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He ain't triangulating, he's my post-partisan. That's Eugene Robinson innovative new MSM means of covering for Barack Obama. As Obama sprints toward the center and away from many of the positions that won him the nomination from the liberal Dem base, WaPo columnist Robinson has suggested that the nominee isn't engaging in the kind of cynical "triangulating" that made Bill Clinton famous. No, Obama's just being the real post-partisan he really was all along. EUGENE ROBINSON: "My headline tonight is a question: is it post-partisanship, or plain old triangulation? I think everyone's instinct, when we heard Barack Obama talk about...

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Clintons Suffer From Premature Triangulation Penn, a professional pollster who was political adviser to President Bill Clinton, is chief strategist for Hillary Clinton's campaign. He has embraced the triangulation -- coming across as a third force somewhere between the liberal and conservative poles -- that characterized Bill Clinton's politics after 1994, based on advice from Dick Morris. To many Democratic operatives, Penn's triangulation prematurely introduced a general election strategy when in fact the party nomination was still in doubt. Clinton was even more obviously engaged in triangulation in September, when she voted for a resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary...

Sen. Hillary Clinton faces tonight's Iowa caucuses not as the inevitable Democratic presidential nominee but seriously challenged by Sen. Barack Obama, thanks in no small part to committing a strategic error: premature triangulation. The problem is reflected by what happened to a proposal for a simplified, though sweeping, health care plan. One longtime Democratic consultant, not involved in any campaign this time, suggested that Clinton propose a genuine universal health care scheme. Everybody would be covered by Medicare, except people who chose to retain their private health insurance plans. The consultant gave the idea to somebody close to the senator,...

According to The Politico, New York Post columnist and FOX News contributor Dick Morris has been secretly advising former client Mike Huckabee on his Presidential campaign. Morris claims he is acting in an entirely voluntary capacity by simply offering free advice. Keep in mind that nationally syndicated columnist George Will was pilloried by the media when it became public that he had secretly and voluntarily helped Ronald Reagan prepare for his Presidential debates in 1980. A prominent national GOP insider tells Politics1 that he believes Morris -- despite his claims to the contrary -- is paid for his services through...

Summary: At a Democratic debate in Philadelphia, Sen. Hillary Clinton ducked some questions and gave misleading answers to others. She falsely implied that the reason White House documents about her communications with her husband haven't been released is due to bureaucratic delays, and she avoided saying whether she would ask Bill Clinton to clear their release from the National Archives. She avoided a yes-or-no answer to whether she supports giving New York driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and at one point denied saying the idea made sense, when in fact she said less than two weeks earlier that it "makes...

Hillary Clinton is killing me. Slowly. ... This recent fracas with Gen. Pace declaring homosexuality "immoral" might have taken the cake. She should have come out swinging. She should have ... called intolerance and ignorance out, but she didn't. Instead, she offered that whether or not homosexuality is immoral is for "others to conclude." Not exactly the voice heralding a new era, is it? ... In any case, it doesn't matter much that she eventually issued a statement saying "I should have echoed my colleague Senator John Warner's statement forcefully stating that homosexuality is not immoral because that is what...

I’ve finally heard a position on America’s War in Iraq that I like less than that of Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich wants all US troops to leave that theatre within ninety days. It’s cut and run, but it’s also cut and dried. I feel that it would be wrong, but at least the man does the wrong thing in the right manner. I can’t speak as well for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most recent geometrical foray into non-substantial triangulation over Iraq. She offers the following dung pile of useless, contradictory guidance on the issue.Read on . . . The United States’ security...

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a “remaining military as well as political mission” in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced but significant military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military. In a half-hour interview on Tuesday in her Senate office, Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain in Iraq after taking office would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence — even if it descended into ethnic cleansing.

MEXICO CITY - California's Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, meeting with outgoing President Vicente Fox in Mexico City, hailed the Democratic takeover of Congress as healthy for democracy, saying "Washington was stuck." Schwarzenegger suggested that Washington follow his example in California where he has worked with Democrats to achieve bipartisan agreements, such as placing $37.3 billion in bond measures on the November ballot, which voters embraced and which are aimed at easing the state's traffic jams, aging schools and inadequate affordable housing. "I think this is good that we have new blood coming to Washington, that we have new people with...

Sen. Clinton says how Bush went wrong and offers her prescription for the war. Clinton met with the Daily News Editorial Board yesterday. These comments are excerpted from her remarks. "We have to deal with the Iraq we have, not the Iraq we wish we had. And the Iraq we have is a deteriorating, violent conflict that, if not technically a civil war, is about as close as you can get. Having been now on the Armed Services Committee for more than 3½ years, the uniformed military has tried to be respectful of the chain of command. They've been unwilling...

Those words notwithstanding, the greenhouse gas "rollout," as political pros call it, has little or nothing to do with global warming -- it's mostly a symbolic declaration to do something many years hence -- and everything to do with Schwarzenegger's triangulating strategy that already has generated a double-digit, and widening, lead over Democratic challenger Phil Angelides. Conservatives consider the main greenhouse bill, Assembly Bill 32, to be a sop to the environmental leanings of centrist voters, albeit one with a potentially serious impact on business if, in fact, the carbon dioxide emission limits it envisions are imposed sometime in the...

Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman in last week's Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut precipitated the expected torrent of rubbish from left-wing blognuts and conservative wingnuts. There was a nauseating triumphalism on both sides, the unblinking assertion that this one poorly attended summer primary provided a lesson of earth-shattering significance to the future of American politics. Maybe it did, but I hope not.... ...On the other side, Eli Pariser, the executive director of MoveOn.org and therefore, perhaps, the nation's blognut in chief, proposed the "death of triangulation"—that is, the end of Clintonian moderation—in a Washington Post Op-Ed piece and...

Ned Lamont's victory Tuesday night in Connecticut's U.S. Senate primary is great news for Democrats. And it's a watershed moment for the growing majority of Americans, in red states and blue, who want change. For months, polls have warned that across the political spectrum people are fed up -- with the no-end-in-sight occupation of Iraq; with an energy policy that caters to oil giants while gasoline prices soar; with a health-care system that leaves more behind with every passing day. Lamont's victory is evidence that a long-awaited wave of voter sentiment on those issues has materialized. It's certainly understandable that...

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. New York Senator Hillary Clinton says Israel's incursion into Lebanon is an exercise of the right that every sovereign nation has to defend itself against attacks. Clinton was at Fayetteville this afternoon on a rare visit to her former Arkansas stomping grounds. She said Israel had the right to take stern and strong action against Hezbollah attacks originating in Lebanon. Asked if her support extended to Israel's bombing of the Beiruit international airport, she said, quote, "I fully support Israel's right to defend itself," unquote. Clinton was speaking in front of the Clinton House Museum, the small brick...

(AXcess News) New York - When Democrat Sen. Hillary Clinton was booed by her party's base at the "Take Back America" conference, it was the result of her saying the US must finish the job in Iraq and not announce a withdrawal date. However, Clinton voted "Yes" to a resolution demanding that troops begin withdrawal of US troops this year and that the Commander-in-Chief should submit a plan for total withdrawal -or a "redeployment," as several Democrats call leaving Iraq. Clinton also opposed any criminal investigation of the New York Times and defended their right to print the story regarding...

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton went toe-to-toe Tuesday with some of her anti-war critics, opposing a hard deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq and urging Democrats to unite to win back Congress. At a speech before a liberal gathering dubbed "Take Back America," the New York senator took grief from those in the audience critical of her vote for the Iraq war and her opposition to an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. "I do not think it is a smart strategy, either, for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which...

WASHINGTON, April 29 — Only eight years have passed since Lindsey Graham, then an ambitious Republican member of the House, paraded over to the Senate each day to argue the impeachment case against President Bill Clinton. How things have changed. Mr. Graham, of South Carolina, is now a senator. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the wife of his adversary, is now a colleague with ambitions of her own. And the two are — to the amusement of their peers and the distress of liberal activists — increasingly close allies and friends, working together on high-profile issues from military benefits to manufacturing, traveling...

It's one of the marvels of today's political arena: a senator with obvious White House ambitions constantly changing positions on important issues while the "people's watchdogs" -- the news media -- ignore the flip-flops and flim-flam.After showing her support during a huge rally of pro-illegal alien protesters in New York City, including a speech that brought pandering to new heights, she suddenly took her hardest line yet against illegal immigrants. Sen. Hillary Clinton told the New York Daily News she wants US borders secured with a wall or fence, possibly surveillance drones and infrared cameras. Clinton's proposal -- which comes...

The GOP is seeing the first signs that it's made some nicks in Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's political armor in a new poll that shows her support dropping dramatically. RasmussenReports.com surveyed Clinton's presidential hopes every two weeks over the last year.....found that support for her presidential ambitions has hit rock bottom............ Now just 27 percent say they'd definitely vote for her — down seven points from the start of the year — and 43 percent say there's no way they'd cast a ballot for her, an eight-point uptick in the past month. Pollster Scott Rasmussen, who accurately forecast the outcome...

The nation's most prominent pro-choice spokeswoman blasted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for giving $10,000 to right-to-life Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey and accused the former first lady of "putting politics over principle." "When push comes to shove, at certain times, [Clinton] will support the party even if that choice does not reflect all their standards and principles," Kate Michelman, former longtime head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, told The Post. Clinton, a darling of the pro-choice community, is taking heat from the activist for giving the maximum donation allowable under law to pro-life Senate hopeful Casey through her political committee, HillPAC.

SAN FRANCISCO - U.S. senator and possible presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton stopped in San Francisco on Saturday night for a friendly discussion on her life, her husband and her future. But it's her views on Iraq that have upset some California Democrats. Clinton, New York's junior senator and wife of former President Clinton, was interviewed before a crowd of about 1,600 at the Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium by former television host Jane Pauley as a fundraiser for the Bar Association of San Francisco. Her spokesman steadfastly refused to describe what else she is doing while in California. Nonetheless, the...

Day-o, day-ay-ay-oDaylight come and me wan' go home (GO-AND-SNUB PLAYS TO HILLARY CONSTITUENCY OF ZERO) by Mia T, 1.13.06     hillary dumps Geena for Maggie,1 and when that doesn't fly,2 she dumps Maggie for bill. Without missing a beat. It's the old Dick Morris Hail Mary pass, (when in trouble, triangulate3), the once trusty play that for eight years kept two clumsy kleptocrats4 in the Oval Office and out of the slammer (even as it placed America and Americans in ever-increasing peril.)5 That missus clinton has managed, thereby, to stake out Iraqi territory occupied apparently by no one6 seems...

December 15, 2005 -- IF Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton really wants to run for president, it looks as if she needs a new strategy, because her tortured triangulation is now backfiring so badly that even draft-Hillary fans are mad at her. In fact, draft-Hillary chief Bob Kunst — who broadcast the first pro-Hillary TV ads of the 2008 cycle — is so upset that he's mulling new ads to accuse triangulation champ Bill Clinton of betraying his wife politically. Bill Clinton invented triangulation — trying to grab the center and paint foes on both sides as extremists. It was great...

If Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton really wants to run for president, it looks as if she needs a new strategy, because her tortured triangulation is now backfiring so badly that even draft-Hillary fans are mad at her. In fact, draft-Hillary chief Bob Kunst —who broadcast the first pro-Hillary TV ads of the 2008 cycle — is so upset that he's mulling new ads to accuse triangulation champ Bill Clinton of betraying his wife politically. Bill Clinton invented triangulation — trying to grab the center and paint foes on both sides as extremists. It was great for him in the 1990s,...

RYE BROOK, N.Y. - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be "a big mistake." The New York Democrat said she respects Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., the Vietnam veteran and hawkish ex-Marine who last week called for an immediate troop pullout. But she added: "I think that would cause more problems for us in America." "It will matter to us if Iraq totally collapses into civil war, if it becomes a failed state the way Afghanistan was, where terrorists are free to basically set up camp and launch attacks against us," she said....

<p>An acoustic sensor on a lamppost in East Orange, N.J., where the Police Department will start using the sensors next week in an effort to combat gun violence.</p> <p>EAST ORANGE, N.J., Aug. 16 - The sound of gunshots has become such a routine part of the urban cacophony here that the police say many residents do not even bother to call them anymore.</p>

The Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of influential party moderates, on Monday named Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., to direct a new initiative to define a party agenda for the 2006 and 2008 elections. The appointment solidified the identification of Clinton -- once considered a champion of the party's left -- with the centrist movement that helped propel her husband to the White House in 1992. It also continued her effort, which has accelerated in recent months, to present herself as a moderate on issues such as national security, immigration and abortion. In her new role, Clinton immediately called for...

Immigration is the next big thing in political hot buttons, but who wins and who loses? Both parties are divided within their own ranks on how to position themselves for maximum advantage on an issue that is rising quickly toward the social and political surface. Both sides agree it could be a deciding factor in many races in next year’s midterm election. “It is the strongest issue out there for the blue-collar white males,” says Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a Virginia-based Democratic consultant who is co-author of an upcoming book, “Foxes in the Henhouse,” which will suggest ways his party can...

Leave it to the nation's most famous immigrant governor to trip himself up over the issue of immigration. In a recent policy speech to newspaper publishers gathered in San Francisco, Arnold Schwarzenegger prescribed an unintentionally inflammatory remedy for illegal immigration: "Close the borders. Close the borders in California and all across Mexico and the United States." When the stuff later hit the fan, particularly in California's immigrant communities, Ahnuld clarified that he meant "secure the borders," a politically safe position these days for politicians as diverse as President Bush and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yet if stopping illegals, whether at...

Gov. Signs Gun-Permit Bill in Raton By Dave Kavanaugh Journal Staff Writer RATON— In the midst of several bill-signing ceremonies around the state, Gov. Bill Richardson chose the National Rifle Association's Whittington Center as the backdrop to add his signature to legislation allowing more New Mexicans to legally carry concealed handguns. House Bill 641 lowers the minimum age for concealed-carry permits to 21 from 25, extends the license term to four years from two and allows for a waiver of license fees for law enforcement personnel and retirees. Additionally, the legislation, approved by lawmakers during the recent session, removes the...

Parting company with some members of her own party, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said yesterday that setting a timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq would only give a "green light" to terrorists and undermine the country's nascent democratic government. Speaking with reporters by telephone from Baghdad, Clinton said there were "grounds for cautious optimism" about Iraq's direction after last month's successful national elections, which she called an "important milestone" because so many voted in the face of terrorist threats. Clinton said the Iraqi leaders she met over the weekend as part of a visiting Senate delegation were unanimous...

The [60 Minutes] interview also covered the war in Iraq, which was not mentioned in yesterday's excerpts. Rather said Clinton was "supportive" of President Bush on Iraq and that "it will surprise some people."

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[OK, barf bags on the ready...] (From paper copy) Bill Clinton is remebered for two things: the longest economic boom within living memory and some stains on a blue dress. The impression of the President of the USA as an unfaithful liar was the result of a Republican conspiracy and had little to do with politics. The boom was, however, entirely genuine and provided jobs and hope for hundreds of millions of people, not only in the USA. Now, both the dress and Clintonomics are history. Instead another heritage lives on. It is the way to conduct politics. Bill Clinton...

Several hundred people stormed the small yard of President Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, yesterday afternoon, pounding on his windows, shoving signs at others and challenging Rove to talk to them about a bill that deals with educational opportunities for immigrants. Protesters poured out of one school bus after another, piercing an otherwise quiet, peaceful Sunday in Rove's Palisades neighborhood in Northwest, chanting, "Karl, Karl, come on out! See what the DREAM Act is all about!" Rove obliged their first request and opened his door long enough to say, "Get off my property."

I am sure that many of you were shocked, by the CNN poll showing J. Ketchup Kerry beating President Bush in a poll: http://cnn.allpolitics.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=CNN.com+-+Kerry+leads+Bush+in+new+poll+-+Feb.+2%2C+2004&expire=-1&urlID=9143781&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2004%2FALLPOLITICS%2F02%2F02%2Felec04.poll.prez%2Findex.html&part The poll goes against what most freepers regard as commonsense. Of course, you will say, a rich liberal New England elitist like Kerry can never get elected President. Right? No self-respecting folk in the South, the West, and the Mid-West will vote for him. Right? I will begin by stating an obvious fact that is well known to both you and I. That no Democratic Presidential candidate, who is truly HONEST about what the modern Democratic...

<p>A few weeks back, Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth in his own special Foghorn Leghorn way declared that he was "disappointed and shocked" when Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge suggested that President Bush might be softening government policy on undocumented workers.</p>

Rush has spent the last several minutes likening Bush to Nixon. Nixon gave us OSHA and the EPA. Bush is giving us Prescription Medicine benefits for seniors. Rush says the Republican party cannot claim to be the party of smaller government. This sounds likme the OLD Rush of 10 years ago! Go Get Em Rush!

Posted on Wed, Sep. 17, 2003 Schwarzenegger shifts toward centerLOS ANGELES TIMES Title: "Principles"Producer: Don SippleThe script: Schwarzenegger is pictured in the same cafeteria setting used in his last three TV commercials. Addressing what the campaign says are Schwarzenegger volunteers sitting around a lunch table, Schwarzenegger says: "My principles of leadership: progress over politics, bipartisanship always, and the will of the people is paramount. I will do the people's work, and I will take responsibility and be accountable to you." [Snip] Analysis: The ad would seem to represent an attempt to move back to the political center after a...

W's TriangulationBy Dick MorrisFrontPageMagazine.com | June 25, 2003 President Bush has stolen all the Democratic issues. Offering prescription-drug benefits under traditional fee-for-service Medicare. Expanded education funding. Boosting Head Start. Banning road construction in Wilderness Areas. Providing tax credits for lower-middle-income families. Ending racial profiling. Replacing expensive branded medicines with cheaper generic drugs. Like President Bill Clinton signing the welfare-reform bill and leaving Bob Dole with nothing to say, George W. Bush has triangulated and helped to assure his re-election. Two months ago, even in the flush of his victory in Iraq, Bush was vulnerable. His swift success in the War...

Triangulation, Good Politics -- Bad For The CountryBy John HawkinsIf I asked you what the worst thing in American politics was today, I would get a variety of answers. Some of you might say "dishonesty", others recoil from the "negativity" and I'm sure there are plenty of Americans fed up with the "petty partisanship" we're confronted with at ever turn. But me? I'd point to Dick Morris' Frankenstein monster, triangulation. For all intents and purposes, triangulation is the art of trying to be all things to all voters, or at least getting as close as possible. What you want to...

Senior White House Advisor Karl Rove has sworn off the concept of 'Triangulating' his fellow Republicans, the approach to Congress once synonymous with the Clinton Adminstration. [and their top advisor Dick Morris]At a closed door House Republican leadership retreat last Wednesday, Rove repeatedly stressed that the concept of political 'triangulation' does not work and said that President George W. Bush would not alienate House Republicans by moving to the center, leaving them isolated in efforts to rally the party's political base.Republican GOP Leadership aides said that the comments worked to reassure lawmakers after the President appeared to burnish his 'compassionate...

The Bush administration expressed at least limited support yesterday for the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in college sports, asking a federal court in Washington to dismiss a lawsuit by coaches of men's college teams who said enforcement of the law was hurting opportunities for male athletes. The National Wrestling Coaches Association filed suit against the Department of Education in January, saying the guidelines for a federal law known as Title IX discriminated against low-profile men's sports. Since then, alumni and student groups from Marquette University, Bucknell and Yale have joined the suit, charging that the Education Department's enforcement of...