Back in August, Americans learned that among Rick Perry's miserable grades in college was a "D" in "Principles of Economics." Now we know why. His contribution to the GOP's flat tax one-upsmanship not only fails to simply the U.S. tax code. As it turns out, Governor Perry's "Cut, Balance and Grow" scheme would undermine Social […]

As Steve Forbes learned in 1996 and 2000 and Herman Cain is learning now, the flat tax is a bad idea whose time never came. After all, the move to a single income tax rate for all earners inevitably shifts the tax burden from the rich to middle and lower income Americans. And if the […]

Memo to Republicans: (1) Until President Obama appears on the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit and an oversized cod piece, no conservative can ever accuse of him of taking too much credit for any national security success. (2) When it comes to Iraq, no one who has been as consistently […]

During the debate over the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in early 2009, stimulus opponent Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed, "If the money were lent rather than just granted, states would, I think, spend it wisely and the states that didn't need it at all wouldn't take any." Now would be a […]

Judging by the headlines, Herman Cain's tenure as the frontrunner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination may be a brief one. After his supposed "jokes" about lethal electrified borders fences, Politico and the New York Times wondered if candidate Cain is even "serious" about the White House. Following his jaw-dropping pro-choice, anti-abortion declaration, the Greg […]

Herman Cain's now ubiquitous 9-9-9 tax plan went from the ridiculous to the sublime during Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate. While House Republicans and Grover Norquist had complained that the pizza mogul's proposals constituted a tax increase, some of Cain's fellow White House hopefuls actually expressed concern that it would be lower and middle income […]

Here's a handy cheat sheet for those trying to make sense of the protest movements of the past three years. Tea Party followers were mad about losing the 2008 election; Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are angry about losing the American Dream. But for defenders of the Tea Party, that unhappy band of especially ardent Republicans, […]

As the House GOP's probe into the $535 million lost loan to Solyndra heated up, the Obama White House had dutifully provided thousands of documents demanded by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Dutifully, that is, until Friday, when White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler announced that President Obama's Blackberry messages and other internal White House […]

On Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner took Barack Obama to task for the President's claim that he had not yet seen a jobs plan from Republicans. "I want to make sure," Boehner lectured the President, "you have all the facts." As it turns out, this is one of those rare occasions where John Boehner is […]

For Republicans on the warpath against Warren Buffett, President Obama's willing poster child for raising taxes on wealthy Americans, this week has been a very bad one. First, new polling confirmed that Americans overwhelmingly support President Obama's jobs plan in general and his proposed gilded-class tax hikes in particular. (On that second point, Republican voters […]