National Republicans
A Calm Explanation
There’s been a lot of screeching and howling coming out of Washington about who shut down the government. Respected economist Thomas Sowell lays out his opinion pretty calmly below: Who Shut Down the Government? By Thomas Sowell Even when it comes to something as basic, and apparently as simple and straightforward, as the…
Read MoreA Poker Game
A government shutdown’s turned out to be a peculiar sort of beast. First, before a shutdown, every politician – in both parties – declares the government shutting will be terrible. Awful. Armageddon. And every politician swears they want the government to stay open. Then the government shuts down. Next one group of…
Read MoreDoctor My Eyes
So all the DHHS scandals are based on a report that was doctored to mislead legislators and taxpayers. The $87,000 salaries for young campaign aides, lucrative contracts for political allies, eyebrow-raising sudden exits by top department officials and sweet severance payouts. All that is based on the McCrory’s administration claim that it inherited a…
Read MoreOverconfident?
What if Obamacare flops? What if the public has sticker shock? What if voters blame both sides for the shutdown? From the White House down, Democrats seem awfully confident the shutdown-Obamacare standoff will end well for them. Plus, they say, Americans will love Obamacare once they get to know it. But suppose all…
Read MoreA Wacky Idea
Talk about strange things happening: Up in Washington two tribes of politicians have been pummeling each other night and day over who deserve the blame for shutting down the government. Then, unexpectedly, one tribe changed directions. First the House Republicans voted to fund national parks and monuments, then they voted to fund part…
Read MoreWhen Headlines Compete
Look at the news this week, and you see that Republicans made a classic PR mistake: They stepped on their story. For them, the best story would be problems, questions, concerns and online glitches with Obamacare. Instead, that story is competing with shutdown fallout: national monuments closed, WWII veterans turned away, school tours cancelled,…
Read MoreObamascare, Day 2
The story in the Onion summed it up: “Man Who Understands 8% Of Obamacare Vigorously Defends It From Man Who Understands 5%.” How you feel about Obamacare probably correlates about 100 percent with how you voted in the 2012 election. Unless you already found out you pay more or less for insurance. I’m double-sold.…
Read MoreBeyond Quick Healing
The politicians, when you get down to the short rows, are the varmints who decided to hang a ‘Not Open for Business’ sign on the federal government – but, in an odd way, it wasn’t the politicians who were pouring gas on the fire. In the age of the twenty-four hour news cycle and…
Read MoreShutdown Politics
The shutdown showdown shows how much worse politics is today than in the 1990s. And it was bad then. Back then, Newt Gingrich shut down the government because…well, nobody can remember why. Except he was mad that President Clinton made him sit in the back of Air Force One. And Newt wanted to show…
Read MoreA History Lesson
It’s an old American saga: The President has a program he’s in love with but can’t muster the votes in Congress to fund it. So he doesn’t get his program. That’s the way it’s been for over two centuries. So why, now, isn’t the story coming out of Washington simply, “The President fails…
Read More