Posts by David Weigel

BOSTON — At 9:20, the first rumors of Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts Senate race started to work around the room. A moment later, Doug Flutie turned around from a TV interview to face the crowded Park Plaza Hotel ballroom, give a thumb’s up, and say “won!”

The candidacy of Scott Brown, the GOP candidate who may win the seat held by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts today, is explicitly being compared to Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency.

For a while, I’ve been calling and emailing the organizers of the National Tea Party Convention with some basic logistical questions, to no avail. Star Tribune Washington reporter Kevin Diaz explains why: the convention, held in Nashville next month and including speeches by Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, will be closed to all but [...]

For Republicans, a revelation in Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s book “Game Change” was manna from heaven. Looking to capitalize on comments by Sen. Harry Reid that Barack Obama was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” some in the GOP are calling for Reid to step down as Senate majority leader.

Just as Sen. John McCain was beginning his acceptance speech inside the Xcel Energy Center at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Adam Kokesh unrolled a banner that read, “MCCAIN VOTES AGAINST VETS.” Before he was removed from the site, the Marine and Iraq Vets Against the War leader shouted, “Ask McCain why he votes against veterans!” Today, Kokesh’s relationship to the GOP is quite different: he’s the party’s front-runner for Congress in a Ron Paul-inspired race in New Mexico.

As the internet buzzed about this awkward confrontation between Sen. Joe Lieberman and Sen. Al Franken, I remembered Franken’s novel “Why Not Me?” in which he runs for president, wins and resigns in disgrace. In the book, Franken chooses Lieberman as his running mate. Below the jump, check out the “news” from the book:

WASHINGTON — Around 3,000 conservative activists spent Tuesday on Capitol Hill, jamming into the offices of their senators and crowding outside the Senate for a rally sponsored by numerous Tea Party groups. The crowd was as punchy as it had been during any of the anti-Democratic Party events that have defined 2009 for conservatives. It was home, however, to real pessimism about whether activists could really stop health care reform. Optimism focused instead on the 2010 midterm elections — and the chance conservatives will have to punish the Democrats.

Investigators have determined that Bill Sparkman, the census worker who was found dead with an anti-federal government message scrawled on his body, committed suicide. There’s some political news here: Coming as it did the day of the taxpayer march on Washington, days after Rep. Michele Bachmann became the most prominent Republican to urge non-compliance with [...]

My Washington Independent profile of WorldNetDaily made the case that the conservative website, which opinion-makers brush off as a conspiracy hub, is actually incredibly influential on the right. Here’s some evidence for that argument.

On Saturday, 64 Democrats backed Rep. Bart Stupak’s (D-Mich.) amendment to prevent abortions from being funded with taxpayer money in the comprehensive House health care bill. On Wednesday morning, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) attempted to soothe the jangled nerves of pro-abortion rights activists who were lighting up switchboards and issuing not-another-dime fund-raising threats against the party for letting it happen.