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Later today, President Obama is going to address the nation on the subject of the Afghanistan war. Specifically, he's going to make good on a promise made a year-and-a-half ago: to begin the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan next month. The big question everyone's been speculating about in the run-up to this announcement has been how big a reduction the president will announce.
[Program Note: OK, since I've been away, and since June has been a (shall we say) "sub-par" month for us here in terms of posting things in a timely manner, I'm going to run a rare late-Sunday column for your edification. This is, in some ways, a mea culpa for the break in service last week. Also, it seemed appropriate, since I've been away so much this month that I pretty much completely missed commenting on the continuing saga of Anthony Weiner. So, while Weiner's case was a bit more unique (no hookers were even involved), I thought it time to dig this column out from three years ago, which I wrote in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer scandal. You may also wish to check out a follow-up column I wrote entitled "On Whores" in November of 2009. In any case, this column somehow seemed appropriate, given the mainstream media frenzy in the past few weeks....]
The Republican presidential field for the 2012 presidential election will be on full display this evening, as CNN airs the second nationally-televised candidate debate, this one from the early-voting state of New Hampshire. Since the first debate was a little light on heavyweight candidates, this is the first chance a lot of Republican primary voters will have to assess the biggest names in the race.
Having just gotten back from a trip abroad where the news was dominated by the story of a politician facing severe consequences (and the end of his political career) for his sexual misconduct, I opened up the pages of the American news to find... well, pretty much the same thing.
With all this frantic jumping in and out of the race, I thought it was time to take another look at the Republican field to see how it is shaping up. At this point, there are only a few holdouts left on the sidelines, as most of the bigwigs (and some decidedly "smallwigs") have made their intentions known.
A word here about timing is necessary, I think. While the blog post is quite obviously meant as a semi-joke, wouldn't this have been more fun in, say, mid-October -- a few weeks before Hallowe'en? Instead of this week, with the "End of Days" prophesied for midafternoon this Saturday? I'm just saying....
In this year's version of the "Balloon Boy" fake news story, it was revealed today that the "Botox Mommy" story was a complete fabrication. In other words, those stalwart "journalists" -- busily gatekeeping their little hearts out to keep the mainstream media so very, very far above the blogosphere when it comes to fact-checking -- once again got punked. Not only did they get punked, but it actually cost them at least ten grand in the process.
It's rare for me to have a moment of pity for someone like Newt Gingrich, but I have to admit I'm feeling a little sorry for the guy this week. But before we delve into Newt's campaign problems in greater detail, it seems to me that most pundits are missing a big underlying new reality in the Republican Party. The focus has all been on Newt himself, what he said, and the subsequent ire directed at him by prominent Righties. But after the dust settles on the incident itself, people are going to notice the bigger fact this fracas has illuminated: Republicans are doubling down on Paul Ryan's budget rather than backing away from it, to the point where it has now become the acid test for Republicans in 2012. Which should be good news for Democrats.
Well, that was a fun couple of weeks, wasn't it? For the past month or so, Donald Trump pretended to run for president and the media pretended he was serious (funniest headline I've seen today, from the Washington Post, "Donald Trump: I'm Fired!"). This entertaining period has now drawn to a close, much to the dismay of late-night comedians everywhere, as The Donald all but admits that the whole thing was a ratings and contract negotiations ploy to boost his "Apprentice" show on NBC. What it all means is that we can now take a look at who is yet to decide to jump into the Republican nomination race in earnest, and without such clownish distraction.
Ron Paul, apparently, is not a superstitious kind of guy.