More than 70 percent of Republicans in the House and Senate happily voted for the massive bipartisan budget compromise, despite years of preaching the gospel of small government and lowering federal spending. … To many observers it was a breathtaking contradiction, with some suggesting that there would be political consequences […] Read more »
How tax cuts for the wealthy became Republican orthodoxy
The Republican Congress has passed a tax plan in which more than four-fifths of the long-term tax cuts are steered to the extremely wealthy, and are offset by future tax increases for a significant fraction of the party’s own voting base. Republicans plan substantial cuts to government services that those […] Read more »
Trump dominates the GOP base. Party leaders live with the consequences.
The Republican Party has been plunged into ever more turmoil, thanks to the outcome of the off-year election in Virginia, the results of contests elsewhere around the country and an allegation of sexual misconduct against Roy Moore, the party’s candidate for Senate in Alabama. … Republicans have been dealing with […] Read more »
A Divided Party Cannot Stand. Or Can It?
Eight years after the rise of the Tea Party, the GOP remains engaged in intra-party warfare. Capturing all levers of political power in Washington has done nothing to temper the deep-seeded tension between the forces of the traditional “establishment” wing of the party and its populist/libertarian infused “anti-establishment” wing. … […] Read more »
Why Obamacare’s Loudest Critics Aren’t as Loud Anymore
… Since the summer of 2009, when Tea Party activists angrily confronted Democrats who were drafting the Affordable Care Act, the Republican Party has been driven and defined by outrage over it. But now, with the Republican health care legislation hanging in the balance, President Trump and congressional leaders are […] Read more »
Republicans are predicting the beginning of the end of the tea party in Kansas
Kansas was at the heart of the tea party revolution, a red state where, six years ago, a deeply conservative group of Republicans took the state for a hard right turn. Now, after their policies failed to produce the results GOP politicians promised, the state has become host to another […] Read more »