Romney's Airplane Jitters
I've been offline most of the day on a cross-country flight (fittingly enough), so apologies if the point has already been made. But this detail from this weekend's Times profile of Romney's body-man, Garrett Jackson, struck me as not-at-all flattering to the presumed nominee. I'm frankly shocked that Jackson confirmed it: READ MORE >>
Why Romney Is Too Moderate to Beat Obama
A Real Sign of Progress for Romney?
You may recall that I suggested Rick Santorum had a shot of exceeding expectations in Wisconsin by doing well in the Milwaukee suburbs, which looked on paper like they were solid Romney country but had a reputation for being more conservative than other Midwestern suburbs. READ MORE >>
Romney Cleaned Up; It's Still Gonna Cost Him
Santorum's One Hope for a Wisconsin Upset
By this point in the primary season, everyone has his or her preferred metric for predicting the outcome of a given contest. We’ve all noticed that Mitt Romney tends to perform well in states with small evangelical and rural populations, and in states with large numbers of college grads and affluent voters, while the opposite is generally true for Rick Santorum. READ MORE >>
George HW Bush's Romney Endorsement, Seriously
Don't get me wrong, I see the appeal of nailing down George HW Bush's endorsement. It signals to the GOP establishment and the media that the nomination is effectively over, probably helps Romney raise some money, and maybe gets a few more fence-sitting Republican elites on board. Still, I'm not entirely sure that outweighs the negatives in Romney's case. After all, Romney is doing fine in the GHW Bush wing of the Republican Party. Where he's struggling is the portion of the party that sees Bush as a sellout, and which worries Romney is made of similar stuff. READ MORE >>
Outtakes from the Bush Romney Endorsement
There was something slightly poignant, slightly comical about George H.W. Bush's endorsement of Romney yesterday. This sequence in particular (via Mike Allen's replay of the pool report): READ MORE >>
How Obama Could Have Avoided His Mandate Quagmire
Reid Cherlin, a former Obama White House spokesman whose portfolio included health care, had an interesting post up at GQ.com yesterday about why the Affordable Care Act is so damn hard to sell. The gist: READ MORE >>
Jim Kim and the Problem of Excess Humility
After reading this Rolling Stone piece about Dartmouth (via Felix Salmon), I now see why the school's president, Jim Yong Kim, who Obama just tapped to head the World Bank, made such a good impression on Tim Geithner: They have very similar views on cultural humility--by which I mean how much READ MORE >>
Matt Bai's Excellent Piece...Shows 2011 Was Pointless
Matt Bai’s long-awaited, 10,000-word opus on the rise and fall of last summer’s deficit grand-bargain is finally out and very much worth a read. Bai adds a lot of new detail affirming what we thought we knew—which is that Obama was ready to do a deal and Boehner wasn’t—but which got much hazier in recent weeks amid Team Boehner’s furious spin. READ MORE >>
