Why GOP Name-Calling Is Backfiring This Time

And Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin is still pretty scary: reactions

(NEWSER) - If you thought Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin was terrifying in the first Game Change teaser , wait until you see her in the full trailer, where she utters lines such as, "We have to win this thing. I so don’t want to go back to Alaska." Watch below, then read on for some reactions:

• This will clearly be "a Frankenstein-esque story about McCain’s staffers coming to regret the choice they made in bringing a little-known governor into the limelight," writes Jon Bershad at Mediaite . "The full trailer ... gives us even more famous actors getting their turn to stare in horror at the 'monster' they’ve created."

HBO debuts first teaser

(NEWSER) - For all of you who have spent the past nine months wondering how Julianne Moore’s Sarah Palin impersonation will stack up against Tina Fey’s , you finally have your answer. HBO debuted its first teaser trailer for Game Change, the film due in March that's based on the Mark Halperin-John Heilemann book about the 2008 presidential election. Neither Ed Harris as John McCain nor Woody Harrelson as top adviser Steve Schmidt sound much like their real-life counterparts, notes David Jackson in USA Today , but Moore’s Palin is spot-on: Numerous publications including People , New York , the Huffington Post , and Jezebel are fairly impressed. More»

Asked about losing to Barack Obama while in India

(NEWSER) - Republicans might have fared better in 2008 if Sarah Palin was atop the ticket—suggests Sarah Palin. While speaking today at the India Today Conclave, the former Alaska governor was asked why Republicans couldn't defeat Barack Obama in the election, reports the Hill . She tipped her hat to Obama's strong campaign, and said he was able to convincingly bill himself as a change candidate. When India Today's editor then argued that she also represented change, Palin said, "I wasn't at the top of the ticket, remember?" Palin says she wasn't claiming she should have been the nominee. More»

Get it? Get it? Also, we need to cut 'fluffery' spending on NPR

(NEWSER) - Sarah Palin, not surprisingly, wasn’t a fan of President Obama’s State of the Union address . She joked with Greta Van Susteren last night that his theme “was the WTF, you know, winning the future ,” which was appropriate because “there were a lot of WTF moments throughout that speech.” Specifically, she took issue with his “off base” ideas about how to create jobs: “Obviously government growth won't create any jobs, it's the private sector that can create the jobs.” More»

No more Mr. Nice President

(NEWSER) - It's hard to imagine that critics once complained that Barack Obama wasn't tough enough. Lately, he's been savaging his opponents by name, Politico notes, tossing verbal jabs directly at Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin , Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and more. It's a deliberate effort to get back the “spunk and fight” Obama had during the campaign, says one presidential rhetoric expert. “When you campaign, you campaign against people.” More»