Starting today as political reporter for National Review’s The Corner is my erstwhile Hotline colleague and freelancing maniac Jonathan Martin, who got off to a running start this afternoon with a detailed report on the GOP minority leader’s race. If there’s anything wrong with the post, it’s only that it sets a high bar for future reporting:
Political Washington today is focused on three fronts. On one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Topic A remains Iraq, and the forthcoming Baker report and Gates hearings. Up the Hill, members return to the Capitol today for a lame-duck session that will be dominated this week by leadership contests. Everywhere else, the focus is on the above and the fast-developing ‘08 road to the White House news (Vilsack in, Feingold out, McCain putting his first toes in the water). Because I’ve got a weakness for Hill leadership contests, I’ll start there with the House Minority Leader race. First off, all these contests differ from the last one we saw (for Majority Leader in January) in that the candidates aren’t, at least for now, circulating names of supporters. That will probably come as good news to those of you who don’t care to follow the preference of every obscure rank-and-file member, but is sad for those of us who like to keep score at home.
He’s a good writer and great reporter, not to mention a bit of a throwback — he likes to start off his day with an actual broadsheet newspaper. And I hope Jonathan will forgive me for revealing his darkest blogging secret: In spite of his new job, the truth is he was no fan of the blogosphere until the 2005 Virginia governor’s race, when he first discovered that there were some blogs he liked — and quickly realized that blogs were essential for keeping score at home. And now, the conversion is complete.
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