• 3/31 Bob Novak

The two remaining Democratic candidates are playing it safe, sticking to similar policies.  

• 3/31 Wrap: This was an uneventful Bob article (i.e. no anonymously sourced scurrilous sleazy rumors). I like the jockish dismissals of serious thought pertaining to life and death issues though: “they (supporters of each candidate) endured wonkish declarations, nearly identical from Obama and Clinton, on corporate tax policy, college tuition, alternative energy and other items on the liberal laundry list.”

• 3/30 David Broder

John McCain’s foreign policy speech was similar to Obama’s race speech. He broke with many Bush positions and may attract liberal/moderate voters because of this.

• 3/30 Catherine Rampell

Obama has connected with youth voters without catering to their sometimes cynical inclinations. He’s done this through engaging them on an idealistic level.

• 3/30 Wrap: Why can’t our purveyors of conventional wisdom be a bit more wise? McCain pretends to love sanity and certain pundits act as if he’s reinvented the wheel. Fact: Promising to stay in Iraq until it is safe and prosperous is NOT a sane position. Not when international Zogby polls show widespread Iraqi dislike of the occupation and not when the American military is fighting against popular leaders like Al Sadr. But I suppose this is the insanity of our era: An administration that doesn’t care about democracy pretends to bring democracy to people who don’t seem to want democracy and when the popular opinion turns against the democracy spreaders, the spreaders refuse to honor the popular sentiment. And McCain has cheered this stupidity on and continues to do so. God help us.

• 3/29 James Carville

Carville’s “Judas” comment regarding Bill Richardson was proper because the Clintons have helped Richardson in the past. The Clintons “made” Carville, so therefore Carville was right to stick up for them. It would have been permissible for Richardson to just keep his mouth shut.  

• 3/29 George Lardner Jr.

Very few decisions need to be made at 3 AM, and this is an unimportant issue.  

•  3/29 Wrap: Carville’s Richardson piece was pretty ridiculous. My response to his response on the response to his Richardson response is this: Who cares?

• 3/28 Charles Krauthammer

John McCain’s infamous “100 years” comment was about maintaining US military presence in Iraq–not fighting there for 100 years. Democrats are misleadingly hammering McCain for saying this.  

• 3/28 Eugene Robinson

Hillary Clinton took a bigger post Wrightroversy popularity hit than her rival. This may be because her campaign gives the impression of doing anything it takes to win. 

• 3/28 Michael Gerson

British conservatives (like David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith) are using thinktanks to come up with effective conservative policies and positions. John McCain could learn from them. 

•   3/28 Wrap: Kraut may have a point on the McCain slip. Still, I fail to see how staying in a Middle Eastern country for 100 years is “serious” policy solution. Krauthammer uses Kuwait as an example, but fails to mention that the state is really more oil tanker than country (2 million of the 3.5 million residents are non-nationals).  Also, the Germany and Japan comparisons leave me cold. Both were homogeneous, militarily powerful, capitalists. Germany and Japan also had 99 percent literacy rates, Iraq currently hovers around 50. Let this be a lesson to war cheerleaders everywhere: Iraq is not similar to any of these three countries and such bad historical analogy making can only lead us to further disaster. So will partisan, intellectually dishonest think tanks (I’m looking at you, Gerson!), but that’s a different matter for a different day. 

• 3/27 David Broder

The Michigan and Florida Democratic delegations should angrily hold a “rump” convention and cast meaningless mock votes.  

• 3/27 Bob Novak

McCain can make a payroll tax cut a winning issue. Obama won’t do it, so this issue is McCain’s for the taking.  

• 3/27 Wrap: “Bob says that the Democrats cut the regressive tax because they are bound by dogma (which is funny because the tax came from the Reagan administration). In this quote, Novak spreads the lie of the missing trustfund: “The perceived need to offset losses in payroll tax revenue stems from a belief that the Social Security trust fund must be replenished. The truth is that there is no such fund”

• 3/26 Michael Kinsley 

Hillary’s constraints as a female candidate can be summed up by her ordeal of “getting ready” (women in our society have to do more prep work).  

• 3/26 Harold Meyerson

McCain would be more dangerous than anyone in handling a “red phone” foreign policy call.  

• 3/26 Wrap: I wholeheartedly agree with Meyerson. I smell a Goldwater style add down the road.  

• 3/24 Robert Novak

The Obama speech failed politically because the enormity of his controversy (and the ambitious zeal of the Clintons) is too great. 

• 3/24 Wrap: It was hard for me to parse this column. I’m honestly not sure why Bob thinks the speech failed. Based on his long winded “look at me I have secret sources in Washington” rambling, this was the best I could do.