A Million Wisconsinites Petition to Recall Scott Walker: "Petitions with the names of 1 million Wisconsinites were submitted to state elections officials today, in a move that will jump-start the process of removing the nation’s most notorious antilabor governor from office... In all, close to 2 million signatures were submitted Tuesday, building the historic in-the-streets popular uprising that rocked Wisconsin in 2012 into a electoral uprising that has the potential to rock the politics not just of the state but of the nation in 2012. The movement to oust Walker will have secured the support of a higher percentage of eligible voters than has ever before sought to recall an American governor."
[more inside]
posted by flex
on Jan 17, 2012 -
106 comments
After interminable months of campaigning, debates, and
roller-coaster polling, the first official vote of the 2012 presidential race is in -- and boy, is it a doozy.
Ames straw poll winner Michele Bachmann placed second-to-last, while former juggernaut Rick Perry performed so badly he's
canceled upcoming events and is said to be on the verge of dropping out. Meanwhile, perennial laughingstock Rick Santorum, consolidating the support hemorrhaging from Perry, Bachmann, and an
ad-blitzed Newt Gingrich, rocketed past the
youth- and independent-backed Ron Paul and, with 99% of the vote counted, is separated from Mitt Romney by
four votes out of ~120,000 -- by far
the closest result in caucus history. As the shaken field contemplates the path ahead through Romney firewall New Hampshire, conservative South Carolina, Florida, Super Tuesday, and beyond, President Obama staged
a quiet redux of
his own dramatic caucus win four years ago, a dry run for the looming general election. And as for powerhouse
Buddy Roemer? Don't worry --
his team is ready to do battle with
evil.
posted by Rhaomi
on Jan 3, 2012 -
277 comments
Texas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry is booked on all the major morning shows tomorrow, and with good reason.
After two months of
gaffes,
impolitic stands, and
bizarre speeches that quickly waned his
once-strong odds of winning the Republican nomination, Perry went into Wednesday's
CNBC debate sorely needing a win... only to deliver
a tortuous, cringingly forgetful attempt [video] to recall just which three cabinet departments he'd vowed to abolish, a stunning failure political scientist Larry Sabato deemed
"the most devastating moment of any modern primary debate" in his memory.
While Perry's slow-motion flameout has
boosted the fortunes of dark horse candidate Herman Cain, the unlikely challenger is facing troubles of his own in
a volley of sexual harassment claims -- an
oddly ineffective scandal Cain is doing his best to
(somewhat dubiously) disavow. If Cain collapses, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
may reap the benefits, but his moribund campaign
has issues of its own. Pawlenty, Bachmann, Perry, Christie, Cain, Gingrich... the base is loathe to rally round him, but after so many failed, flawed, or forfeited challenges,
can anyone topple Mitt Romney?
posted by Rhaomi
on Nov 10, 2011 -
208 comments
In a widely discussed tweet last week, Jon Huntsman broke with the stated opinion of every other major Republican presidential candidate†:
@JonHuntsman
"To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."
Is Huntsman's announcement a shrewd move to establish his campaign as "
the only moderate" candidacy in the crowded G.O.P. field, or is it evidence of a man sticking by his principles and "
having a little fun" in a primary he knows he cannot win?
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posted by 2bucksplus
on Aug 24, 2011 -
130 comments
"Isarithmic maps are essentially topographic or contour maps, wherein a third variable is represented in two dimensions by color, or by contour lines, indicating gradations. I had never seen such a map depicting political data — certainly not election returns, and
thus sought to create them".
posted by nomadicink
on Nov 22, 2010 -
20 comments
Palin for 2012? She's popular with conservatives, and even before any potential makeover
6 out of 10 evangelicals think she is experienced enough to be president. She'd potentially get the Huckabee evangelical vote in the primaries *and* the talk radio wing. If Obama succeeds in taking moderates, the evangelical and talk radio wings will only be stronger. And the GOP would appear to
already be talking about it.
posted by jaduncan
on Oct 24, 2008 -
317 comments
Tom Davis Gives Up (SLNYT).
“Tell them about the important work we’re doing while Rome burns,” he said. A candid accounting of American politics from a member of the GOP disillusioned with both sides of the aisle and an overview of how he became that way.
posted by schroedinger
on Oct 4, 2008 -
39 comments
My Right Wing Dad is a new-ish and rather informal blog that aims to provide "a chance for folks to examine the unrestrained rhetoric that is quietly passed from in-box to in-box in America," by hosting a collection of the emails that form an often untraceable and unacknowledged part of public discourse in the U.S., especially on the Right. Tagged by category (for example:
God,
college,
flag,
liberal, and
World War II), the amateur archive presents a range of colorful opinion, not all of it strikingly accurate, and some of it offensive. In efforts to understand
liberal and conservative habits of communication, it may be worth considering the role of forwarded email in the electoral process, and the
reasons that the forwarding of email is popular among some people, and whether this behavior tends to correlate with particular political opinions. The emails hosted on MyRightWingDad may in any case be enlightening, unless you're already on the forward list of someone in the know.
posted by washburn
on Aug 15, 2007 -
105 comments
Late Night Shots is an "invitation-only" social networking site for elite GOP youth of Washington, DC that the late
Steve Gilliard mockingly described as
"the best and whitest." The Wonkette blog has devoted an
entire section to the site that documents Late Night Shots'
racism,
date rape,
anti-Islamic prejudice, and
incest with second cousins, at least until
Wonkette's editor started getting invited to their parties. The founder of Late Night Shots,
Reed Landry, plans to take his networking site to other cities, but even though Wonkette has lost interest, the Washington City Paper has attracted scrutiny to the site again with a juicy new
exposé.
posted by jonp72
on Jul 12, 2007 -
83 comments
Rollback. Media critic Jay Rosen rises above the McClellan/"shake-up" foofaraw to put several pieces of the puzzle together and show how the Bush administration has significantly altered the long-standing relationship of the press to the White House. (More from Rosen
here.) Another piece that fits: Donald Rumsfeld's
bold, frequent, and rarely-challenged assertions that the American press is being expertly "manipulated" by Al Qaeda
"media committees" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
posted by digaman
on Apr 20, 2006 -
19 comments
The Purple Party Why can’t we have a serious, innovative, truth-telling, pragmatic party without any of the baggage of the Democrats and Republicans?
Where to draw the line is mostly a matter of common sense. Public reminders to honor one’s parents and love one’s neighbor, and not to lie, steal, or commit adultery or murder? Fine. Genesis taught as science in public schools, and government cosmologists forced by their PR handlers to give a shout-out to creationism? No way. Kids who want to wear crucifixes or yarmulkes or head scarves to those same schools? Sure, why not? And so on.
posted by frogan
on Apr 19, 2006 -
36 comments
So if you run the CD in your personal computer, by the end of it, the Minnesota GOP will not only know what you think on particular issues, but also who you are. --a cd being sent out to home by the Minnesota GOP is polling people who use the cd, sending their personal info, including name, address, and phone, among other info, back to party headquarters. No privacy policy or statement identifying what the cd does is visible anywhere:
...As far as I could tell, nothing tells you that the answers are about to be e-mailed or otherwise transmitted to the Minnesota GOP.
So you finish, and then the phone rings. "Hello, Mr/Mrs. Voters, it's Joe and I notice you support gun control and the marriage amendment, would you like to donate some money to us?" That might startle the person who may have thought he/she was viewing the presentation in the privacy of the computer room. ...
posted by amberglow
on Feb 28, 2006 -
80 comments
