So did Kerry-Edwards get a post-convention bounce or not? Depends on how you spin it, it seems. I’m not too concerned, frankly…I think most people know how they’re going to vote at this point (including the Kerry Republicans.)
Category: GOP
Their Man George.
From the bookmarks: Rick Perlstein tries to wrap his mind around Bush Country for the Village Voice. It ain’t easy.
The L Word.
“Conservatives have ‘been working on redefining the word “liberal” for decades, and turning it into a four-letter word…We don’t want to give up the word. We’ve been losing the fight for the definition.’” Sixteen years after Bush I first hammered it into the ground, the Post examines the status of “liberal” as a GOP epithet (and Dem rallying cry.)
Defending the Champ.
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns joins with civil rights leaders, John McCain, and – oddly enough – Orrin Hatch to obtain a retroactive pardon for Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion in history. A hero to black America during the Progressive Era, Johnson was convicted under the 1913 Mann Act for the then-heinous crime of dating a white woman. You’d think Jackson’s story might cause Senator Hatch to reflect on the appropriate role of the State in private relations and persuade him to rethink his support of the pathetic Marriage Amendment. Baby steps, I guess.
Party Crasher.
At least McCain gets the message. The Senator from Arizona came out forcefully against the doomed and ridiculous amendment yesterday, arguing: “The constitutional amendment we’re debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.” Um, have you looked around your own party lately? It’s not the Dems pushing this garbage.
Have soap, need box.
Ticked by the choice slots allotted to Schwarzenegger, McCain, Giuliani, and other GOP moderates, the social conservatives angle for more convention time. By all means, please give it to them.
Tommany Hall.
Speaking of the conservative fringe, investigations into Enron have produced more evidence of corporate fundraising shadiness by the DeLay machine in Texas. This guy has got to go, already.
Under his thumb…
Partisanship 1, Civil Liberties 0. The House GOP ride to the administration’s rescue and, by means both fair and foul, block a critical challenge to the Patriot Act with a 210-210 tie vote. “Rep. C.L. Butch Otter (R-Idaho), a conservative and an advocate of the defeated provision, told reporters after the vote: ‘You win some, and some get stolen.’“
…And Pointing the Finger.
Similarly, GOP Senator Pat Roberts covers Dubya’s back by making Tenet the fall guy for the WMD fiasco in the Senate Intelligence Committee report, while preventing any further investigation into White House efforts to arm-twist the CIA into the right conclusions. “‘The Republicans ultimately and effectively, at the end of the day, controlled this investigation. There’s no doubt about it. And they tried to put a bipartisan patina on it, but anybody who accepts that on face value is out of touch,’ said [a] former Democratic aide.”
Deserter, meet Shredder.
Hmm. So the military records that would theoretically prove that Dubya was not AWOL and hiding from a drug test in 1973 have been “inadvertently destroyed” by the Pentagon. Funny, that. (Via Princess Diana/Medley.)