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Karl Rove's Half Right on Donald Trump and the Birther 'Trap'
Tweet Share on Facebook March 31, 2011 Comment (20)I suggested Tuesday that Donald Trump’s increasingly flamboyant embrace of birtherism might be a sign that his candidacy was hatched in a dark corner of the Democratic National Committee in an effort to force Republican presidential candidates to take clear positions on the “issue” and either look crazy or risk alienating the party’s fringe-base. Apparently Karl Rove and I are thinking alike (I’ll take “sentences I never thought I’d write” for five hundred, please, Alex).
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Tea Party Should Declare Budget Victory and Go Home
Tweet Share on Facebook March 31, 2011 Comment (17)The Tea Partyers are coming to Washington today, rallying in front of the Capitol just as a deal to avert a government shutdown seems to be inching into view. I wonder how they’ll greet this widely reported news. What they should do is declare victory, congratulate themselves, and laud House Speaker John Boehner, as they all got a win disproportionate to their power. But probably they’ll fulminate against the liberal Senate Democrats (of course) and gnash their teeth at weak-kneed House Republicans.
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Sarah Palin, Donald Trump Winning the GOP 2012 Blog Primary
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2011 Comment (29)Sarah Palin has taken a commanding lead in blog coverage of the GOP 2012 primary, according to a new New York Times report, with Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Michele Bachmann following distantly behind her. Traditional media, by contrast, tend to cover a slightly more staid and perhaps more plausible set of potential candidates. I wonder if this divergence isn’t in part a reflection of how the never-ending search for Web traffic is affecting coverage of the race. Call it the blog primary, or perhaps the SEO primary.
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Is Birther Donald Trump a Democratic Sleeper Agent?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 29, 2011 Comment (36)I’m becoming concerned that a certain political figure in the 2012 presidential field has a sinister, hidden agenda. We all like to laugh and be dismissive--but it’s increasingly hard to ignore the questions about his birth certificate. One has to ask: Is Donald Trump, seemingly a “birther” running for the GOP presidential nod, really an Obama sleeper agent?
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Eyeing 2012, Michele Bachmann Hires an Iowa Birther
Tweet Share on Facebook March 25, 2011 Comment (25)I’d love to give Michele Bachmann and her advisers truth serum and out find who among them--if any--see a plausible path to the presidency for a someone who has never run for (let alone won) statewide office and inhabits a portion of her party’s political spectrum distantly removed from the main stream of U.S. politics. It may be that her soon-to-be political director in Iowa, Kent Sorenson, is a true believer. But he seems to believe a lot of, ahem, funny things. He is, for example, a birther.
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Is Obama's War on Libya Constitutional?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 22, 2011 Comment (25)The most pointed and damning criticism of President Barack Obama’s military excursion into Libya comes not from the peacenik left or the truculent right (who grumble about the Obama being less aggressively hawkish than France, as if a cultural punch-line--the French are militarily inept!--should be a benchmark for war-making). No, the critique that I am interested in hearing President Obama respond to comes from candidate Barack Obama.
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Poll: Charlie Sheen 'Winning' Over Sarah Palin Among Independents
Tweet Share on Facebook March 17, 2011 Comment (18)Among independent voters, “tiger blood” trumps “Mama Grizzly” genes, at least according to a poll released today by Public Policy Polling. For laughs, the survey tested out of control actor Charlie Sheen in hypothetical 2012 matchups against President Obama and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. And while Sheen may be bi-winning--here and there--but he’s not tri-winning, as he loses these matchups. Both pols trounce him. But he does beat Palin among one key voting demographic: independent voters. Apparently for them, Sheen’s “one gear—go” trumps her don’t-retreat-reload mantra.
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How Spending Cuts Would Harm Tsunami Detection and Warning
Tweet Share on Facebook March 14, 2011 Comment (20)In the immediate wake of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan on Friday, I and others noted the effects that the temporary funding bill which the House passed last month would have on the government’s ability to detect and war about tsunamis. This prompted questions about both what that meant and also the propriety of making the observation while a disaster was unfolding.
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Michele Bachmann Butchers American History in New Hampshire
Tweet Share on Facebook March 12, 2011 Comment (30)Michele Bachmann continued her 2012 presidential flirtation today with what is quickly being called the “gaffe her ’round the Internet.” Speaking at a Manchester, New Hampshire event sponsored by the Republican Liberty Caucus, the Tea Party favorite tried to establish a rapport with her audience and with the Granite State generally over a common love of freedom. “You’re the state where the shot was heard ’round the world at Lexington and Concord,” Bachmann told the crowd. (WMUR has the video.)
Of course Lexington and Concord are about an hour’s drive south of Manchester … in Massachusetts. It’s probably not the best way to introduce oneself to the famously flinty New Hampshire-ites who are enormously self-serious about their role in the presidential nomination process.
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GOP Would Cut Tsunami Warning Funding
Tweet Share on Facebook March 11, 2011 Comment (16)The tragedy of a killer earthquake striking off the coast of Japan, along with the tsunami-sized ripples it has sent across the Pacific Ocean, remind us that there are real world consequences to some of the budget cuts passed by the House of Representatives a couple of weeks ago.
