… Five years after it emerged as the most potent force in conservative American politics since the Reagan revolution, the tea party is at a crossroads — and some critics have declared the movement all but dead. Insisting that they’ve learned from the setbacks, however, stalwarts are vowing to reinvent […] Read more »
Democrats face turnout problem, dissatisfaction in ranks leading to midterms
… Democrats have a turnout problem because they have a motivation problem. In 2010, their biggest problem was that they ran into an energized Republican electorate. The rise of the tea party and hostility to Obama’s health-care law brought Republicans to the polls while Democrats stayed home. Obama’s vaunted political […] Read more »
Groucho Marx’s Republican Party
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” —Groucho Marx In just a few words, Groucho Marx summed up the current state of the Republican Party heading into the 2016 presidential elections. Since the start of George W. Bush’s […] Read more »
Political Déjà Vu
Political aficionados like to look at elections the same way sports fans fill out their NCAA basketball brackets, assemble a fantasy football team, or play rotisserie baseball. The real import is what the final governing configuration will be after Election Day: Which party will control the House? Who will hold […] Read more »
The grim NBC News/WSJ survey: The ‘14 reality is likely worse for Democrats
Democratic after-action reports on their Florida-13 special election loss are clear: they lost because they didn’t turn out the vote. While there is much parsing on the who, what, when and where of Obamacare, the facts are that Republicans showed up while Democrats didn’t. … The internals of the most […] Read more »
Americans Don’t Believe Christie on Jam, Clinton on Libya
Americans aren’t buying the explanations offered by Chris Christie and Hillary Clinton about controversies that could stand between them and the White House if either runs for president in 2016. Sixty-three percent say they don’t believe the New Jersey governor’s claims that he knew nothing of a plan by his […] Read more »