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Sarah Palin Jumps Aboard the 'Obama as Hitler' Train
Tweet Share on Facebook June 25, 2010 Comment (142)There is an old Dave Barry column about how to win an argument in which he suggests various tactics like drinking liquor, making up facts, and using snappy and irrelevant comebacks. The "heavy artillery," Barry writes, "for when your opponent is obviously right and you are spectacularly wrong," is to compare them with Adolf Hitler.
I don't know if half-term Gov. Sarah Palin and conservative columnist Thomas Sowell are familiar with Barry's work, but they certainly seem to have embraced this last piece of advice, in this case comparing President Obama with the Nazi dictator. (I'll let readers weigh in below about how many of Barry's other nuggets they employ.)
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The McChrystal-MacArthur Comparison
Tweet Share on Facebook June 23, 2010 Comment (5)One analogy that Gen. Stan McChrystal's self-immolation has stirred in many quarters is President Harry Truman's firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. It's not a completely mismatched comparison, but it's also not a good fit.
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Does Sarah Palin Favor Legalization of Marijuana?
Tweet Share on Facebook June 18, 2010 Comment (61)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
No, Sarah Palin doesn't favor legalization of pot. But in a recent appearance with Rep. Ron Paul on the Fox Business Network, the half-term former governor of Alaska sounded ... sensible. She said that while she opposes legalization--we don't want to encourage kids to try it--she thinks that the police probably have more important things to do than bust adults who quietly toking up in the privacy of their own homes.
Here's what she said (h/t Hot Air's Allahpundit):
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Obama Healthcare Law Polling Numbers Improving
Tweet Share on Facebook June 17, 2010 Comment (19)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Associated Press brings a bit of good news for Democrats, especially those standing for office in November: According to a new poll, the Obama healthcare law has reached its highest level of popularity. The poll, from AP-GfK, has 45 percent of adults approving of the bill and 42 percent disapproving. That's a statistical tie since the margin of error is plus or minus 4.3 percentage points, but the important data here is the trend line.
Last month the law only got 39 percent approval, and 46 percent disapproval. According to the AP:
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Angle, Barber, and the Republican Rhetoric of Violence
Tweet Share on Facebook June 16, 2010 Comment (45)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Is the GOP becoming the party of revolution? And I don't mean "revolution" in the sense of the "Republican Revolution" of 1994, but in the literal rise up with arms sense. A couple of data points have surfaced that raise genuinely disturbing questions about a pair of the candidates running for office under the GOP banner this year. And I'm not talking about marginal candidates, but people who actually have a real chance of getting elected to Congress.
One is Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada. As "The Plum Line's" excellent Greg Sargent reports, in January (when she was still dwelling in the polling margin of error, before her meteoric rise to the top of the GOP field), Angle raised the specter of armed violence--"Second Amendment remedies" as she blithely put it--if "this Congress keeps going the way it is."
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Oval Office Setting Won't Make Obama's Gulf Oil Spill Speech
Tweet Share on Facebook June 15, 2010 Comment (16)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Almost a year and a half into his term, President Obama will give his first Oval Office address, on the ongoing oil spill disaster. The setting is meant in and of itself to send a message. "By choosing to speak to the nation on Tuesday night for the first time from the Oval Office, where his predecessors have spoken of wars and disasters, President Obama is conveying the gravity of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico," the New York Times reports.
Obama and his team must be careful, however. A successful presidential speech requires the message and the moment to sync. At their best, presidents understand that a great speech can crystallize or catalyze a national moment, but rarely can it create one. That is why so many of Obama's predecessors' memorably successful Oval Office speeches focused on singular events like wars. The record of Oval Office speeches focused on more diffuse themes--like a slowly unfolding natural disaster--is mixed, at best.
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Barbara Bush Endorses Obama Healthcare Plan
Tweet Share on Facebook June 14, 2010 Comment (16)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
When does a New York City-dwelling, healthcare non-profit running, 28-year-old's endorsement of the Obama healthcare plan make news? When the twentysomething activist in question is Barbara Bush, the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of Republican politicians, including the two most recent GOP presidents.
The younger Barbara was featured on Fox News Sunday this weekend as the show's "power player of the week," and she weighed in with some views on healthcare that would be unwelcome in many quarters of the GOP. "Healthcare should be a right for everyone," Bush said on the show. Asked whether she supports Obama's healthcare overhaul law, she gave an I'm-about-to-get-in-trouble smile and temporized briefly ("that is a good question") before plunging ahead with her family political apostasy, saying that she was "glad" that the bill passed.
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5 Reasons for Democrats to be Happy With Tuesday's Primary Results
Tweet Share on Facebook June 10, 2010 Comment (9)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Mary Kate yesterday gave five reasons Tuesday's primary races helped the GOP. And while her post is certainly worth reading, there are as many reasons why Tuesday was a net plus for the Democrats. Let's start with...
1. Sharron Angle. Faced with an eminently vulnerable Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Republican voters went all in on the crazy, selecting the most radically conservative candidate they could find. I wrote last week that, based on her desire to do things like abolish the departments of education and energy, and privatize Social Security, Angle could be the next Rand Paul. Before this thing is through, we might call Paul the first Sharron Angle. And as Talking Points Memo reports, she's also an oather--associated with the fringe-of-the-fringe group the Oath Keepers. This crowd of police and military has taken an oath to disobey any order they view as unconstitutional. Apparently they worry that the government is about to start rounding people into concentration camps. And they believe in state nullification of federal laws, an issue which was settled with some finality back during the 1860s.
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Some Sarah Palin Endorsements Matter More Than Others
Tweet Share on Facebook June 4, 2010 Comment (4)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Do endorsements matter? And specifically, do Sarah Palin's endorsements matter? Some more than others.
To wit, Politics Daily's Sandra Fish has an article today looking at the former half-term governor's track record endorsing candidates this cycle. It's a mixed bag, Fish concludes with Palin going 2-0 in gubernatorial endorsements thus far, but only 3-3 in congressional races. Of course such record keeping is rather beside the point. Palin's nod may have highlighted Rand Paul's Tea Party cred, for example, but she didn't create it. And by the same token, her endorsement of national Republican favorite Vaughn Ward in Idaho (in the race to face Rep. Walt Minnick) didn't lead to his defeat--rather it was his plagiarizing from Barack Obama and unrepentant ignorance of Puerto Rico's not being a foreign country.
Let's face it: In all but the rarest cases, endorsements don't swing elections. Their importance lies in what they tell us about the endorser, not about the endorsee. Which brings us to Palin's latest endorsement: Former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who is hoping to reclaim his old job.
