More on the whisper

Add comment January 25th, 2008

Earlier today, I told you HERE of a mysterious whisper picked up by television microphones during last night’s Republican presidential debate in Florida.

The latest on the matter is HERE.

This is pathetic

1 comment January 25th, 2008

If libertarian Republican Ron Paul could convert the passion of his supporters to real political power, he would easily win the GOP presidential nomination. These people are true  believers.

Unfortunately for Paul, his backers also are politically naive. Most of them  have no real grasp of the process.  Their hero has no chance in hell of winning  even one primary election or caucus, let alone the nomination, but many of them seem completely unaware of that hard truth.

The cluelessness of the Paulists is demonstrated by the campaign commercial below, which cites bogus, unscientific polls as evidence of their man’s popularity among the people. (The ad also is embarrasing for its many grammar, spelling and punctuation errors — including repeated uses of  the word “canidate.”)

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/OFAJby9BYu0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

  

‘Peggy says she doesn’t like you’

Add comment January 25th, 2008

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, a conservative who worked in the Reagan administration and wrote speeches for the first President Bush, SAYS the second President Bush has “destroyed the Republican Party.”

(In the same breath, at no additional cost, she also disses the Clintons.)

Is Dick Cheney anti-military?

Add comment January 25th, 2008

 

It’s an article of faith among conservatives that Democrats want to close all of our U.S. military bases and turn them into hippie communes while Republicans are patriots whose support of our troops never wavers and whose willingness to lavish money on the Pentagon knows no bounds.

This theory doubtless was behind a remark made last night by Rudy Giuliani at the Republican presidential debate in Florida:

“Bill Clinton cut the military drastically. It’s called the peace dividend, one of those nice- sounding phrases, very devastating. It was a 25, 30 percent cut in the military.”

Ah, but it wasn’t Clinton who came up with the plan to cut the military during the 1990s.  It was Dick Cheney, who was secretary of defense under the first President Bush.

John Aravosis has the truth of the matter HERE.

And The New York Times has THIS.

A.P. can be silly sometimes

Add comment January 25th, 2008

The Associated Press WANTS YOU TO KNOW that the presidential primary elections in 22 states on Feb. 5 (or Super Duper Mega Awesome Orgasmic Tuesday, if you will) “won’t decide nominations” in either party.

But that’s not necessarily true.

Granted, there aren’t enough delegates at stake on the big day to push any candidate completely over the top.  That’s ”mathematically impossible,” as Steven Ohlemacher puts it in the wire service piece.”

But it’s still eminently possible that one candidate in either party could come out of the Feb. 5 balloting with a sizable lead in delegates and an irresistible momentum going forward on the campaign trail.

Let’s use a baseball analogy.  If your team has an 18-game lead in its division going into the Labor Day weekend, it hasn’t yet clinched the title, but the smart money says it will. Even the dumb money says so.

The truth is that we might wake up on Feb. 6 to learn that the Republican or Democratic race has, in effect, ended. Maybe both of them.

This is strange

3 comments January 25th, 2008

During last night’s Republican presidential debate in Florida, Tim Russert asked Mitt Romney a question about Social Security.

Just before Romney replied that he wouldn’t raise taxes, someone is heard to whisper the term “raise taxes.”

The story is HERE.  Be sure to listen closely for the whisper.

Hillary’s and Bill’s lies could backfire

Add comment January 25th, 2008

 

Hillary and Bill Clinton have been peddling falsehoods about Barack Obama with respect to something he said about Ronald Reagan (see HERE) and the “present” votes he cast on occasion in the Illinois State Senate (see HERE).

I think these attacks are potentially, if not inevitably, damaging to the Clintons on several counts. For starters, they discredit Hillary’s claims to integrity.  She knows that this stuff is nonsense, and lots of other people know she knows. The effect is a tarnishing of her reputation among progressives.

But it’s Bill Clinton who poses the bigger problem.  As a popular, colorful, former two-term president, he gets massive media attention whenever he says anything controversial. Such is the case with his bashing of Obama.  But the hubbub does him and his wife no good.

Americans tend to hold ex-presidents in reverence and don’t expect them to resort to nasty campaign tactics, even on behalf of a spouse. Bill’s departure from such expectations  only diminishes his stature.

It also diminishes Hillary’s candidacy.  It raises the question of whether Bill would be running the show in a new Clinton administration – and the question of  whether he’s calling the shots in his wife’s campaign.  His eagerness to  splash around in the muck and mire of this year’s politics creates the impression that he’s just itching to get back in power. The more he speaks out, the more that impression is reinforced. For everybody’s sake, especially Hillary’s, he should cool it.

No wonder the media spin on this matter has not been favorable to the Clintons, as noted HERE.

POST SCRIPT: The Washington Post has MORE on all of this.

POST SCRIPT SCRIPT: But alas, The New York Times has ENDORSED Hillary.