The 2012 presidential election season has not been a normal one in many ways. History teaches us that every election season brings something new we haven’t seen before – but also that progress in electioneering, as in most walks of life, is more gradual than people are wont to predict. The candidate who says “this time, everything is different” or “the old rules don’t apply” | Read More »
If you’ll permit me, I’m going to go on record with a very early prediction about 2012. Sarah Palin has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning endorsing Paul Ryan’s Roadmap as a good plan for rescuing the nation’s fiscal solvency. It’s far from the first time that former Gov. Palin has spoken warmly of Congressman Ryan and his ideas. I have no | Read More »
Let’s talk just a little about the 2012 presidential election. I’d like to make three related points: (1) Nobody should be touting Scott Brown as a 2012 presidential candidate. (2) The GOP is going to be picking from a bench that is short on candidates with the experience we need. (3) It’s a good thing that Ron Paul won the “straw poll” of 2012 candidates | Read More »
Bush pollster Matthew Dowd looks at why he thinks it’s possible – not likely, mind you, but possible – for Sarah Palin to win the White House in 2012. (H/T) Along the way he reminds us that John Kerry was one of the few challengers in memory to lose a race against an incumbent that may actually have been winnable: Gallup polls over the past | Read More »
She’s not taking it sitting down: “This was a degrading remark about our world’s most precious and unique people, coming from the most powerful position in the world,” fumed former GOP veep pick and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose youngest son, Trig, has Down syndrome. “These athletes overcome more challenges, discrimination and adversity than most of us ever will,” she added. Obama’s better off sticking | Read More »
Given the battery of problems President Obama’s Cabinet nominees and prominent Democrats have had paying their taxes, Democrats are undoubtedly relieved to see that a review by the State of Alaska has concluded that one very prominent Republican – Governor Sarah Palin – also owes the IRS money (H/T). The facts about Palin’s taxes, however, are dramatically different from those of Democrats like Tim Geithner, | Read More »
In a perfect emblem of (1) how insular the media really is and (2) the national spotlight that will continue to focus on the Governor of Alaska wherever she goes, Sarah Palin did one of those typical silly ceremonies politicians across the country get asked to take part in, and went and pardoned a turkey in advance of Thanksgiving. But while the President has a | Read More »
Peter Beinart had an article in the Washington Post the Sunday before Election Day arguing that the culture wars are over; according to Beinart, Sarah Palin was failing to connect with voters because Palin’s brand is culture war, and in America today culture war no longer sells….Although she seems like a fresh face, Sarah Palin actually represents the end of an era. She may be | Read More »
Apparently, according to Newsweek, Gov. Palin refused to appear onstage with a New Hampshire Senator and a New Hampshire Senate candidate because they are pro-choice. (H/T). Except that the Senator in question, John Sununu, is pro-life. And except that the other candidate wasn’t running for the Senate (Newsweek may have missed this, but Sununu was up for re-election, so there were not two Republicans running | Read More »
For conservatives and Republicans tempted to follow Fred Barnes and lay low a while, just notice what sites like the Huffington Post are up to these days: the #1 topic over at HuffPo right now, by the frequency of tags used, is “Sarah Palin”: The Left will not let up its assault on Gov. Palin for any “honeymoon” period. We on the Right will indeed | Read More »
As has often happened with Gov. Sarah Palin during the campaign, we’ve had a battery of headlines from a single report, putatively based on an unnamed source, and only later do we get the facts. Let’s look at some of the McCain and Palin aides now going on the record to respond:
As promised, here’s my initial thoughts on what the Republican field will look like in four years. Obviously, there are many variables along the way, ranging from how beatable Obama looks to the 2010 midterms; I’m just forecasting with the known knowns we have today. As usual there will probably be 10 or so candidates, but from where we sit today there look to be | Read More »
Ah, the death of a talking point…we have news from Alaska that the investigator for the State Personnel Board has issued a report – contrary to the findings of the Legislature’s independent investigator – and concluded that Gov. Palin did not abuse her authority in the case of State Trooper Michael Wooten, the controversy over “Tasergate” or, if you prefer, “Troopergate.” Let’s do a Q&A | Read More »
That would be…Gov. Palin. And in another example of what Tom Maguire calls “the now-so-obvious-it-was-inevitable media surge in support of Sarah Palin,” CNN actually notices that Palin may indeed be popular with people whose votes are needed to win the election. David Gergen even speculates that she may carry her own reverse-Bradley effect: “It may well be that there is … a group of people | Read More »
From today’s Best of the Web: A hilarious example of press bias against Palin occurred last FridayI on “The Diane Rehm Show,” a production of Washington’s WAMU-FM. The exchange between hostess Rehm, caller Tom of Norwich, Vt., and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne begins at about 46:10 of the “10:00 News Roundup”: ) Tom: I just wonder why not more has been made of the | Read More »
I have previously discussed at length the extent to which the public mood has focused on the issue of integrity in this presidential election. If anything, the recent credit crisis has heightened that concern – frankly, the public doesn’t understand the crisis and isn’t convinced the candidates do, either, but wants reassurance that the next President will be above outside influence in dealing with its | Read More »
So neither party’s House leadership was able to deliver the votes to save the bailout. As Erick noted above, John McCain fought valiantly but came up short in trying to find support in his own caucus, while Barack Obama sat on his hands: Mr. Holtz-Eakin said Mr. McCain had made “dozens of calls” on the bill, some to House Republicans who opposed it. Aides to | Read More »
Like a lot of conservatives I was gnashing my teeth on two levels at the initial interview clip yesterday of Governor Palin, in response to a question from Katie Couric, not being able to name any examples of John McCain pushing for more regulation in his 26-year career – that’s like if somebody running with Joe Lieberman couldn’t name examples of him bucking his party. | Read More »
Here’s the state of play as I write. Bush and Capitol Hill Democrats are hammering out an agreement to, in essence, bail out financial institutions and possibly other companies that hold bad debt, mainly mortgage-backed securities. Pretty much everybody on all sides agrees that the bailout proposal stinks to high heaven and is a fundamental violation of everything conservatives believe in and everything liberals believe | Read More »
In response to Stanley Kurtz’s detailed story on Barack Obama’s role in working with unrepentant terrorist and left-wing radical Bill Ayers to arrange the financing for a project that “poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists” under Ayers’ dubious theory of treating left-wing political activism as “education” (a story I discussed at length here), Marc Aimbinder wants | Read More »
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