Back when Senator Charles Schumer was a freshman from an embattled minority party, he used to say that if you put his distant predecessor Jacob Javits—the legendary liberal, antiwar, nonconformist Republican—into a centrifuge and spun it around, it would produce a pair of New York isotopes: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an intellectual who churned out sesquipedalian Read More
Far be it for me to condone the Kenyan government’s heavy-handed treatment of anti-Obama polemicist Jerome Corsi, news of which was splashed across the top of the Drudge Report this morning, and is still prominently displayed. It appears to this reporter, who has spent some time in the Read More
ST. PAUL—A huge crowd is gathered around a flat-screen TV on the Xcel center right now watching Obama’s O’Reilly Factor interview.
This morning, Michael Gerson, the former Bush Administration speechwriter, participated in a panel discussion on democracy and America’s role in the world alongside foreign policy mandarins like Henry Kissinger. Afterward, I walked up to him, and without missing a beat, he said: “You want to talk about Sarah Palin?”
Today, everyone did. It will be Read More
Last night, I wrote about Senator Joe Lieberman’s appearance at a panel discussion on John McCain’s foreign policy. Lieberman’s appearance made the news, but some of the most notable comments actually came from Robert “Bud” McFarlane, the former national security adviser to Ronald Reagan and current member of the McCain campaign’s national security advisory Read More
MINNEAPOLIS—Senator Joe Lieberman sat on an auditorium stage, surrounded by Republicans, and beamed like a satisfied heretic.
It was less than 24 hours since the former Democrat’s convention speech in praise of his friend John McCain, and Lieberman was speaking as part of a panel discussion on the prospective McCain administration’s hypothetical foreign policy. Read More
BLOOMINGTON, Minn.—Bill Noll, an Alaskan delegate to the Republican convention, has been a coal entrepreneur, an appointed state officeholder and the mayor of a small town in his home state. “Smaller than Wasilla, actually,” he said with a grin. It had been four days exactly since John McCain had made Alaskan Sarah Palin the most Read More
BLOOMINGTON, Minn.–On Sunday, John McCain called for Republicans to “take off their Republican hats and put on their American hats,” stifling any partisan attacks as Hurricane Gustav bore down on the Gulf Coast. Well, that’s over.
At a breakfast speech before the Tennessee and Alaska Republican delegations this morning at the Pawnee Room at the Read More
ST. PAUL—With much fanfare, this evening’s session of the Republican National Convention was turned into a fundraiser for hurricane relief. Laura Bush and Cindy McCain appeared onstage beneath a video screen that projected a web address, www.causegreater.com, which was set up by the McCain campaign. Visitors to the web site, as well Read More
Overheard on the bus to the Xcel Energy Center, 2:30 p.m:
A middle-aged couple, members of the Georgia delegation, discuss the news that Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter Bristol is pregnant.
Her: “I guess it’s not so bad if the guy is 17. It’s not like he’s older, right?”
Him: “I wouldn’t know. I abstained until Read More
