BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
America likes winners. They vote against losers.
Obamacare is not the reason that the Republicans are going to win big this fall. Or at least, not the sole reason.
President Obama is.
The American people abhor weak leadership. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Originally published in The Hill
It was in 1513 that Niccolò Machiavelli first wrote The Prince, although it didn’t hit the printing presses until 1532, five years after the most infamous of political philosophers had died.
That was by design, because the Catholic Church didn’t much care for the tone of Machiavelli’s most famous work and put it on its list of banned books.
Despite the early controversy, The Prince still lives in the heart of the modern politician. Here are some examples: Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
I’ve been doing a lot of TV since the shut down began. Specifically I’ve been doing one or both of Anderson Cooper’s programs at 8 PM Eastern and/or 10 PM Eastern.
In almost every one of those programs whoever is to my Left says that President Obama has been elected twice on the program of ObamaCare and, as ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES, Republicans should back off, roll over, and accept their fate as having lost the Presidency in 2008 and 2012.
There is something to that. I’m not sure I remember either election turning on the fulcrum of ObamaCare but that might be because Mitt Romney didn’t have a good answer opposing ObamaCare because of the Massachusetts plan that was adopted when he was Governor – ObamaCare lite. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
As members of Congress prepare to depart for the August break at the end of the week, they will be packing talking points from their caucus messaging packets that seek to explain why Congress hasn’t accomplished very much since the last time they went home.
With congressional ratings bouncing around at an all-time low, it is hard to imagine that whatever they have to say will have any resonance with voters.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) tried to put a unique spin on congressional inaction when he said that politicians should be measured not by how many laws are passed, but by how many laws were repealed.
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
“U.S. President Barack Obama is using his weekly address to promote a better bargain for the middle class.”
If that were the lead of an Associated Press report we might think it deserves a closer look, but it was the lead of a press release from the Voice of America, an arm of the U.S. State Department.
Let’s look at Politico.com’s lead: “President Barack Obama sharpened his focus on the economy Wednesday, looking to breathe new life into his second-term agenda with a fresh pivot back to the issue a majority of Americans feel most acutely in their daily lives.”
Ok. We can work with that. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Originally printed in The Hill
The dog days of summer used to be dedicated to the appropriations process on Capitol Hill.
Both the House and the Senate would slog through 13 spending bills, usually under an open amendment process. Members of the various subcommittees would fend off hostile amendments, defending projects, programs and spending levels.
When the bills passed the House or Senate floors, members of both bodies would put out press releases, touting the bacon they would be bringing home for local constituencies. And back home, those constituents would applaud news of funds from Washington, to build bridges, to fund the local Veterans Affairs hospital, or whatever else was being touted by those press releases. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
There is almost no good news for President Barack Obama in the CNN/ORC poll that was released earlier this week.
As the President giggled and played rock, paper, scissors with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-8 Conference in Ireland, the bloom appears to have begun to come off the Obaman Rose as far as the American people are concerned.
This is one poll taken last week (Tuesday through Thursday) so it might not signal a trend, but it certainly won’t generate confidence in the West Wing. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
America Held Hostage: Sequester Day 8
It didn’t snow in DC on Wednesday so I spent the entire afternoon watching Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) filibustering the nomination of John Brennan to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Sen. Paul’s issue wasn’t with Brennan; it was with the refusal of President Barack Obama to describe his position on using drones to kill people generally, and Americans in particular, on U.S. soil. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
President Obama has announced all U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year. Eight years, 4,500 U.S. troops killed and more than 33,000 wounded and we’re leaving. My vast store of knowledge about the military/political situation in Iraq ended in May 2004 when I came home and it wasn’t that vast even when I was there. I point that out to put myself squarely in the corner of people who say “I have no clue whether this is a good idea or not.”
Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta said in what I read as an extremely diffident statement, “Going forward, we will work closely with the Iraqi government and their armed forces to help them continue to build a stronger and more prosperous country.” I spent a considerable amount of time on the phone yesterday with a friend in the Gulf region – the “Persian,” not the “of Mexico” – who said with some conviction that the Iranians would be calling the shots in Iraq in short order. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from townhall.com and Mullings
While everything else has been going on, two senior Democratic Members of Congress, Maxine Waters (DEMOCRAT-Calif) and Charles Rangel (DEMOCRAT- New York ) have been, essentially, indicted by the House Ethics Committee for violation of House rules.
Both of those findings came well in advance of the House resuming its back-breaking schedule of a two-week work period between the August-September recess and the October-November pre-election recess.
When the Ethics Committee reported its findings, the expectation was that both Waters and Rangel would have their hearings/trials prior to the pre-election break.