With 54 days until the election and four debates still to go, a lot can happen; the presidential race could still end up getting badly away from either McCain or Obama. But now that we have the benefit of polling done entirely after the two VPs were picked and the two conventions held, it’s possible to get a sense of what the playing field really | Read More »
Until September 11, 2001, I worked in the World Trade Center, halfway up Tower One. I wasn’t doing political blogging at the time, but was writing “the Baseball Crank” as a weekly baseball column for the online edition of the Providence (R.I.) Journal. Here’s my account of that day, written for ProJo two days later while it was all still fresh; we have run this | Read More »
Well, Obama’s response to the “lipstick” flap – to call it “swift boat politics” – officially confirms what I have been saying for years: the true definition of “swift boating” is to accurately quote the words of a Democratic politician.
Back in February, Barack Obama sounded a familiar note in defending himself against charges that his campaign was “just words” – in fact, a note taken almost verbatim from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, also a client of David Axelrod: Patrick eventually tried to help by explaining that he had offered up his words to Obama to use. In June, Obama tried a different inspiration on | Read More »
One of the more popular fables retailed by the Democrats is that Republicans use social “wedge” issues that have nothing to do with the business of government to win elections, and Democrats do not. Now, I don’t deny that Republicans often run campaigns that deal with social issues and the values of the candidates, and I’m not going to get into a long debate here | Read More »
The Washington Post, running through their checklist, has an article looking at Sarah Palin’s state-paid living and travel expenses as Governor of Alaska. Our own Ben Domenech wrote up a response to this, which he asked me to post (there go those tech issues again). Ben’s post is as follows: I do not think this word means what you think it means: …Palin (a) billed | Read More »
Some of you who were nervous about the serially bad news cycles in 2006 may remember receiving assurances from the GOP that we should not panic, we still had a great “ground game” that would make up the difference. Of course, while a good ground game matters a lot, it can’t make up for getting whupped on the evening news every night, and Republicans got | Read More »
The last two weeks have been a great time for Republican and conservative activists, and a great time for RedState. All of us on the site are very proud of the great content our whole team has been producing here, especially the coverage of the conventions and the latest turmoil in the financial markets. And we have been thrilled by the massive, site-record-shattering traffic that | Read More »
One of the major themes in the reaction on the Left to the Republican convention – and we have seen this directly from the Obama campaign as well as from left-leaning bloggers – is to scream bloody murder at Mayor Giuliani and Governor Palin for mocking Sen. Obama’s experience as a “community organizer,” mainly for the three years between his college graduation and his entry | Read More »
Hunter’s piece on McCain’s speech made me think of an important point: after last night, can we finally put to rest the stories about McCain’s supposedly uncontrollable temper, which he has nonetheless managed to keep largely under wraps in decades of public appearances? I mean, look: we all know McCain has a temper – one that, when unleashed, is a fearsome thing to behold. But | Read More »
Last night was the fireworks at the GOP Convention, the high-wire triumph of Sarah Palin, the street fighting of Rudy. Tonight was the hard work: John McCain laying out his policy vision. So, what did I think? John McCain is a great talker, but not a great speaker – he’s the polar opposite of Obama, who gives a tremendous speech but does not converse and | Read More »
If you are like me, you’ve been in the dark a bit day to day about the speaker schedule for the Republican Convention, given that the hurricane scrambled the original lineup. Here is tonight’s lineup, and it’s a good one following last night’s right-left combo of Fred Thompson (or, if you were watching most of the networks, the last third or so of Fred) and | Read More »
Tonight’s speech at the Republican National Convention by vice presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is probably the most important convention speech in memory by a vice presidential candidate. Gov. Palin made a smashingly good impression with her initial appearance on Friday, but her relative inexperience combined with a ferocious left-wing/media assault on her and her family has left a lot of the public up | Read More »
The great question of the week, which I am unfortunately only now getting around to starting to answer, is what to make of John McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Let me offer here my take on a few of the other early points here. I. Euphoria I really was unprepared for how euphoric my reaction was to McCain’s choice, | Read More »
I have been thinking for a while that I wanted to see Sarah Palin on the national ticket in 2012, but she wasn’t my first choice for VP – my long list of “don’ts” included a few strikes against her, and in the days before the rollout, I backed Eric Cantor and viewed Palin as too much of a rookie for the national ticket. Had | Read More »
Thought #1: The Democratic convention hall is set up with the Illinois and Delaware delegations front and center. Which – especially if they go ahead with a full roll call of the states – would be rather embarrassing if Biden’s own delegation was voting for Hillary. Fortunately for Biden, Obama won Delaware; I wonder, though, if the fear of a similar scene was a motivating | Read More »
So now we know the Democratic ticket: Obama-Biden. We have been promised John McCain’s running mate on Friday the 29th. With Joe Biden as the matchup, who among the plausible candidates should McCain take? And who is helped/hurt by the Biden pick? Personally, I think I would disregard at least some of my own prior checklist and take Eric Cantor. Cantor’s young (but not too | Read More »
Two sets of thoughts on Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his running mate – more on this to follow: 1. Gaffe-Tastic! The initial gut reaction of essentially every Republican I know was giddiness. Biden’s the most gaffe-prone politician I have ever seen, and if you think about the competition that is a truly impressive accolade. Others have spent more time cataloguing Biden’s taste for | Read More »
David Broder, hardly a source likely to report good news for the GOP until it’s fully established, says that John Sununu is pulling back into striking distance of Jeanne Shaheen in a race many Republicans gave up for dead months ago: Here on the ground, it looks a lot less certain that Democrat Jeanne Shaheen will cut short the promising career of Sen. John Sununu, | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}