President Barack Obama has vowed to keep pushing for new gun control measures and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the failed gun vote in the Senate was “just the beginning.” However, the latest Reason-Rupe national poll finds just 33 percent of Americans feel the “Senate should debate and vote [...] Read more »
Another Change Election?
It’s not as if Democrats aren’t already looking at a tough election in 2014. They have lots of red state Senate seats to defend and few obvious GOP targets in the House. They have to prepare for the likelihood of a rough and messy implementation of the health care law [...] Read more »
How the White House Scandals Could Hurt Republicans, Too
Scandals large and small are a remarkably common, if unwelcome, house guest for second-term presidents. But President Obama may not prove to be the only one hurt by the eruption of controversies around the Benghazi attack, the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups, and the Justice Department’s seizure of [...] Read more »
Republicans Should Go Easy on Obama, At Least in Public
… Although an administration under siege is never a pretty sight, it’s more the rule than the exception during second presidential terms. It is a time when the novelty of a new president has fully worn off and the public becomes increasingly open to change. These second-term problems have become [...] Read more »
Targeting Texas
While the Republican Party struggles to resolve fratricidal conflict over gay marriage and immigration reform, there is another elephant in the room: Texas, the last big-state bastion of the right. Neglected by national Democrats since 1992, when Bill Clinton’s campaign decided to write it off, Texas has emerged as a [...] Read more »
I.R.S. Targeting of Conservative Groups Could Resonate in 2014
My rule of thumb is that a vast majority of alleged political scandals will have less electoral impact than the conventional wisdom initially holds. … But the recent admission by the Internal Revenue Service that it targeted conservative organizations with terms like “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names when [...] Read more »
The IRS and AP controversies spell trouble for Obama and Democrats
The Justice Department has “secretly obtained” two months of conversations between Associated Press (AP) officials in a move called “unprecedented”. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Cincinnati office singled out new conservative groups for extra scrutiny over the past couple of years. One of these controversies alone would have caused a [...] Read more »
Benghazi Investigation Does Not Reignite Broad Public Interest
The public paid limited attention to last week’s congressional hearings on Benghazi. Fewer than half (44%) of Americans say they are following the hearings very or fairly closely, virtually unchanged from late January when Hillary Clinton testified. Last October, 61% said they were following the early stages of the investigation [...] Read more »
Why Obama is in trouble on IRS and Benghazi
After a largely scandal-free first term, President Obama appears likely to spend a lot more time mired in the politics of scandal after last week’s Benghazi hearings and Friday’s revelation of alleged political targeting at the IRS. My research suggests that the structural conditions are strongly favorable for a major [...] Read more »
Immigration Reform: The Foreign-Born Factor
On its face, the Senate’s immigration reform effort seems a bipartisan affair. Four Democratic and four Republican co-sponsors crafted a bill that would fundamentally change immigration policy and offer illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship. But the fault lines around the bill are numerous, particularly where the Republican Party is concerned. [...] Read more »