McCain Ditches Town Halls for Larger Crowds

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»

Hillary Clinton, as 'buyer's remorse' plagues a third of the country

(NEWSER) - The most popular politician nationwide is the one that got away: Hillary Clinton. Nearly two-thirds of the country sees the secretary of state favorably, and a third are battling what Bloomberg terms “buyer’s remorse” over not electing her president. Just over a year ago, only a quarter of Americans felt that way. “Looking back, I wonder if she would have been a stronger leader, knowing the games and the politics and all that goes on,” says a Florida woman. “I don’t think she would have bent as much.” More»

Iowa Tea Party founder Ryan Rhodes confronts him at town hall

(USER SUBMITTED) - President Obama was greeted with some unexpected spice at the end of his town hall meeting in Iowa last night, when the founder of the Iowa Tea Party confronted him about Joe Biden's alleged remark that Tea Party members acted like "terrorists" (the VP denies saying it ). Obama didn't directly respond in public, but did tell Ryan Rhodes that "as someone who’s been called a socialist, not born here, taking away freedoms for providing health care, I’m all for lowering the rhetoric." The two then apparently held a brief but "animated" private conversation, reports Greta Van Susteren's GretaWire . 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»