National Republicans
Divided we stand
It’s not just that our nation is divided. Both parties are divided. The Democrats’ division is generational. The Republicans’ division is personal. One party’s insurgency comes from the left; the other, from the right. One is young vs. old; the other, inside vs. outside. Both come from a deep well of fear and loathing about…
Read MoreA Nasty Guy?
“He’s a nasty guy. A very nasty guy.” Donald Trump was talking about Ted Cruz and with the same uncanny instinct that unmanned Jeb Bush with two words (“low-energy”) he’d put his finger on Cruz’s Achilles heel. In many ways Ted Cruz looks like the archetype of a candidate who should win a Republican Primary:…
Read MoreBirther Karma
The constitutional question about whether Ted Cruz is a “natural-born” citizen is as good a reason as any to deny him the White House. If we want a President from Canada, let’s get Justin Trudeau. The issue is sweet confirmation of the Universal Law of Payback. How many Cruz supporters were “birthers” who questioned President…
Read MoreThe Reaction
A girl who thinks she’s a boy asked to use the boys’ bathroom at her high school. The principal allowed her to use a staff bathroom instead. Then a boy who thinks he’s a girl circulated an internet petition saying the principal was wrong. And it landed, beneath a picture of the two teenagers, on…
Read MoreObama Redux
Franklin D. Roosevelt said the Presidency “is preeminently a place of moral leadership.” President Obama’s State of the Union met that standard. The President channeled FDR, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan all in his speech. He rose above the usual political theater than these speeches have become. He set out an optimistic vision of…
Read MoreThe paradox of George Herbert Walker Bush
To read Jon Meacham’s new biography of Bush 41 (“Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush”) is to realize how much politics has changed in 20 years, to understand why Jeb Bush is going nowhere in the presidential race and to marvel at GHWB’s admirable character – and fundamental cluelessness. The…
Read MoreWho’s being weak here?
It damn sure isn’t President Obama, who is unafraid to show his grief, anger and determination to combat gun violence. No. It’s the cowardly Republican politicians who are so scared of the NRA they react hysterically over the smallest steps to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. The NRA…
Read MoreConnecting the Dots
It turns out President Obama’s case of the wobbles, when it comes to whipping ISIS, isn’t confined to putting ‘boots on the ground.’ There’s a story in The Hill telling how the Homeland Security Department got the wobbles too, stopping an investigation dead in its tracks to ‘connect the dots’ between outright terrorists and other…
Read More“He isn’t politically correct”
Those are the code words often used by Donald Trump’s supporters. Meaning what? Judging from what Trump says, it must mean, “We like it when he says things that offend people, like women, the handicapped, the poor, Hispanics, Muslims and anybody else we don’t like.” These people appear to like it when he suggests most…
Read MoreThis Little Problem
After what happened in San Bernardino you’d think, now, down in the bowels of the Immigration Department they’d be hard at work fixing the problems with granting visas. But, instead, they’re having a knock down drag-out fight over an odd bit of esoteric Orthodoxy: When it’s right and when it’s wrong to use social media…
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