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MIAMI — Facing the unthinkable here just seven days ago — a second loss in a row to Newt Gingrich — Mitt Romney’s campaign team hatched a two-part plan to win in Florida: make Newt mad and Mitt meaner. [snip] If Mr. Romney does win here on Tuesday, it will have been through a blistering and unrelenting series of attacks. His campaign has pressed everything at its disposal into service to eviscerate Mr. Gingrich, painting him as an erratic, unreliable Washington insider in mailings and television advertisements, at two critical debates here (where his team made sure Mr. Romney had...

Now rolling out for the voters of New Hampshire:

In a stinging comparison that is sure to leave a mark, on Sunday’s This Week With Christiane Amanpour, George Will said the rise of Herman Cain had a lot to do with Republicans coming to the realization that Mitt Romney is their Michael Dukakis. “A technocratic Massachusetts governor running on competence, not ideology,” Will observed.

Boston radio talk show host Howie Carr brought up on his Monday's show that Onyango Obama, President Obama's long lost half uncle ("Uncle Omar") who was arrested by Framingham, Massachusetts police last week, charged with DUI, and found to have a warrant out on him by immigration authorities at ICE, has a valid social security number and a Massachusetts driver's license.SNIP...A number of commentators are mentioning that President Obama's uncle may have benefited from a policy from the days that go back to former Massachusetts Democratic Governor Michael Dukakis, whereby illegal immigrants were assigned identification numbers that looked similar to...

Why isn’t Tim Pawlenty pulling away from the GOP field? That’s the biggest mystery in GOP nomination politics right now. After all, the current field includes only Pawlenty and Mitt Romney as plausible nominees, and Romney remains highly suspect among many important Republican groups because of his past positions on a wide range of issues — most seriously, in my view, on abortion-related policy. And that’s on top of concerns that his religion will cause problems with some voters. Pawlenty, however, has no major liabilities. Oh, he used to accept scientific facts on climate change and market-based plans to deal...

"This is another fine mess you've gotten us into," Barack Obama may be telling Nicolas Sarkozy as he reads the latest reports from Libya: "Hundreds of rebels fled Ras Lanuf Wednesday morning as pro-Kadhafi soldiers used tanks and heavy artillery to seize the port city. Some of them called on France to bomb their opponents and called on foreign powers to send them arms...." In response to the faltering fortunes of their rebel allies, the West has to consider supplying arms to them, as this ragtag group still wields clubs and rocks against the much better supplied government forces of...

It turns out that one of the first people to figure out that George H.W. Bush's famous "Read my lips: no new taxes" declaration would come back to haunt him in 1992 was Michael Dukakis -- who came to the realization in December 1988, just a month after losing the presidential election to Bush. "He really didn't believe it," he recalls. "He and I met in early December (after the election), at the vice president's house. He was nice enough to invite me down." During their campaign, Dukakis had brought up a contentious issue -- more vigorous enforcement by the...

Kitty Dukakis's visits to Hingham polls annoy some residents E-mail | Print | Comments () Posted by Jessica Bartlett November 2, 2010 05:17 PM By Jessica Bartlett, Town Correspondent Kitty Dukakis, the wife of former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, showed up to the Hingham polls today, but not to vote. Dukakis stood near the voting area of all three of the town's polling stations, greeting voters on their way in, a tactic that angered many sign holders and voters.

How desperate is Barney Frank in his battle with Sean Bielat? This desperate. Not only does Frank now have Michael Dukakis stumping for him in the district, he’s literally doubling down on Bush-blaming. Dukakis isn’t content to just blame W, he also goes after Poppy in this attempt to fire up the base. He even gets in a dig at the 2000 election, just to complete the picture of undying resentment, caught by Franklin & Hayes (which seems to be down, probably due to the traffic hit from our earlier headline link):

The National Security Advisor of the President of the United States is a really important job – for NATO and the West, not just for America. Whoever holds it has to ensure (among many other responsibilities) that the efforts of the the Pentagon and the State Department are coordinated towards a strategic end. Of all the posts in government, this one is supposed to be apolitical. Until last week, General Jim Jones, a retired marine with an extensive strategic resume, held the post for Obama. Now he has been replaced by a pure political hack: Thomas E Donilon. As my...

Though his party is ailing as we enter the home stretch of the election, President Obama and his supporters can take heart, knowing that he's getting new strategies for electoral success from a fresh crop of advisers. For example: former vice president and failed presidential candidate Walter Mondale. You can't read the news these days without finding pearls of wisdom the Minnesota Democrat has dropped. Mondale is 82 and last won a major election under his own name in a 1970 Senate race. After a term as vice president, he ran for president in 1984 and lost every state save...

Earlier this week the Boston Globe posted an article about Michael Dukakis giving advice for the midterm elections to the Obama Administration. Sounding like the perfect premise for an NBC sitcom iOwnTheWorld did a contest where you fill in the blank.... Taking advice from Michael Dukakis on elections is like taking advice from _____ about ______ And I flippin' missed the deadline for it! So I'm just going to have to post what I've would've come up with here. Taking advice from Michael Dukakis on elections is like....... taking advice from cats about barking taking advice from highlighters about...

WASHINGTON -- Former Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, the failed 1988 presidential nominee, recently visited the White House and delivered his strategy for the midterm elections: pound key precincts across the country with the message that Republicans want to implement the same policies that led to the Great Recession. Dukakis, who said in a telephone interview that he "popped in" to the White House while on a trip here several weeks ago, said he told aides to President Obama that Republicans "want to go back and do exactly what got us in this mess in the first place." "It seems...

Former Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, the failed 1988 presidential nominee, recently visited the White House and delivered his strategy for the midterm elections: pound key precincts across the country with the message that Republicans want to implement the same policies that led to the Great Recession. Dukakis, who said in a telephone interview that he "popped in" to the White House while on a trip here several weeks ago, said he told aides to President Obama that Republicans "want to go back and do exactly what got us in this mess in the first place." "It seems to me...

When President Acorn was running for the White House, he led many people to believe that he was a technocrat. What does that mean? Ideally a technocrat is someone who gets things done without regard to ideology. Now, I am a conservative ideologue, but I can see that there are times when you just want a job done. For example,I want access to the best doctor, regardless of his voting record. While incredible amounts of oil are being spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, I do not care if the solution comes from a conservative, libertarian or even a liberal....

Ouch. As much as I truly didn't want to acknowledge it, I listened to the "ass kicking" display and felt the same embarrassed awkwardness I felt when Howard Dean and Mike Dukakis tried to channel their own inner manly man... Hollow theatrics don't matter when push comes to shove; they just are embarrassing in the face of the environmental disaster that is the Gulf oil spill. Say what you will about Dubya, one fact about him remains clear - he never resorted to "acting" due to a lack of insight or conviction in his beliefs -- regarding Katrina or any...

Fourteen years before an antsy convicted killer named Willie Horton torpedoed Gov. Michael S. Dukakis’ presidential hopes, Joseph Fournier was just an earnest kid working after school to save money for his first car. The media perversely tagged Horton “America’s Most Famous Convict” in 1988, “but nobody knows my brother,” former state Rep. Donna Fournier Cuomo resigned herself to believe.

THE GRATING COMMUNICATOR October 21, 2009 The Obama administration has attacked Fox News in order to prevent government corruption stories broken on Fox from bleeding into the other media, which are all-consumed with daily updates on Levi Johnston's Playgirl spread and Carrie Prejean's breast implants. That's understandable. But I think the administration should have picked someone other than David Axelrod to deliver the claim that Fox News is "not really news," inasmuch as Axelrod was behind the leak of scurrilous allegations in Jack Ryan's sealed divorce papers when he was running for a Senate seat against Obama. Talk about vicious...

The final day of Michael Dukakis’ final—and most improbable, unconventional and just plain bizarre—campaign for political office began on a bad note Wednesday morning. Influential Democrats in Washington, reacting to The Boston Globe’s endorsement of Dukakis for an interim Senate appointment a day earlier, had fought back by telling The New York Times that the 75-year-old former governor “was out of the running and would not be named” by Governor Deval Patrick to replace Ted Kennedy, as the paper reported it. Instead, The Times and other national outlets suggested that Patrick was likely to settle on Paul G. Kirk, a...

Massachusetts would be well-served if the law is changed to allow the governor to appoint an interim senator while the election of a successor proceeds and thus the state will not lose a voice as critical legislation comes before Congress. There would be no better and deserving choice for the interim position than former Gov. Mike Dukakis. - Richard Rust, Boston

Health Reform: If Democrats in Washington think their health care reform with a public option is a good thing, why have they exempted themselves from it? Why isn't what's good for their constituents good for them?During ABC's June 24 infomercial for government-run health care broadcast from the White House, President Obama was asked if he and his family would abide by the restrictions and limitations that came with his proposed reforms. In what Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com called "Obama's Michael Dukakis moment," President Obama refused to make such a pledge and confessed that if "it's my family member, if it's...

Barack Obama got ABC to move their news division into the White House in order to make the big pitch for his egalitarian, everyone-gets-treated-equally ObamaCare push. Instead, Obama fumbled into a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite. ABC itself leads with Obama’s response that he wouldn’t stay within his own plan for his family:

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/25/obamas-michael-dukakis-moment/ Barack Obama got ABC to move their news division into the White House in order to make the big pitch for his egalitarian, everyone-gets-treated-equally ObamaCare push. Instead, Obama fumbled into a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite. ABC itself leads with Obama’s response that he wouldn’t stay within his own plan for his family:

BOSTON — Former Massachusetts House Speaker Thomas Finneran has enlisted the help of four former governors in his bid to get a pardon from President Bush on an obstruction of justice conviction. The Boston Globe reports Friday that Finneran submitted an application for a presidential pardon last month. The four governors — Democrat Michael Dukakis and Republicans William Weld, Paul Cellucci, and Jane Swift — followed with a letter of support. In the letter, obtained by the newspaper, the governors says Finneran has been severely punished and has "learned the error of the episode." Finneran, currently a radio talk show...

Barack Obama was no better a candidate than Michael Dukakis. That sentence sounds absurd, right? Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in the primaries, and went on to win the highest Democratic vote percentage since 1964. Dukakis, by contrast, barely emerged from a primary field of--at least when their 1988 political statures are compared to Clinton's in 2008--relative minnows, and then went on to squander an enormous polling advantage in the general election. Surely, Obama and Dukakis are not comparable in terms of their ability as campaigners. However, as I discuss in the extended entry, virtually all of Obama's, and really all...

subtitle: sorry, auntie. Now get under the bus.From the perky Katie interview:Couric: YOU HAVE AN AUNT WHO’S BEEN LIVING IN THIS COUNTRY APPARENTLY ILLEGALLY, AND YOUR CAMPAIGN SAYS ANY AND ALL APPROPRIATE LAWS SHOULD BE FOLLOWED. SO WOULD YOU SUPPORT HER BEING DEPORTED TO KENYA? Sen. Obama: If she is violating laws those laws have to be obeyed. We’re a nation of laws. Obviously that doesn’t lessen my concern for her, I haven’t been able to be in touch with her. But I’m a strong believer you have to obey the law.

Former Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis said Friday that it was "pretty pathetic" of Sen. John McCain to choose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate and questioned the Republican candidate's use of a Karl Rove protege to run his campaign. In an online chat with The Washington Times, Mr. Dukakis, former Massachusetts governor and now a professor at Northeastern University, said that's just one sign Mr. McCain has changed for the worse since his failed 2000 presidential campaign. "His selection of Sarah Palin as a running mate was, I thought, pretty pathetic. I made a lot of mistakes...

When John McCain’s campaign made it clear over the weekend that their stretch-run strategy would lean heavily on raising questions about Barack Obama’s personal history and past “associations,” Obama’s communications director provided a simple, almost indifferent reaction to The Washington Post: “This isn’t 1988.” Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee whose campaign was eviscerated that year by tactics ripped from the same playbook from which Mr. McCain now seems intent on borrowing, tends to agree. “Well, it happens every time,” the former Massachusetts governor said in an interview on the afternoon of Oct. 6 in his college office. “They’re desperate,...

Former Gov. Michael Dukakis said Monday that John McCain's presidential campaign is using the same race-based tactics that were used against him in the 1988 presidential run...

Former Gov. Michael Dukakis said Monday that John McCain's presidential campaign is using the same race-based tactics that were used against him in his 1988 presidential run. The Brookline Democrat was referring to a recent McCain ad that claimed Democratic nominee Barack Obama received economic advice from Franklin Raines, the former CEO of the recently bailed out mortgage lender Fannie Mae. The ad features images of Raines and Obama, two African Americans, and then an image of an elderly white woman.

Barack Obama is slumping. Poll numbers are down. Enthusiasm is down. Democrats, once again, are freaking. So, we asked a few folks, from different walks of life, to offer their opinion on what Obama should do to improve his standing. Here's what former Massachusetts Governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis had to say: On campaigning: "I think this thing is going to be won in the field, with basic grassroots organizing ... and I don't think McCain has anything out there. Obama is attempting to do that more thoroughly and better, in more states, than I think anybody...

Former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis says he supports Barack Obama for president. Dukakis, 75, now a professor at Northeastern University in Boston, lost to George H.W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. Born to a Greek immigrant family, Dukakis received his law degree from Harvard University. After serving as governor of Massachusetts, he became the Democratic Party`s nominee for president in 1988. Though he enjoyed high popularity until his nomination, he lost the election due to mainly a smear campaign by the Republicans. The Dong-A Ilbo held a phone interview with Dukakis about his experience 20 years ago....

According to Gallup, Barack Obama is now leading the race for president with his highest share of support to date: According to a Gallup poll published in the NYT, 1988: Fifty-five percent of the 948 registered voters interviewed in the poll said they preferred to see Mr. Dukakis win the 1988 Presidential election, while 38 percent said they preferred to see Mr. Bush win.

“Well, Mr. Jones,” said the HR director. “You seem to have done well in school. You have a good attendance record. When did you graduate high school?” “Two years ago, in 2006,” Mr. Jones replied. “I’m 20 years old.” “I’m having a hard time understanding why you haven’t been able to find a job in two years since graduating high school, Mr. Jones,” the interviewer confessed. Mr. Jones got a glum look on his face. But he was determined not to let this situation defeat him yet again. “Well, sir, just a string of bad luck, I guess,” he said....

About 850 people attended the fund-raiser, which cost between $1,000 and $4,600 per ticket. Among those, 250 also ate dinner with Obama - for $15,000 per ticket or $28,500 per couple. Guests began dinner with heaping helpings of field greens, heirloom lettuces, candied hazelnuts and port-soaked currants tossed with a sherry Dijon vinaigrette. The main course: cinnamon-and-red-wine-braised short ribs and roasted porcini-crusted sea bass, plus a trio of potato confit, and hand-rolled gnocchi with wild mushrooms and a vegetable bouquet. Guests washed down that sumptuous repast with a perky 2004 Cloudy Bay Sauvingnon Blanc “Te Koko” and an impertinent 2004...

"This election isn't about ideology, it's about competence." -- Michael Dukakis, 1988 "The choice in this election is not between left or right, it's not between liberal or conservative, it's between the past and the future." -- Barack Obama, 2008 Why? Why do liberals who capture their party's presidential nomination say things like this? Why are they so afraid to say, "I'm an out and out card-carrying liberal and I'm proud of it!" Why do they try and hide their liberalism behind "competence" and screeds about "the past and the future"? There is a reason. There are lots of reasons,...

Dukakis calls for end to Electoral College Dave Wedge By Dave Wedge Tuesday, July 8, 2008 Calling it “critically important” to eliminate the Electoral College system, former Bay State Gov. Michael Dukakis called on lawmakers to join a growing number of states supporting a switch to a national popular vote to elect the president. “I think it is high time we got rid of the Electoral College and elected our presidents the way we elect every other elected official in the country - by a vote of the people,” Dukakis wrote in a letter e-mailed to state lawmakers yesterday. “The...

Sen. Barack Obama did patriotism yesterday, today it is faith and by the end of the day both speeches will have been done in back-to-back states that swing: Missouri and Ohio. The Obama campaign said the Illinois senator plans to go to Zanesville, located in eastern Ohio, to visit a church program that provides food and clothing assistance to those in need.

Shades of Dukakis, Obama up 15 THE PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW BY: Salena Zito In May of 1988 after all of the Democratic primaries ended presumptive nominee Michael Dukakis enjoyed a 54 to 38 percent lead over then Ronald Reagan wing man George H.W. Bush. H.W. went on to win in that November handily This evening a new Newsweek poll shows Obama having a giant lead, from 51 percent to 36 percent, over McCain among registered voters across the country. Obama got his bounce, Dukakis style.

Obama's quandary: Wear a helmet, look dumb or be a role model? No image affected Michael Dukakis' 1988 campaign more than his infamous ride in the tank. This image is still funny. Sure, there's world wars and toxic pollution and corruption and Social Security reform and a few other things like trillions of dollars in debt to worry about. But before getting to those easy issues, politicians who want to be chief executives must first get elected. And to do that they must decide if they're going to wear funny hats. It's the bane of most big-time campaigns. And why...

LOS ANGELES — It is a thought that sends shivers down the backs of Democrats, a name that brings to mind memories of an election lost that might have been won, against a war hero once referred to in headlines as a “wimp” who won not so much by his own strengths but because of the skill of his operatives in painting his lesser-known opponent as an out of touch “liberal” who refused to salute the flag or admit his mistakes, not to mention his supposedly unpatriotic wife. Could Obama be another Dukakis? It isn’t just die-hard Clinton supporters who...

Twenty years ago it was Mike Dukakis who broke out of the Democratic pack to capture the presidential nomination. This cycle, Dukakis believes -- like many other observers in the party -- that Barack Obama is poised to do the same. "If you were to say to me, 'If you were a betting guy, Dukakis, what do you think?' I'd say he's going to get the nomination within the next month or so," said Dukakis, who is publicly neutral in the race. (His wife, Kitty, has contributed money to Obama.) Dukakis is quick to add that politics -- as the...

The Massachusetts Democratic primary, along with nearly two dozen other primaries and caucuses, was held on Feb. 5. Hillary Clinton won it by 15 points, one of her best showings anywhere this year, and Michael Dukakis voted in it—but he won’t say for whom. [SNIP] Mr. Dukakis has maintained an adamantly neutral public stance throughout the campaign, hoping instead to sell both candidates and their campaigns on the need for assembling a massive grassroots organizing effort—a captain and six block leaders in all 200,000 precincts in the country—for the fall. But he also said that Barack Obama will probably be...

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft. Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur. Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of...

History, in Marx's famous dictum, tends to repeat itself: the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. So what do you call it the third time around? A bad sitcom? A bad marriage? A bad dream? All three of those seem like viable ways of describing the Democratic Party's current predicament, locked in an endless and self-destructive struggle with itself, like a would-be Buddhist penitent unable to atone for eons' worth of bad karma. Even in the annals of Democratic ritual suicide, the 2008 campaign is something special: It's not just that the protracted and painful nomination...

Days after he'd been nominated by Democrats for president in the summer of 1988, while enjoying a double-digit lead in the polls, Michael Dukakis took what he fancied as a Trumanesque whistle-stop train tour. The train dipped into the northeastern corner of Arkansas for one quick depot stop. It wasn't clear why. Maybe he and his advisers surmised as follows: Since Dukakis's National Governors Association pal -- a fellow named Clinton -- was the governor there, then Dukakis might have a shot at those six Southern electoral votes. He didn't. I was plopped on this train and granted an interview...

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's advocacy for the release of convicted rapist Wayne DuMond and DuMond's subsequent rapes and murders following his release should give every Republican pause before they vote for a candidate with a Mike Dukakis-problem. Watch the full video here. More information on this twisted case can be found here: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTcyMTM5YzRiMzVjMjA3MGEwMjUwM2Y3NGJiMzM1YWY=&w=MA== http://lesliecarbone.blogspot.com/2007/11/governor-and-murderer.html http://lesliecarbone.blogspot.com/2007/12/dear-wayne.html

ROCHESTER, N.H. - A man wearing what looked like a bomb beneath his sweater and tie walked into Hillary Clinton's campaign office yesterday, taking three staff members, a volunteer, and an infant hostage, forcing the closure of the senator's campaign offices throughout Iowa and New Hampshire, and paralyzing this small city on the Maine border, authorities said. ...Eisenberg, formerly known as Ralph E. Woodward Jr., served time at Bridgewater State Hospital and MCI-Concord, according to court records. In 2002, he filed a lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court against Bernard Cardinal Law, in Law's capacity as Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston,...

Michael Dukakis has seen this script before: a Republican administration besieged by scandal and running out the clock on its second term, while wide-eyed Democrats confidently lick their chops, knowing there’s no way in hell voters will reward the G.O.P. with four more years in the White House. It was around this very moment 20 years ago, the summer when Oliver North told Congress he was “authorized to do everything that I did” and Reagan fatigue took hold, that Mr. Dukakis, then the 53-year-old governor of Massachusetts, emerged at the head of a crowded Democratic presidential pack. By the time...

Dukakis granted pardon to Brown By KATHRYN MARCHOCKI New Hampshire Union Leader Staff 9 hours, 57 minutes ago BOSTON – The convicted New Hampshire tax evader now at the center of a standoff for his refusal to surrender and serve a 63-month federal prison term won a pardon in 1976 from then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis for an earlier criminal conviction. Edward L. Brown, 64, who remains holed up in his Plainfield, N.H., compound with his wife, Elaine, was found guilty in 1960 of assault and armed robbery in Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge and later sentenced to state prison,...