Protesting a bit too much

  • The media, not the Bush Administration picked up the story and have been lateralling it, like a football with no time left on the clock, back-and-forth down the field trying keep the story alive.

  • Paul, methinks, was protesting a bit too much. The Democrats want to keep this election from sliding back into a referendum on who can best protect America from where they have it now: Who can best run the House Page program.

  • Yesterday, I got a call from a senior political reporter asking if I thought the Democrats were taking a harder line on Iraq and whether that would help them.

  • I said that would play directly into the hands of Republicans locked in close elections.

  • There is, I continued, a strong feeling among Americans away from the two coasts that there is a strong "peacenik" strain which has never been fully bred out of the DNA of the National Democrats.

  • If the Dems make Iraq the centerpiece of their closing strategy, they will be seen - well, described by people such as me - as adopting the dreaded cut-and-run strategy.

  • If that happens, all a Republican candidate has to say is: See? Vote for my Democratic opponent and that's what you'll get: The Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Al Sharpton foreign policy.

  • Begala is a smart guy. He is trying to send a message to Democratic candidates to stay away from this being a referendum on national security.

  • New Topic: The Palm Restaurant in Washington has, as do all Palm Restaurants, caricatures of people from the area. As it happens, my caricature is on the wall just as you enter the restaurant.

  • As it also happens - although I didn't notice this until Wednesday when it became more-or-less a running joke - my drawing is right next to that of … Mark Foley's.

  • I'm going to say this one last time: I never had …

  • On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to Hamlet; a Mullfoto over which I laughed out loud; and the Catchy Caption of the day which is the wall at the Palm Restaurant.