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The Senate race in Montana is going to a be a tough one, that's for sure. Democrats currently hold the seat, but this is one state where Republicans have a clear shot at an upset this November. Senator John Walsh has just released a rather amazing television ad, though, which is the best pushback on the "personhood" concept I think I've ever seen. Because it features a rape victim telling her own story.
Karl Rove successfully manipulated the entire news media this week, so we are going to play along today. Rove's specialty is to take what could be considered a reasonable idea, and then twist it beyond recognition while dragging it through the swampiest mud he can dream up. Well, that's admittedly a terrible (and mixed) metaphor, but I think you get the general idea.
The Republican Party's 2014 midterm election strategy was supposed to be simple, since it contained only one plank in the platform: the awfulness of Obamacare. This isn't mere supposition, as Republicans have been freely admitting this for over six months now. They were so sure of their strategy that they didn't even care if everyone knew what it was ahead of time. The midterms would be "all Obamacare, all the time" on the Republican side, and that would usher them into victory. They even convinced themselves to avoid tackling other issues (such as immigration) because doing so would be a distraction from the single-minded focus on Obamacare.
Today's article title is meant as commentary on the media's overreactions to the first big round of primary election results (announced last night), and not any sort of supportive call to arms. Just to be clear up front, in case anyone was expecting a very different sort of article. It really should read "The Tea Party Is Dead / Long Live The Tea Party," since it represents a clear dichotomy in how pundits reacted to the primary results. Since the Tea Party candidates didn't do very well (and even that's putting it charitably) in this first big round of primaries, many are now proclaiming total victory for the Establishment Republican faction of the Republican Party, and an absolute rout of the Tea Party faction. The second way of interpreting the results warns that rumors of the Tea Party's death are premature, and that what really happened was that the Tea Party's takeover bid for the entire Republican Party is now a complete success. The Tea Party won, this way of thinking goes, because they have now become the Republican Party.
After suffering a negative month in the polls in March, President Obama bounced back in April, gaining back all the ground he had lost and then some (well, "and then a little bit more" would be more accurate...). He still hasn't quite made it back to where his poll numbers were before the Obamacare website rollout, but if the trendlines continue in May, he is at least within reach of this goal for the first time since last October. Let's take a look at the updated chart, shall we?
There was a lot of political news this week, most of it pretty good for Democrats. In the Senate, Democrats forced Republicans to filibuster a minimum wage bill (more on that in a bit), and then the week ended with some very good news in the unemployment numbers.
There seems to be a quiet debate going on within Congress over the possibility of bringing back the practice of earmarks. Unusually, the debate doesn't seem to break down on strictly partisan lines (the way most issues do, these days). But it does raise a valid question: should some limited form of earmarks be allowed to return to the budgeting process? Would it be a good thing or a bad thing, overall?
Over the course of the next two months, the Tea Party movement may become to be seen (to mix a few metaphors) as more of a paper tiger than the tail that wags the Republican dog. To put it a little more concretely, the Tea Party may be losing some of its outsized influence over the Republican Party. It is still too early to state with any degree of certainty (since the Tea Partiers have shown themselves to be impressively resilient on previous occasions), but if Tea Party power is indeed on the wane it could signal a turning point in modern American politics.
There were two political stampedes this week, both towards and then back away from the same man: rancher Cliven Bundy. Bundy was a strange hero for conservative Republicans to adopt, since he is essentially fighting for his right to be a "taker" (in "conservativese") from the federal government -- a right that he refuses to pay for, and by doing so has broken the law. So he's a law-breaker and he wants to mooch off the public for free -- two traits which conservatives routinely rail against. I guess conservative Republicans can be forgiven, since there was all the excitement of guns and going toe-to-toe with the dastardly gummint agents -- which always causes conservative hearts to swoon.
Three hundred of these columns? To coin a phrase... far out, man.