Tim Fernholz

The blogs have been mocking Senator McCain‘s initial response to the Obama campaign’s wave of attacks charging him with being out of touch. (The Obama campaign tells me the ad is going out on national cable, but won’t give me anything else.) The McCain campaign’s reply fell into the category of “noun, verb, POW” — […]

The Washington Post profiles McCain‘s de facto campaign manager today. Steve Schmidt is generally held responsible for the campaign’s new sense of discipline and purpose, as well as its negative turn. But here’s what stood out to me: Schmidt’s sister, his only sibling, is gay, and he has made it clear that he is appalled […]

Via Ambinder, the Obama team already has a pretty devastating attack ad out going after McCain for being completely out of touch, not only with the economy but with his own home economics. Here’s hoping they push it hard for the next week. This is a testament to the preparation and reflexes of Obama’s media […]

The two presidential campaigns jointly announced their debate plans today, and there are no real surprises. What would you give to be a fly on the wall when that joint statement was hashed out? Looking at the formats — posted below the jump — you’ll see two of the debates will have a relatively free-form […]

So Allen and Martin had a laugh-in with John McCain yesterday and wrote up this zinger: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own. “I think – I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told us in Las Cruces, N.M. […]

Today’s campaign skirmish started by the McCain campaign: Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer visited Syria a few months ago with the American Bar Association for a conference on the rule of law and met with Syrian oficials; he’s also an informal advisor to the Obama campaign. This afternoon’s McCain conference call featured Randy Scheunemann and Rudy Giuliani […]

Amidst all the Cold War throwbackery here at TAPPED, we’ve let Iraq slip a little below the radar. What’s up now? The Shiite government seems to be cracking down on Sunni leaders. Abu Muqawama has the run-down, but basically it looks like ethnic conflicts are coming to a boil again; via Spencer this article gets […]

The Round-Up returns with background info on Georgia and a deep love for the reality-based community. Past is prologue. Georgia and its neighbor Azerbaijan have a history of supplying the world with oil, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ David C. Chow notes. These same oil reserves are both Russia’s target and the key […]

Shorter David Brooks: The American people have forced John McCain to run a dishonorable campaign. Especially — gasp — those young journalists! McCain started out with the same sort of kibitzing campaign style that he used to woo the press back in 2000. … This time there were too many cameras around and too many […]

Sarah clarifies her response to my post: [B]y accepting his invitation, and by agreeing to terms that were set up by Warren and Warren alone, the candidates were acquiescing to him being the arbiter of what the important political and theological questions are (and that it’s proper to pose theological questions to political candidates in […]