For Mitt Romney, the president's greatest vulnerability seems to be that Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton — and he is seeking to exploit that perception in his public speeches attacking the incumbent. On Tuesday, the presumptive GOP nominee drew the contrast for an audience in Iowa, harking back to a famous Clinton speech in 1996. More »Where's the Beef'? Clinton's Answer to Romney Snark
For honoring his conscience on the issue of marriage equality, President Obama earned angry rebukes from all quarters on the right, including the Uncle Toms of the Log Cabin Republicans, who said he was "a day late and a dollar short"; teenage mom Bristol Palin, who mocked him for invoking his daughters in changing "thousands of years of thinking about marriage"; and 50-year-old virgin Ann Coulter, often engaged but never wed, who called his decision "a sign of desperation." More »The Only True Way to Save Marriage From Obama
Just as aspiring judges ought to possess the quality known as "judicial temperament," a would-be president should have certain obvious attributes of mind and character. Two incidents tested Mitt Romney this week — and both times, his ambition overwhelmed his judgment. More »What the China Crisis (and His Gay Crisis) Revealed About Mitt
Nothing aggravates Republicans like seeing nasty, effective tactics upon which they have so long relied being turned against one of their candidates. So when Barack Obama's re-election campaign aired an ad celebrating the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death — and suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn't have achieved that objective — the right exploded with outraged protests. More »Why Obama's bin Laden Ad Drives Republicans Crazy
Representative Barney Frank, who is not seeking re-election, gave a memorable exit interview this week to New York magazine suggesting that President Barack Obama "underestimated, as did Clinton, the sensitivity of people to what they see as an effort to make them share the health care with poor people." More »Barney Frank Makes a Misdiagnosis on Obamacare
With the Republican primary contest over and the general election underway, Mitt Romney faces a voting public whose disdain for him has reached levels that pollsters describe as "historic." From his embittered opponents as well as from Romney and his campaign, Americans have learned that the former Massachusetts governor simply won't uphold any political position, issue or achievement he thinks might cost him votes. He doesn't seem to understand that his inconstancy forfeits more respect than any disagreeable opinion would. More »What Mitt Romney Seems to Believe (and Why He's so Disliked)
When George W. Bush made his first public appearance in many months to discuss economic policy in New York on Tuesday, his utterances may have revealed more than he intended. "I wish they weren't called the 'Bush tax cuts,'" he said of the decade-old rate reductions that bear his name. But does he really believe, as he seemed to suggest, that Americans want to let those cuts expire from a desire to spite him? Or is there a deeper Bush somewhere within who would prefer not to be associated with fiscal profligacy and ideological overreach? More »What's in a Name? George W. Regrets Dubbing Those Bush Tax Cuts'
How the Supreme Court majority will rule on President Obama's Affordable Care Act may well have been foretold months or perhaps years ago — not so much by their questions during argument this week, as by their flagrant displays of bias outside the court, where certain justices regularly behave as dubiously as any sleazy officeholder. More »The High Court's Supremely Unethical Activists
Despite significant negative signals, the final outcome of this week's arguments over the Affordable Care Act will remain unknown until the Supreme Court issues a ruling in June. What is painfully obvious today, however, should have been clear enough long before any of the lawyers opened their mouths. The five Republican justices represent an ideological bloc as adamantly hostile to universal health care — no matter the cost in lost lives or squandered trillions — as in 1965, when Medicare passed. More »If Obamacare Goes, Will America "Let Him Die"?
If the foreign adversaries and competitors of the United States imagined a future that would fulfill their most ambitious objectives, it might begin with a government crippled by the House Republican leadership's "Ryan budget" released on Tuesday. Followed to its absurd conclusion, this document would lead America toward a withered state, approaching the point where Marxian dreams and Randian dogma converge. More »Paul Ryan's Plan for American Decline
For everyone who originally supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, the question today is how what was once a righteous mission can end in anything but ruin. Blaming the Bush administration's neglect and incompetence for the critical failures of the first several years is fair enough, but it is not easy to argue, let alone prove, that the Obama administration has improved upon the mess it inherited. More »What Are We Doing in Afghanistan?
Seeking applause from a right-wing audience in Michigan, Mitt Romney vowed on Saturday: "I will cut spending, I will cap spending, and I will finally balance the budget," saying that he will end federal funding for all the usual Republican budgetary scapegoats — the Public Broadcasting System, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has said much the same thing many times in recent months, hoping to woo the tea party extremists who keep rejecting his candidacy. More »Romney's Budget-balancing for Dummies
Rumors and whispers of a late presidential bid by Jeb Bush are difficult to consider seriously — if only because the deadlines to enter primary contests have past, the necessary money and campaign staff are not in place, and the mechanisms for a "brokered convention" do not exist. And yet some worried Republicans are evidently imagining a rescue by the former Florida governor. More »Desperate Fantasy: Can Jeb Bush Save the GOP?
What is most striking about the showdown over contraceptive freedom is not the political victory that President Obama earned by standing up for women's reproductive rights, although his Republican adversaries are certainly helping him to make the most of it. Those adversaries don't seem to realize they have fallen into a trap, whether the White House set them up intentionally or not. More »Will Catholic Bishops and the Religious Right Save Obama?
If the Conservative Political Action Conference can be expected to accomplish anything more than angry bellowing, it is to reliably embarrass every decent and sane conservative in America. Sometimes the problem is a conspiratorial extremist co-sponsor, like the John Birch Society; sometimes the problem is a certifiable kook giving the keynote address, like Glenn Beck; and sometimes the problem is just vicious bullying of gay conservatives, who have been officially expelled from the conference. More »White Nationalists Share Spotlight With GOP at CPAC
Mitt Romney's convincing victory in the Florida primary erased his earlier defeats and perhaps any serious obstacle to his nomination. The question that still troubles party leaders, however, is the damage he will sustain before returning to Tampa in September for their convention. More »The High Cost of Romney's Scorching Victory
Why the Republicans chose Mitch Daniels — the Indiana governor who once thrilled right-wing pundits as a 2012 hopeful — to deliver a rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union address is puzzling. His uninspiring remarks surely killed the Daniels fad, revived lately as Republicans fret over the unappetizing choices available in their primaries. More »Mitch Daniels: Bombast From the Past
Mitt Romney's latest flip-flop is almost complete. Having vowed a month ago not to release his federal income tax returns, the Republican presidential front-runner conceded during Saturday night's debate that he would "probably" release his returns, and then on Tuesday afternoon finally said he will do so — in April, long after he is likely to have secured his party's nomination. ... More »Tax Day: Will Romney Make April Fools of Republicans
For Mitt Romney, Tuesday night's triumph in the New Hampshire primary offered a tempting opportunity to gloat. Such unattractive conduct is no longer surprising from the Republican front-runner, who is enduring the gradual disclosure of his personality. More »Bitter Primary Reveals the Real Romney
Politicians and their flacks lie every day, but it is unusual for someone prominent to utter a totally indefensible falsehood like the whopper that just sprang from the mouth of Eric Cantor's press secretary on national television. More »Did Reagan Raise Taxes? Let GOP Candidates Answer
The latest evidence of simmering racial resentment on the American political fringe showed up Monday in a Facebook post by a California man who urged the assassination of the president and his two daughters in obscene, racist language. Aside from the Secret Service, there was little reason for most of us to pay attention to this sick boob — except that he was identified as a local political leader of the tea party and an avid supporter of Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who now seems likely to place first in the Iowa presidential caucuses. More »The Lethal Fantasies of Dear Old Ron Paul
If these are the last weeks of Rick Perry's ridiculous presidential campaign, his desperation is turning him into a nasty clown indeed. By publicly attacking the gays and lesbians who have chosen to serve their country in uniform, the Texas governor seems to have gained ground in Iowa. But at what cost did he win a few points that still leave him well below the top tier? His pollster and consultant Tony Fabrizio has been "outed," rightly or wrongly — and worse still, the swinging closet door of the Republican Party has been flung open again. Who else will be found inside? More »The Republican Closet That Won't Stay Closed
Tasteless and questionable as it was for CNN to "co-sponsor" a Republican presidential debate with a pair of right-wing Washington think-tanks, at least the branding was accurate. There among the honored interlocutors were the authors of dismal failure and national disgrace in the Bush era, such as Paul Wolfowitz and David Addington, whose presence helpfully reminds us that to elect a Republican risks a presidency that will make the same gross moral and strategic errors, or worse. ... More »Unacceptable in Today's GOP? Realism and Compassion