Kristol to Ravish Grey Lady
There's been a lot of speculation about just what Mr. Sulzberger must have been thinking adding William Kristol to his stable of opinion columnists at The New York Times. Yes, Kristol's on record saying the paper should be prosecuted for its reporting on the warrant-less wiretapping program. And some of his predictions have not panned out.
But the weirdest thing about the choice is that Sulzberger and Co. have failed to grasp the taxonomy of the neoconservative literary cartel. David Brooks is the house-broken William Kristol, the cadre tasked with operating just behind enemy lines, or at least in the no-man's-land where only a kinder gentler version of the faith can be propounded. And they already have him.
So why you'd want both Kristol and Brooks on staff is a question that simply has no logical answer unless they got some sort of two for one deal or other kind of group discount.
--Josh Marshall
A Wingnut Too Far?
Camp Rudy considers canning campaign surrogate who says Rudy will send the Muslims back to their caves.
--Josh Marshall
Still More of a Sad Story
I've written a lot today on this question of how Benazir Bhutto died. So let me add to the discussion the latest I've read. Earlier today, when the Pakistani government suggested that Bhutto sustained her fatal injury in the process of ducking out of the way of gunfire, I asked why these statements seemed to discount what seemed like a more plausible scenario -- the head injury was the result not of her ducking but the force of the explosion pushing her into something.
Carlotta Gall's report is now out in the Times and her report suggests that this is what the government is saying ...
With many of Ms. Bhutto’s supporters openly blaming the government for her death, the Interior Ministry made the surprising announcement that Ms. Bhutto had died not from gunshots or shrapnel but from a skull fracture when she was thrown by the force of the suicide bomb and hit her head on a lever of the sunroof of the car in which she was riding.
Whether this is true or not, it at least sounds much more plausible. Whether this is a revised version of the story or whether the earlier accounts were garbled accounts of the government story is not clear to me at this point.
--Josh Marshall
Ridiculous
I've been knocking for most of the day on these weird inconsistencies emerging in the accounts of the death of Benazir Bhutto; and now the biggs seem to be digging deeper. A number of clinicians who've written in today have said the government's story -- that Bhutto died because she basically knocked her head on the car sun roof while ducking to avoid the bullets -- is deeply implausible. A number of reasons are given, the most common of which is that you would have great difficulty generating enough force to inflict the kind of injury that would lead to death so quickly.
But when you step back and look at the constantly changing and mainly contradictory stories, you have to say, to what end? Other than a lot of confusion and irresponsible statements, what's the point of the different stories? Perhaps there's none. But the oddity of the final account -- that in so many words she died of a self-inflicted head injury when trying to duck gunfire -- comes not only from its improbability but from the level of detail.
The idea here, remember, is that you have a very chaotic and rapid chain of events that leaves Bhutto pronounced dead in less than an hour after the first shots were fired. With no post-mortem, which would seem necessary to conclusively identify the cause of death as this sort of head injury, they not only pronounce on the cause of death but even describe in some detail just how she came to have the head injury -- a blow to the head while trying to get away from gunfire.
To put it plainly, it simply seems incredible to me that they could have any real sense of how she got the head injury, even if they could establish, absent any clear evidence, that that was the cause of death.
And this suspicion is, I think, added to by the named accounts of doctors who actually treated her. This is from a late report from CNN ...
Dr. Mussadiq Khan of Rawalpindi General Hospital, who treated Bhutto before she was declared dead, said she had "a big wound" on the side of her head "that usually occurs when something big, with a lot of speed, hits that area."
The key details are there, something big at high speed. I guess 'big' is relative in this context, but that sounds a lot like she got shot or hit by a bomb fragment. And frankly, how likely is it that someone shoots at you several times at point blank range, near so (the video suggests no more than ten feet), and then detonates a bomb a few feet away from you and a few minutes later you're dead and it has nothing to do with either of those things?
I'd say, not likely.
But again, why?
From the current CNN headline story, I've seen what strikes me as the first explanation that makes sense of all facts ...
CNN national security analyst Ken Robinson, who worked in U.S. intelligence in Pakistan during the Clinton administration, said he suspects Bhutto's enemies are attempting to control her legacy by minimizing the attack's role in her demise."They're trying to deny her a martyr's death, and in Islam, that's pretty important," Robinson said.
Bhutto, he said, threatens to become more influential in death than she was in life. "Her torch burns bright now forever. She's forever young; she's forever brave, challenging against all odds the party in power and challenging the military and Islamic extremism."
Obviously, I have no idea beyond Robinson's surmise. But in a case like this I find myself looking for some explanation that makes sense of the seemingly nonsensical data. And this makes sense. The bonk on the head theory is ridiculous on many levels, not simply on that of implausibility, but because it makes her a potential object of ridicule, mockery and the manner of her death somehow ignoble. That would be a pretty harsh take, certainly; but they seem to play pretty rough over there.
For my money, if she happened to die in such a freakish manner in the process of an assassination attempt, it wouldn't diminish her heroism or bravery. But I would imagine many would see her death as tied in some way to cowardice and diminish, as Robinson says, any sense of her as a martyr.
--Josh Marshall
Judith Miller's Replacement?
Pinch Sulzberger taps Bill Kristol to write a weekly column for the New York Times.
--David Kurtz
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
As promised, we have more of Greg Sargent's interview with John Deady, the co-chair of Veterans for Rudy in New Hampshire.
Greg asked Deady if he stood by his Muslim-bashing remarks recorded on video by the Guardian:
"I most assuredly do. I've been very concerned about this Muslim thing for quite awhile. The average American does not know beans about what the Muslims are about. I am talking about the Muslims in general. I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. They're all Muslims."
The rest of Greg's report is here.
--David Kurtz
Stepford Husband
I've said a lot about how well-positioned Mitt Romney still looks to take it all, even with all the problems he's having in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states that were supposed to nail down the nomination for him. But at Huffpo, Tom Edsall's got a pretty solid contrary argument. Mitt's spent well over $80 million this year on this campaign and he's still falling fast (at least in relative terms) in both key states.
--Josh Marshall
William Hartung argues that the U.S. should put a hold on military aid to Pakistan until Musharraf follows through on his pledge to hold legitimate elections.
--David Kurtz
Experts Weigh In
TPM DR Reader FP ...
As a physician, I agree that a bullet to the neck looks a lot different than a skull fracture. But there are several caveats. When a trauma victim comes into the ER, you tend to believe the story you're told as long as it's generally consistent with what you're seeing. In Bhutto's case, I assume someone said something along the lines of, "There was gunfire and then a bomb." That's broadly believable. If there are inconsistencies in the story, you usually don't start asking questions until the patient has been stabilized. (You see this a lot in child abuse cases. The story will be something like, "He fell off his bike." Your first task is to make sure the kid's okay. There's no reason to question the story until the radiologist calls and says, "There's no way this fracture was caused by a fall.") In Bhutto's case, she died less than an hour after coming in. Once the patient is dead, you usually stop asking questions, and the case goes to the medical examiner and possibly the police. The story I heard is that her husband didn't want an autopsy, so the body was released without one. That probably wouldn't happen here, but we're talking about Pakistan, and I'd guess that the authorities would do whatever her husband asked.The other big thing to think about is where the information is coming from. I don't know what the ethics rules are in Pakistan, but in the US, you can't give out ANY information about a patient without some sort of consent. As far as I can tell, none of the information here is coming from Bhutto's doctors. Doctors can't just call a press conference to talk about their patients, even if there are news stories out there that are wildly inaccurate.
TPM DR Reader DS ...
Cardiac arrest from a head injury would require sufficient internal bleeding to cause pressure on the brainstem. I have a hard time accepting that a self-inflicted, "if only she had stayed in the vehicle" kind of injury would generate that level of intracranial bleeding, certainly that quickly. If they attribute the head injury to concussive force from the blast, it is implausible to me that she would have lacked shrapnel injury; either the armored vehicle shielded her or it didn't, but it wouldn't do so selectively. To my ears, the whole thing sounds like the Pakistani government deflecting blame for the attack by saying her death was her own damn fault. I find the lack of a post-mortem troubling, and will have a hard time believing any kind of official pronouncements on the subject.
TPM DR Reader DS (another DS) ...
I am not a forensic pathologist, and so my opinions should be taken with something of a grain of salt. However, as a pediatrician, I see a fair amount of head injuries, both acutely and in follow-up. I find the explanations coming from Pakistan regarding the mechanism of Bhutto's demise to be unconvincing, to say the least. If they are positing that Ms. Bhutto died from an essentially self-inflicted injury while ducking, I find that contention absurd. It is implausible in the extreme that she would have generated sufficient velocity in ducking that short distance to sustain a skull fracture, much less a fatal head injury that would have prevented emergent resuscitation. And yes, any reasonably competent physician would be able to distinguish between a gunshot wound, a shrapnel injury and a skull fracture, open or closed. Further, if no post-mortem was done, it is essentially impossible for them to attribute the cause of death to a head injury, unless it was an open head injury. Traumatic brain injury as a cause of death cannot be effectively diagnosed by visual inspection alone. If an open head injury is supposedly the cause of death, shrapnel is a much more likely cause of the injury than ducking. I find their explanation patently preposterous.
Having read through a number of educated and/or expert responses, and taken them in through the prism of my medical ignorance, a few points jump out at me. The first is that we haven't heard anything from a doctor who was actually there, which is key. We've heard things from government officials who at various points had strong interests in getting some information out quickly or exculpating security or inculpating different possible assailants. Second, in the chaos of a very high-pressure and grave medical emergency there are probably all sorts of misunderstandings and misdiagnoses that were possible.
The key to me is that it's very hard to see how the knowledge of the cause of death improved after she died if there was no post-mortem examination of the body. Indeed, given the chaos of the situation and the lack of a post-mortem, it's difficult to see how how a closed head injury as the cause of death was confirmed and, even odder to me, how the authorities could have isolated such a precise explanation of the injury. You have gunshots, a major explosion and then lots of chaos afterwards, and without a post-mortem examination you're able to determine that the cause of death was a head injury sustained when the vehicle lurched down from the gunfire and inadvertently struck her head on the sunroof?
Let me be clear: I'm not alleging a conspiracy here or that she didn't die in one fashion or another because of an assailant who approached her vehicle, fired a gun and blew himself up. But we do seem to be getting explanations that are either very contradictory or are explanations that the authorities in question probably can't know. With no post-mortem examination and the body already in the grave, it seems increasingly unlikely we ever will.
--Josh Marshall
A Giuliani campaign official in New Hampshire is busted on camera touting Rudy as the guy to send all the Muslims back to their caves.
Late Update: Greg Sargent just interviewed the guy. He is John Deady, the co-chair of Veterans for Rudy in New Hampshire, and he is not backing off his original comments, telling Greg: "I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. They're all Muslims."
We'll have more from Greg's interview shortly.
--David Kurtz
Getting Weirder
Initial reports from Pakistani government officials ascribed the death of Benazir Bhutto to a gunshot wound fired by the assailant before he detonated his suicide bomb. Subsequent reports today say that it was not a bullet wound but rather shrapnel from the bomb.
A fired bullet can be badly disfigured. So probably only an expert can reliably distinguish one from the other. And thus that confusion is not surprising.
Yet now the Pakistani Interior Ministry is reporting that Bhutto died neither from a gunshot wound or shrapnel but rather from a blow to the head (causing a fractured skull) she suffered while ducking down into the car she was riding in to escape the gunfire.
Early reports of chaotic events are often garbled and inaccurate. But my strong impression is that to a competently trained physician a skull fracture looks very different than bullet wound to the neck. And the credibility or at least reliability of this latest explanation is undermined by the fact that there was apparently no post-mortem conducted on the body.
I don't know what it means or what purpose the shifting explanations might serve. Perhaps, as I said, they are simply progressively more accurate accounts provided as the chaos of the initial moments fades and more details can be ascertained. But I think at this point it's worth making a public note that this is starting to sound fishy and probably deserves more scrutiny.
(ed.note: I would be interested to hear from any doctors, EMTs or forensic examiners who might be able to shed more light on this. What the government accounts seem to discount is what I would imagine would be a more plausible explanation, that the force of the explosion led to a fatal head injury.)
--Josh Marshall
Really?
There are a bunch of news items coming down the pike, sourced in one fashion or another to the Pakistani government, saying that al Qaeda has taken responsibility for Bhutto's killing. It's entirely possible that it was al Qaeda, or one of its incarnations. But let's keep in mind that it is strongly in the interests of the Pakistani government for the crime to be blamed on al Qaeda. And the Pakistani government isn't the most reliable source.
--Josh Marshall
Endless Number Crunching
A little more detail on that LA Times poll.
Yesterday we brought you news of the new poll out from the LA Times and Bloomberg. The headline was a virtual dead-heat on the Democratic side in both New Hampshire and Iowa.
But there's a bit more there in the details about Iowa. And here it gets a touch technical.
In Iowa the numbers for Democrats who plan to attend the caucuses is Clinton (29%), Obama (26%), Edwards (25%). With the 4% margin of error, that's basically a tie.
In yesterday's LA Times article it gave a separate set of numbers for "voters who said they are certain or very likely to actually participate in the Iowa caucuses." 'Very likely voters' is usually such a tight 'screen' that we somewhat discounted these results, which are better for both Clinton and Edwards. They're Clinton (31%), Edwards (25%) and Obama (22%). The same applies even more to 'certain'. And the more respondents you screen out, the higher the margin of error becomes.
But when we looked this morning at the actual poll internals it just says 'likely voters'. The Times article was also revised to remove 'certain'.
These may seem like small semantic points but they suggest significantly different ways of interpreting the numbers.
In any case, the upshot is that based on what we know now, we'd give more weight to the likely voter number. It's still pretty much anyone's game, but the news is better for Clinton than we'd thought, and at least indirectly better for Edwards too.
--Josh Marshall
Heisenberg ...
Looking at these latest numbers from the LA Times poll (noted below), and the context of other polls over the last few weeks, I think you have to say that none of the three competitive campaigns on the Democratic side can go into the next two weeks with any real confidence or even relative certainty of the result.
Even John Edwards, who in my own mind I'd pushed into a second tier, is by no means out of this. He's in third in Iowa. But only a statistically insignificant margin, 4 percentage points, separates him from the leader, Hillary Clinton. And what 2004 showed in spades is that an unexpected win in Iowa can rocket a candidate into the lead in New Hampshire. Possibly even more so this time since a mere five days separates the two contests.
Of course, another possibility is that they remained bunched but in an unexpected order -- Obama, Edwards, Clinton or Clinton, Edwards, Obama.
There's some thin reassurance for Hillary in the LAT sounding: among Iowans who are certain or very likely to participate in the Iowa caucuses she leads by 9 points. But if I were Hillary's field director in either of the two states that would not settle my stomach much.
--Josh Marshall
Down to the Wire
A new LA Times poll shows Barack Obama (32%) in a statistical dead heat with Hillary Clinton (30%), with Edwards a distant third (18%). In Iowa, it's a three-way dead heat, at least when margins of error are factored in: Clinton (29%), Obama (26%), Edwards (25%).
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: Election Roundup #6
We've got four days left of 2007 and six days left until the Iowa Caucuses. We survey the terrain in our sixth 2008 election roundup episode of TPMtv ...
--Josh Marshall
Edwards releases statement on Bhutto: surprisingly the assassination turns out not to be about him.
(ed.note: There's a bit of extenuating circumstances or clarification required. This is the formal Edwards response. The craven stuff out of camps HRC and Obama was from surrogates. On balance though I think the comparison is merited.)
--Josh Marshall
Not So Fast
Musharraf or Al Qaeda behind Bhutto assassination? Think again says ex-US intel official.
--Josh Marshall
Horse Race
The leading Dem candidates for president appear to be in a pitched battle to make the most craven and insipid uses of the Bhutto assassination for immediate political advantage. A true horse race.
--Josh Marshall
Hillary Surrogate Evan Bayh: Assassination reminds us, GOPers could paint us Dems as weak if we don't pick Hillary.
--Josh Marshall
Lords of CW
Kos and I are definitely of the same mind on this. And there is perhaps no political commentary bromide more impervious to evidence to the contrary. Newsweek's Evan Thomas argues that our increasingly partisan and divided politics are creating two Americas -- one very engaged minority of hyped-up political junkies and a great majority of citizens who are turned off and tuning out politics.
I have some articles from the late 1990s or early 2000s I wish I could refer back to (not sure where the links are), but Kos nicely sets forth some of the key and incontrovertible evidence that this is not only wrong but precisely the opposite of the case. It's revealing that the source Thomas cites is Thomas Patterson, a conventional wisdom bathed press critic at the Kennedy School, rather than a more granular summary of voting statistics.
You can certainly make a qualitative argument that increased partisan adherence is damaging our politics -- not one I'd agree with, at least not mainly. But the quantitative argument -- that increased partisanship is driving people away from politics and voting -- simply can't be made. Nor should it be that surprising. The more people are engaged in the issues of the day, the more likely they are to vote.
--Josh Marshall
Obama advisor Axelrod: Assassination reminds us of Hillary's wrong call on Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
McCain/Rudy
We're finishing up today's election round-up episode of TPMtv. And the big story is clearly John McCain. On balance, I think I'd still say Romney is the favorite for the nomination, as I've been saying for some weeks. But things are moving really quickly. And none of the quick stuff that's happening is good for Romney.
Newspaper endorsements generally don't amount to much. But what were effectively anti-endorsements from New Hampshire's two leading newspapers -- the Concord Monitor and the Manchester Union-Leader -- come at the worst possible time. The liberal and conservative paper both saying, Don't vote for Romney because he's too big a phony to be president.
But on McCain, one thread of what's happening, that's important not to ignore, is the synergy between McCain's and Giuliani's support. We've already noted the effective collapse of Giuliani's numbers. But at least a topline look at those numbers suggests that McCain's surge is being fed by Rudy's rapid decline.
And it makes a fair amount of sense. Whatever you think of either guy, both are basing their candidacy on hawkish foreign policy and what counts in a GOP context as centrism on key social issues. In my mind, the profile of each guy's supporters is pretty similar. (To be clear, no, they're not explicitly emphasizing this in the primaries. But it's still a key selling point for each.)
It's not hard to predict that if McCain gets even third place in Iowa, the airwaves will be dominated for the next five days by stories of his miracle comeback.
--Josh Marshall
Help. I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up
As poll numbers plummet, Rudy goes all 9/11 in new commercial.
--Josh Marshall
Classy Scarborough: Assassination Helps Rudy
Late Update: Lots more on this here, including polling that shows Rudy doesn't even have any advantage on terror over his GOP rivals.
--Josh Marshall
Bhutto Confidante: Musharraf to Blame
TPM's Spencer Ackerman just interviewed Benazir Bhutto's longtime confidante and advisor Husain Haqqani. He says Musharraf's to blame. "There is only one possibility: the security establishment and Musharraf are complicit, either by negligence or design. That is the most important thing. She's not the first political leader killed, since Musharraf took power, by the security forces."
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read
TPM's Spencer Ackerman talks to Pakistan expert Barnett Rubin about Bhutto's assassination and what it means for Pakistan and the United States.
TPMtv interviewed Rubin in October about the situation in Pakistan and our alliance with Pervez Musharraf.
--Josh Marshall
Bhutto Dead
Obviously, the big news of the day is the assassination, in Pakistan, of former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto. The early reports suggest that an assassin shot Bhutto twice at close range and then blew himself up. On first blush, that sounds like the killers -- if in fact they're the same people -- learned a lesson from the first attack when the blast pattern left Bhutto more or less uninjured. Also important to watch, there was a sniper attack on supporters of rival former PM Nawaz Sharif earlier in the day. We're not clear yet whether he was present at that earlier incident or not, though earlier reports suggest he was not.
We'll be following the story closely today, bringing you the latest and trying to find the context to help explain what it means. Watch our news section to the right for the latest.
--Josh Marshall
That ARG Poll
Earlier today I pointed to the mystery surrounding that new ARG poll suggesting Hillary was opening up a big lead in Iowa. Outlier? Or the first in a late breaking trend? Prof. Charles Franklin looks more deeply and more knowledgeably into the question.
--Josh Marshall
Golden Dukes Announced on 31st! (The Excitement Mounts!!!)
In case you're getting antsy for the Golden Dukes awards announcement on the 31st, here's who I would have chosen for the winners of the Dukes in each of the six categories, if I'd be chosen to be a judge ...
--Josh Marshall
All the Mayor's Men
Rudy Giuliani biographer Wayne Barrett introduces non-New Yorkers to Ed Norris, a Rudy confidante who was deputy commissioner of the NYPD and who apparently picked up Rudy's (and Bernie Kerik's) penchant for romancing on the public dime:
Norris, who was still at NYPD headquarters when the Judi Nathan adventure began in 1999, pled guilty to federal charges in 2004 that he had used a supplemental police fund in Baltimore as if it were his own ATM, "financing romantic encounters with several different women." The original indictment referred to eight women entertained by the police chief on the public tab, but that was later reduced to six. Prosecutors also claimed that the married Norris used the apartment of his chief of staff for workday liaisons that were called "naps," sometimes occurring several times a day. Within months of taking over as police commissioner, he billed an October 2000 stay with "female number one" at the Best Western Seaport in New York to the fund, according to the indictment. The estimated $20,000 in playtime billings included luxury hotels and gifts from Victoria's Secret, and his final plea included admitting to looting the funds and not paying taxes on the income.
Norris went on to become a much celebrated police chief in Baltimore and the head of the Maryland State Police before his federal conviction and six month prison sentence. He is now a talk radio host in Baltimore and a regular on HBO's The Wire.
--David Kurtz
A '90s Flashback
Judicial Watch--the conservative watchdog group that made its name on the Clintons in the 1990s--has shown itself on occasion to be willing to go after Republicans in the 2000s, suing for Bush White House visitor records, for instance. But with Hillary back in the national picture (did she ever really leave?), Judicial Watch must be seeing visions of a return to its anti-Clinton heyday.
Here's the group's list of the most corrupt politicians of 2007, released today:
Hillary ClintonJohn Conyers
Larry Craig
Diane Feinstein
Rudy Giuliani
Mike Huckabee
Scooter Libby
Barack Obama
Nancy Pelosi
Harry Reid
In this day and age, you really have to stretch to put together a corruption list in which Dems outnumber Republicans. But maybe it's a sign of the times that even Judicial Watch wound up with two GOP presidential candidates on its list. You can't knock them for trying, but whitewashing GOP corruption is just darned hard these days.
Late Update: TPM Reader AB correctly notes that the list is in alphabetical order--not level of corruption, as this post originally suggested.
--David Kurtz
Don't Tell Camp Obama
Greg Sargent flags a new study that says the media really has been toughest on Hillary.
--Josh Marshall
Paul Appealing and Peale Appalling?
TPM Reader HC checks in ...
Thanks for the thoughtful post on Ron Paul, one of the more lucid pieces I've read on his candidacy. I think, though, what you may be missing is that certain major voices in the blogosphere have spoken admiringly about him (Greenwald) or have actually endorsed him in the GOP primary (Sullivan). This man is clearly beyond the valley of crazies and has advanced extremely racist views in the not-too-distant past and yet many of our more libertarian pundits seem willing to give him a pass. This is frustrating to many of us.
--Josh Marshall
Run Amok
Spencer Ackerman has more from the motherlode that his FOIA request to the State Department has yielded.
Today, it's an internal September 2007 State Department report on how bad the department's own accounting practices are in Afghanistan, where $28.4 million in U.S. government property issued to contractors Dyncorp and Blackwater cannot be accounted for.
--David Kurtz
Antipodes
I didn't think I should let the day go by without a brief mention of my visit to the Ron Paul alternative universe on Christmas Eve.
On Monday, we flagged Paul's star turn on Meet the Press, in which he laid out his policy proposals on the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Now, if you've been online much lately you know that while Paul can't get above the middle-single digits in the polls, he's running with overwhelming majority support from a community of sufferers from an affliction which, from what I can tell, seems to consist of a Tourettes-like compulsion to invade various websites comments sections and spasmodically type "RON PAUL!!!" or "RON PAUL 2008!!!" or similar phrases, most always in all capital letters.
Having run this site for going on eight years, I'm no stranger to hate mail. So I was neither surprised nor bothered by the responses the post drew from Paul supporters -- many or most of which amounted to what I guess would be nerdy, 21st century libertarian versions of 'you'll be the first one up against the wall when the Revolution comes'.
But what did jump out at me in the emails was this strong sense from Paul supporters that the establishment and MSM figures like myself (yes, I've been promoted, it seems) are looking for ways to stop the Ron Paul tsunami that's building across the country.
Now, before going further, I would say that a lot of the things Paul says in the debates seems pretty sensible, though that's not necessarily that difficult when arguing against the GOP line on Islamofascism and the War on Terror. Or I'll actually say more than that. In his debate performances -- and I'm thinking particularly of one of Paul's answers referencing the Vietnam war and the supposedly perpetual nature of the war on 'Islamofascism' -- he often sounds a lot more frank and sensible than the Democratic candidates since his world view makes it possible for him to sweep the barn much more thoroughly of much of the claptrap about which our foreign policy has been organized for the last six or seven years.
And while Paul has a history of saying some pretty ugly things, for this I think he's at least proved a tonic in the GOP debates, as a breath of relative sanity on some key foreign policy issues. All that's a long way of saying that I don't have particularly strong feelings about the guy one way or another. And as long as he doesn't have much popular support I don't see much reason to have one. But when I say alternative universe, I don't just mean his supporters.
A while back I was peppered for a few days by emailers pointing me toward an article detailing Paul's alleged history of anti-Israel politics and slurs and goading me to 'disavow' him. I told these good souls that I found it hard to disavow him since I hadn't avowed him in the first place. And the response I got was that it was a matter of all the liberals and Democrats who were on the Ron Paul bandwagon.
But who are these people? The Democrats and liberals who are on the Ron Paul bandwagon?
And this is what I mean: the alternative Ron Paul universe, supporters and critics, all living in a some sort of bubble, alternative reality, in which Paul is a key driver in our national politics, notwithstanding the fact that he barely registers in the polls and does not seem to have moved the needle one notch the GOP nomination contest in terms of shifting the terms of the debate toward his views on foreign policy.
--Josh Marshall
One Week To Go
The Iowa caucus is a week from tomorrow, and the candidates are making their closing arguments to voters. TPM Election Central has the Edwards campaign's new internal memo to supporters.
--David Kurtz
No, No, Don't Make Me!!!
We posted today's episode of TPMtv a little earlier this morning. It's a mash-up of the different candidates' Xmas commercials. And a reader just reminded me of the part that jumped out at me during the edit. It comes at 2:20 in. It's Mitt Romney with what I guess must be a grandson or something like that on a skiing trip. I don't pass it on as having any great meaning. But it's just funny and, well, weird in a sadistic kind of way. It's Mitt with the kid with a sled. And the kid's obviously afraid he's going to hit some pole or something. And Mitt's like, you got to do it anyway, son. And then he swooshes him down the hill and you see the little guy totally wipe out at the bottom.
I'll be honest. I'm not nearly virtuous enough not to get a laugh out of slapstick humor. But there's something just odd about it in a campaign commercial.
Like I said, about 2:20 seconds in ...
Late Update: Some sharp-eyed readers point out that the kid at the top of the hill getting the bum rush seems to be a different kid than the one you see wiping out at the bottom of the hill. Either that, or the guy put on a different pair of pants on the way down -- which given how wigged out he seemed, is certainly a possibility.
Even Later Update: Correction: Okay, I have to take my lumps on this one. I was watching our mash-up and not the original. And the sense that it's the same kid is a product of our mash-up edit, not the original. So it would seem the wiping out kid is definitely not the scared kid, pants change or no pants change.
--Josh Marshall
Big Question
Looking ahead to next week and the beginning of the primary/caucus roller-coaster, a lot depends on whether this ARG poll released the day before Christmas was an outlier or the first to spot the trend.
ARG's been doing increasingly frequent polls of both Iowa and NH (I think they're actually located in NH). Their poll ending Nov. 14th, had Hillary up 27% to 21%. The next on Nov. 29th had Obama up 27% to 25%. On Dec. 19th, it was Hillary up 29% to 25%. And in the poll that finished on the 23rd, Hillary had opened up a 15 point lead, 34% to 19%.
So a late November surge for Obama, followed by a stalemate and then a big breakout by Hillary.
As far as I can tell, ARG is the only polling operation showing this so far. But they were also, as far as I can see at least, the most recent in the field -- polling up until the 23rd. And the clear trend line up until then was a steady move toward Obama with him opening up a very slender but measurable lead.
And if that's not enough, add one more issue: polls over the holidays are notoriously wobbly because a lot more people aren't home and, I assume, it's difficult to construct a model that takes into account the demographic profile of those most and least likely to hit the road for Christmas.
So, I'll be looking for the next crop of polls, which I figure will come out tomorrow afternoon, to see whether this is really where things are headed.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: Adstravaganza! Christmas Edition
Christmas is now behind us. So let's take a look at how the different candidates exploited it in their 30 second political ads in our AdStravaganza! Christmas Edition ...
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Ted Stevens
When you're being investigated for a freebie home renovation deal from a CEO who's already copped a plea to bribery, it's always a good sign when the foreman on the renovation agrees to testify against you.
--Josh Marshall
More on the Facebook shop of horrors from Ari Melber.
Be right back, have to go update my profile.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read
With U.S. approval to violate Iraqi airspace, Turkish warplanes and invasion forces have killed an estimated 150 Kurds in Northern Iraq over the last few days.
--David Kurtz
Game On
Check it out. The Pollster.com chart that aggregates the Iowa polling on the Democratic side shows that Obama is now clearly ahead of Hillary:
It looks like their lines crossed roughly two weeks ago, give or take. I could be wrong, but I don't think it was readily apparent on the chart last week--or at least didn't yet have the visual impact--that Obama had in fact taken the lead.
It's really a rather remarkable event. If you click on the chart above you can see the trend lines dating back to mid-2006, when Edwards was the clear frontrunner and Obama didn't even register. When Hillary passed Edwards earlier this year, Obama was still in third. He passed Edwards for second a few weeks later and then surged towards Clinton as her numbers flattened then actually dropped a bit.
It's also interesting to note how consistently upward trending Obama's numbers have been for the last several months. He's grown in Iowa at a pretty steady clip since the summer, even during the period when his campaign was supposedly dead in the water. At least in the Iowa numbers, you don't see much evidence of any significant dip there.
Were it not for the rags-to-riches rise of Mike Huckabee from virtual unknown to serious contender, if not outright leader, on the GOP side, Obama's passing of Hillary would be the story of the campaign so far.
--David Kurtz
I'm a big Facebook user, for better or worse. But here's yet more evidence of the company's sleazy practices.
--Josh Marshall
Not Just the Monitor
Last week the Concord Monitor crapped all over Mitt Romney. Now the Union-Leader, the state's insanely right-wing but very influential daily is doing the same.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: Josh's Picks for the Golden Dukes
Someday I hope to be selected to be a judge for the annual Golden Duke awards. But since I wasn't chosen this year, I thought I'd still give you my picks for what I thought should be the award-winning scandals and the biggest crooks of 2007.
(Remember, the real winners are going to be announced on December 31st. So stay tuned!)
P.S. Merry Christmas!
--Josh Marshall
Merry Christmas!
The TPM Crew takes only three or four holidays off a year. And this is one of them. So from all of us to all of you, we wish you a Merry Christmas, whether it's a centerpiece of your religious observance or simply a secular celebration with loved ones and family. For today, we've got a special Golden Dukes episode of TPMtv for your enjoyment in the post above. We'll be back bright and early tomorrow morning.
--Josh Marshall
You're No Abraham Lincoln
You may have heard that in his star-turn yesterday on Meet the Press, Ron Paul said that the American Civil War was a mistake (brought on by a power-hungry Abraham Lincoln) and came out for so-called 'gradual emancipation'.
Now, there are so many things morally and historically wrong with what Paul's saying here, a few of which my old grad school pal Ari Kelman explains here.
But I must say there's something almost endearing about this unforced error in wingnut extremism. Did Paul give in to the heavy media pressure to come up with a clear position on slavery and the Civil War? What's even funnier is that even in verb tense he talks about it as a live issue. "The way I'm advising that it should have been done," he tells Russert.
Advising? For better or worse, isn't the decision on whether to have the Civil War and emancipate the slaves pretty much moot as a public policy issue?
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: The GOP's Lump of Coal
Watchin'em so you don't have to. It was wall-to-wall election talk on the Sunday shows this weekend. And it's looking pretty bleak for the Republican frontrunners. Even Bill Kristol can barely put a good face on it.
--Ben Craw
Karma's a Bitch
I did not see it myself. But numerous readers told us late Friday how Chris Matthews devoted a substantial portion of Friday's Hardball to trumpeting an article in the New York Times exonerating Rudy on the Shag Fund front and lamenting how his beloved candidate's campaign was torpedoed by a bum rap.
If what the Times reported comes as a surprise, it shouldn't. Because it's what we were reporting as far back as November 30th. The initial story in the Politico suggested that the accounting funny business was intended to hide Rudy's shagging visits. But a look at the records themselves didn't bear that out. The real story was that late in his administration Rudy's team started putting more and more expenses effectively off the books to hide his increasingly high-living ways because he'd made a big point publicly about how he'd reduced spending in the mayor's office.
(As is so often the case, we came to this insight through the scrupulous and meticulously fair-minded research of Paul Kiel who, along with a group of TPM interns, figured this all out in a couple days with the documents.)
That was basically the argument Rudy's team was making -- that whatever fishy accounting techniques they were using, they were using them to cover Shag and non-Shag funding a like -- actually mainly non-Shag funding -- so the aim couldn't be to conceal his affair. That was basically right, only it was in the nature of things, not surprisingly, a difficult argument to make: We weren't just hiding shag, we were hiding everything!
And that wasn't the worst of his problems. The burst of press attention focused a bright light on something that had been partly known in the NYC press but had been the subject of little scrutiny during this campaign: the fact that as Mayor Rudy expended tens or perhaps hundreds of thousand of taxpayer dollars on his mistress while his wife and kids were still ensconced at the mayor's official residence, Gracie Mansion. <