The DC GOP may be looking for creative ways to surrender its principles, but in the states, the GOP is pressing its advantage to reform the country. Today, in Michigan, the GOP Legislature and Governor made a surprise move to
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, often the conservative conscience of the Senate, will resign his seat next month and assume leadership of the Heritage Foundation. He will replace long-time Heritage President Ed Fuelner. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley will name
Apparently, a narrow election loss is all you need to convince GOP Leadership that taxes are too low. President Obama won reelection by a smaller margin than his first victory, yet it was enough to upend a foundational principle of
One negative consequence of a government spending trillions of dollars it doesn’t have is that lots of people have a stake in that spending. Any attempt to curtail that spending is met with ferocious lobbying and howls about the “end-times”
The DC political world thrives by obfuscating and making things seem more complicated than they actually are. The entire government edifice is built on buzz-words and euphemisms intended to obscure that’s happening. When Speaker Boehner promotes a Democrat-inspired “balanced approach”
For most of my adult life, there has been one thing I could rely on with the Republican Party; they weren’t going to raise my taxes. Sure, President George H.W. Bush did it in 1990, but his shock reelection loss
If the recent election taught us anything, it’s that Barack Obama certainly knows how to campaign. While to many of us his speeches were full of seemingly small-bore issues like Sesame Street and contraceptives, these turned out to be perfectly
The media is reprising its role as a modern-day Diogenes, searching for “honest” GOP legislators who will save Democrats from their own policies. While Democrats are never pressed on the need to go against their own constituencies and advocate spending
This morning, the sun rose in the East. At the end of the day it will set in the West. In between, another Illinois Democrat has been indicted for fraud. Just another day in the erstwhile “Land of Lincoln.” A
If you want a sign of how the GOP Leadership have cornered themselves in the fiscal cliff negotiations, look no further than an e-mail the Obama White House sent today to its supporters. In the message, Obama rallies the public
Most parties to the “fiscal cliff” negotiations employ a rhetorical veneer about the importance of compromise on both sides. They riff off Obama’s “balanced approach” talking point and stress that “everything is on the table.” Of course, it isn’t really
President Obama likes to say that he wants a “balanced” approach to address our nation’s fiscal challenges. Presumably, this means a mixture of spending cuts and tax hikes to get our fiscal house in order. He has been very specific
There is no doubt a lot of disappointment around dinner tables this Thanksgiving. The groundswell of conservative opposition to Obama and the Democrats, after delivering a landslide GOP victory, seemed to crash on the rocks as Obama was reelected. The
An existential weakness of the Romney candidacy was that criticism of ObamaCare, the President’s signature initiative, was off the table. As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney had pushed through a health law centered around a mandate on individuals to purchase health
This US Government is staging another legislated crisis to close out the year. This year’s version is negotiations over the “fiscal cliff,” a combination of expiring tax breaks and across-the-board automatic spending cuts. President Obama has promised a “balanced” approach
In the wake of the GOP’s election losses, media mavens and party elders inevitably express deep concern that the party has become “too conservative” to win elections. The party, we are warned, must moderate its positions to better appeal to
The most interesting tidbit in the sad demise of Hostess is the fact that the Teamsters union ignored a strike by a fellow union and crossed the picket-line in a bid to save the company. The Teamsters, not exactly a
Frankly, I have a hard time getting my mind around this story. A teacher in a 6th Grade “journalism” class at a public school in Southern California distributed the materials below to students. The materials are highly critical of ALEC,
One of the left’s favorite parlor games to play on Republicans is to ask them, hypothetically, if they would accept $1 in tax hikes for something like $9 or $10 in spending cuts. The game is designed to show that
The great lefty parlor game in DC is to come up with some theory about how conservatives are killing the GOP and then find a few “conservatives” to reinforce the argument. People like David Frum, Russ Douthat, and David Brooks
The DC GOP and its attendants in the punditry are bent on diminishing the influence of conservatism generally and the tea party specifically. Its been this way for a long time. The DC GOP establishment mobilized all its resources, for
I was obviously depressed in the immediate wake of last week’s defeat. Even worse than another four years of Obama was the notion that the electorate had changed in a fundamental way. It looked like I was wrong about the
Even by the standards of the friday afternoon news dump tradition, yesterday’s news that Gen. David Petraeus had resigned from the CIA was a stunner. The most heralded military officer of his generation fell from grace after it was revealed
My father was an infantry officer in Vietnam, very early in the conflict. He left the theater in 1964, before the massive American military build-up, but could already see the writing on the wall. He remarked to me that he
Rarely has so much been spent to so little effect. In 2010, when the Supreme Court stood up for free speech and struck down limitations on campaign spending, the left and the media terrified themselves, imagining a flood of money
President Barack Obama will never again have to face voters. Nothing he does will have to be calibrated for how it plays in swing states or with Independent voters. He is now governing solely for his own legacy. This is
Andrew always pointed out that politics was far downstream from media and pop culture. By ceding the media and pop culture space, conservatives were always at an extreme disadvantage whenever a specific political debate arose. They could occasionally win certain
The chief reason I’m confident of a Romney victory tonight is I believe there will be a massive GOP turnout. Virtually all of the polling, especially at the state level, is based on a false premise that Democrats will come
The Community Voters Project is a “non-partisan” lefty organization whose mission is to register people to vote, with a particular emphasis on minorities. In the 2008 election, they had offices in 10 states and registered around 300,000 minority voters. So
Could President Obama win reelection tomorrow? Sure, its possible. Is he so favored to win reelection that any argument that Romney will win is irrational and a denial of reality? Of course not. But, certain nether-regions of the left and
This afternoon, Pew Research is out with its final poll of the 2012 campaign. It finds that Romney continues to hold the edge on voter turnout. By solid margins, Romney supporters are more engaged in the campaign, are following news
A week after Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey, the state is still struggling to recover. Hundreds of thousands are still without power, thousands are displaced from their homes and basic food, water and gasoline are scarce. Despite Obama’s promise to
The predicate for Obama winning reelection on Tuesday is that he replicates the strong Dem turnout that swept him into office in 2008. That election saw a greater percentage of young, minority and Hispanic voters than previous elections. It also
This morning, because the sun rose in the East, Nate Silver again increased his odds of Obama winning reelection. Silver now estimates Obama’s chances of reelection at a precise 83.7%. Now, I realize Obama’s improved chances don’t actually have anything to
Today, pollsters are rushing forward a slew of new swing state polls ahead of the campaign’s final weekend. Its an attempt to set a final narrative ahead of voting on Tuesday. PPP is out today with a new poll of
This morning, the Romney campaign announced that Paul Ryan would go to Minnesota on Sunday for a pre-election campaign rally. Its a clear sign that the Romney campaign thinks Minnesota is winnable. Where campaigns spend their time in the closing
At the start of the campaign season, Democrats and the left had high hopes of defeating Iowa Rep. Steve King. Few members of Congress spend more time under the left’s skin, making him something of a hero to us. Iowa
The 2012 Presidential campaign will be decided in the tree-lined cul-de-sacs that dominate the American landscape. Rural voters are reliably Republican and urban voters are reliably Democrat. But, suburban voters are the swingy-est of voters. In many states, they decide
One of my criticisms of the media polling this year is that, whether intentional or not, they paint an unrealistic portrait of the electorate this year. In the vast majority of cases, media polling shows Democrats matching or even exceeding
Montana State District Judge Kathy Seeley heard oral arguments on Monday concerning a $500,000 contribution from the Montana Republican Party to Rick Hill’s campaign for Governor. She refused to issue an immediate ruling, causing the case to drag on for
