The deep disappointment coming from the White House, gun control advocates and the parents of Newtown, Conn., at the demise of the Manchin-Toomey Senate compromise gun bill is understandable. But some of the rhetoric following the amendment’s defeat has been over the top. Supporters of stricter gun control have called those who voted against the […]
A few observations on the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll: This is the first time the president’s job approval numbers have been “upside down” — more people disapproving than approving — since June 2012. After spiking around the election, the right direction/wrong track numbers have slipped back to where they were last June. More […]
The jobs numbers just reported for March — an increase of only 88,000 jobs — are horrendous, especially coming after February’s strong job surge (236,000 new jobs revised up to 268,000). Forget the unemployment rate sliding from 7.7 percent to 7.6 percent. As The Associated Press noted, that drop resulted “only because more people stopped […]
Whether you are a staunch supporter of the National Rifle Association or an enthusiastic backer of the effort by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein for stronger gun control laws, it now should be clear who is winning — indeed, who has won — the latest skirmish in the gun […]
“I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat,” humorist Will Rogers said many years ago. But if Rogers were alive today, he’d undoubtedly see his party as a model of organization and unity when compared to the GOP. The Republican Party continues to fracture more seriously than I expected […]
As former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush continues to do nothing to end speculation that he might run for president in 2016, his Florida ally, Sen. Marco Rubio, twists in the wind. Florida and national insiders have been operating under the assumption that the two Florida Republicans would never run against each other for the nomination […]
The strategy was pretty clear from the start. Pick a fight in a place where you have a substantial advantage and where almost nobody else is playing, dump a ton of money attacking one candidate and supporting another, and then declare victory when — surprise! surprise! — your candidate wins. That is what happened in […]
Congressional Republicans figured that after the fiscal cliff, they’d have the advantage talking about the sequester and, down the road, the continued funding of the government. Clearly, they were wrong. One of the reasons Republicans are faring so badly these days is that the Democratic narrative, presented most persuasively and effectively by the White House, […]
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal have already been tabbed as among the front-runners for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. Not surprisingly, the narrative you will hear will present them as adversaries. But Rubio and Jindal are currently allies in a rather risky effort to redefine the Republican Party’s image and resurrect […]
We may well be at a political tipping point that could mark a dramatic change in American politics. After decades of Democratic Party dominance that began with the formation of the New Deal coalition, Ronald Reagan ushered in an era of relative party parity. But a deep fracture in the GOP, combined with crucial demographic […]