Republicans: storming the castle

Just like the Democrats, New Hampshire Republicans armed with torches and pitchforks stormed the Establishment castle. Now the GOP Establishment has to decide whether to unite behind Jeb Bush, John Kasich or Marco Rubio – or cut a deal with The Art of the Deal himself, Donald Trump. Anything to stop Ted Cruz. The party…

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The Great White Hope

As we get to the real voting, it gets real clear that Donald Trump’s candidacy comes down to the lowest common denominator of American politics: race. Like any great scam artist, Trump has come up with a way of putting the best face on the ugliest impulses. He first seized the stage as an anti-Obama…

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Trump and the art of the put-down

Ted Cruz thought he zinged Donald Trump good when he accused him of “New York values.” But one New York value that Trump has mastered is the put-down. Carter noted how Trump’s spot-on zingers buried Jeb Bush (“low energy”) and burned Cruz (“he’s a nasty guy”). Now The New York Times reports that Trump’s jibes…

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“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…

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A nation at risk

Has America really come to this? Have we come to where we must rely on the Republican Party to save us from electing a President who is an arrogant, egotistical blowhard with the vocabulary and maturity of a fourth-grade boy and the potential to wreck our economy and start World War III? What have we…

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Is Trump 2016’s Ross Perot?

Didn’t we see this movie before? A billionaire with a big ego and a bigger mouth seizes the stage, runs for President as an independent and ends up electing President Clinton. That was Ross Perot in 1992. Now Donald Trump is warning he may go third-party next year. Visions of Republican chaos and a Clinton…

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This is your chance, Chris Christie

The worse Donald Trump gets, the better his poll numbers get. Once again, he owns the national political debate because he goes where no one else dares to go. And when you go where even Dick Cheney and the South Carolina Republican Party chair won’t go, you’ve left the gravitational pull of Earth. It’s time…

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Trump disease

Donald Trump is like a fever in the Republican body politic: a sign of sickness. A lot of Republicans are hoping and praying the fever breaks before the sickness infects the entire body. Trump has owned about a third of the Republican vote in polls since he announced. That one-third gravitated to him when he…

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Terror politics

The Great Ebola Panic hit America a year ago this October, right before the 2014 midterm elections. President Obama’s poll ratings plunged, and races that had been within Democrats’ reach – including the U.S. Senate and legislative races in North Carolina – shifted to Republicans. This year, the Paris terrorist attacks remind us how dangerously…

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Hillary versus The Donald

This will be The Greatest Show on Earth. Or maybe a sign of the End Times. It will pit the yin and yang of American politics, the alpha and omega, Wonder Woman versus Captain America, Good versus Evil (whichever side you’re on). The only thing they have in common is our obsession with their hairstyles.…

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