Sam Rosenfeld

NE 3: SIGN OF THE TIMES IN NEBRASKA. Indicative of the kind of year it’s been for the GOP, President Bush will spend the final weekend before the midterm elections in Nebraska, campaigning in one of the country’s most Republican congressional districts. As the GOP battles nationwide to keep control of Congress, Bush’s plans to […]

MI SEN: DOES THE RSCC KNOW SOMETHING WE DON’T? Of all the close Senate races in the nation, Michigan rarely factors into the mix. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) has led challenger Mike Bouchard (R) in every poll this year, and no poll has shown the Republican within five points of the incumbent since August. Consultants […]

PRESIDENTIAL FAITH ADVISER OUTED? Rev. Ted Haggard, pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, is the target of accusations by Mike Jones, a male “escort,” that the pastor has been a sexual client of Jones’s for the last three years. Haggard belongs to the […]

TO LAURA. OK, in 2004, you came out and patted us all on the head and reassured us that all that icky stem-cell stuff wasn’t something we should count on, no matter what beasties were lurking in our gene pools. Last week, you went back to that old stand, tut-tutting Michael J. Fox, simultaneously insulting […]

“THIS IS JUST LOUSY.” Greg sure is right about that. –Sam Rosenfeld

CALCULATED OBTUSENESS. As it happens, I have some experience with calculated obtuseness as a political and rhetorical tactic. You can see in that episode all the characteristic charlatan’s tricks now being applied to John Kerry‘s unartful attempt at humor. You can see the Deliberate Missing Of The Point, and you can even see the Knuckling […]

BUYER’S REMORSE. This gloriously frank piece is getting a decent amount of blogo-buzz this morning, and it’s got me to thinking that the current buyer’s remorse among “principled” conservatives makes me want to vomit. I am not really having any fun attacking my old friends — but I don�t know how else to respond when […]

DON’T FORGET KATRINA. With all the mudslinging and war talk that has dominated this mid-term campaign, the Bush administration’s Gulf Coast debacle has been forced into the background, except for the occasional use of the name “Katrina” as a synonym for ineptitude (as in John Kerry‘s description of the president’s “Katrina foreign policy”). Yet Katrina […]

A PROPOSAL. If we’re going to play by Mark Halperin‘s rules of mindless balance, then every news item about John Kerry‘s hamfisted way with humor should be followed by a sentence something like this: “This is not the first time an important politician has been caught in what observers say is an act of disrespect […]

FEVERED. Someone please show me a single act of public political courage undertaken by John McCain since he won the New Hampshire primary in 2000 that he hasn’t hedged, trimmed, or walked back completely. The Bush campaign trashed his wife and daughter, and he’s spent the years since trying to get a job as the […]