As most of the leading lights of the fractured Republican Party gather in Washington for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), organizer Al Cardenas is looking backwards for guidance in taking the GOP forward. Reflecting on Ronald Reagan's 1975 post-Watergate address to the conclave, Cardenas recalled the Gipper's lessons that "conservatives will never compromise […]

When Congressman Paul Ryan first rolled out his plan three years ago to replace Medicare with a voucher system, he acknowledged the inescapable conclusion that his massive cost-shifting to seniors constituted rationing. "Rationing happens today!" Ryan protested, "The question is who will do it? The government? Or you, your doctor and your family?" But then […]

This week, former GOP vice presidential nominee and current House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan will present the 2013 Republican budget proposal. Unlike his last plan which didn't balance the budget until 2038, this time Ryan insists he will hit break even in just 10 ten years. As Ezra Klein explained, Ryan will close much […]

"The doctor-patient relationship." For two decades, Republicans have wielded that four-word talking point as a cudgel to bludgeon health care reform. In 1994, GOP strategist Bill Kristol warned that "the Clinton Plan is damaging to the quality of American medicine and to the relationship between the patient and the doctor." (Future "death panels" fabulist Betsy […]

Republican Senator Rand Paul's 13 hour filibuster this week produced no shortage of spectacle--and irony. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, one of the few Democratic voices questioning the secrecy and legal basis surrounding President Obama's policy of drone strikes against U.S. citizens engaged in terrorist efforts abroad, joined his colleague from across the aisle. But Paul's […]

As the deadline for the March 1 budget sequester approached, John Boehner made a surprising admission. Asked if he had "a sense of how many jobs will be lost as a result of the sequester," the Speaker of the House said, "I do not." On Sunday, Boehner once again proclaimed his ignorance in an interview […]

History will record that Mitt Romney was a pimple on the ass of American politics: painful while here and forgotten once gone. Now the pustule has resurfaced. As part of his brief "Thank You Tour," Romney is using appearance on Fox News Sunday to attack President Obama for "berating Republicans and blaming and pointing" over […]

Back in 2010, Ohio Rep. John Boehner defied recent history and basic math when he comically denied that the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 played any role in producing federal budget deficits ever since. Now in his refusal to countenance any new tax revenue in a last minute compromise to avoid the […]

Nothing focuses the mind, Oscar Wilde famously said, like the sight of the gallows. And so it is with Republican Governors on the brink of losing $6 billion in federal aid thanks to automatic budget cuts currently set to kick in on March 1. But it shouldn't have taken the specter of the sequester's body […]