The Democratic Party's problem is that voters don't believe the president's claims that the economy is thriving. Even people with jobs feel apprehensive. Paychecks are flat, growth anemic, and people are worried about their children's prospects. Mr. Obama had a 38% approval on handling the economy in the Sept. 9 Fox News poll. In the Sept. 7 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 67% believe America is on the wrong track.

My name is Patrick Fitzgerald ... I like to tear the tops off small animals.

Look, in 1800 the sainted Thomas Jefferson arranged to hire a notorious slanderer named James Callender, who worked as a writer at a Republican newspaper in Richmond, Va. Read some of what he wrote about John Adams. This was a personal slander.

Senator McCain believes there ought to be a limit to how much the government can take from anybody, and he believes that today with the federal tax rate at 35 percent that that's more than the government ought to be taking from any individual regardless of how much they make.

But the world is a better place with Saddam Hussein gone.

If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated. It's not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek.

I hate to sound sort of diffident about it but it strikes me that a lot of people on the right have got active lives and are doing other things.