Archive for January, 2010
Political Genius
Evan Bayh edition: Even before the votes are counted, Senator Evan Bayh is warning fellow Democrats that ignoring the lessons of the Massachusetts Senate race will “lead to even further catastrophe” for their party. “There’s going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this,” Bayh told [...]
Horton Hears A What
As in “what really happened”. In June 2006, the Bush military announced that three Guantánamo detainees had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. In November 2009, a team of students and faculty at the Seton Hall University law school analyzed a heavily redacted NCIS report of the alleged suicides, and found the official [...]
A Fine Example Of Republicanese
Republicanese is not merely a language, it’s a holistic rhetorical grammar that rises to the level of a fine art. In the hands of its finest practitioners, it effortlessly reconciles things that lesser beings — especially liberal bloggers — might consider irreconcilable, it justifies votes and political positions that lesser beings might consider unjustifiable. Based [...]
Where God Appears To Michael Steele, And One Of Them Has Fun
(1) Yesterday, E. J. Dionne offered up this phrase to describe the routine political posturings of Republicans: “the audacity of audacity“. Right on cue, RNC chairman Michael Steele stepped up to provide a perfect example: As we celebrate (Dr. King’s) legacy, I’m reminded that his message is rooted in ideals and principles that the Republican [...]
Lesson
E.J. Dionne – “Mass. Senate race’s lesson for Obama” (1/17/10): Yet the truth that liberals and Obama must grapple with is that they have failed so far to dent the right’s narrative, especially among those moderates and independents with no strong commitments to either side in this fight. The president’s supporters comfort themselves that Obama’s [...]
Literal Truth In Alabama
Bradley Byrne is a Republican who’s running for Governor of Alabama. In November, he made a statement that he probably thought was reasonable enough: I believe there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not. He obviously underestimated the sheer blind unreasoning intolerance of the voters [...]
Does Martha Coakley Deserve To Lose Ted Kennedy’s Seat?
I still find it hard to believe that Ted Kennedy‘s Senate seat might actually pass into Republican hands in next Tuesday’s special election. Especially when those hands belong to a no-name state senator who has the full-throated support of the Tea Party crowd (even though he is a moderate, and not an ultra-conservative). Surely, a [...]
Healthcare Bill Negotiations
There was a marathon negotiating session yesterday at the White House on the healthcare bill, that lasted more than eight hours. While the President was not present throughout (he “also spent time monitoring and coordinating the response to the crisis in Haiti”), “participants said he was in the room for hours.” However, it’s not clear [...]
Is Healthcare Reform Sinking Or Swimming?
Roll Call has put out a report on the Senate-House healthcare negotiations that sounds quite alarming: “We’ve got a problem on both sides of the Capitol. A serious problem,” Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday evening. The difficulty in hashing out an agreement between the two chambers is largely due to there [...]
Republican Hyperbole Jumps The Shark
Over the weekend, this excerpt from Mark Halperin and John Heilemann‘s forthcoming book, Game Change brought Harry Reid much grief: He (Reid) was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama – a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, [...]