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Thingish Things

The “Story” is a Campaign Essential

When Peggy Noonan is on her game, there are few more persuasive than she. And the former Reagan speech writer is decidedly on her game today with a Wall Street Journal column entitled “Once Upon a Time in America.” Ms. Noonan’s column is so compelling and so well written that it pains me to disagree […]

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Is “Soft” the New “Malaise”?

President Obama has been doing interviews with local television stations for months now in the hopes  of getting softer questions than he might speaking to network anchors. But that didn’t help him one bit yesterday in Orlando while speaking to the local NBC affiliate. Here, very much reminiscent of President Carter’s “malaise” remarks, President Obama inexplicably says that America has gone “soft.” […]

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Raising Cain

 ] Now these guys are having fun…

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The San Francisco Sound

I woke up thinking about that old Ronald Reagan quip explaining why he became a Republican.  “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party,” Reagan said. “The Democratic Party left me.” That line rang true for millions of Americans in the 1970’s and 80’s who famously became known as Reagan Democrats. Today’s Democratic Party strikes me as […]

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When the Fire Goes Out

  On Election Day 1989, while working ballot security in Harlem for the mayoral campaign of Republican Rudy Giuliani, I saw the most extraordinary thing.   I was in the passenger seat of a car stopped at 125th Street and Lexington Avenue as an African-American volunteer for the Democratic candidate, David Dinkins, carried an elderly black woman in […]

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Damned YouTube!

This just up on Drudge sure to make its way around this week…  

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Obama’s Narrative Crisis

President Obama’s re-election narrative got a lot worse today, with Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune urging him to forgo running entirely in 2012. That’s tough stuff for someone struggling to get up from off the mat. Chapman enumerates the President’s re-election challenges — the economy, the economy, and the economy — and then writes: “But there is good […]

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The Youth Vote, Part 67

I apologize for harping so much on the youth vote, but here is a new ad from the College National Republican Committee that rings irresistibly true.  It is playing on programming that appeals to the the under-30 age bracket on cable stations, including MTV and Comedy Central.  My gut says it will be explosively effective. I remember hearing messaging that rang […]

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The Disappearing Debt Issue

I don’t care what anyone says, debt is the number-one issue in America. Polls say otherwise. They consistently report that the issue is jobs, but it’s debt as far as I can see. It should stay front-and-center on the national radar.  I can hear it when talking to people on the campaign trail. I hear it from […]

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Man on a Mission

 Many messages can be taken away from the NY-9 congressional election Tuesday – the President has problems among Jews and Catholics, machine politicians are an endangered species, and Watch Out!: voters of all parties are now in play – everywhere. But my chief takeaway is the lesson that can be learned from Bob Turner the […]

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