Last November, the elderly and the rich powered Republicans to victory in the midterm elections. Voters aged 65 and older backed the GOP by a staggering 59% to 38%, while boosting their share of the turnout to 21% from 16% in 2008. Those with family incomes over $200,000 chose Republicans over Democrats by a 30 […]

If nothing else, the House Republicans' 2012 budget proposal being rolled out this week by Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan offers a never-ending series of ironies. Now touting $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next ten years, Ryan as a member of the Simpson-Bowles commission voted against the panel's plan shooting for the same […]

On Sunday, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) previewed his party's 2012 budget proposal due out Tuesday. Needless to say, its target of $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade won't be met by simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Instead, Ryan as widely expected will propose the "voucherization" and inevitable […]

Having won one class war, Republicans are starting a second. To perpetuate record levels of income inequality not seen since before the Great Depression, conservatives are agitating for middle class Americans to wage a civil war on each other. Their latest divide-and-conquer tactic is to portray government workers as "takers" and "parasites" somehow responsible for […]

Given his emergence as the new face of the "Birther" movement, it comes as no surprise that Fox News has rewarded Donald Trump with a weekly slot on its morning show. (After all, with Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and now "Monday Mornings with Trump" fixtures on the network, Fox is a […]

From taxes and the First Amendment to Reagan's Iran/Contra scandal, how much energy her home state of Alaska produces and so much more, Sarah Palin doesn't know what she doesn't know. Regardless, the language comedian Bill Maher recently used to describe her shocking ignorance and incessant demagoguery is beyond the pale. His right-wing critics are […]

Facing dire budget crises, governors nationwide are waging an economic race to the bottom. In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee and Idaho, the new GOP leadership is pursuing draconian curbs on public employee unions supposedly to rein in compensation and pensions of government workers. Meanwhile, in Florida, Michigan and elsewhere, Republican governors have slashed corporate […]

As was proven once again this weekend, for Republicans nothing succeeds like failure. Across the Sunday talk shows and op-ed pages, a legion of GOP luminaries spoke authoritatively on subjects they had frequently - and often catastrophically - bungled in the past. Apparently, no transgression is too serious, no series of mistakes too disastrous and […]

At an event hosted by Rep. Steve King in Iowa yesterday, the clown car of would-be Republican White House hopefuls quickly put to rest quickly any notion of a "truce" on social issues. And while Newt Gingrich seemed to question whether Islam was a "true religion," former pizza mogul Herman Cain declared that as president […]

The national debt of the United States tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under George W. Bush. Bush and the GOP Congress cut taxes during wartime, a first in modern American history. During his presidency, Republicans voted seven times to increase the debt ceiling. As Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 2009 described Republican orthodoxy […]