Blog Buzz: Fighting Out of Iraq, Media Out of Debates, Never Out of Paul, and the McCain-Newsweek Spat

Stories and topics lighting up the Internet today:

How Cease Is That Fire?

News of a cease-fire agreement in Baghdad between the Iraqi government and the Sadr forces is being greeted with skepticism from all points of the ideological compass, including Juan Cole and Spence Ackerman on the left and Red State's Jeff Emanuel on the right.

Cutting Out Their Base

The McCain and Obama camps are angling to brand the other guy as the bigger media darling but at the same time may cut the press out of the debates—an idea greeted with mixed enthusiasm by Carpetbaggers Steve Benen and with no excitement at all by TNR's Noam Scheiber. The Standard's Dean Barnett says not to worry, that Obama will find a way out of the idea in the end anyway.

PaulWatch

Ron Paul's forces continue to plug away with an eye toward fun in Minnesota, causing Attytood's Will Bunch to wonder which party's convo will have the bigger fireworks. Josh Patashnik at TNRs The Plank ID's South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford as a Paul-like Republican and wonders whether McCain would really consider such a man on the ticket. (Buzz colleague James Pethokoukis sources a GOP fundraiser as putting Huckabee at the top of the McCain's short list.)

McCain vs. Newsweek

Newsweek's cover on Obama prompted a Mark Salter letter of outrage, which has received a chorus of "amens" from the rightward sections of the Net. TNR's Michael Crowley wonders whether Salter shouldn't confine his writing to McCain's speeches.

—Robert Schlesinger