[ Posted Friday, October 2nd, 2015 – 17:43 UTC ]
Kevin McCarthy is not worthy. Of using the English language correctly, among other things. Amusingly, though, this will likely not stop him from becoming the next speaker of the House. And if his past is any prologue, hearing the speaker speak should provide all sorts of amusement for the rest of us. It may not be the return of the garbled George W. Bush era of mangled English, but it could be close.
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[ Posted Monday, September 28th, 2015 – 17:52 UTC ]
Ben Carson would not support a Muslim candidate for president. This statement was made a week ago, and the media is still pressing him on the issue. But what's kind of puzzling to me is why they don't ask a few very obvious questions that would expose the rank hypocrisy involved in Carson's thinking. Instead, they just ask him the same question (in slightly different formats) over and over again, ignoring the fundamental contradictions in what Carson is espousing.
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[ Posted Friday, September 25th, 2015 – 15:03 UTC ]
Every so often, when preparing to write these weekly wrap-up columns, I wake up Friday morning and a political bombshell has happened which pretty much wipes out all the political news from the entire rest of the week. Obviously, today was one of those days, as we all learned this morning that Speaker of the House John Boehner will be a private citizen again by Hallowe'en. He'll step down not only from his speakership, but also from his House seat itself, more than a year before the end of his current term. So it looks like the Republicans are going to need a new cat-herder to (attempt to) lead them in the House.
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015 – 18:53 UTC ]
It always amuses me when Americans are told that the political climate today is "poisonously partisan" or "divided" and that this is "the worst partisanship Washington has ever seen." While pundits in the mainstream media love to whip this non-story into a frenzy every election year, it only goes to prove their utter ignorance of American history.
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[ Posted Monday, September 21st, 2015 – 17:01 UTC ]
For the past few days, the presidential election has focused on religion -- in specific, the Islamic religion. This started with Donald Trump failing to challenge a questioner's assertion that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and then shifted to asking Republican candidates whether they could hypothetically support a Muslim to become America's president. This time it was Ben Carson who stumbled, not Trump. Other Republican presidential candidates have -- to their credit -- condemned Carson's remarks, most notably Ted Cruz (on constitutional grounds: "the Constitution specifies there shall be no religious test for public office and I am a constitutionalist") and Lindsey Graham (on historical grounds: "America is an idea, not owned by a particular religion"). Bobby Jindal tried to win the gotcha battle in his own unique way:
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[ Posted Friday, September 18th, 2015 – 17:27 UTC ]
This was one of those weeks when one event overshadowed pretty much everything else that was going on in the political world. The event, of course, was the second round of Republican presidential debates, which lasted for a grueling five-plus hours.
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[ Posted Thursday, September 17th, 2015 – 17:30 UTC ]
It may not have been the first time that marijuana legal reform came up in a televised presidential debate, but last night's discussion between Rand Paul, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush was certainly the most in-depth and serious handling of the subject I've ever seen. This is something of a milestone, especially since it happened in a Republican debate (all of the quotes below come from a transcript of the debate provided by the Washington Post, I should mention).
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 16th, 2015 – 22:24 UTC ]
After having just sat through over five hours (!) of Republicans debating each other, I have to say my brain is somewhat numb. So I'm not going to try to do any high-level analysis of the 25 pages of notes I took, but instead rely on just snap reactions to what I've just witnessed at the Shrine of Saint Ronald of Reagan's Magic Airplane. I write these snap reactions for a reason, and the reason is to see how differently I saw the debates from all the professional pundits out there. Come tomorrow, I'll read what everyone else has to say, and if the past is any measure, I'll be astonished at what settles in as conventional inside-the-Beltway wisdom. All quotes are transcribed by me hastily, and may not be exact, I should mention in passing, too.
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 15th, 2015 – 17:27 UTC ]
We are over a year away from voting who will be America's next president. Summer's not even over, and the first primaries will be held in the bitter cold of next winter. Most people simply aren't paying much attention to politics yet, and won't for some time to come. I truly do understand all of that, but at the same time I've been writing more than my fair share of "horserace" stories already -- a trend which will only accelerate in the coming months (especially when I crank up the 2016 version of my "Electoral Math" column series, which tracks polling from all 50 states). So I wanted to take today to offer up a proactive defense of the concept of watching the polling around the "horserace" that is the presidential contest.
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[ Posted Friday, September 11th, 2015 – 17:15 UTC ]
Breaking news! Rick Perry drops out of presidential race!
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