Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) trails his Democratic opponent by 17 points in a recent poll, further bolstering the argument that Democrats’ best hope for making gains in the Senate starts in New England.
In a poll released today by the University of New Hampshire Sununu trails former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen by a margin of 54 percent to 37 percent, with 7 percent undecided and a 4.5 point margin for error. These numbers are largely unchanged since last July, showing that Shaheen continues to poll well in a state that has trended strongly toward Democrats in the past election cycle.
Sununu’s campaign has countered with an American Research Group poll taken in December that showed Sununu up 11 points, so it’s clear that methodology and the polling sample could be further debated and analyzed in this race.
Democrats possess a field advantage in 2008, needing to defend only 12 seats, while Republicans must defend 23. In addition, five Republicans and no Democrats have announced that they are retiring. The open seat gap between the parties is the biggest in 50 years.
Saying he never intended to be a professional politician, Rep. John Shadegg announced Monday that he will not seek re-election to an eighth term in Congress.
It appears to have been an abrupt decision:
Just weeks ago, Shadegg spoke confidently about his ability to win another term from the 3rd Congressional District, and he had raised nearly $500,000 for re-election in the fourth quarter.
His district in Phoenix is solidly Republican, but his Democratic opponent has raise $500,000, and Shadegg’s departure could make the race competitive.
Shadegg’s retirement means there are now 29 open Republican seats in the House, compared with five Democratic seats.
Update: Corrected amount of money raised by Shadegg’s opponent. Thanks VRW.
It’s fair to say that you’ve officially become the Democratic frontrunner when George Bush lies about your record:
Appearing today on Fox News Sunday, President Bush laid into Sen. Barack Obama, claiming he would “attack Pakistan” and “embrace” Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“I certainly don’t know what he believes in,” Bush said when asked if there had been a “rush to judgment” about Obama. “The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he’s going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad.”
Bush added he doesn’t think people know enough about Obama — but wouldn’t comment on why, if that’s the case, so many are supporting him.
In fact, Obama has not advocated either for attacking Pakistan or embracing Ahmadinejad. Obama has said that the U.S. should be willing to strike against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan if the country’s president Pervez Musharraf refuses. Obama also said during a debate last year that he was willing to meet with leaders of Iran and other U.S. rivals without preconditions, although he did not commit to doing so.
Does anyone seriously believe there are more voters who loathe Hillary Clinton than there are racists in American today? Peggy Noonan, the right’s resident moonbat, appears to believe this — and she asserts that the GOP would not dare run a racist ad against Barack Obama. If Sen. Corker or former Sen. Jesse Helms were forced to be truthful — let’s say by waterboarding them — both would admit they did not care that their victories were attributed to racist ads. Neither will Pres. McCain.
As expatriot columnist David Seaton put it, “I smell a rat.”
He’s referring to Noonan’s column in the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal column on Friday, in which she waxed poetical about Obama, who is quickly becoming the GOP’s second favorite Republican, after Joe Lieberman:
But Mr. Obama will not be easy for Republicans to attack. He will be hard to get at, hard to address. There are many reasons, but a primary one is that the fact of his race will freeze them. No one, no candidate, no party, no heavy-breathing consultant, will want to cross any line–lines that have never been drawn, that are sure to be shifting and not always visible–in approaching the first major-party African-American nominee for president of the United States.
Baloney. Noonan has forgotten, deliberately perhaps, the ad produced by the Republican National Committee to run against then-Rep. Harold Ford, conservative African-American Democrat who was running for the U.S. Senate against a lightweight former mayor of Chattanooga, which exploited ancient fears about black men and white women, especially in the South:
A new Republican Party television ad featuring a scantily clad white woman winking and inviting a black candidate to “call me” is drawing charges of race-baiting, with critics saying it contradicts a landmark GOP statement last year that the party was wrong in past decades to use racial appeals to win support from white voters.
Critics said the ad, which is funded by the Republican National Committee and has aired since Friday, plays on fears of interracial relationships to scare some white voters in rural Tennessee to oppose Democratic Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. Ford is locked in a tight race, hoping to become the first African American senator since Reconstruction to represent a state in the former Confederacy.
“It is a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African American men and white women,” said Hilary Shelton, head of the Washington office of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the country’s oldest civil rights organization.
A former Republican senator, William S. Cohen of Maine, was more blunt. Cohen, who was also Defense secretary under President Clinton, said on CNN that the ad was “a very serious appeal to a racist sentiment.”
Ford saw his lead in most polls evaporate after the ad started running. Corker won the seat, 51 percent to 48 percent.
Speaking of “rats,” in 1990, future professional Clinton-hater Dick Morris and GOP message-meister Alex Castellanos, the “father of attack ads,” produced the most famous racist ad prior to the anti-Ford nastiness, for the U.S. Senate reelection campaign of Jesse Helms, the segregationist scourge of North Carolina. As a former Charlottean who voted for Helms’ opponent, Harvey Gantt, when he ran successfully ran for mayor, I was, and still am, outraged over this:
Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.
— Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) essayist, biographer, lexicographer and a critic of English literature
That’s the only winning strategy for Rush, Ann, Laura, and all the other blathering conservative big mouths, according to industry experts.
Rush rose to fame during the Newt Gingrich Contract With America years, when both he and Newt pursued the same winning strategy. They just watched which direction the crowd was already marching, ran out in front and yelled, “Hey everybody, this way!”
Robert Mathias, managing director of Ogilvy PR’s Washington office, said conservative hosts need to begin adapting to the changes occurring in the Republican party or risk losing their audiences.
“Mr. McCain’s victory creates a little bit of a loss of standing, but it is not a sea change,” he said. “The party is not moving in lock step with conservatives, and if there is in fact a change occurring and if these guys don’t adjust they will lose some of their audience.”
[President of radio consulting firm Jacobs Media Fred] Jacobs said it’s now a win-win situation for the likes of Mr. Limbaugh and his conservative cohorts. Regardless of who now makes it to the White House, they will have an adversary they can complain about for four years.
“He is actually guaranteed some great material now,” Mr. Jacobs said.
Added [Talkers magazine publisher Michael] Harrison, “They can now be critical of both parties, which puts them in a much better position.”
There is probably a very large demographic out there that does, in fact, hate everybody. Some of them have begun leaving comments on Pensito Review. They are not Republicans, think John McCain is a dangerous hawk, and see Mike Huckabee as too flaky-Christian to be trusted with the Constitution.
At the same time, they don’t want a female president and they damn sure don’t want that particular female to be president, and they are only just now getting in touch with their racist side. As they do, they are finding it really matters to them that the president be a white male.
Rush rose to fame during the Newt Gingrich Contract With America years, when both he and Newt pursued the same winning strategy. They just watched which direction the crowd was already marching, then ran out in front and yelled, “Hey everybody, this way!” It’s worked for a long time and there’s no reason it would fail now. FOX News should get a clue: hating everybody is the best way to engage their audience.
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton has replaced campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, naming longtime aide Maggie Williams to the top job.
Solis Doyle announced the shift in an e-mail to the staff on Sunday.
“I have been proud to manage this campaign and prouder still to call Hillary my friend for more than 16 years,” Solis Doyle wrote. “Maggie is a remarkable person and I am confident that she will do a fabulous job.”
The move comes a day after rival Barack Obama swept contests in Washington state, Nebraska, Louisiana.
Democracy is among most Civil nations accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of Government … and History does record that it hath always of least continuance and fullest troubles.
— John Winthrop (1588-1649) Puritan, first Governor of Massachusetts
The Shocking Video Swiftboating Hillary Obama Wants You To See!!
Maybe things aren’t as rosy at the Obama campaign as his team — and the completely smitten mainstream media — would have us believe. Other than desperation, what else would explain the waves of “Obamabots” spamming the comments boards of liberal websites with Clinton-hating screeds?
The most egregious of these was posted today in the comments for this site by a spammer using the handle “S Bison.” It is a link to a trailer for an anti-Clinton video that nonpartisan Factcheck.org compared with “‘The Mena Coverup,’ ‘The Clinton Chronicles’ and others accused Clinton of a range of illegal and unethical acts. Like many — we daresay most — of those, this video contains a lot of false, unproven and misleading material. And what it leaves out is often more important than what it tells us.”
Here’s Factcheck.org’s summary of its detailed analysis of the video:
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
“The man is afraid of the voice of the people and that the people understand and know what he’s doing. He’s trying to stifle the ability of journalists to let the people of America know what’s really going on with their government.”
— “Kamala Harris called President Donald Trump’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House ‘absolutely abhorrent,’” The Wrap reports.
“Not one of them is trained in technical skills. Not one research PhD, as opposed to China, where half the cabinet is science and technology PhDs. We’re led by grifters and fools.”
— Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs, on X, on President Trump’s 35-person cabinet.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far… The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
— Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), breaking with President Trump in a direct-to-camera video.
“Donald Trump made over a thousand stock sales and purchases worth between $79m and $270m in July,” The Guardian reports. “His two largest sales were of Amazon and Microsoft stock, selling between $5m and $25m each on 20 July. That same day, he also sold up to $5m worth of Oracle and Costco stock, $500,000 to $1m in Nvidia, and bought up to $5m worth of shares in Intuit and Salesforce, among dozens of other transactions.”
“The unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House has changed the congressional districts for one-tenth of Americans and significantly altered the makeup of at least one-fifth of districts, according to a new study,” the Associated Press reports.
A new Fox News Poll finds 71% of voters think the Trump administration lacks a clear strategy for ending the Iran War, including 95% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 43% of Republicans. Sixty percent say U.S. military action against Iran was the wrong decision, while just 37% say it was right.
“The Trump administration last year spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave for federal workers as part of its plan to shrink the government and save taxpayers money, according to a new estimate by a congressional watchdog,” CNN reports.
Reuters has documented at least 470 targets of retribution under Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.
