For the second time in four months, Mitt Romney has penned a tough-talking op-ed on the Iranian nuclear program. But this time, the almost certain GOP presidential nominee has introduced a new riff to his constant refrain that "If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. If you elect me as president, […]

Barack Obama was 10 years old when legendary activist and organizer Saul Alinsky died in 1972. Nevertheless, right-wingers are frothing at the mouth at the discovery posthumously unearthed by the late Andrew Breitbart that then Illinois State Senator Obama was part of panel discussion after a 1998 play about Alinsky. But conservatives' fixation on the […]

You can fool some of the people all the time, and that's our target market. On no issue has that time-tested Republican strategy been more consistently applied than the impact of tax cuts on the national debt. But even after oceans of red ink washed away George W. Bush's bogus contention that "You cut taxes, […]

Everything you need to know about the economic plans of the Republican White House hopefuls is conveniently contained in two headlines. In October, the McClatchy Newspapers revealed, "GOP presidential candidates' tax plans would benefit the rich." Last week, the Washington Post bookended that analysis with another finding, "Debt will swell under top GOP hopefuls' tax […]

During last week's Republican debate in Mesa, Arizona, GOP co-frontrunners Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney claimed "courage" and "resolute" as the single words which respectively best described them. If so, the two rivals might want to take a look back at their records on Social Security. After all, in 2005 Santorum was the GOP point […]

Last year, GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney unveiled a plan to extend the Bush tax cuts, eliminate the estate tax and slash corporate taxes. But that proposal, one which would deliver 60 percent of its benefits to the top one percent of taxpayers while draining $6.6 trillion from the U.S. Treasury over ten years, was blasted […]

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 […]