From Informed Comment’s A Social History of the Surge: “Aside from defining what proponents mean by the ’surge,’ all kinds of things are claimed for it that are not in evidence. The assertion depends on a possible logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. If event X comes after event Y, it is natural to [...]
From the Huffington Post’s Katie Couric To Obama: People Are “Scratching Their Heads” About Your Opposition To Surge: “In his foreign policy speech, delivered before his trip, Obama did a fine job in differentiating the tactic of the ‘Surge’ as but a thin sliver of tactic within a larger foreign policy strategy that has failed [...]
From the Drudge Report’s DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2008®: “An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES — less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama… [The Times' Op-Ed editor said] ‘The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information; while [...]
From NY Times’s 300 Advisers Shape Obama’s Foreign Policy: “Mr. Obama’s infrastructure funnels hundreds of e-mail messages and reams of position papers and talking points each day to members of the core group, who in turn seek advice or make requests for more information to team members down the line.”
From Barack Obama’s Op-Ed, My Plan for Iraq: “In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our [...]
From Gail Collin’s The Audacity of Listening: “When an extremely intelligent politician tells you over and over and over that he is tired of the take-no-prisoners politics of the last several decades, that he is going to get things done and build a ‘new consensus,’ he is trying to explain that he is all about [...]
From NY Times’s Obama Says His Critics Haven’t Been Listening: “‘Look, let me talk about the broader issue, this whole notion that I am shifting to the center,’ he told a crowd gathered at a town hall-style meeting in this Atlanta suburb. ‘The people who say this apparently haven’t been listening to me.’”
From Bob Herbert’s Lurching With Abandon: “[Obama] seems to believe that his shifts and twists and clever panders — as opposed to bold, principled leadership on important matters — will entice large numbers of independent and conservative voters to climb off the fence and run into his yard. Maybe. But that’s a very dangerous game [...]
From Slate’s Keeping tabs on Obama’s shifts toward the center: “More than a ‘clarification’ but not quite a flip-flop, the centripetal shift is a proud tradition among presidential nominees (as is flat denial of any change in position). But Obama’s movement has been so fast that it’s becoming hard to track. Here’s a quick rundown [...]
From Arianna Huffington’s Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers: “I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy… Running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters didnt work for Al Gore in 2000. It didnt [...]
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