Tactics

CNN created something of a buzz earlier this week when it reported that about 11% of those it surveyed claimed to have actively supported the tea party movement, while another 24% favors the movement but hasn't actively participated. The poll also showed that "Tea Party activists would vote overwhelmingly Republican in a two-party race for Congress," which, as JasonMBryant, posting on Political Wire observed, is:

... not a new group of people who are changing things. These are just the hard core conservative Republicans voters.

It's like looking at a pile of apples. If you separate the apples into two piles, one labeled "apples" and the other labeled "Granny Smith apples," you haven't really changed anything. It still just a bunch of fruits.

Noam Scheiber writes:

... [L]iberal use of reconciliation and other ostensible crimes against Senate protocol may be the Democrats’ best hope going forward. Moderates will complain that they risk a voter backlash by looking thuggish and partisan. But, as Bush showed, these tactics aren’t just a way to enact an agenda that the opposition is bent on blocking. They’re the most effective way to achieve bipartisanship in the process.

Read the full story in The New Republic.

... [T]he president's approval ratings are quite healthy in light of an unemployment rate that's gone over 10 percent and a nearly unprecedented destruction of personal wealth.

The conservatives' focus on ideology ... is an opportunistic way of distracting attention from the mistakes of the Bush years and the role conservative policies played in bringing us to this point. To cite ideology rather than the economy in explaining the poll numbers is like analyzing the causes of Civil War without any reference to slavery or the rise of the New Deal without mention of the Great Depression.

— E.J. Dionne in The New Republic

Dubya Report contributor Publius wrote us recently:

OK, let me get this straight:

On the Republican side you have a candidate who was at the center of a major political/financial scandal that cost the taxpayers billions, who cheated on and ultimately left his disabled wife in order to marry an heiress worth 100 million, many years his junior, who herself stole prescription drugs from the non-profit she nominally headed in order to feed her addiction to prescription painkillers. He chose as his running mate a person who, despite the claim that she is a bold reformer, headed the PAC for the one of the more corrupt members of Congress, lied about her opposition to pork barrel gifts to Alaska, has evidently used her political power to fire on more than one occasion public officials who disagreed with her, or thwarted her will on purely personal matters, and is now parroting Bush/Cheney claims of executive power over the duly constituted authority of the State legislature seeking to investigate her wrongdoing. And this is not even talking about the lunacy of opposing contraception and advocating abstinence even faced with the unwed pregnancy of her 17 year old daughter.

On the Democratic side you have the son of a teenage mother who raised him as a single parent, who by dint of superior intellect and drive graduated near the top of the most prestigious law school in the country, eschewed corporate practice to work as a community organizer, and goes on to a life in politics, and has, by all accounts, an exemplary, monogamous family life, who chooses as his running mate a blue collar guy who, after his wife was killed, commuted every night from Washington to Wilmington so that he could tuck his kids in and feed them breakfast in the morning.

And the Republicans are considered the party of family values? It makes me want to scream.
-- September 2, 2008

On February 21, 2008 the , John Weaver, a top strategist in McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, acknowledged meeting with Iseman at Washington's Union Station to tell her to stay away from McCain. Iseman disputed Weaver's account but confirmed the meeting.

The report, McCain "acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman." Weaver subsequently clarified that his concerns had to do with claims that Iseman was making about "strong ties to [McCain's] committee staff, personal staff and to him."

At a news conference on February 22 McCain denied having had a romantic relationship with Ms. Iseman, asserted that aides had not confronted him about her, and claimed no knowledge that John Weaver had asked the lobbyist to keep her distance. Conservative commentators who only a few days earlier had questioned McCain's conservative credentials, calling him a "liberal" and a "Democrat" now rallied to his defense. Both the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee used the incident as an occasion to try to raise additional funds, and reported a "substantial return" on new email initiatives.

The image of Giuliani broadcast around the world, striding purposefully up a New York City street on 9/11, speaking with apparent calm to the news media, is nearly the entire Giuliani campaign. But as some pollsters have suggested that Giuliani's support is following a similar downward trend to that of McCain, the Romney campaign has begun to claim front-runner status among primary voters, and a firefighters union and family members of 9/11 victims have reminded the public that in the famous video footage, Rudy was running away.

Updated August 18, 2007

"I'm looking at 68 polls a week," the pudgy college dropout and Deputy White House Chief of Staff told NPR's Robert Siegel. "You may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes nationally, but that do not in -- impact the outcome of the races." "... You've seen the DeWine and the Santorum race?" Siegel asked. "I d -- I -- d -- I don't want to -- yeah, l -- l -- look. I'm looking at all --" Rove stammered, channeling Porky Pig. "I'm looking at all these, Robert, and adding 'em up, and I add up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House. You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math and I'm entitled to 'The Math.'"

"Joe Lieberman's defeat is evidence of a startling political shift," the Economist wrote in an August 10, 2006 article titled "America's anti-war center begins to hold." Businessman Ned Lamont defeated Lieberman in the Connecticut senatorial primary on August 8 by a 52% to 48% margin. According to state statistics 14,000 voters changed their registration from unaffiliated to Democrat to vote in the primary, while another 14,000 new voters registered as Democrats. Voter turnout, normally around 25% for primary elections in Connecticut, exceeded 40%. Calling Lamont's victory "astonishing and revealing," the Economist noted that Lieberman lost because of his "enthusiasm" for the Iraq war, and for his view that criticism of the commander-in-chief in time of war is dangerous.

Updated March 28, 2006

The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was incorporated in 1840 in the UK by a Royal Charter, which, as noted on the company web site, explains why the company name doesn't carry the more recent identifiers PLC or LLC. The firm's flag includes the colors of the Spanish and Portuguese flags -- a reference to the Iberian Peninsula that was home to its earliest shipping destinations. "Oriental" refers to the company's early expansion to India, Australia, and the Far East providing Imperial mail service along with its commercial trade.

Updated April 13, 2006

Lost in the media hubbub over Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, and Karl Rove's role in disclosing the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, was a brief item reported by ABC News on July 14. In a follow-up to the London bombings of July 7, investigative reporter Brian Ross disclosed that maps of the London subway system, and names linked to a cell in Luton, England, where the July 7 bombers set out on their mission, had been found on the computer of Pakistani computer technician Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested a year ago. What even Ross's report did not highlight, however, was that, like Valerie Plame, Khan had been providing intelligence to US authorities when his identity was revealed directly or indirectly by the Bush administration, in an action apparently timed for maximum political impact. The disclosure compromised terrorist investigations in progress in Britain and elsewhere, possibly including individuals who would eventually participate in the London attacks.