Campaigns & Elections

According to USA Today's Susan Page, Lincoln Chafee, a Republican who left the party and voted for Barack Obama in 2008, is simply a "moderate." A cover story for Tuesday's print edition of the paper featured the misleading sub-headline: "Centrists Fuel Big Crop of Contenders This Year." Nowhere in the 1800 word piece did Page describe Chafee as a liberal. Instead, the politician, now running for…

Former Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos on Thursday attacked Republican Carly Fiorina for opposing the current unemployment plan in the Senate. The Good Morning America host derided, "And are you running for the wrong job? How do you create jobs in the Senate if you don't pass legislation?" Stephanopoulos also recycled the California candidate's June 9 joke about Democratic opponent …

Over the weekend, Dave Weigel resigned as WaPo's house chronicler of conservatives after revelations of his antipathy toward the people he was covering. Tonight brings us the spectacle of Ross Douthat, an ostensibly conservative columnist at the New York Times.  Appearing on MSNBC's Ed Schultz show, Douthat proffered precisely zero criticism of anyone or anything liberal.  But he did manage to…

As pathetic as Joe Biden's thin-skinned "Why do you have to be such a smart-a**" comment to a Milwaukee-area custard shop manager was yesterday (covered at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), it wasn't even the Vice President's worst Wisconsin Saturday moment. A far worse moment, in terms of familiarity with the truth, occurred as Biden rewrote history and unilaterally revised economic growth upward in…

Matt Drudge is currently linking to the YouTube version (also carried at Real Clear Politics) of Milwaukee TV station WISN's report on Vice President Joe Biden's visit to a Greenfield, Wisconsin custard shop. In it, you can hear the following exchange between Biden and the Kopp's Custard manager: Biden: What do we owe you? Manager: Don't worry. It's on us. ... (inaudible) ... Lower our taxes and…

"Being a suicide bomber is the new political role model," Chris Matthews told his Friday "Hardball" audience. "Just kill everything, destroy everything, blow it up, nothing gets done. You're dead, but who cares?" he added, referring to conservative Republicans running against Democrats in the 2010 midterms.The comment came at the end of a segment featuring Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and Politico's…

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit mocked the curious turn of phrase National Public Radio Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving used on his Watching Washington blog to defend a recent NPR survey showing dire straits for the Democrats in the fall. Beneath the surface, the NPR poll was all about the tyranny of constituency, the down and dirty of serving the folks back home. House districts (and states'…

Between the ongoing Gulf oil spill and the McChrystal row, this story is bound to get put on the back burner, but it still deserves attention by the broadcast and cable news media.Yesterday I wrote about the Washington Post burying its story on House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer saying that congressional Democrats were not wedded to President Obama's 2008 campaign pledge to not raise taxes on…

In a recent interview, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that the Bush tax cuts that affect the middle class should not be considered "totally sacrosanct." The number two Democrat in the House of Representatives "acknowledg[ed] that it would be difficult to reduce long-term deficits without breaking President Obama's pledge to protect families earning less than $250,000 a year,"…

Liberals in the media frequently paint conservatives and Tea Party activists as pushing the GOP too far to the right to be electable in general elections. But the same complaint isn't repeated on an endless loop when it comes to leftist activists challenging more centrist Democratic incumbents in primary contests. In fact, in some of those occasions, the media find a way to cast aspersions on…

Usually when you see something on the Center for American Progress' Think Progress blog, you ignore it (or at best take it with a grain of salt) because you know its fundamental objective is to score some inane point against conservatives or the Republican Party. But a June 21 post by Tanya Somanader, categorized as "Radical Right-Wing Agenda" was too hard to let go. In her post, "Fact Checking…

At first blush, it seems as if this item might be one to file under "It Takes One to Know One." That would be wrong; the circumstances are too different. Carly Fiorina took what she thought was a private swipe (which might not even have been a swipe at all, as noted at the end of this post) at Barbara "Don't Call Me Ma'am" Boxer's hairdo as being "so yesterday." The comment was captured by a…

Someone—please!!—buy the man another stock phrase . . . Teasing his upcoming interview with Joe Sestak on last evening's Hardball, Chris Matthews admitted that Democrats are worried that Dem PA senatorial candidate Joe Sestak isn't "ready for prime time."When Sestak later appeared, he demonstrated just why Dems are distraught.  The leaden, formulaic Sestak used the trite "at the end of the day"…

What do Tea Partiers, Truthers, birthers, Birchers, militias, Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, Barry Goldwater, Joe McCarthy, Father Coughlin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond, Rand Paul, Alex Jones, Orly Taitz, and Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh all have in common? Approximately nothing, but don't tell Chris Matthews.The MSNBC "Hardball" host…