Month: January 2008

Some ominous developments in the North Sea.

An ornithologist’s charming guide to the election.

I thought McCain and Huckabee were on very good form, and Romney did better than he has in the past – largely because he was not attacked. But again, when I hear him lambasting Hillary Clinton on healthcare as if she were far out on left field, I recall the extreme similarities between her vision and Romney’s mandated individual, government-enforced private sector insurance policy in Massachusetts. Now I know there’s a difference between federal and state policies in this regard, but Romney’s ability to treat his own policies as if they were utterly anathema to him is … how to put it? … unsettling.

The big take from the debate is the Republican unanimity on the Iraq war: it’s been a great thing and we should keep at it. Maybe it helps with base voters (although I doubt it), but it’s going to be a real issue this fall and every single one of them is now wedded to it. McCain’s attempt – again – to describe those who favor withdrawing from Iraq as people eager to wave the "white flag of surrender" is offensive. If you believe that staying in Iraq for ten thousand years, as McCain said is feasible, actually hurts our ability to defang Islamist terror, you may be wrong. But you are not in favor of surrendering. And framing it in that way is Dolchstoss-style Republicanism.

But what do I know? Here’s the objective voice of reason:

Tim Russert and Brian Williams … threw hard balls at the former Massachusetts governor and he hit them all, many out of the park.

Romney displayed

a memorable and effective display of the sort of energy and tactics the GOP candidate must make every day for the next eight months… Romney won the night, and perhaps the nomination as well.

If Romney wins this, one small consolation will be the immense pleasure so many of us will draw from the continued insights and brilliance of Hugh Hewitt. Oh, and keeping Tagg! around, of course.

Or anyone, for that matter. University College, Falmouth, in Britain has an ongoing project for students to offer advice in poster-form to incoming freshmen. There are some great ones here. This piece of advice can’t hurt:

Hat tip: Core 77. More after the jump.

Well, we know whence he got his temper and candor:

Steve Scully: This is a political question in terms of how he gets the nomination, but just from what you have seen, how much support do you think he has among the base of the Republican Party?

Roberta McCain: I don’t think he has any. I don’t know what the base of the Repub–maybe I don’t know enough about it, but I’ve not seen any help whatsoever.

Scully:  So can he then go on and become the nominee of this party?

McCain: Yes, I think holding their nose they’re going to have to take him.

Scully:  Can you explain?

McCain:  Well, everything they’ve done and said.  … Now I’m really popping off, but he worked like a dog to get Bush re-elected.  …He’s backed Bush in everything except Rumsfeld.  Have you heard other senators and congressmen backing Bush over eight years? Find me it–give me a name.  I’ve not seen any public recognition of the work that he’s done for the Republican party.

Video here. A timeline of his support here. Melissa McEwan says goodbye:

Probably the only people who do care at this point are Chris Matthews and the rest of the morons in the Boys’ Club, who will no longer be able to leer over his wife like the disrespectful, perv-brained douchehounds they are.

Lovely.

The data are clear: trust and honesty are the Clintons’ liabilities, as they should be.

Greg Sargent thinks so. I think the spin war itself is a distraction from Obama’s core message – of unifying change – and distracting from that is central to the Clintons’ strategy. It seems to me that Obama needs to focus back on the case for his own candidacy, in particular, providing explicit concrete policy detail in his public presentation. The Clintons are running as prosaic general managers. Obama should not downplay his transformational potential or his broader themes. But in the battle for base voters, many people are not hearing specifics – on the economy, on healthcare, on taxes, on climate change. He has them. He needs to repeat them. With the same mind-numbing repetitiveness that the Clintons always deploy.

Henry Kissinger discovers YouTube. Hey: it beats the Washington Post op-ed page.