A year ago she was well on her way to being a flash-in-the-pan also-ran. Today, she’s the Republican Party’s Queen Bee. A look at Sarah Palin’s comeback.
In the ArenaUncategorized
Election Road Trip, Day 18: Good News!
Phoenix, Az.
Event: John McGraw gets a job
Road trip regulars may remember that last week I wrote about John McGraw who’d been laid off for 19 months and working feverishly to land a new job. He had sent out 4-5000 resumes globally and received 2300 rejections. Today, he emailed this:
Hope the road trip is going well … just
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1,000 Words: Chin Up, Champ Edition
The GOP’s Bad/Inadequate Ideas on Health Care
I was going to write a post about how unworkable the health care plan in the GOP’s new “Pledge to America” is. But Jonathan Cohn already did it so well, I see no need to repeat. Click here to read Cohn’s explanation of how the Republican plan to cover pre-existing conditions is pretty much bogus.
A few other things Republicans are …
Common Sense in the GOP’s “Pledge”?
Why does the new House Republican campaign platform’s call for immediate discretionary spending cuts feature a clause promising “common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans and our troops”?
“Seniors” is an awfully broad swath of society to place off-limits, particularly given that quite a few American seniors retire into affluence. …
Health Care Goes South for Democrats
My timing was impeccable: Last month I wrote a story for Time.com about the modest role health care seemed to be playing in the midterm elections. My thesis was that, although Obamacare was far from a winning issue for Democrats, it hardly promised to be the political debacle that Republicans gleefully predicted when Obama signed health …
Morning Must Reads: Pledge
President Obama speaks during the Millennium Development Goals Summit at the U.N. headquarters in New York September 22, 2010. (REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton)
–As Alex notes, House Republicans have unveiled their new governing platform a la 1994’s Contract With America. Chris Good pulls out some bullet-points. Marc Ambinder thinks it …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Election Road Trip, Day 17: Another Loss…And Latest Column
Phoenix, Az.
Traveling Companion: None
Events: Long drive through a desert rain
I’ve been enjoying the natural world, for a change, as I’ve been driving along, but things keep getting in the way. I was simply blown away by the eastern vista as I came down through Raton Pass into New Mexico–just a spectacular buff khaki …
The Silence on Iran… From Obama’s Critics
Presidents Barack Obama and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will deliver speeches at the United Nations General Assembly in New York Thursday, but it’s more interesting to note who isn’t speaking about Iran this week: critics of the Obama administration’s “dual-track” diplomatic approach to the Islamic Republic. These critics traditionally …
The GOP’s “Pledge to America”
House Republicans will unveil their “Pledge to America” at a hardware store in Sterling, Va., tomorrow morning. The GOP frames the document as a series of ideals, programs and policy blueprints it would uphold and pursue if restored to power in November. It’s also an attempt to neutralize Democrats’ charge that the “Party of No” has no …
Holbrooke on Woodward, Afghanistan
NPR has sent around an excerpt from a “Talk of the Nation” interview with Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to early reports, Bob Woodward’s new book depicts Holbrooke as skeptical that Obama’s Afghanistan strategy can succeed. Holbrooke tells NPR that he’s going to “duck” any …
Dept. of Books: “American Taliban”
Our colleague Ishaan Tharoor has a new Time.com Q&A with Markos Moulitsas about the Daily Kos founder’s new book, “American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right.” You can read the whole thing here. The opening excerpt:
You refer to a whole swath of U.S. conservatives as American Taliban. Is that
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“Barbarians at the Gate: The GOP’s Health Reform Plan”
My colleague Jeff Kluger, who covers health and science, has penned an impassioned defense of the Affordable Care Act, inspired by his kids’ reaction to his recent outpatient surgery. An excerpt is below. Full piece here. Discuss.
I had a bit of surgery last week. It wasn’t much — the kind of outpatient operation that would
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