At the outset of his presidency, Barack Obama promised to restore America’s great diplomatic stature, weakened in the politically costly wake of its war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Healed by renewed international cooperation, those wounds would be a thing of America’s darker, Republican past, he promised. But Number 10 never envisioned that Mr. Obama’s overhaul of America’s international relations would come at the cost | Read More »
After the whistleblower group Wikileaks released Afghan war documents identifying local informants, its founder Julian Assange said in an interview with the Today Show that if American sympathizers were targeted in the divestment’s wake it would constitute his own collateral damage: “If we had, in fact, made that mistake then of course that would be something we would take very seriously.” The subject of my | Read More »
RNC chairman Michael Steele’s two most visible aides announced Sunday they would resign their posts later this week, following the group’s annual Winter Meeting in which it will select a new chairman. When the former Maryland lieutenant governor took over the reigns of the national party apparatus two years ago, he promised an “off the hook” public relations campaign. Instead, Steele’s tenure has been marred | Read More »
Senate Democrats unveiled earlier this afternoon a 1,924-page omnibus spending bill to fund the government through fiscal year 2011. Aides to GOP legislators on Capitol Hill have already begun poring over the $1.1 trillion package, describing the proposal as “a total mess” to Fox News. Republican lawmakers — including those in the lower chamber, like Speaker-elect John Boehner — are already vowing to help kill | Read More »
The same non-profit group who wasted no time in lobbying new members of Congress to slash federal spending — by blanketing Ronald Reagan Washington International Airport with print ads in time for this week’s freshman orientation session — unveiled today a quirky new web spot addressing the nation’s “uncertain” economic environment. The video, which features a bullish “boss lady” who opens beer bottles with her | Read More »
Texas Governor Rick Perry will be named chairman of the Republican Governors Association when the group gathers in California next week. Perry’s appointment to the RGA won’t be the governor’s first rodeo: He led the same committee in 2008 and had worked in varying capacities for the group in years prior. The Washington-bound move — not the move for which some Republican donors had hoped | Read More »
When a deeply polarizing egotist leads an already-unpopular party, the only place to go is down, as endangered Democrats will soon realize. Some, having already learned the lessons of the Pennsylvania and Colorado Senate primary contests, are politely rebuffing–while others still downright rejecting–Barack Obama’s offers to join them on the campaign trail. Instead, they’ve got another president in mind: Bill Clinton, whose presence on the | Read More »
What’s Halloween without a little politics? And with little more than a week until Election Day, you can’t blame me that I incorporated it into my jack-o’-lantern last night, when I joined my family to carve pumpkins. Inspired by a recent Gallup survey in which President Barack Obama and former President George Bush were virtually tied in a measure of approval, my get out the | Read More »
A California union stagehand was abruptly terminated Friday for wearing a “George H. W. Bush” sweat shirt and hat while constructing a stage to be used for a get out the vote rally featuring President Barack Obama. Duane Hammond says his clothes were not a political statement, rather a sign of support for his son, who is serving on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. George H. | Read More »
In a state Democratic Party mailer that hit South Florida mailboxes last week, voters found an interesting figure on a top GOP House recruit: His social security number. The Florida Democratic Party reproduced a 2005 tax lien–since paid–filed against Allen West for delinquent credit card bills. As the Palm Beach Post reports, the document contains the GOP hopeful’s social security number. While the record does | Read More »
Incumbent Democrats are desperate — increasingly aware the public’s taste for their brand of change has waned. Some, in generally conservative districts and states, are reaching for the mantle of the moderate; others, like those in reliably Democratic areas, have not yet begun backsliding on the president on the issues of health care reform and spending. But all — no matter how comfortable their lead | Read More »
In an election cycle where Democratic campaign advertisement expenditures disparaging their party’s landmark health care overhaul is wildly outpacing pro-reform spots, one New York congressman is embracing a bold approach: Taking ownership of the health care reform bill. “I wrote the bill,” Rep. Anthony Weiner said Monday at a town hall, referring to his party’s landmark reform of the nation’s health care system. “The bill | Read More »
A prominent civil rights crusader and former congressman on Thursday likened anti-big government Tea Party activists to members of the notorious Klu Klux Klan at a press conference questioning the motives a conservative rally scheduled for the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The “Restoring Honor” rally, hosted by conservative radio and television talker Glenn Beck, boasts former | Read More »
The story of an irritated JetBlue flight attendant whose tantrum last week drew national attention is the subtext of a new web ad in which endangered Democrats frantically escape an airplane piloted by the president with a course set for their home states and districts. Parodies aside, the 50-second spot highlights a serious concern among Democrats: President Barack Obama’s unpopularity–stemming from his controversial overhaul of | Read More »
In today’s Politico, I have an editorial on the Democrats’ procedural gimmicks and faulty pay-for system that cost the passage of the James Zagroda 9/11 Health and Compensation Act: In spite of fierce public opposition, the Democrats’ sizable House majority secured passage of President Barack Obama’s controversial overhaul of the nation’s health care system. But this same majority failed Friday in its efforts to create | Read More »
Political observers will attest that the majority of campaign ads are banal rehashings of tempered stump speeches. But we were greeted this week with a pleasant–and yet remotely disturbing–break from that pattern, with the video “Greene is on the scene,” a parody of South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene’s campaign missteps set to a retro hip-hop tune. The New York Times reported Thursday the | Read More »
A House ethics committee has launched an investigation into New York Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel for undisclosed ethics violations, the Associated Press reported Thursday. Rangel, who resigned from his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee in March following a formal admonishment for two corporately-underwritten Caribbean junkets, will appear next week before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Composed | Read More »
Vice President Joe Biden was caught on camera calling a Glendale, Wisconsin custard shop manager a “smartass” after the man asked the White House lower his taxes. Biden visited Kopps Frozen Custard, a popular Milwaukee-area restaurant the vice president mistook for an ice cream parlor, to chat with employees and patrons. Biden’s rebuke, which was captured on film by a local ABS News affiliate, came | Read More »
When the Washington Post hired bloggers Greg Sargent and Ezra Klein, it appeared the paper was inclined to invest heavily in its web presence — and prepared to shift its online editorial slant further leftward. To offset what many saw as a disproportionate coverage of Democratic politics, the paper announced months later it had hired Dave Weigel to cover Republican intra-party politics. Sargent, whose muckraking | Read More »
At Human Events, I have an editorial today on the multi-million dollar gamble organized labor made on Bill Halter’s ill-fated primary challenge to Blue Dog Senator Blanche Lincoln: For Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Tuesday’s victory was bittersweet: She narrowly secured her party’s nomination, though head-to-head polls indicate she will lose six of every ten general election voters to her Republican challenger in November. But for organized | Read More »
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