Manuel Miranda is a charming, avuncular GOP operative in his mid-forties who is known in Republican circles as Manny. In 2004, he enjoyed fifteen minutes of more widespread fame. Miranda, who at the time was the judicial nominations counsel to then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and the Senate Judiciary Committee, had downloaded memos detailing […]
Rebecca Sinderbrand
Posted inMagazine
Lets Do Lunch
Last Novembers Democratic victory catapulted party leaders like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Rahm Emanuel into prominence. But its not just those with a capital D after their names whose fortunes are on the rise these days. The changeover on Capitol Hill has reordered virtually every aspect of Washingtons political culture. In so doing, it […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
WHITHER OLLIE?…
WHITHER OLLIE?… Anniversary stories are the journalistic equivalent of strawberry Pop-Tarts; a steady diet won’t do, but in a pinch, they make for reliable, easily-prepared filler. Editors start off the year with a lengthy calendar that reads like a high school history final crib sheet, where the moon landing bumps up against the Battle of […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
Over on Showdown, Matt Cooper has some great perspective on the largely-overlooked Deval Patrick win in the Massachusetts gubernatorial contest last night — a victory that was surprising mostly for the lack of surprise involved. But as Matt points out, the race shouldn’t have been a sure thing: Patrick’s not-so-secret weapon in his first race […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
UPDATE on the GOP’s shrinking cash advantage
UPDATE on the GOP’s shrinking cash advantage: Karl Rove’s campaign success has generally rested on creating an aura of inevitable dominance. That’s obviously a bit tougher this cycle — and as Greg Sargent points out, his bluff has just been called on the latest campaign finance numbers. Of course, the biggest surprise here is the […]
Posted inMagazine
Rove 2.0
But a funny thing happened on the way to the front page. The poll results had barely gone public before Allen’s chief campaign strategist, Dick Wadhams, went on the offensive. Sabato was a “biased” source, Wadhams sniffed to reporters from the Newport News, Va.-based Daily Press, and The Wall Street Journal poll carried out by […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
Cat Blogging From Syria
CAT BLOGGING FROM SYRIA….OK, I’ll admit it: I’m not really much of a cat person. (Sorry, Kevin). They’re just too hard to read, and a little too stealthy for my taste. But war means a bit of boundary-stretching for everyone. So when my friend Lee ? who lived in Beirut until an emergency taxi ride […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
The Tipping Point
THE TIPPING POINT….Inside his sunny office in Herzliya yesterday, Yoni Fighel of the Institute for Counter-Terrorism took a sheet of paper and started to draw a crude map of the Middle East for me. Then he started sketching lines between each nation, from theocratic Iran to client states like Syria to crumbling countries he thought […]
Posted inPolitical Animal, Politics
Talking to Syria
TALKING TO SYRIA….There are still plenty of nay-sayers, but the chorus calling for Syrian involvement in crafting a Lebanon ceasefire solution now includes Richard Armitage, Warren Christopher, and Mr. Flat World himself, Tom Friedman. The idea isn’t limited to diplomacy’s backseat drivers. With the notable exception of France (which is trying to seduce Syria’s closest […]
Posted inMagazine
Unsettling
The consular rep didn’t want to announce his mission by actually entering the community, so he decided on a quiet drive-by instead. He reported back to his superiors that those alarming tales of settlement growth were standard-issue media exaggeration, a “somewhat distorted picture of reality.” In any case, he argued, Kalyah was too far from […]
