Mitt Romney believes that his best line of attack is making the claim that he has not spent a moment as a D.C. politician while his two main opponents, Newt ...
No two ways about it, Rick Santorum had a good night. Not only did he sweep Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri but he also got off the best line of the ...
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 ...
Another great speech by President Obama last night. Eugene Robinson reflects.
In Tucson tonight, President Obama played the role that all presidents must play at times of great tragedy: consoler in chief. His speech at the memorial service for the victims of Saturday’s massacre seemed not to come from a speechwriter’s pen, but from the heart.
At a moment of great sorrow, there was a glimpse of the kinder, gentler America that Obama described — an America in which “we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
But can he himself, the man who implored Democratic voters to “punish our enemies” and only recently referred to Republicans as “hostage takers” live up to his own words?
This is, after all, a man who got his political start in the home of a terrorist who’d dedicated a book to Robert F. Kennedy’s killer — a man who never repented but who Mr. Obama then gave grant money to.
Will the President live up to his own standard? Everyone can change. Everyone can repent. Let’s hope this President will.
It would be wonderful to believe that the political rhetoric and tone could change in the aftermath of the Tucson tragedy. Sadly, it won’t. The right is not about to change its ways. Fox will continue on with it’s anti-Obama agenda of lies and misinformation. Beck, Limbaugh et al will do likewise. Michele Bachmann’s delusional world will be no different today than it was yesterday and Sarah Palin will forever be Sarah Palin. Boehner, McConnell, Issa and friends? After a few days of calm, Republicans in Congress will pick up exactly where they left off.
I don’t know where the answer lies but if 9/11 was unable to mend the raging political divisiveness for more than a few months, I doubt that the Arizona shooting will do any better no matter how many brilliant speeches this president gives.
Underestimating this President might be the most serious mistake one can make. After getting a tax bill through Congress (imperfect as it was), today he signed a bill repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – a move which a mere two weeks ago seemed near impossible. It appears that this not-so-lame lame duck session will end up being one of the most productive in history. A measure funding health care for 9/11 first responders as well as ratification of START are set to pass Congress before Christmas. Good stuff. .
As anger and resentment from liberals over the President’s tax cut deal with Republicans grows, a “sober and melancholy realism” is how E.J. Dionne interprets the following take from an anonymous House Democrat.
“If I thought they [White House] were ready to go 12 rounds on this next year, I’d kill it in a heartbeat. But if they’re going to keep leaving the ring after the first punch, this is the best alternative we’ve got to keep this recovery going and helping those who are hurting the most.”
“Leaving the ring after the first punch” is a good line and does to a degree describe the manner in which the White House has reacted to Republican bullying tactics on a number of issues. The question which goes unanswered is what would have happened if the President had stuck to his guns and refused to extend tax cuts for the rich. Would Republicans have remained firm on their vow to block an extension of unemployment benefits for millions of Americans and would they have allowed tax cuts for the middle class to lapse? Based on their shameless behavior over the last two years, the answers to the last two questions could very well be yes and yes.
In any event, we might still get to find out. There are at least fifty-four Dems threatening to block the bill in the House so while passage of the bill is probable, it’s not yet a done deal.
Ok, so President Obama and Democrats took a “shellacking’ in the November midterms. Dems lost 63 House seats and another six in the Senate. Not a pretty picture and if we’re to listen to the doomsayers, Democrats don’t have a chance of holding on to Congress or the White House come 2012.
Time’s Mark Halperin wrote in a total downer of a post.
The coalition that got Barack Obama elected President just two years ago has been shattered.
Really? Is the Obama coalition of young people, women, African Americans, and Hispanics really shattered? Is it game over for Democrats, liberals, progressives and independents who found hope and change in the presidency of Barack Obama?
Nah, Halperin is full of it. The coalition lives. Here are the numbers from the latest NBC/WSJ poll.
- Blacks: 90% approve/6% disapprove
- Democrats: 82/12
- Liberals: 79/16
- Latinos: 56/33
- Post grads: 56/41
- UPDATE: 18-29: 53/38
- UPDATE 2: NBC’s Ana Maria Arumi notes that in the 2010 midterm exit polls, voters 18-29 said they approved of the president’s job by a 62/38 margin, which is close to how they voted in 2008 — 66/32
- Women: 52/43
- 18-34: 49/43
And here’s what the Republican half of the polling team had to say.
“It’s a reminder again … for a guy who took a shellacking, he’s got a pretty strong core pulse.” He cited Obama’s strong support among a core constituency of younger women, blacks, Latinos, young voters, voters in the West, and under-30 urban moderates. “This is a president that retains political standing,” he added.
It’s not going to be easy but this thing ain’t over by a long shot. The black Muslim socialist kid from Kenya is still in the game.
Yesterday I had a piece on Democrats’ cowardly ways. Greg Sargent adds more.
One last nugget from Richard Wolffe’s new book on the Obama White House. In an interview with Wolffe, the President seemed to acknowledge that in pursuing bipartisan support for health reform, he and Democrats got snookered by a previously-thought-out GOP strategy to delay the process for as long as possible in order to politically damage him and the Democratic Party.
Here’s the President on page 75:
“You have to give the Republicans credit, just from a pure political perspective, that they used every instrument available to them in the Senate to prolong the process in such a way that helped drive down support nationally, that gave everybody a sense that somehow Washington was broken,” he told me. “At a time when everybody was worrying about jobs, for us to have to spend six to nine months on this piece of legislation obviously was not helpful.”
Ok, wonderful. He supposedly gets it. Now what? Each time Dems give in to Republican demands, the goal posts get shifted further to the right. What is it going to take for the President to realize that the only end zone that matters for Republicans is the one that has them occupying the Oval Office in 2012?
Sargent is absolutely right in stating that there was no reason for the health care debate to drag on for as long as it did. It was quite evident within the first month or so that Republicans had no desire to reach agreement on any part of reform. By allowing Republicans to define the issues along their terms, Democrats saw public opinion on reform shift dramatically away from what it was at the beginning of 2009. And so it has been with every other issue Democrats have attempted to deal with in Congress.
How many more times does the anvil need to fall squarely on their heads before the President and Democrats really do indeed get it? It might be time to replace the Democratic donkey with a pic of a clueless Wiley E. Coyote.
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