Once in a rare while, a book captures the spirit of its age. So it is with Nixonland, Rick Perlstein's stunning chronicle of the rise and fall of Tricky Dick. But his story of the "fracturing of America" isn't simply the harrowing tale of how Nixon, "a serial collector of resentments," fanned the flames of […]

During the Democratic primaries last spring, Barack Obama almost derailed his campaign with his unfortunate remark about "bitter" people in small town Pennsylvania who "cling to guns." Now after the second Keystone State shooting rampage in four months, that clumsy comment is sounding eerily prophetic. On their face, the long-planned Pittsburgh area fitness club killings […]

As has been documented in detail, the anti-Obama birther movement is strongest in precisely those states where Republicans poll best and, ironically, health care is worst. But despite experiencing serial embarrassments akin to learning the sun does not rise in the West, a new Pew Research Center poll shows Republican want more - and not […]

In a jaw-dropping DaliyKos/Research 2000 poll released today, a stunning 58% of Republicans did not believe (28%) or were unsure (30%) that President Barack Obama was in fact born in the United States. To be sure, this is a Southern pathology, a region home to 69% of all birthers and the only part of the […]

Rick Santorum may no longer a Senator, but he remains an endless source of amusement - and hypocrisy. In 2002, the devout Catholic blamed the shocking clergy sex abuse scandal consuming his church on Boston's supposed "political and cultural liberalism." Warning of the slippery slope to "man-on-dog" nuptials to be triggered by same-sex unions, Santorum […]

God may work in mysterious ways, but He has nothing on today's Republican Party. As the dueling scandals of John Ensign and Mark Sanford wash away the last vestiges of the GOP's long-discredited claim to uphold "moral values," gambling addict William Bennett and the thrice-married Rudy Giuliani weighed in on the imbroglio. Bennett, the former […]

Three weeks ago, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee declared California's passage of Proposition 8 "a miracle from God's hand." Now, new revelations from Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford, two of Huckabee's would-be (or would have been) rivals for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, show they, too, believe they are part of God's plan. As the […]

Politics, they say, makes strange bedfellows. And perhaps none is stranger than Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn. As the Washington Post reported today, the tenant of the mysterious "C Street" brownstone was a key player in both the Ensign and Sanford affairs. As it turns out, the arch-conservative Coburn also happens to be a friend […]

You know things are bad for God's Own Party when the arch-conservative and faithfully Republican Washington Times runs an article proclaiming "social conservatives fall from moral high ground." Declaring "Republicans retreat from values claims," the Times catalogued the damage done to the party of supposed "values voters" by an endless string of scandals extended by […]

It was just nine months ago that McCain campaign volunteer Ashley Todd manufactured a hoax in which a African-American attacker supposedly carved the letter "B" in her face. Now the conservative faithful have again been duped by one of their own. For the last two months, 26-year old blogger Beccah Beushausen won over anti-abortion activists […]