In just their latest failed effort to peel away supporters from one of the Democratic Party's most reliable constituencies, Republicans in 2012 still lost among Jewish voters by over a 2-1 margin. The reasons for the GOP's consistently dismal performance are no mystery. Survey data show that Jewish Americans overwhelmingly reject the Republicans' reactionary social […]

Back in December 2005, John Yoo was asked if any law or treaty could prevent the President of the United States from torturing someone, "including by crushing the testicles of the person's child." Yoo, then head of President Bush's Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, responded, "I think it depends on why […]

In his 2005 book What's the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank provided a case study in how conservatives in his home state successfully used social issues to get working class Americans to consistently vote against their economic self-interest. But that formula failed spectacularly in 2012, as Republicans nationally hit the brick wall of America's changing […]

After its shell-lacking in November, the Republican Party is now splitting in two over the issue of immigration reform. On one side are the cynical, convinced the GOP must change its stand not out of principle or basic humanity but simply because of, as John McCain put it, "elections, elections." But on the other side […]

As a quick glance at his record shows, no American political figure has been as consistently and catastrophically wrong on matters of national security than John McCain. (Worse still, McCain's out-of-control temper and erratic judgment led many of his Republican colleagues like Thad Cochran to worry that "the thought of his being President sends a […]

All along, the real danger of the so-called "fiscal cliff" wasn't that U.S. national debt would increase, but instead that it would drop too quickly. Now, the surprise news that the American economy contracted by 0.1 percent in the last quarter of 2012 is providing a case in point. Along with the impact of super […]

The new bipartisan immigration framework announced by the "Gang of 8" brought some great news for Mitt Romney. After he lost the Hispanic vote by 44 points in 2012 (up from just 9 in 2004), Senate Republicans have apparently concluded you can have illegals, for Pete's sake. But at least for now, you shouldn't compare […]

One sure sign of the success of Barack Obama's second inaugural address on Monday is that right and left shared a common assessment of its impact. Conservatives decried the "amazing" speech (Charles Krauthammer) as "among the best of the past half-century" (David Brooks) precisely because liberals found Obama's "expansive case for progressive governance, grounded in […]

President Obama's gun control proposals have predictably--and disturbingly--spawned protests with names like "Gun Appreciation Day" and the February 23rd "Day of Resistance." But with their bills calling for the nullification of new national gun laws and the imprisonment of federal officials enforcing them, some supposed defenders of the Second Amendment have apparently confused the Confederate […]