Entries for July 2008

The Republican Party has decided that the way to win over disenchanted voters this campaign season is to stir up anger on gasoline prices. The GOP answer: Drill like hell on the outer continental shelf and in the wild reserve of Alaska.

Sen. John McCain and President Bush are pinning the blame for those running numbers we see on gas pumps on Democrats in Congress. It is a charade.

Almost in a postscript whisper, the Republicans admit it will be years before new drilling would bring any relief. (Even by conservative estimates, it could be nearly 10 years.)

Bob Novak is a friend of mine and has been for decades. I make no apology for it.

The liberal readers of this blog may be surprised or even angered to read that the Prince of Darkness and I are friends. That's the way it is.

Even younger journalists have expressed astonishment when they hear that the conservative columnist is a friend. They don't understand that reporters of our vintage were on the campaign trail with typewriters and deadlines that permitted some camaraderie and even fun.

In every presidential campaign, candidates of both parties will say something over the line. Sen. John McCain has already hit a low mark.

The senior senator from Arizona said his Democratic rival would "rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." What's next, an open charge of treason?

Suppose there were political conventions and the media were nowhere to be found. It may look like that in Denver and the Twin Cities late this summer.

Severe cutbacks and buyouts at newspapers, large and small, and similar budget woes at the networks are forcing media organizations to scale back their coverage.

Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, the now resigned economic guru to Sen. John McCain, was right to say there were whiners among us. However, they were really his colleagues in the McCain camp howling over news coverage rather than over economic woes.

It is almost pathetic to see McCain's aides hopping mad over coverage of Sen. Barack Obama's trip to the Middle East and Europe. If that is the crux of their strategy, it is a sure loser in public relations.

In quashing speculation that he would be Sen. John McCain's running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman told a home-state newspaper in Connecticut: "I'm where I want to be."

Of course, the Democrat, who was Al Gore's running mate in 2000, means the United States Senate. But he really belongs on the other side of the aisle with the Republicans.

Present day conservative Republicans would be wise if they listened to the more moderate—even progressive—view of former Gov. Linwood Holton of Virginia. Of course, it is not about to happen, given the stances of the GOP in Congress and with most of its governors.

Holton, elected in 1969, was governor when the Old Dominion was ordered by the court to integrate its public schools. Previous governors had circled the wagons behind segregationist positions of Republicans and Democrats, including the once potent machine of Democratic Sen. Harry F. Byrd.