About a week after right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh attacked U.S. troops who disagree with him on Iraq policy, the subject seems to have grown stale. Dems did their best to generate interest in the story, but the political establishment only seems to care when MoveOn criticizes one soldier, not when Limbaugh criticizes thousands of soldiers. […]
For the last several decades, as nearly all political observers know, the two broad coalitions that make up the Republican Party are business interests (tax cuts, minimal regulation, free trade) and social/religious conservatives (anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-church-state separation, pro-gun). The two didn’t necessarily have much in common, but they were under the same GOP tent, and […]
In a bit of a surprise, Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, said this afternoon that he would block supplemental Iraq war spending unless Bush is prepared to embrace timetables for withdrawal and longer rest times for the troops. “As chairman of the Appropriations Committee I have absolutely no intention […]
Given the serious scandals surrounding Blackwater’s activities in Iraq, I thought it was at least possible that congressional Republicans would take their responsibilities seriously enough to challenge the company aggressively. After all, it’s easy to create a distinction between the company’s operations and the Bush administration’s mission — there’s a clear disconnect. In fact, the […]
Republican Rep. Pete Sessions, a staunch opponent of abortion rights and a vocal supporter of Rudy Giuliani, told TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network that the former NYC mayor would, if he were in Congress, be considered “pro-life.” He did not appear to be kidding. “In a hypothetical comparison of congressional votes, Mayor Giuliani’s […]
Of all the groups in the religious right, few have been as hostile to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as the Christian Coalition. TV preacher Pat Robertson, the group’s founder, has made no secret of the fact that he wants to make sure the GOP nominates anyone but him for president. But that was before McCain’s […]
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * I’ll have more on the quarterly totals later, but for now, Hillary Clinton raised $22 million in primary funds in the last three months, outpacing Barack Obama’s $20 million. No one in […]
With his autobiography hitting bookstores this week, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been in this news quite a bit lately, and most of the emphasis has been on two central points: Thomas is still bitter about Anita Hill’s (almost certainly accurate) accusations, and he’s still bitter that so many people believed her. There are […]
Kevin Drum recently suggested Barack Obama is doing far too little to go beyond conventional policy prescriptions: “His big foreign policy speech was fine, but cautious and mainstream. His big healthcare speech was fine, but cautious and mainstream. And now his big tax speech is….just cautious and mainstream. I really want to hear something big […]
As regular readers know, it’s really not my style to defend the president, especially when it comes to his unique rhetorical style, but once in a while, the criticism gets a little silly. This isn’t helpful at all — if Bush criticism is off-base, it makes it easier for the right to dismiss all disparagements, […]