More Chickens
Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, 2008
| Republicans: | |
| John McCain | 4 |
| Mitt Romney | 2 |
| Rudolph Giuliani | 1 |
| Democrats: | |
| Barack Obama | 7 |
| John Edwards | 2 |
| Bill Richardson | 1 |
The Most Heroic Palindrome
Star? Not I! . . . He too has a wee bagel still up to here held. . . .
Sample hot Edam in a pan. I’m a rotten digger – often garden I plan, I agreed; All agreed? Aye, bore ensign; I’d a veto – I did lose us site. Wool to hem us? No, cotton. Site pen in acacias or petals a last angel bee frets in. . . .
Vendor pays: I admire vendee, his pots net roe. Nine dames order an opal fan; I’ll ask cold log fire vendor to log igloo frost. . . . Cat? No, I’m a dog; I’m a sad loyal pet. . . .
Hot pages are in a mag, nor will I peer, familiar tat, so lewd . . .
Sam’s a name held in a flat, or, sir, bedsit. I wonder, is it illicit ore? No ties? A bit under? Retarded? Is 'owt amiss? I’m on pot; not so Cecil, a posh guy a hero met. A red date was not to last so Cecil sat. . . .
Part on rose? It’s a petal. Define metal: Tin is . . . (I gulp!) can! . . .
No, draw a pot now, do! Of wary rat in a six ton tub. . . .
Semitone, not a tone, radios emit; no, on tape; elsewhere it’s a tone. . . .
No, it is opposite. Yaks I rode wore hats, albeit on deity’s orders. Rats age more held in a trap, nip and I know it – set no cage now. . . .
Macaroni, rats, as a hoot, tie. I vomit on rats.
Frank Rich on Barack Obama: “Voting for a Smile”
People usually run for president because somebody tells them they should and then graft on the reasons afterward. But on Thursday, Obama’s vague optimism and smooth-jazz modernity came together in a spectacular fusion with the deep yearning of Democrats who have suffered through heartbreaking losses in the last two elections with uninspiring candidates.
Often unable to surf the electricity he sparked over the last year, Obama has now put on his laurel wreath and dropped his languid pose, tapping directly into what he calls the “fire burning†across the country — the dream of a cool, smart, elegant, reasonable, literary, witty, decent “West Wing†sort of president who won’t bankrupt us or endanger us or co-opt our rights or put a black hood on the Constitution.
Peggy Noonan on Mike Huckabee
Everyone said Mike Huckabee was a big dope to leave Iowa Wednesday to fly to L.A. to be on Jay Leno, but did you see him on that thing? He got off a perfect line on why he's doing well against Romney: "People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off." The studio audience loved him. And you know, in Iowa they watch "The Tonight Show" too.
Mr. Huckabee likes to head-fake people into thinking he's Gomer Pyle, but he's more like the barefoot boy of the green room. He's more James Carville than Jim Nabors.
What we have learned about Mr. Huckabee the past few months is that he's an ace entertainer with a warm, witty and compelling persona. He won with no money and little formal organization, with an evangelical network, with a folksy manner, and with the best guileless pose in modern politics. From the mail I have received the past month after criticizing him in this space, I would say his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture.
They have been bruised and offended by the rigid, almost militant secularism and multiculturalism of the public schools; they reject those schools' squalor, in all senses of the word. They believe in God and family and America. They are populist: They don't admire billionaire CEOs, they admire husbands with two jobs who hold the family together for the sake of the kids; they don't need to see the triumph of supply-side thinking, they want to see that suffering woman down the street get the help she needs.
They believe that Mr. Huckabee, the minister who speaks their language, shares, down to the bone, their anxieties, concerns and beliefs. They fear that the other Republican candidates are caught up in a million smaller issues--taxing, spending, the global economy, Sunnis and Shia--and missing the central issue: again, our culture.