Posts by David Weigel

As former Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) could tell you, a challenge in your own district is a heck of a thing to deal with while you’re running the NRCC.

This rundown of why a vote on unemployment insurance benefits was delayed by five weeks seems like a nadir in the War on ACORN. According to Ryan Grim, the GOP objected to an early vote because they “were trying to introduce unrelated amendments attacking ACORN and the financial-industry bailout, among other things.”
There are two echoes [...]

In Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s statement on  the new unemployment rate of 10.2 percent, he argues that “it is time the Obama administration stop spreading their phony ‘saved or created’ talking points and start creating the dependable jobs America needs”:
President Obama promised jobs during his campaign for president, and the elections in Virginia [...]

There are a few telling details about yesterday’s rally against the House’s health care reform bill that got lost in the coverage. The rally was not planned by the GOP leadership, which was focusing on a 12-hour online health care “town hall.” Rather, the rally was initiated by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the loose-tongued rising [...]

From the conservative Committee for Justice, a key player in judicial nomination fights, comes this reaction to the nominations of one Hispanic and one African-American judge to circuit court slots.
Does President Obama or his advisors believe that southern white men are likely to be bigoted, making them unfit to serve on the second most powerful [...]

Eric Kleefeld and Matthew Yglesias point out something that hasn’t gotten too much attention. There were two-anti tax measures on the ballot yesterday in Maine and in Washington state. In Maine, the measure failed by 20 points, and in Washington it failed by 10 points. The momentum is actually against the anti-tax movement — a [...]

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is keeping her focus on the important issues: an amendment that would increase congressional control of “czars.”
Her amendment, which she first tried to attach to an appropriations bill without success, would also require their offices to submit periodic reports about their activities to congressional oversight committees. If they failed to comply, [...]

SARANAC LAKE, NY – Will Doug Hoffman mount another bid for Congress in 2010? Jim Tedisco, the other New York GOPer who lost a special election in neighboring NY-20, is already set for a 2010 rematch with Rep. Scott Murphy (D-N.Y.). And before the polls closed, it was very clear inside Hoffman’s camp that he [...]

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — On a conference call with some of the conservative leaders who’d backed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman’s upstart campaign in NY-23, I asked for a response to an uncomfortable argument about the results. Hoffman and the outside groups who backed him tried very hard to link Democrat Bill Owens to Speaker [...]

SARANAC LAKE, N.Y. — Early last night, when the mood at NY-23 Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman’s campaign headquarters was a lot lighter than it later became, campaign communications director Rob Ryan told me that there were two major inflection points in the race. The first was when the Club for Growth endorsed Hoffman.
“We were [...]