Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, September 6, 2012

How Clinton Damaged Romney-Ryan

Daniel Larison thinks Clinton damaged the Romney/Ryan ticket and they have no one to blame but themselves.
Scott Galupo identifies the main strength of Bill Clinton’s convention speech:

 But the case he made against Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan was devastating.

It was, and it was all the more devastating because Romney and Ryan made no concerted effort to make the case for their ticket and their agenda last week. ........... Ryan was supposed to be the presidential ticket of the “data-driven” manager and his budget wonk sidekick, and between the absence of any significant policy discussion last week and what happened tonight that has lost all credibility. Clinton outperformed both of them in terms of discussing policy details, and underscored just how meaningless the “campaign of ideas” phrase has been. Ryan fans had been convinced for over a year that the election had to be a contest over “big ideas,” and when it came time to engage in that contest their party leaders didn’t even try.
Steven Taylor thinks Clinton was correct when he said:
In Tampa, the Republican argument against the President’s re-election was pretty simple: we left him a total mess, he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.
It appears they are running a Bob Dole rope a dope campaign thinking that not being Obama will be enough.  It didn't work for Dole and it won't work now. Steven Taylor again:
However, the Romney campaign, especially as manifested by the RNC’s messaging, is failing to do two important (and interrelated) things: 1.  Explain how Romney will do better than Obama. 2.  Explain how Romney will do better than Bush. A successful campaign needs, I would argue, to be able to say how he would do better than the incumbent, but he also needs to explain what he would do differently than the last time one of his co-partisans occupied the White House.
The "policy" discussions at the RNC were little more than Republican talking points - very little policy.   Anyone who says they are going to cut taxes, increase defense spending and balance the budget does not deserve to be taken seriously.

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