Stung by his failure to get on the ballot in Virginia, Newt (through his campaign manager) has taken to Facebook likening his set back to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor …
Newt and I have talked three or four times today and he stated that this is not catastrophic – we will continue to learn and grow. Remember that it was only a few months ago that pundits and the press declared us dead after the paid consultants left. They declared that the decision not to compete in the Ames Straw Poll would mean that Iowans would ignore us. Some will again state that this is fatal.
Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941: We have experienced an unexpected set-back, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action. Throughout the next months there will be ups and downs; there will be successes and failures; there will be easy victories and difficult days – but in the end we will stand victorious.
What a long strange trip it’s been.
2011 started with tragedy with the Gabby Giffords shooting, then shifted to high drama with the roiled politics of Wisconsin and the killing of Osama bin Laden and finally settled into a ever-deepening farce as the White House and Congress battled over the debt ceiling and then jousted over whether jobs were a bigger priority that budget cutting.
Which TPM posts did you like the best?
Judged by your readership (i.e., page views), here are the Top Ten TPM Posts of 2011 … Read More
One of the major effects of the 2010 Republican wave election was the subsequent passage of a raft of voter ID laws and other legislation aimed at curtailing voting rights across the country. The aim, often little disguised, is to reduce voting among racial minorities, students and poorer voters generally, all of whom tend to vote disproportionately for Democrats. The voter suppression lobby has gained a number of key court decisions over recent years. So it has been a looming question just how big an effect the clampdown on voting will have on the 2012 election. Read More
Justice Department will block South Carolina’s new voter ID law, saying it disproportionately impacts minority voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act, according to a letter sent to the state by DOJ and obtained by TPM.
You can read the letter here.
A sampling of the most virulent excerpts from Ron Paul’s now-notorious newsletters.
It’s probably not the most effective form of political protest you’ll ever see, but a ‘gay robot’ confronted Michele Bachmann in Iowa yesterday. Happy holidays… or something.
President Obama and congressional Democrats are doubtless savoring their pretty thorough victory in their standoff with House Republicans over an extension of the payroll tax holiday. The congressional spit fights to come will soon take off some of the sheen.
But perhaps the real political win – the one with real electoral implications – is that more Americans now know that they actually have a payroll tax cut to lose, and the President emerged looking most like the one who wants to keep them from losing it.
What’s that? You didn’t know it was almost Christmas?
Let Fox & Friends fix that for you.
The Ron Paul camp is now denying to TPM that Paul himself wrote the circa 1993 direct mail piece that Reuters first reported about last evening. So let’s unpack this. Read More