Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency? — Joseph N. Welch, head counsel for the United States Army while it was under investigation by Joseph McCarthy‘s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for Communist activities, an investigation known as the Army-McCarthy hearings.  Spring 1954. Shortly after the Denver debate two weeks ago, […]

Biden’s use of the famous Lloyd Bentsen put-down of Dan Quail—“Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy”—is getting pretty good play among the punditry. (Yay!)  Now, hopefully, Obama and Biden will educate the public about the tax rates on the wealthy and on capital gains in, say, 1963.  And on whether, y’know, America was a European-style socialist […]

Not surprisingly, the pundits have concluded that, while the debate last night will stop the bleeding for the Dem ticket—stop the momentum for Romney/Ryan—it won’t make a difference beyond that. People don’t vote for the vice presidential candidate; they vote for, or against, a presidential candidate. And anyway, Biden smiled too much!  And Ryan was […]

And a debate is a perfect place to spit out numbers and plan names without a moderator fact-checking you. —  Paul Ryan’s Word Salad, David Weigel, Slate, today Indeed. I was absolutely dumbfounded to read yesterday that the MSM is now buying Lehrer’s idea of what a debate should be. Do they not understand that […]

Beautiful. (I was thinking the same thing during the debate, but since no one afterward pointed it out, I thought I must have misunderstood.)  Just wondering whether Romney still has his old calculator around.  The one from his Bain days.  The one that could actually add and subtract!  And multiply and divide and perform algebraic, trigonometric and […]

Have you heard the news? Mitt Romney met with editors of the Des Moines Register yesterday and dropped a bombshell. “Romney promises no abortion legislation,” says the Associated Press. “Romney: No abortion legislation,” says Politico. “Romney says no plans to restrict abortion,” says Agence France-Presse. Nope. That isn’t what Romney said. This is a man with a long history […]

A really striking feature of the Romney campaign is the candidate’s penchant for stating policy positions as though each one exists in a vacuum.  To wit: His 20% across-the-board tax-rate reduction, which, this successful businessman made clear at the debate last week, he didn’t trouble himself to figure out the likely result of it on […]

In a terrific article published on Friday, Slate’s John Dickerson asks: Which Mitt Romney DoYou Trust Most? Is he a cold-heartedconservative or a moderate Republican from Massachusetts? How can we know? As for the second of those three questions—Is he a cold-hearted conservative or a moderate Republican from Massachusetts?—I think there’s a third possibility.  I […]

Slate’s William Saletan has a terrific article there today, with a terrific title: Tax Evasion: Romney’s preposterous arguments for not telling you which tax breaks he’d abolish.  And, yes, elsewhere, too, mainstream-media folks are showing some morning-after queasiness about their debate verdict, by getting into the “um … huh?” stuff now. But in pointing out that […]

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Friday said that President Barack Obama’s call to hire more police, firefighters and teachers proved that he didn’t “get the message” from Republican wins in the recent Wisconsin recall elections. During a press conference earlier on Friday, Obama had called on Congress to pass a jobs proposal that would prevent layoffs and […]