obama campaign official said Wednesday that Mitt Romney‘s campaign is “rooting” for a worsening U.S. economy to lift his election prospects.
“They are putting all of their chips on worsening economic news,” the official …
Why There Aren’t Supermarket Scanner Moments Anymore
Everybody knows the story. Another sad impostor in the long line of presidential candidates who try to emulate the Normals, George H.W. Bush walked into a grocery store one day in 1992 and blew his Joe Sixpack cover story by marveling at the futuristic wonder that was the store’s decade-old bar code scanning technology. Everybody knows …
Decision 2012: To Heckle or Not To Heckle
Can we at least agree to let each other speak? Apparently not.
The two candidates running for office have taken different approaches to the heckle question. The Obama campaign does not heckle, at least in ways that are …
Rubio Mania Meets Reality
Updated, 6:10 p.m.
ABC News’ report that Marco Rubio is not among the candidates Mitt Romney is vetting for vice president is a surprise in one respect: Rubio’s cadre of boosters has been vocal for so long about his suitability for the ticket that Romney’s decision not to shortlist the Florida Senator could be construed as a …
Will the Supreme Court Consider a Campaign-Finance Mulligan?
The Affordable Care Act isn’t the only consequential law whose fate the U.S. Supreme Court holds in its hands. Before the end of the month, the court is also expected to decide whether to hear a Montana campaign-finance case that …
Romney’s Dream Act Response Highlights Political Peril
Mitt Romney faced a Catch-22 in President Barack Obama’s high-profile roll-out of a regulatory version of the Dream Act last Friday. The presumptive GOP presidential candidate crafted a careful response, but not a particularly …
His Re-election in Trouble, Obama Goes Big and Gets Serious
When in trouble, Barack Obama gives big speeches. He has addressed joint sessions of Congress after dismal August recesses, repeatedly interrupted prime-time programming in times of Washington gridlock and pontificated on race …
The Campaign of No Change
In the normal meta-narrative of a presidential campaign, when things are going badly, talk of change fills the air. The least extreme move is to change tactics. A more extreme move is to change strategy. The most extreme move is to change senior personnel. Not surprisingly, there is no sign of any such response from Team Obama at this point.
The Twitter Campaign
President Obama doesn’t think much of the campaign his opponent is running. “You can pretty much put their campaign on a tweet and have some characters to spare,” Obama told the crowd at a Tuesday fundraiser. It was a fitting salvo for a presidential election that resembles nothing right now so much as an Internet flame war. And so …
Operation Nevada: Can GOP Factions Make Peace in a Battleground State?
Like no other American city, Las Vegas loves to flout rules. Even so, it may have been something of shock for local Republicans to come upon a billboard this month that implicitly denigrated GOP nominee Mitt Romney while …
The Republican Confidence Boom Decoded
Republican confidence about the presidential election is breaking out in all the usual places. Talk radio has become a gloat-a-thon, Fox talking heads are giddy. Donors’ checkbooks never close.
Even in more sober GOP circles, the Obama-can’t-win industry is in growth mode.
Las Palabras de Mitt Romney
Steve Schmidt, the strategic manager of John McCain’s 2008 campaign, got a friendly New York Times profile over the weekend, complete with some funny vision quest photos of Schmidt amid trees. The story is notable mainly for the perfectly sardonic way he summarizes the art of modern campaign strategy: “I’m not sure I want to spend …