[ Posted Wednesday, February 18th, 2015 – 16:51 UTC ]
The immigration fight just got a little more complicated for the Republicans. A federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction blocking implementation of President Obama's new immigration policy, which has thrown a curve ball into the Republican congressional strategy of having a big political battle over immigration next week. Will they realize the ruling gives them a political "escape hatch" out of their unwinnable position? Will they use the legal case as an excuse to "kick the can down the road" a bit more? Or will they just go ahead and shut down the Department of Homeland Security anyway? These are really their only three viable options, and all of Washington is atwitter over which they'll choose to take.
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[ Posted Monday, February 16th, 2015 – 16:54 UTC ]
The Republican Party and the political media world are already off to the 2016 horseraces. With endless fascination, the latest polling from Iowa and New Hampshire is examined under the microscopes of the pundits and sweeping pronouncements are made as to who the eventual frontrunners will be. Of course, it is way too early for any real analysis of the public's mood, but that doesn't stop the oddsmaking within the Beltway. After all, the Democratic nomination race is setting up to be a snoozer, so why not get started obsessing over the Republican race?
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 11th, 2015 – 19:04 UTC ]
The 1828 presidential campaign was one of the most vicious in all of American history. While campaigning on what would today be called populism (complete with a "Let the people rule" slogan), Andrew Jackson was called a nothing short of a "jackass" by his opponents. Jackson, in a feat of political jiu-jitsu, then embraced the jackass label as his own. This is why, today, the Democratic Party is often represented by an image of a jackass (which is usually euphemistically referred to as a "donkey"). This historical introduction is necessary to put Speaker John Boehner's recent comments regarding Senate Democrats into context and perspective.
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 10th, 2015 – 16:52 UTC ]
While the fight for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination is already fiercely heating up, over on the Democratic side there is really only one question even being asked right now -- when will Hillary Clinton formally declare her candidacy? Will she wait until summer, or throw her hat in the ring during the spring? Whenever she does launch her campaign, she will inevitably face the same problem she grappled with the last time she ran. Call it her inevitability problem (or maybe her "inevitable inevitability problem," if you're trying to come up with a clever headline).
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[ Posted Friday, February 6th, 2015 – 18:04 UTC ]
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams (or, as we affectionately refer to him, "BriWi") was ruthlessly mocked online this week, after a war story he told turned out to be a complete fabrication. Our headline today refers to the funniest mockery we've yet seen on the subject, titled "That one live shot I did from the moon," for no other reason than it makes a funny headline. We really have no news to report from the moon, although (as usual) there are quite a few bits of lunacy to report from the political world. As for BriWi, well, we'll see what happens next. Perhaps it's time to give Lester Holt a shot at the big chair? It's a little hard to feel too sorry for BriWi, since he reportedly rakes in $10 million a year to read the news to America every night. Nice work if you can get it, eh? Or hold onto it, for that matter.
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 4th, 2015 – 15:48 UTC ]
Republicans in Congress have, once again, successfully painted themselves into a corner. Even though they've done exactly this previously (in exactly the same way), they now have absolutely no idea how to get out of this dilemma (which they created for themselves). They've got a few weeks to figure something out, but at the moment it appears they have no clue. That's not just liberal snark talking, either. I've seen multiple Republicans interviewed in the past few days and they all universally offer up some form of: "We have no idea what plan B will be."
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[ Posted Monday, February 2nd, 2015 – 18:16 UTC ]
President Obama just finished a very good month in public opinion polling. Obama showed such notable improvement in January that it's tough to choose which metric he did best in. In improvement over the previous month, Obama just had the best month of his second term (so far). His January improvement was the fourth-best of his entire presidency. He hit numbers he hasn't seen since the summer of 2013 -- gaining back all the ground lost (and more) since the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website. NBC's Chuck Todd, during coverage of Obama's State Of The Union speech, came up with the best metaphor for what has been happening since the midterm elections last year: Obama stole the GOP's "honeymoon." After a big Republican political victory, Obama has been increasingly bold. As a result, Obama got the bump in polling, instead of the Republicans. January was indeed a very good month for President Obama.
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[ Posted Friday, January 30th, 2015 – 17:54 UTC ]
That headline certainly does promise a large amount of schadenfreude over the misfortunes of a certain former vice presidential nominee (and half-term governor of Alaska), doesn't it? Well, that'll all have to wait for the end of this column, where we will be supplanting our normal talking points section with a few choice conservative reviews of Sarah Palin's recent speech in Iowa. But before we dive into this snarktastic dessert of vicious quips, we've first got to get through the meat and potatoes of the politics of the week.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 29th, 2015 – 16:02 UTC ]
Today's news headlines included an interesting item: "U.S. Air Force To Replace Air Force One." My immediate reaction: Does this mean the future presidential library in honor of Barack Obama will have a plane in it? After all, the last time we upgraded Air Force One, the old one wound up in Reagan's library, so it seems only fair for Obama to get one too.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 28th, 2015 – 18:00 UTC ]
The 2016 presidential election cycle is already underway. Whether you are delighted or horrified at the prospect, the race is indeed now on. While it might seem impossibly far in the future, consider that the Iowa caucuses are only a year away. So we're going to take a very early look at the Republican field, which seems to be getting larger every week.
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