But you knew that, already, right? Because I reported as much on December 30, when everyone else was saying that the Republican party was not giving him adequate support. Hey, I heard it from the horse’s mouth.
FYI: I listened in on a conference call with Brown, yesterday, and was surprised to learn that those rumors about the GOP leaving him in the cold were greatly exaggerated. In fact, “Don’t believe everything you read” is a direct quote from Brown. He wanted us to know that the GOP wasn’t stiffing him. But he is being greatly outspent by his well connected opponent, MA Atty Gen Martha Coakley, who has special interest, and union $$$ backing her.
NRSC, RNC quietly moved money into Massachusetts last two weeks
This was a brilliant move by both the NRSC and the RNC. They didn’t fall into a Democratic trap by trumpeting their involvement with Brown, who wanted to show as much independence as possible. Coakley and Obama spent Sunday making Brown look like a tool of the Tea Party movement and the GOP national machine, but it was Coakley getting bailed out by Democratic heavyweights from outside Massachusetts.
Incidentally, in that post, I also linked to that hunky Cosmo spread of Brown, which I found whilst googling, the first blogger to notice it, (it was from a Sept. issue), not that I got any hat tips out of the deal. Hmmmph.
Of all the freshly revealed anecdotes, though, none may be as eye-opening as the previously-unknown friction between the president and vice-president – which on Saturday a Biden spokesman dismissed as “rumors.” The tensions began in September of 2008 word got back to Obama’s campaign headquarters that Biden had told reporters on his campaign plane that he was more qualified than his running mate to be president.
“A chill set in between Chicago and the Biden plane,” Halperin and Heilemann write in the book, to be released Monday. “Joe and Obama barely spoke by phone, rarely campaigned together.”
And when Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was asked about having Biden dial into the nightly campaign conference call, he responded: “Nah.” Instead, Biden had his own call with Plouffe and senior campaign adviser David Axelrod.
Obama himself was growing increasingly frustrated with his running mate after Biden let loose with a string of gaffes, including a statement that paying higher taxes amounted to patriotism and criticism of one of the campaign’s own ads poking fun at John McCain.
But when Biden, at an October fund-raiser in Seattle, famously predicted that Obama would be tested with an international crisis, the then-Illinois senator had had enough.
“How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?” he demanded of his advisers on a conference call, a moment at which most people on the call said the candidate was as angry as they had ever heard him.
For his part, the authors write, Biden wasn’t pleased with the campaign’s direction.
After a prep session for a “Meet the Press” appearance following the Democratic convention, Biden was incredulous when he was briefed by campaign aides about the ticket’s tax policy. He told them: “Well, it’s your campaign. I’ll say what you want me to say. But after Election Day, all bets are off.”
Following his campaign plane braggadocio about being more qualified than the man who put him on the ticket, Biden’s access to the press was limited and he grilled new staffers that were assigned to him to try and determine if they were part of his team or loyal to Chicago.
When the ticketmates talked a few days after Biden’s prediction that Obama would be tested, Obama lit into his running mate. But Biden didn’t apologize – or even indicate he understood why his comments in Seattle were problematic, though McCain’s campaign had already cut an ad featuring the dark warning.
Speaking to his own staff, Biden insisted that it hadn’t really been a gaffe. And feeling a bit defensive, he invoked one of the worst memories of Obama’s primary campaign.
“I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t say anything about bitter people who cling to their guns and religion,” Biden cracked, the authors paraphrase.
Asked about the book, Biden spokesman Jay Carney said: “We aren’t going to comment on rehashed rumors about the campaign. But I can say that if the authors were concerned with accuracy they might have checked their reporting with people on the Vice President’s staff. They did not. I can also say that the President and Vice President have worked together very closely and successfully this past year.”
Well, sure they have. Every time I turn around there’s another story about the President and Vice President working closely together, and enjoying each other’s company.
Is this really breaking news? I thought that I had heard a long time ago, that George W. Bush had indeed volunteered to go to Vietnam. Goldberg is right, it is a little known fact, and the CBS producer Mary Mapes knew it and suppressed the information.
I do remember her as the real villain in this case.
M1A, the organizers of this effort, would like to submit the letters and signatures to the GWB Presidential Library on September 11, 2011, the ten year anniversary of 9/11.
Here’s the latest video from GOP.gov, one of their best, yet:
Go to Innocent Bystanders to hear Geoff explain why saving the jobs of ‘teachers, police officers and firefighters’ isn’t “stimulus”, anyway. (Sorry, no chart, this time).
“They’re Between a Rock and a Hard Place:” Democrats Divided on Economy; Grim Unemployment Figures Suggest Need for Second Stimulus, But Their First Free-Spending Ineffectual Non-Stimulus Leaves the Nation Already Bankrupt
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” — Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001
Imagine the hue and cry if a white male had said that about a Hispanic female.
Charles Krauthammer, on Fox just said that this was a shrewd move by Obama, because it takes the media focus off of the disastrous (for him) debate on GITMO, and the embarrassingly defiant nuke testings by North Korea. Also, this will placate the left for many years to come.
Allahpundit had a different take, twittering: Obama could have picked a lefty firebreather if not for identity politics concerns. I.e. left actually loses this time bc of “diversity”
Jimmie from the Sundries Shack tweeted “Hmm…Sotomayor has no children. However will she empathize with the working mother?” and, “I wonder how Judge Sotomayor’s tax records look… “
Krauthammer says this is a done deal. She will be confirmed.
Chuckie Schumer liberally employs the ‘moderate’ talking points:
Struggles with earpiece…
UPDATE:
I’m already tired of hearing people speak of her “compelling personal story”. Enough already. Did they say the same for Justice Thomas? I don’t remember, but I doubt it.
The Washington Times looks at her overruled decisions in A Judge Too Far:
Even the liberal establishment worries that Judge Sotomayor tilts too far to the left. New Republic essayist Jeffrey Rosen reports that fellow liberals who have watched or worked with her closely “expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and… [they have said] she is ‘not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench.’ “
A suspiciously high number of her decisions have been overruled by higher courts. Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network said that record shows “she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court.”
Nice Deb 