Posts by David Weigel

Rand Paul, who has surprised a lot of people by becoming a real contender for a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky, bows to political reality — he’s blasting the Obama administration’s policy on terror trials and proposing to “try, convict, and lock up terrorists in Guantanamo.”
Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), is one of the [...]

Rasmussen Reports finds Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) clinging to a two-point lead over a possible challenger, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.). Chris Simcox, the leader of the anti-illegal immigration Minuteman Project who’s already in the race, scores 4 percent. All of this puts McCain, who has never been seriously challenged since he came to the [...]

As the NY-23 absentee ballot count moves into districts that were won by Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.), his lead is growing over Conservative Party challenger Doug Hoffman. According to the Watertown Daily Times, Owens now leads by 3,096 votes with 3,105 absentee ballots left to count. That represents a boost to the Owens lead since [...]

Eric Kleefeld points to the internals of a Fox News poll — one that shows President Obama’s overall approval rating dipping into the mid-40s — that has a mere 26 percent of Americans saying it’s “never appropriate” for the president to bow to foreign leaders. Sixty-seven percent say it’s fine.
I think Greg Sargent gets at [...]

Sarah Palin’s book tour is a big story, and I think Ben Smith has the best political take on it so far, but it’s worth pointing out that a huge crowd for a conservative book is not a phenomenon unique to Palin. In March, radio host Mark Levin came to Tysons Corner, in liberal northern [...]

A moment I nearly missed, from last night’s Sarah Palin appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show:

HANNITY: Look, you supported [Conservative Party candidate] Doug Hoffman in the New York 23. And when you did that, though, it was a big jolt to his campaign. As a matter of fact, according to the latest numbers [...]

Markos Moulitsas leaks (on Twitter) the results of the latest Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, which has Marco Rubio surging against Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) in the 2010 GOP Senate primary. The trendlines:
Charlie Crist – 47 percent (-10)
Marco Rubio – 37 percent (+26)
Likely Democratic candidate Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.), according to Kos, is a non-factor in [...]

I wish that the results of this new survey from Public Policy Polling, via Eric Kleefeld, were more surprising.
Among Republicans… only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% — an outright majority — saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided. Among McCain voters, the breakdown is 31%-49%-20%. By comparison, independents weigh [...]

The author of “The Persecution of Sarah Palin” gets a friendly profile in Doublethink, the in-house magazine of the libertarian America’s Future Foundation. (Disclosure: I’m a member and am speaking at an AFF event tonight.) If there’s a revelation, it’s that Palin’s biggest defender inside the beltway is less an ideologue, more a reporter who [...]

So what is defeated Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman doing by casting doubt on the results of the NY-23 special election? The most obvious answer, suggested by that letter, is fundraising. It was an expensive race, and Hoffman put some of his own cash on the line, so that makes sense. Why, though, make claims [...]