In the late 1970's film Animal House, John Belushi's character Bluto famously rallies his fraternity brothers by proclaiming, "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" Now, a latter-day Bluto may be running for President of the United States. Pandering to Republican voters in New Hampshire on Saturday, Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann comically […]

Terrified by bogus Republican claims of draconian Democratic cuts to Medicare, elderly voters propelled the GOP to an overwhelming victory last November. Voters 65 and over, the only age group to support John McCain in 2008, boosted their share of the turnout to 21% from 16% two years earlier. Nationwide, Republicans won seniors by a […]

Republicans have seen the future and it's in Mississippi. On the same day Wisconsin Republicans turned to unprecedented and possibly illegal maneuvers to strip public workers of collective bargaining rights, the Michigan legislature blessed emergency powers for Governor Rick Snyder to terminate municipal contracts across the state. And while Idaho joined Tennessee in seeking to […]

Ten years ago, George W. Bush was sworn in as America's first MBA President. Now, Mitt Romney wants to be the second. Two years after President Bush completed the worst economic record since Herbert Hoover, Romney the perpetual White House hopeful declared, "I spent my career in the private sector. I know how jobs are […]

At some point in the next several weeks, former RNC chairman and current Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour will decide whether he will seek the White House in 2012. To be sure, Barbour's path to the presidency is full of obstacles. And it's not just because America's foremost neo-Confederate literally whitewashed the Jim Crow era and […]

Just days after his sneering "so be it" at the prospect of massive job losses which could result from GOP budget policies, House Speaker John Boehner declared public employees have a "machine gun" pointed "at the heads of local officials." That makes Boehner just the latest Republican leader respond to a $175 billion shortfall in […]

Last summer, Moody's economist and former adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain Mark Zandi authored a study which concluded that combined federal interventions beginning in the fall of 2008 prevented the Great Recession from becoming Depression 2.0. Now in a new report, Zandi warns that the GOP's plan to slash $61 billion in federal […]

During his 2004 campaign, Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn declared, "I favor the death penalty for abortionists." Four years later, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin famously refused to condemn an abortion clinic bomber as a "terrorist." Last week, a GOP mayoral candidate in Jacksonville joked that bombing an abortion clinic "may cross my mind." Now, […]

"Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong." As it turns out, those 1982 Dire Straits lyrics sum up the current dire straits of the 2012 Republican presidential field. With the premature withdrawal of John Thune and Mike Pence from the ranks of the GOP White House hopefuls, social conservatives are nervously […]

A word of advice to conservatives desperately trying to smear teachers and other public employees in Wisconsin: when trapped in a hole, first stop digging. On Monday, the right-wing blogosphere made the mistake of complaining that Wisconsin received millions of dollars in federal education aid when solidly Republican red states get much, much more. Now, […]