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Political Commentary

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October 14, 2008

Muck, Inc. By Debra J. Saunders

Over beers, Brian McConnell and his buddies came up with the idea to put a measure on the San Francisco ballot to rename a city sewage plant after President Bush. Ha, ha, ha.

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October 14, 2008

Stock Markets Like What They’re Seeing By Lawrence Kudlow

Stocks are up over 700 points today, a record-breaking one-day rally. Good news is coming from the four corners of the world as the U.S., G-7, and G-20 are all working to stem the global banking crisis and credit freeze-up.

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October 12, 2008

McCain Needs to Catch A Break - Or Else By Scott Rasmussen

John McCain needs a couple breaks if he's going to make the presidential race competitive down to the wire.

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October 12, 2008

Playing the Race Card By Debra J. Saunders

The race card is back. After Tuesday night's debate, Washington party-crossover dean David Gergen announced it was "too early" to declare victory for Democrat Barack Obama, not because the election is a month away, but because "Obama is black."

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October 11, 2008

The Coming Obama Thugocracy By Michael Barone

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors," Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. "I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face." Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people's faces. They seem determined to shut people up.

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October 10, 2008

Thirty Days and Counting By Alan Abramowitz

With one month remaining in the 2008 presidential campaign, national and state polling data indicate that Barack Obama holds a clear lead over John McCain.

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October 10, 2008

Statehouse '08 Update By Larry J. Sabato

There are just eleven governorships up for grabs from coast to coast, six currently held the Democrats and five by the Republicans.

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October 9, 2008

Honor Won and Lost By Joe Conason

Nothing in the presidential campaign so far has been as instructive as its swift descent into the politics of personal destruction. Although voters have probably heard little lately that they did not already know about Sen. Barack Obama, they have learned something very important about Sen. John McCain.

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October 9, 2008

McCain Economics Still Bush League By Froma Harrop

Take a great nation with a fabulous work ethic and inventive people. Turn its $236 billion budget surplus into an estimated $482 billion deficit, and nearly double the national debt to $10 trillion. In the meantime, fuel economic growth with a consumer-led borrowing binge that makes America beholden to China.

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October 9, 2008

Obama, the Good Soldier By Debra J. Saunders

Two important questions were asked at Tuesday night's presidential debate.

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October 9, 2008

Will McCain Make the Investor Connection? By Lawrence Kudlow

While the presidential candidates were debating in Nashville on Tuesday night, the Asian stock markets were selling off by 10 percent. Earlier in the day, the U.S. market plunged by 500 points. These were big-time drops, yet presidential debaters never talk about the stock market. Nashville was no exception.

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October 9, 2008

Is The Electoral Dam Breaking for Obama By Larry J.. Sabato

All season, political observers have been speculating when, if ever, the Electoral College and the state and national polls would reflect the basic pro-Democratic fundamentals of the presidential election year.

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October 8, 2008

A Great Line By Susan Estrich

I'm happy to give my friend Madeleine Albright credit for the line, as Starbucks apparently has. But the truth is I've been using it for years in speeches to women about how we need to help each other get ahead in business, politics and academia.

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October 8, 2008

Bafflement By Tony Blankley

There was a joke going around conservative circles during the mid-1960s that we conservatives were warned that if we voted for Barry Goldwater, America would get deeper into the Vietnam War. The punch line was that we did vote for Goldwater and America did get deeper into Vietnam.

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October 7, 2008

Why Independents Care So Much About Health Care By Froma Harrop

Political independents now rank health care second among the issues they most want the presidential candidates to discuss, according to a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll for September. The No. 1 issue for independents, as well as for Democrats and Republicans, is the economy.

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October 7, 2008

The Supersize Bailout By Debra J. Saunders

The only way Congress could pass a $700 billion economic bailout package last week was to spend an extra $110 billion that the federal government does not have.

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October 5, 2008

Return to Redistricting Sanity By Debra J. Saunders

As reform measures go, Proposition 11 -- the redistricting reform measure -- is hardly a transformational law likely to supercharge activists (of any political stripe) eager to make Sacramento more effective and more accountable to the public.

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October 4, 2008

The Year of Campaign Chaos By Michael Barone

Politics ordinarily has a certain predictability. Yet presidential politics this year has often seemed to resemble what science writer James Gleick described in his book "Chaos."

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October 3, 2008

The Palin-Biden Verdict By Debra J. Saunders

She passed. He passed. Palin fared better going against Joe Biden than Katie Couric.

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October 3, 2008

A Heartbeat Away By Susan Estrich

For all the Republicans' complaints about Gwen Ifill, the moderator's questions were softballs compared to what Sarah Palin faced from Katie Couric. Ifill did not demand that Palin list (OK, how about just name more than one?) Supreme Court decisions. She did not push on the issue of foreign policy experience.