National Republicans
Emoter-in-Chief
What’s with this mania about whether President Obama has shown enough anger over the BP oil spill? Is this the legacy of Bill Clinton, who so famously felt our pain? Or that old actor Ronald Reagan, who could muster a catch in the throat and a flash of anger at the drop of…
Read MoreOld Guvs Rule
Tuesday’s primaries across the county were good for women candidates. And old governors didn’t do too badly. California Democrats nominated Jerry Brown for governor again. Brown, 72, served as governor from 1975-1983. Iowa Republicans nominated Terry Branstad for a return engagement. Branstad, 63, was governor from 1983-1999. Both were fellow governors with…
Read MoreBlame the Republicans
The White House needs to go on offense on the Gulf oil spill. Democrats, all too often, are weenies when it comes to political combat. They want to be fair, see all sides and over-intellectualize. It’s time for a go-for-the-gut message: Blame the Republicans. Here’s how it goes: This all started…
Read MoreA Bright Line
That didn’t take long. For all the Tea Party’s denials of racism, it took Tea Party poster boy Rand Paul about one news cycle to trip over race. The federal government, he says, has no business telling a business it can’t discriminate on the basis of race. Of course, he added, he…
Read MoreEndorsements and Establishments
Do endorsements matter? Not judging from Tuesday’s primaries. A candidate endorsed by President Obama loses a Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. A candidate endorsed by the Senate Republican leader – and the state’s senior Senator – loses the GOP primary in Kentucky. So how does Ken Lewis’ endorsement help Elaine Marshall? Well, it’s…
Read MoreObama Sets a Trap
About the only varmint on earth these days more unpopular than a Democratic Congressman is a Wall Street banker – so to save their political hides President Obama and the Democrats in Washington have gone banker hunting. Now, broadly speaking, Wall Street bankers have a simple theory of politics: Without regard to race, creed,…
Read MoreThe Trust Deficit
It’s bad news for Democrats when only 22 percent of Americans say they trust government. That number comes from a Pew Research Center poll, which found “a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government — a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials.” …
Read MoreTea Time
The Tea Party movement may return the Republican Party to power – or ruin it. Whichever, the Tea Party controls the GOP’s future. If Mushmouth Mitch McConnell and Suntan John Boehner become majority leaders in the next Congress, they’ll have no choice but to walk the Tea Party line. That would pretty much…
Read MoreWhy So Angry?
There’s a lot of free-floating anger in America today. We saw it throughout the health-care debate. And Republicans are counting on it to fuel big election wins in November. It’s mostly on the right side of the spectrum. I see it in comments on this blog. Frank Rich wrote recently in The New…
Read MoreWingnuts
Extremism in the defense of liberty may or may not be a vice, but it’s a good way to lose elections. And it may be how Republicans blow their chance at a game-changer in November. Judging from their hysterical reaction, the stories about threats and violence have touched a raw nerve among Republicans. …
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