The vast majority of voters have yet to cast their ballots. The presidential candidates are still campaigning. Ads are still running. But many Republican insiders and some members of the conservative punditocracy are already moving on. This election is, to many of them, passé.
David Frum boldly wrote off John McCain in a Washington Post Read More
It was not too long ago that conservatives were salivating about the prospect of running against Barack Obama. They were certain he could easily be painted as a tax-and-spend liberal and that a right-of-center economic message presented by an non-doctrinaire Republican might be just what their party needed to pull off an upset. But then Read More
To call Governor Sarah Palin a “wild card” doesn’t begin to describe the drama and uncertainty that she has injected to the presidential race. Conservatives are elated and Democrats are worried, but we’re still finding out about her. No one is quite certain who she is and what she means for the race.
Democrats are Read More
Hillary Clinton must be feeling John McCain’s pain. For months and months she battled against Obamamania — the lofty rhetoric, the swooning girls, the giant crowds and the massive turnout of young people. She tried to mock and belittle his language. (Who can forget the cringe-inducing "Change you can Xerox"?) She tried to raise doubts Read More
Democrats are frustrated and Republicans are amazed: Barack Obama is not running away with the presidential race.
This is the presidential election, we have been told, that a Democrat can’t lose. The economy is in decline, with unemployment on the rise, President Bush’s approval ratings in the basement and virtually everyone convinced that America Read More
John McCain has a love-hate relationship with immigration reform. Or rather, he loves immigration reform but the conservative base hates it. That becomes apparent whenever he talks about it.
McCain and his conservative critics learned different lessons from the ill-fated attempt in 2007 to create a comprehensive immigration reform scheme. Conservative opponents of immigration reform Read More
Justice Kennedy started the fireworks. As the deciding vote in the landmark Supreme Court decision which extended habeas corpus rights to detainees held at Guantánamo he not only made legal history — he set off one of the heated debates of the presidential campaign. John McCain argued that Barack Obama is weak on terror. Obama Read More
On the last night of primary season, both John McCain and Barack Obama spoke before national television audiences. The contrast was not a favorable one for McCain. It was even worse with the sound turned off.
The text of the speech was fine, even innovative in some places, as McCain laid out the beginnings of Read More
There is a lot of bitterness out there. And it’s not coming from rural voters in Appalachia. There are legions of Hillary Clinton supporters—from Emily List activists to NARAL members to middle-aged female fans—who do not like the impending outcome of the Democratic primary.
They are downright angry about some of the language employed by Read More
Barack Obama has won the Democratic nomination. Magnanimous Democrats might applaud Hillary Clinton for energizing the party and helping to register millions of new voters, but her contribution was not merely to her own side.
Clinton’s failures and successes provide some invaluable lessons for John McCain as well—if he’s alert enough to heed them.
Clinton’s Read More
