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Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the winner of the first major presidential debate tonight according to a survey of Republican and Democratic political operatives, campaign consultants, and party strategists, in a special National Journal Political Insiders Poll conducted tonight. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann also had a good evening.

Among the New Hampshire electorate as a whole, Palin is viewed favorably by just 28 percent, according to a recent survey by the Democratic automated pollster Public Policy Polling. In PPP surveys in 31 states over the last six months, just three states had smaller proportions of Palin fans, and all were in the northeast: New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. (Though the firm is partisan, its results generally track with polls by other organizations. PPP’s results were used in this analysis in the interest of consistency across different states.) Continue Reading Text Size -+reset Listen Palin’s highest ratings, in...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is grinding through the 2010 campaign state by state and district by district, adhering to a go-everywhere, never-say-no campaign schedule that will have recorded visits to 30 states before Election Day. * * * * * * Romney’s schedule is so all-inclusive that it barely looks like he’s picking his targets. In just the past few weeks, he’s campaigned for Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson and gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal. He made a Western campaign trip that included stops for Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, Nevada House candidate Joe Heck and gubernatorial nominee...

Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO Mike Allen - POLITICO Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation Ryan Avent - Economist Dean Baker - The American Prospect Nick Baumann - Mother Jones Josh Bearman - LA Weekly Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report Ari Berman - The Nation Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University Brian Beutler - The Media...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Sunday that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has "the cojones" that President Obama "does not have" to take on illegal immigration. Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Palin blasted Obama for suing Arizona to block the state's controversial new law without addressing "sanctuary cities" -- in which local law enforcement are prohibited from asking people about their immigration status.The former governor said the president and congressional Democrats "are all wet" on plans to allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire. "It's idiotic to think about increasing taxes at a time like...

It's no secret that POLITICO is a biased news organization. The online polictical blog is as progressive as they come. Very agenda driven. In our reporting we have already addressed the fact that Journolist members are solidly entrenched inside POLITICO's upper levels. Something Roger Simon, who calls the website home, tried to downplay. John Nolte over at Big Journalism isn't buying it, and has a simply marvelous retort: You say MSM, I say Politico. You say corrupt, I say Politico. Today, Politico’s Roger Simon was kind enough to almost scold JournoList for its lasting effect on his precious little profession...

In a widely read and discussed piece at the Daily Beast, Reihan Salan asks: Has a shadowy gang of left-wing journalists and intellectuals been plotting to manipulate the news cycle… His answer is, yes, perhaps so, but they’d be doing it with or without Journolist. Salan is more right than he probably knows. The list of those identified as former members of the group is now up to about 146 names, out of 400 in all. Nearly 1/4 of those individuals were connected with another media organization called the Media Consortium. The Consortium is an organization of progressive media outlets...

Next week's Republican gubernatorial primaries in Michigan and Tennessee will likely determine the next governors of those two vote-rich states, but also could provide a playbook for Mitt Romney in the '12 presidential primary. That's because the current GOP frontrunners in both races, Rick Snyder and Bill Haslam, have run to the political center, an uncommon tack in a primary but one that's paying off given the multi-candidate fields. Neither state has a runoff, allowing the winner to win a plurality w/ moderates and even some crossover voters. *** After all, that's how John McCain won the GOP nomination in...

Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO Mike Allen - POLITICO Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation Ryan Avent - Economist Dean Baker - The American Prospect Nick Baumann - Mother Jones Josh Bearman - LA Weekly Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report Ari Berman - The Nation Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University Brian Beutler - The Media...

Among the individuals who were part of the controversial "JournoList" e-mail group were activists with ties to the White House and a socialist group closely linked for years to President Obama. Other members of JournoList were activists from a far-left think tank that has been partnered with ACORN and was founded with input from Obama. The group, Demos, may have been instrumental in securing the appointment of Obama's former "green jobs" adviser, Van Jones, who resigned after it was exposed he funded a communist organization. JournoList – a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists and like-minded professors and activists...

How ironic that on a day when we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, The Daily Caller released 15 pages of JournoListers’ email exchanges about a dark and demented conspiracy regarding my son, Trig. It’s tough to fittingly describe these numerous members of the mainstream media who actively engaged in the debate about this conspiracy back when I was first introduced as John McCain’s running mate, and it’s impossible to legitimize any “prominent” media publication that continues to traffic in this bizarre narrative today. It wasn’t just a few fringe characters...

* Gov. Palin posted this Monday on her Facebook Notes page: Journey into the Media’s Heart of DarknessHow ironic that on a day when we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, The Daily Caller released 15 pages of JournoListers’ email exchanges about a dark and demented conspiracy regarding my son, Trig. It’s tough to fittingly describe these numerous members of the mainstream media who actively engaged in the debate about this conspiracy back when I was first introduced as John McCain’s running mate, and it’s impossible to legitimize any “prominent” media...

Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO Mike Allen - POLITICO Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation Ryan Avent - Economist Dean Baker - The American Prospect Nick Baumann - Mother Jones Josh Bearman - LA Weekly Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report Ari Berman - The Nation Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University Brian Beutler - The Media...

As The Daily Caller’s coverage of the now-defunct liberal listserv Journolist’s 2008 Obamamania campaign grew more intriguing each day this week, a slew of emails hit my inbox asking variations of this: “So, when do you think the P-bomb’s going to drop?” Of course, they were referring to the fact that there was no way in heck Sarah Palin could’ve steered clear of scathing remarks. I responded with, “My guess is it’s on its way.” And whad’ya know? Yesterday’s headline read: “Liberal journalists swapped their best lines of attack for coordinated ‘non-official campaign’ against Palin selection.”

Don't make excuses for the Journolisters. They subverted journalism and the pursuit of truth for politics and the pursuit of power. John Tabin has entered the fray over Journolist, the now-defunct secret listserve of several hundred liberal journalists, activists and academics. Tabin agrees that much of what the Daily Caller has reported about this cabal is extremely troubling and reprehensible. To wit: • the Journolisters' attempt, during the 2008 presidential campaign to kill and bury stories about Obama's relationship with "Reverend" Jeremiah Wright; • their push to deliberately smear innocent conservative journalists and politicos as "racists" and "bigots"; • their...

From a remote location on an island off Alaska’s coast, former Governor Sarah Palin is blasting what she describes as the “sick puppies” in the media who immediately and ruthlessly attacked her when Sen. John McCain picked her as his running mate during the 2008 presidential campaign. In exclusive remarks to The Daily Caller, Palin described “hordes of Obama’s opposition researchers-slash ‘reporters’” descending upon Alaska in the days after she was picked by McCain. She said the media became a key reason she decided not to finish out her term as governor and faults, in part, the McCain campaign for...

THE DEATH OF JOURNALISM– The criminals in the state-run media planned to destroy Sarah Palin. We all knew they did. There was even a movie made on how these leftist cranks obliterated the popular Governor of Alaska who enjoyed an 80% approval rating when she was selected by John McCain to be his running mate for Vice President. “Media Malpractice” reported on how the liberal media destroyed Sarah Palin:

I've written before about Journolist, a liberal email list that conservatives have claimed was the center of a liberal media conspiracy but in reality was anything but. The Daily Caller, a conservative website, has a new story claiming to have obtained evidence that Journolist was everything conservatives feared: the epicenter of a deep liberal plot to control media discourse. "It's everything you may have suspected," comments an excited Sarah Palin. "It is no less corrupt than the comically propagandistic Fox News and the lock-step orthodoxy on the partisan right in journalism - but it is nonetheless corrupt," asserts Andrew Sullivan....

In the hours after Sen. John McCain announced his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the last presidential race, members of an online forum called Journolist struggled to make sense of the pick. Many of them were liberal reporters, and in some cases their comments reflected a journalist’s instinct to figure out the meaning of a story. But in many other exchanges, the Journolisters clearly had another, more partisan goal in mind: to formulate the most effective talking points in order to defeat Palin and McCain and help elect Barack Obama president. The tone...