National Republicans
The Answer…
Yesterday I asked why the three camps in Washington – the House Republican Bigwigs in Washington, the House Republican Conservatives in Washington, and President Obama –couldn’t sit down and make a list of the government departments they can agree to keep open and then fund them this week to avoid an absolute government shutdown. …
Read MoreMillennial Politics
Today I suspend Republican-bashing to recommend a provocative political analysis. Titled “Will Disillusioned Millennials Bring an End to the Reagan-Clinton Era?,” it’s from a professor and Daily Beast contributor named Peter Beinart. It’s long, and it’s worth reading. Here’s my best shot at a short recap: For decades now, politics has been…
Read MoreA Three-Tribe War
With thick smoke clouds billowing out of the Capitol it’s hard to see who’s winning the latest war in Washington – plus, it isn’t a simple us versus them war: It’s a three tribe melee (with two camps of Republicans fighting Obama and each other at the same time). At first, a couple of…
Read MoreLost in Syria
Foreign policy is not my forte, so don’t ask me what America should do about Syria. But I get politics, and I don’t get President Obama’s political strategy. If you want to do something, why ask permission from a Congress that has proven itself incapable of doing anything? Most Republicans won’t vote for…
Read MoreThe Price of a Fiction
In the Senate of the world’s oldest democracy the Honorables sat down around a giant horseshoe-shaped table to hold a hearing to ask the Secretary of State how he figured bombing Syria was a good idea – but a strange thing happened: As soon as each Senator asked his first question the Secretary of State…
Read MoreNot One Overheated Washington Politician…
Broken politics and posturing politicians present one degree of mendacity when it comes to passing a budget – but the moment a war appears on the horizon that same devilment turns lethal. A few days ago the President declared that, as leader of the oldest constitutional democracy on earth, he needs the support of…
Read MoreTwo Skunks
In the desert land where the Lord struck St. Paul blind then showed him a vision, a pair of skunks are fighting a Civil War and five-thousand miles away in the world’s oldest democracy a great hue and cry has arisen to bomb one of the skunks. Now in the oldest democracy politics is…
Read MoreSitting Pretty
An Old Wise Lobbyist (OWL) gives me a Labor Day break by sharing this: “Contributors to Rep Edgar Starnes’ campaign should be disgusted and dismayed that he used their contributions to beautify his Raleigh legislative office. “The Republican House leader used $7,000 of campaign money for furniture and other niceties at the legislative…
Read MoreThe ‘Voting Rights’ Foo-Fa
This isn’t a story of sin begetting sin but of foolishness begetting foolishness. Years ago, somewhere, some Democratic political guru sat in a room with reams of demographics of people who never had voted and when he finished studying those pages of statistics one fact was clear as a bell: If those folks started…
Read MoreMad Men
“You have a Republican majority that is doing exactly what they were elected to do.” – Claude Pope, state GOP chairman “They really messed up when they screwed with the mothers, the teachers and the women.” – Shannon Shanks, Wilmington teacher Well, in 2014 and 2016 we’ll find out who’s right. Republicans may…
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