At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who comes up with a good idea; it just matters that it’s a good idea. On the other hand, when it comes to politics, credit sometimes matters. A little over a week ago, Senate Dems unveiled their policy agenda for the 109th Congress. The very first […]
We’ve been hearing for months about the Dems drive to reach out better and more effectively to religious voters nationwide. It’s a reasonable goal — like the 2000 election, the 2004 results showed that the more often a voter attends religious services, the more likely he or she would vote Republican. Now we’re seeing some […]
Bush’s political strategists believe Republicans should recast themselves as the “party of civil rights,” and reach out to African-American churches as a way to improve GOP candidates’ chances, but before that can happen, the president may want to learn what the Voting Rights Act is. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) says he’s “shocked” and “utterly […]
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) has a history of embarrassing failures and debacles. Remember the Iran-Contra scandal? Daniels was Reagan’s political director and helped direct the White House damage-control effort. The Enron scandal? Ken Lay personally helped choose Daniels to head Bush’s Office of Management and Budget. But Daniels most spectacular mistake was crafting and […]
Despite evidence to the contrary, the president insists that the late-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) would embrace privatization of Social Security, a claim intended to show bi-partisan support for his scheme since he can’t find living Dems who’ll sign on to his approach. Among the voices speaking out to criticize this tack is Moynihan’s own […]
Would-be presidential candidates, particularly Republicans, have been investing plenty of attention in Iowa and New Hampshire, but if you want to know who’s definitely weighing a campaign in ’08, take a look at South Carolina, home of the nation’s first southern primary. Rudy Giuliani, for example, has scheduled two South Carolina speaking engagements in the […]
Remember yesterday when the executive board of the Association of State Democratic Chairs recommended that the group endorse Donnie Fowler as the new DNC chair? Yeah, that didn’t work too well for Fowler. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean took control of the race for Democratic National Committee chairman yesterday by easily winning the endorsement of […]
The debate over privatizing Social Security is, at its root, a fight over politics and spin. For Bush and other proponents, that’s a good thing, because if this discussion rested exclusively on a policy debate, opponents of the privatization scheme would have already won in a knock-out. Pointing to a Paul Krugman column is almost […]
There’s been a flurry of interesting items lately about the next presidential race, with several players positioning themselves carefully. Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold (D), for example, was in Florida over the weekend to talk to locals about his interest in the job. U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told the Tiger Bay Club of Volusia County on […]
Bush and the Republicans need polls to shape their message and direction… The Republicans left an annual retreat in the Allegheny Mountains with a 104-page playbook titled “Saving Social Security,” a deliberate echo of the language President Bill Clinton used to argue that the retirement system’s trust fund should be built up in anticipation of […]