Few would argue the fact that Citizens United has been a major player in the Republican primary...and many if not most would concede that none of it has been healthy ...
As if you needed another reason to not vote Romney.
Celebrity business magnate Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney for president Thursday, telling reporters he will not mount an independent campaign if ...
In a perfect world, the Republican contest to find a nominee to face Barack Obama would go on forever...or at least until August. You cannot attach a number to the ...
I suspect there are a ton of conservatives secretly agreeing with Begala and while it's too early in the game for Dems to get cocky, it's difficult to not smile ...
Quotes don't get much better than this one by Bob Dole.
"Why do people take such an instant dislike to me?" asked a perplexed Gingrich, to whom Dole bluntly ...
After the beating Gingrich took last night, it's hard to imagine under what scenario he can make a comeback. Florida is going to Romney and for Gingrich to regain the ...
There's a lot out there on the President's SOTU, so I'll keep my thoughts short and sweet.
The speech did what it had to do which was target liberals and independents ...
The highlights from last night's debate.
- Newt Gingrich can't wait to become president so he can revisit the early 60s and overthrow Castro in Cuba. War, baby, war.
- Santorum, who ...
It appears that the South Carolina verdict is forcing Romney to start taking Gingrich seriously.
“We’re not choosing a talk show host, we’re choosing a leader,” Romney said, saying that their ...
Mike Huckabee offers advice to Mitt Romney concerning his unreleased tax returns.
Let him [Romney] make this challenge: "I'll release my tax returns when Barack Obama releases his college transcripts and ...
Via Political Humor...
"Mitt Romney is coming under fire because even though he is a multimillionaire, he only paid 15 percent in taxes. That's not a tax, that's barely a tip." ...
Good line.
My guess is that after Romney fails to beat Obama in the general, Huntsman will be back in 2016. The most electable guy in the field and he could ...
I found this pretty funny...and accurate. It comes from a reader over at Balloon Juice.
So, let’s review. The contenders for the GOP nomination are
A vulture capitalist who believes that any ...
Lively little debate going on at one of last week's posts with Libertarianism put under the microscope.
ocLiberal:
I know I am in sketchy territory here, (start the indignant shouting now) but ...
In the contest to determine the winner of the Far-Right Politics gold medal, rack up a few more points for Newt Gingrich.
“I think an intelligent conservative wants the right federal ...
Via Political Humor...
"Congratulations to Mitt Romney. He won the New Hampshire primary last night. See, this is proof that even the multimillionaire son of a multimillionaire can beat the odds ...
Story 1:
North Korea punishing those who 'didn't display enough sadness over Kim Jong Il's death'
North Korean authorities are reportedly punishing citizens who did not display enough sadness over the death ...
In case you missed the story, Pope Benedict made headlines this week by doing what it is popes do best - putting the irrational fear of God into his followers.
The ...
Romney was asked whether questions dealing with distribution of wealth and power were a matter of jealousy or fairness.
You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class ...
Update to my last post on Obama at the America’s summit and how he dealt with Chavez.
Conservative Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper had this to say in a conference call with reporters:
“I thought President Obama did an excellent job of expressing the values, and priorities of the U.S. of America,” he added. “I thought that he allowed … a dialogue to take place in a good spirit to animate the room — which I thought made the meetings productive. I think [it] made the U.S., took the U.S. to a higher plane than the Venezuelas of the world, and I think was very effective at moving the vast majorities of countries, reaffirming a very centrist position and very progressive position on the things that concern us: democracy, human rights, open markets, trade.”
Harper concluded, “I know he got some criticism at home. But, you know, the U.S. is bigger than Venezuela in the end. The U.S. is the U.S., and I thought President Obama led in a way that was very effective at that conference.”
Bush in bed with the Saudis, holding hands and kissing them even. Good stuff.
Reagan smiling and palling around with Gorbachev in the preamble to the shutting down of the Cold War. Good stuff.
Nixon heading off to Beijing in 1972 and hanging out with Mao. Good stuff.
Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez at the Americas summit. Naive and dangerous behaviour by an inexperienced president.
Or so say the right wing talking heads. I wonder what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich thinks about it all.
“Everywhere in Latin America, enemies of America are going to use the picture of Chavez smiling and being with the president as proof that Chavez is now legitimate that he is acceptable.”
In a wonderful piece in Vanity Fair, James Walcott had this to say about Newt.
“Only within the Beltway popcorn popper could Gingrich, whose serpent tongue and ogre ego did so much to polarize discourse in the 1990s and abort reform, be considered a foxy catch. Only in Washington, D.C., could Gingrich, a magpie of futurist jargon and a bumptious opportunist, pass himself off as an iconoclastic force and centrifuge of ideas, a cross between Buckminster Fuller and Che Guevara leading a commando raid on the buffet table. And only within the punditocracy could “hyper-bipartisan” be bandied about as an aphrodisiac.”
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The Washington Post ran an interesting piece on the future prospects of the Republican party as it relates to the tea party protests of last week. Many conservatives are hoping that the protests will lead to a national uproar against President Obama’s spending policies and what the right perceives as the socialization of America.
The Post writes…
“The tea bag protests that marked tax day on Wednesday represented an opportunity and a risk for the Republican Party. Opportunity because they offered a jolt of energy for a battered party after two dismal elections. Risk because they supplied at best only a partial answer to what ails the GOP.”
Why is that? Well, because “fueling anger is not a strategy.”
How true. Obama is still riding high in public opinion polls with a majority of Americans in favor of his performance to date. Reps will have to do a lot more than simply being the party of ‘NO’. Criticism of Obama based on stale and failed policies from the past, just won’t do it for most. As WP notes:
“The tea party protests offer the GOP an appealing lifeline, an energized cadre of indeterminate size. They may be a one-time phenomenon or the start of something larger. The potency of the Republican prescription of tax cuts and small government has lessened with the failures of the Bush years and the scope of the economic crisis. Can it be restored? Much depends on the success or failure of Obama’s economic policies.”
So it remains to be seen whether the tea parties will have a favorable effect on republican fortunes . There is an attempt underway to organize national protests for July 4 and beyond. What is clear is that the republican party needs to represent more than simply a symbol of opposition. It needs to come up with alternative ideas which are not based entirely on those of the past.
And maybe, it needs to lose some of the conservative shackles which is holding it back in this new age. As an example, John McCain’s former campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, expressed his concerns about the impact of religion on setting Republican policy. Specifically he suggested that the party should rethink its position on gay marriage.
“If you reject [gay marriage] on religious grounds, I respect that,” he said. “I respect anyone’s religious views. However, religious views should not inform the public policy positions of a political party because… when it is a religious party, many people who would otherwise be members of that party are excluded from it because of a religious belief system that may be different. And the Republican Party ought not to be that. It ought to be a coalition of people under a big tent.”
Wise words…
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What is going on here? Someone’s got to teach the President how to keep an enemy. At the rate he’s going, there won’t be anyone left to go to war with.
On his recent European trip, he made amends with Turkey and extended a hand of friendship to the Muslim world. He has opened the door to talks with Iran. And now he’s tackling Latin America.
The President said he’s looking “for a new beginning” with Cuba as he loosened restrictions for Cuban Americans in dealings with family back home. Raoul Castro responded by stating that Cuba is willing to speak to the US and that everything is on the table. Wow. No doubt there will be Cuban cigars on the shelves before the year’s end. After 47 years of isolation, the head of the Organization of American States even said he’ll ask his group to invite Cuba back.
And then, of course, there’s this buddy-buddy thing going on with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. A year ago, Chavez is referring to Bush as the devil and claiming he could still smell the fumes of sulphur from the spot where Bush had spoken the day before…and now he’s shaking hands with President Obama and giving him books as gifts.
Next thing we know, Obama’s going to be handing an iPod to Korea’s tyrannical dictator Kim Jong il. How will we ever get a good war going on in this world if everyone is speaking to everyone else. The best way to ruin bad relations with an enemy is to actually speak to them.
Enough already, I say! We need to go back to a Bush approach to foreign policy. As we all know, you just can’t have enough good enemies.
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