While all eyes in the Beltway were focused on innocent dogs and stay-at-home moms, Republicans have been unveiling their strategy for the 2012 presidential race. President Obama, they claim, is responsible both for failed GOP policies and the unprecedented Republican obstructionism designed to prevent him from fixing them. The fall-out from the Bush recession, the […]

Despite a mountain of data and the overwhelming consensus of economists to the contrary, Republican leaders including House Speaker John Boehner and would-be President Mitt Romney continue to falsely claim "Obama made the economy worse." But another tried and untrue GOP talking point about the supposed "Obama bear market" has largely vanished. Of course, with […]

Republicans have seen the future and it is in Mississippi. But the GOP's Magnolia State crystal ball has little to do with whether today's primary shows that Mitt Romney's cheesy grit eating sealed his nomination, ends Newt Gingrich's viability as a "credible candidate" or even aborts Rick Santorum's White House dream altogether. Instead, the state's […]

For the perpetual tax-cutters of the Republican Party, last week's surrender on the payroll tax cut extension for 160 million working Americans was an especially damaging one. While tried if untrue GOP talking points that "tax cuts pay for themselves" and "never need to be offset" were thoroughly debunked, new polling shows the large Republican […]

For years, conservatives have warned that rapidly rising health care costs require the United States to repeal the Affordable Care Act, gut Medicaid and privatize Medicare. Now, the American Enterprise Institute cheerfully insists, the recent slowdown in that rate of the growth argues for precisely the same Republican policies. But far from happily revealing new […]

As the Republican Party waged its all-out attack in 2010 to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, the GOP's number two man in the Senate provided the talking point to help sell the $70 billion annual giveaway to America's rich. "You should never," Arizona's Jon Kyl declared, "have to offset the cost of […]

On Monday, House Republican leaders announced they would support the extension of the payroll tax cut without a corresponding "offset" in other federal spending. While that new approach is designed to tie Democrats' hands on passage of continued unemployment benefits and the so-called Medicare "doc fix," Speaker Boehner's switch represents a return to a supposedly […]

Back in 1992, President George H.W. Bush tried to counter to the growing perception that he was an aloof, out-of touch patrician utterly detached from the economic struggles of the American people. But his laughably awkward pronouncement to voters, "Message: I care," only served to confirm their suspicions. Now twenty years later, Bush 41's empathy-challenged […]

Appearing on CNN Sunday, Romney endorser and VP wannabe Bob McDonnell gave his GOP credit for the nation's improving economic outlook. "Look, I'm glad the economy is starting to recover," the Virginia Governor declared, "but I think it's because of what Republican governors are doing in their states, not because of the president." Of course, […]

Friday's promising employment report showing that the U.S. added 243,000 jobs in January is just the latest sign of a slowly improving American economy. But that good news for the American people is bad news for the "Hope America Fails" crowd of the Republican Party. After all, GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney has been falsely […]