The Supreme Court filibuster just died. Having failed to break a Democratic filibuster on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Republicans voted 52-48 to invoke the so-called nuclear option, allowing debate on Gorsuch and future Supreme Court justices to be ended by the Senate on a simple […] Read more »
Change the nominee
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) could not be more right: “When a nominee doesn’t get 60 votes, you shouldn’t change the rules, you should change the nominee,” he said. A dozen years ago, in this space, I argued, “It should take 60 votes to put someone on the Supreme […] Read more »
Fox News Poll: 34% of voters favor GOP health care plan
Half of American voters agree with the Republican charge that ObamaCare will collapse if it’s left as is. At the same time, most give positive marks to their health insurance and over half oppose the GOP plan to replace the current health care law. … President Trump gets negative marks […] Read more »
The New Party of No: How a president and a protest movement transformed the Democrats
… The Democrats have never been a natural opposition party, or a particularly effective one. Republicans from Reagan to the Tea Party broadly believed in reducing government, as the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist famously put it, “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it […] Read more »
We Know Less Than We Think We Do
Let’s face it. No one really knows what’s going to happen this year. The president and his aides pride themselves on misdirection and unpredictability, even as they are firmly committed to a populist and nationalist agenda. Many Republicans in DC are uncomfortable with parts of this agenda – as well […] Read more »
In Trump Era, What Partisans Want From Their Congressional Leaders
As President Trump prepares for his address next week to a joint session of Congress, Republicans say they are more inclined to trust the president, rather than GOP congressional leaders, if the two sides disagree. For their part, Democrats are far more concerned that congressional Democrats will not do enough, […] Read more »