[ Posted Monday, October 12th, 2015 – 16:53 UTC ]
Although my own personal bias (as anyone can see, from a random sampling of my past columns) is pretty liberal, every so often I feel the responsibility to offer up honest suggestions for Republican politicians to help either themselves or their party. The only times I actually write such columns are when I'm almost certain my advice will be ignored, so I guess that right there also counts as bias. I offer this up as a preamble to today's column, which consists of some advice for John Boehner. In a nutshell, Boehner should use the freedom his caucus has just handed him (by not being able to agree on his successor) to end his legacy by being the savior of any chance Republicans might have in next year's election.
Boehner, to put this in slightly different (and more ungulate) terms, has already nominated himself as the Republican Party's sacrificial lamb. But on his way out, he could also be a very effective scapegoat, thus sparing both his party and the country at large a whole lot of needless drama and economic instability.
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[ Posted Friday, October 9th, 2015 – 17:19 UTC ]
Two weeks ago, we wrote one of these columns and snarkily subtitled it: "New Job Vacancy: Chief GOP Cat-Herder." This week, we really should have gone with: "Babysitting Experience STRONGLY PREFERRED," but Salon had already used it (we'll explain that joke in a bit, promise). Instead, we chose to feature the word which appeared in too many headlines to accurately count over the past two days, because describing what is going on in the Republican Party these days is pretty downright hard to do without using the word "chaos" in some fashion or another.
Chaos is king. Chaos reigns in the House Republican Caucus, reflecting the chaos from the Republican presidential campaign trail. The question is what will emerge from this maelstrom -- a beautiful phoenix-like rebirth of the Grand Old Party, or perhaps such a wide split that the Republican Party fractures the same way the Democrats and the Dixiecrats did over half a century ago. At this point, either outcome seems equally possible. We are in chaotic and uncharted waters, folks. In fact, you can almost hear the Discordians chanting "Hail Eris!" at this point (that was an obscure Robert Anton Wilson joke, just because it seemed like the perfect week to toss it into the mix).
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[ Posted Thursday, October 8th, 2015 – 16:37 UTC ]
It's hard not to have at least a little bit of sympathy for Kevin McCarthy, at this point. When Speaker of the House John Boehner announced he was going to step down, it was the equivalent of the chief engineer jumping off of a train that was barreling down the track, after just having passed a warning that the bridge ahead was washed out. What sane person would relish the chance to preside over an upcoming disaster, after all? McCarthy faced an unwinnable situation from his own ungovernable caucus, and so he intelligently threw up his hands and essentially said: "Why bother even trying?"
This is momentous, because it doesn't happen very often. In normal times, leading the House of Representatives is an honor that many vie for, because it is a powerful position usually only given to those with a long track record and demonstrable leadership qualities. Now we are left with the speaker's chair being the equivalent of a smoking hot potato -- nobody wants to get left holding it.
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[ Posted Wednesday, October 7th, 2015 – 17:08 UTC ]
Next Tuesday, we will finally get some degree of parity in the world of televised presidential debates, as the Democrats come together for the first time to make their case to the American public. The Republicans have already held two debates and will hold their third later this month. The Democratic National Committee decided to restrict the number of debates held, which has left the field open to the Republicans for two months now. This decision has been hotly debated, mostly by Democrats not named "Hillary Clinton" (who make the case that the debate schedule was shortened to give Hillary an easier time of it). But whatever you think of the decision, we're finally about to see all the Democratic candidates on one stage.
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 6th, 2015 – 16:29 UTC ]
Obama back up again
President Barack Obama had a pretty good month in the polls last month, as he saw his approval take a big step up and his disapproval take a tiny step down. Obama exited the summer doldrums earlier than usual this year, and chalked up a positive month all around. Let's take a look at the new chart.
[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]
September, 2015
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[ Posted Monday, October 5th, 2015 – 17:01 UTC ]
The Republican field of candidates for president has now entered a winnowing phase where the party's voters are clearly indicating that there are only six viable candidates in the race. From an initial field of 17 candidates, two have dropped out, five are on life support (politically), and four are in stable but critical condition. This has left only Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Ted Cruz with any meaningful chance of winning the party's nomination.
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[ 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.
Without getting into the fallout of his recent announcement that Republicans had indeed convened the Benghazi committee to politically take Hillary Clinton down a few pegs, his statement led up to a key pronouncement: "She's untrustable." Um... "untrustable"? Is that anything like "non-trustally-minded"? Or maybe "distrustacious"? How about "untrustalicious"? I mean, the English language is flexible, so if the poetry muse strikes, why not come up with something even more hilarious to the late-night comics, such as perhaps "atrustadonkadonk"? Hillary Clinton might not be trustworthy, but Kevin McCarthy is just plain not worthy of being anybody's "speaker," really.
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[ Posted Thursday, October 1st, 2015 – 19:32 UTC ]
No column today. Airport runs and family responsibilities, sorry.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
[ Posted Wednesday, September 30th, 2015 – 16:58 UTC ]
Bernie Sanders, as far as the media is concerned, is the Rodney Dangerfield of presidential candidates -- "he don't get no respect." Of the 23 candidates running for president in the two major parties, precisely four of them have ever shown even 20 percent support (in their polling averages from their base voters). Actually, to be completely accurate, five people have hit the 20 percent support level since the race began this year, but Joe Biden is not actually a candidate yet. The other four are Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders.
Andrew Tyndall, who monitors broadcast news from ABC, NBC, and CBS, has some numbers which starkly show Bernie's Rodney Dangerfield problem. Tyndall tracked the total time the three networks have devoted to the presidential race this year: 504 minutes. This is more than their coverage (to this point on the calendar) in 2011 (277 minutes) and 2007 (462 minutes), so it's not like they're shying away from covering the race or anything. Out of that total, 338 minutes this year has been aired about the Republican race, while only 128 minutes was centered on the Democratic race. Granted, the Republicans have more candidates, which might explain some of the lopsided nature of those numbers.
Even so, the numbers get even more jaw-droppingly uneven when you look at individual candidates. Donald Trump (of course) leads the pack in coverage of his campaign, clocking in at an impressive 145 minutes. Hillary Clinton has gotten 82 minutes of campaign coverage, and an additional 83 minutes devoted to the email scandal. Jeb Bush, who is currently polling in fifth place in the Republican race with less than 10 percent in the polls, has received 43 minutes of coverage. The Bernie Sanders campaign has received a grand total of eight minutes of coverage -- one-fifth of Bush's time, or one-tenth of Clinton's time (one-twentieth, if you count the scandal coverage). Bernie got roughly the same amount of time as Chris Christie (polling below four percent, far back in the Republican pack). Bernie got the same amount of time that Mitt Romney got, when he was teasing a bid earlier this year.
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 29th, 2015 – 16:52 UTC ]
I should start out by apologizing for the sensationalism of that title, but somehow I just couldn't resist. "Priebus Agrees With James Baker" didn't quite have the same punch, but I'm apologizing in advance for two reasons: I actually agree with the chairman of the Republican National Committee on this one; and because of that, the article's going to be supportive and not snarky, as the headline might imply.
I noticed the connection when reading an article on how Reince Priebus is contemplating a major shakeup of the presidential primary process. Most of the article focused on Priebus hinting at challenging the early primary states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada), and perhaps giving some other states the front position in line. But here's the part that leapt out at me:
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