A week ago, I noted that Republicans and Democrats seemed to be agreeing on a scandal narrative which says President Obama isn't evil, but instead, incompetent. (Or, as I wrote, "Obama isn’t a bad guy, he’s merely out of the loop...He is 'President Passerby,'as Dana Milbank calls him.")
4:53 PM 05/20/2013
This weekend, delegates to the Virginia Republican Party's convention nominated E.W. Jackson, an African American pastor, for Lt. governor. Almost immediately, he came under fire for past comments, including a line about how it's time for black voters, "to end the slavish devotion to the Democrat Party."
1:00 PM 05/20/2013
In the midst of scandal -- and yet again plagued by rain -- President Obama delivered a very good speech Sunday at Morehouse College. But few seem to have noticed or cared. After all, nobody ever accused him of not being a good speaker.
8:42 AM 05/20/2013
Having endured more than a week of scandal, according to a CNN/ORC poll released Sunday, President Obama's approval ratings remained untouched at 53 percent.
10:24 AM 05/17/2013
A couple weeks ago, I made a conservative defense of government. As I wrote, "Conservatives rightly hate nanny-state government and big-spending bureaucracy. But too often, the word 'government' has become unfair shorthand for what is actually only bad or oppressive government."
12:46 PM 05/16/2013
Yesterday on Bloggingheads, Bill Scher, my liberal sparring partner, argued that pursuing "scandal politics" doesn't make sense for the Republicans. In a column at The Week today, he sounds a similar note, reminding us that Iran-Contra didn't keep George H.W. Bush from winning what amounted to Reagan's third term, and that it was Newt Gingrich -- not Bill Clinton -- who was forced out of office as a result of the Lewinsky scandal.
10:53 AM 05/16/2013
Perhaps you've heard all the doom and gloom about how immigration reform will guarantee Republicans can never win another future election?
9:12 AM 05/16/2013
As President Obama defensively declared the other week, reports of his political death are exaggerated. Republicans, I agree, should be careful to avoid premature triumphalism.
2:09 PM 05/15/2013
In a hard-hitting post at Catholic Online, Deal Hudson writes that his support of immigration reform, "was motivated, in part, by the ridiculous attacks on Sen. Rubio, such as that of the venerable National Review, which was once the flagship of the conservative movement."
1:07 PM 05/15/2013
There is a danger to having panache. Sure, it helps you become famous and land a cable TV gig. But being quotable is a double-edged sword. Sometimes, just blending in is the way to go.
8:48 AM 05/15/2013
Now that it seems obvious the Obama scandals won't merely fade away, the White House has segued from blame avoidance to blame shifting. Even accepting that horrible things happened -- Benghazi emails were revised, conservative groups were targeted, journalists were spied on -- motive is everything.
10:53 AM 05/14/2013
Now that Kermit Gosnell has been found guilty of murder, it's time to turn to the politicians who looked the other way and permitted these atrocities.
9:40 AM 05/14/2013
In recent days, the Obama Administration has been rocked by scandal. And in some ways, those scandals may overlap.
2:48 PM 05/13/2013
By now, you've probably heard that Jason Richwine, the co-author of the Heritage Foundation's immigration report, has resigned amid controversy.
12:40 PM 05/13/2013
Sen. Marco Rubio's Reclaim America PAC is taking to the air in New Hampshire to defend Sen. Kelly Ayotte from a barrage of negative attack ads launched by a group funded by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
10:31 AM 05/13/2013
It's that time of year again, when graduates who are about to enter a poor job market are first forced to endure boring graduation ceremony speakers.
9:42 AM 05/13/2013
A little over a year ago, I reported that, "It is likely that someone at the Internal Revenue Service illegally leaked confidential donor information showing a contribution from Mitt Romney’s political action committee to the National Organization for Marriage, says the group."
9:20 AM 05/13/2013
This weekend, Gothamist, The Verge, Gawker -- and numerous other sites -- had a blast mocking a Newt Gingrich video, in which he solicits help finding a new name for our cellphones.
8:29 AM 05/13/2013
Sen. Marco Rubio's team is disputing a recent Wired post alleging the immigration reform bill would create "a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S."
2:26 PM 05/10/2013
1. National Journal's Ron Fournier on "scrubbing the truth from Benghazi."