When it comes to perpetuating the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy, Republicans have long been the party which cried "uncertainty." ""We're calling for an end to the threat of tax hikes," as Speaker John Boehner put it in one formulation, "to provide certainty to those in our country who create jobs." While the […]

At the heart of the Ryan budget plan backed by 98% of Republicans in Congress are two very bad ideas whose time has never come. Privatization of government services and the devolution of their federal funding to the states promise to dramatically raise costs and slash benefits for millions of Medicare and Medicaid recipients. But […]

It is often said that historical events occur twice, first as tragedy, then as farce. But as the top two Senate Republicans showed once again on Sunday, when it comes to comes to the GOP and taxes, some episodes produce both. After successfully blackmailing President Obama in December into extending the Bush tax cuts through […]

Last December, the conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat fretted that Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney is "serially insincere." His concern is well-founded. After all, Romney gymnastic flip-flops don't merely make it "awfully hard to figure out where he would actually stand when the pandering stops and the governing begins." As his latest failed […]

Say what you will about the President's Afghan strategy, but if nothing else, Barack Obama has been consistent. Having criticized the Bush administration for diverting badly needed resources to fight the wrong war in Iraq, candidate Obama promised to dramatically increase U.S. troop strength and to strike unilaterally in Pakistan to eliminate Osama Bin Laden […]

Just two weeks after he seconded Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's dire warnings about the August 2 deadline to raise the U.S debt ceiling, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked out of the budget talks aimed at reaching a bipartisan compromise over deficit reduction. Like Arizona GOP Senator Jon Kyl, Cantor shifted the burden to Speaker […]

Seizing on recent rankings of American high schools by Newsweek and the Washington Post, Walter Russell Mead crowed that "blue state education [is] the shame of the nation." Eager for any data point to bash the supposedly high-tax, big government, union-dominated states which generally vote for Democrats, the conservative blogosphere quickly regurgitated Mead's jubilation "that […]

Of all of Mitt Romney's comical flip-flops on the issues, his gymnastic reversal on the abortion rights is the most pathetic. During his 1994 Massachusetts Senate run, Mitt and his wife Ann contributed $150 at a Planned Parenthood event. Eight years later during his race for governor, Romney assured Planned Parenthood he supported Roe v. […]

As his aides head off to Iowa to assess his prospects for a run at the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, Texas Governor Rick Perry has been hinting that he may be more than just the savior of the Republican Party. After issuing his invitation to the other 49 governors for an August 6 "day of […]