The New Republic

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ALISO VIEJO, CALIFORNIA--Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project, lives in a one-story home in a gated community in Orange County. On a late August afternoon, the 59- year-old former accountant invited me into his backyard, which is strewn with potted plants, blue-and-white pinwheels, and a ladybug wind chime. "There are some Pakistani immigrants that live over there," he says, pointing over his fence, "and a nice Japanese family, and a Taiwanese family that lives around the corner. It's a great neighborhood." READ MORE >>

Earlier this summer, when the Obama campaign announced that Jason Furman was joining its staff as director of economic policy, the storyline seemed to write itself: Centrist adviser will pull Obama to the right. Furman had first made a name for himself as a wonky twentysomething wunderkind in the later years of the Clinton administration--a period when, to the consternation of many liberals, Clinton emphasized balanced budgets, free trade, and welfare reform. READ MORE >>

Last week, Senator Pat Leahy suggested that Hillary Clinton ought to quit the presidential race. How insensitive! How boorish! Pundits gasped, Clinton took umbrage, and even Barack Obama was forced to concede that Clinton has the right to run for as long as she desires. The persistent weakness of American liberalism is its fixation with rights and procedures at any cost to efficiency and common sense. Democrats' reluctance to push Clinton out of the race is the perfect expression of that delicate sensibility. READ MORE >>

On January 25, the New York Times endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton. At the time, the 1,100-word editorial stood out for both its tepidness and early appearance, coming near the front-end of the primary season. The piece ran in the paper the Friday before Super Tuesday, instead of in the Times’s symbolically-important Sunday edition. READ MORE >>

A couple of years ago, as part of his campaign to reassure conservatives of his ideological reliability, John McCain sat for an interview with Stephen Moore, a Wall Street Journal editorial writer and fervent advocate of supply-side economics. In the course of the interview, McCain acknowledged that not all his positions were acceptable to the right, but he hinted that further rightward evolution might be possible. "His philosophy is best described as a work in progress," wrote Moore somewhat hopefully. As McCain put it, "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do a READ MORE >>

In the great Jo(h)n wars of 2008, I'm afraid I have to take Chait's side. Moreover, I have a quibble with a point that John Judis makes here: READ MORE >>

My friend Jon Cohn has asked me to respond to his posting about the Des Moines Register poll, and I will try to oblige. What Jon discovers in Clinton and Obama's totals have shown up in other polls as well: Obama does well among independents and less well among voters without a college degree; Clinton does poorly among independents, but better among voters without a college degree. What this shows is that both candidates have glaring weaknesses that an effective Re READ MORE >>

Kim Murphy is a London correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. London, England READ MORE >>

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