Tag Archives: democrat

The Gun Vote

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

This column is about the vote on Wednesday in the U.S. Senate on the amendment to the gun control bill which had two main sponsors: Democrat Joe Manchin (WVa) and Republican Pat Toomey (Pa).

The effect of the amendment would have been, among other things, to have increased background checks on people buying guns to include gun shows and internet sales.

I don’t want to discuss the merits of the amendment; I want to chat about why it failed in the face of overwhelming popular support. Continue reading →

The Real Budget Battle

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The real budget battle in Washington is not between Republicans and Democrats or conservatives and liberals. The real budget battle in Washington is between discretionary spending vs. entitlement spending.

What the hell does that mean?

Discretionary spending is basically money authorized and then approved each year by Congress. Entitlement spending is money that automatically Continue reading →

The Business of Business

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

“The chief business of the American people is business.”

Calvin Coolidge said that to a group of newspaper editors in 1925, smack dab in the middle of the Roaring 20’s, a decade of brisk economic growth. It was also in the middle of a huge stock market bubble (a bubble which would collapse four years later).

Coolidge summarized perfectly both the Republican and the business sector’s approach to government. Get the government out of the way and let business take care of the people through greater prosperity. Continue reading →

Meritocracy

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

In the deep dark days of 1994, I was out of politics. I was actually running the Middle East for the company then known as EDS out of Dallas.

In the Fall of that year, I got a call from my good friend Joe Gaylord – Newt Gingrich’s political guru – asking me to fly into Atlanta for election night because they were certain they were going to take control of the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years and Newt wanted me to come in and help oversee the press operation.

I was in Abu Dhabi or Qatar or somewhere, but flew in and, indeed, I was there for election night. Continue reading →

Independent Voters

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

In the 2008 election, the independent voter was the king.

Remember how everybody was talking about independents being the true swing voter? Remember how Barack Obama killed John McCain with independent voters, and that is how he easily won the election?

In 2008, independent voters voted for 51 to 43 percent for the Democrats and President Obama.

By contrast, in the 2010 election, Republicans trounced the Democrats among independent voters, 55 percent to 39 percent. That was the big reason that the GOP had the biggest midterm election night since 1938. Continue reading →

Unconventional Political Conventions

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

As you are no doubt aware, Monday’s schedule for the Republican National Convention in Tampa was cancelled due to fears of Tropical Storm Isaac becoming Hurricane Isaac, and Hurricane Isaac taking dead aim at Tampa.

Even if you hadn’t heard this on the radio or on your local news, you knew it when you tuned in to watch convention activities and were greeted by the cable news channels’ equivalent of “Rain Out Theater.” Continue reading →

Romney Reality Differs from Perception

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Cleveland, Ohio
Midwestern Legislative Conference

Donna Brazile and I did our very popular “He said; She said” act in Cleveland for legislators from the Midwest. We will take the act somewhat further on the road next week when we reprise it in Edmonton, Alberta for the Western Legislative Conference.

The buzz among the political cognoscenti is how much damage the Romney campaign has suffered from the attacks on his time at Bain Capital. The problem is, there is no evidence – thus far – that the attacks have had any effect. Continue reading →

Wisconsin Win

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

It is tempting, but not entirely accurate, to say “Obama Loses!” after Democrats suffered another embarrassing defeat last night when the effort to recall Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker failed by the surprisingly wide margin of 55 percent to 44 percent for the Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. An independent got about one percent of the vote.

As of this writing, with 76 percent of Wisconsin’s precincts reporting, it’s over. Walker wins. Much of the Political Punditry Class has been touting this as a preview of the 2012 Presidential election, but now that the Republican won, don’t expect to hear too much of that kind of talk.

In fact, the ink was barely dry on the headlines when the word went forth that it was actually a good night for Obama because the exit polling showed Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 51-45. This is being spun by the Obama team as a victory even though Obama won Wisconsin by a 56-42 margin over John McCain in 2008.

An exit poll showing the incumbent President just barely over 50 percent does not a victory make, seems to me. Continue reading →

Rosen, Women, and Media Bias

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The media coverage of the 2012 political campaigns continues to flood the airwaves, like the Mississippi River in Spring time with inaccuracies, hyperbole, exaggerations, innuendo, and outright falsehoods.

It is too bad the media doesn’t have a Fact-Check.com that does such an excellent job correcting the same drivel from the campaigns and the candidates. Keeping the media honest is more than Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz can handle. There’s too much to cover.

Just this week for example, there was the saga of Hillary B. Rosen, the liberal Democratic strategist and mouthpiece, who criticized Mrs. Romney for being a stay-at-home mom and condemned Mitt Romney for inequality toward women. Here is what she has been quoted as saying: “His (Romney’s) wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why we worry about their future.” Continue reading →

Presidential Campaign Rules of the Road

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Great Barrington, MA

Now that we’re deep into the general election campaign – about 72 hours into it – let’s review the rules.

No matter how many times you’ve hear it, it bears repeating that an election for President in the United States are not a national event. It is a collection of 51 separate elections. The number of electoral votes each state gets equals the number of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives plus its two Senators. Thus California gets 55 electoral votes (53 Congressional Districts plus two Senators) while Wyoming (a single Member state) gets three.

The District of Columbia, although it has one non-voting Delegate to the House and no Senators, by virtue of the 23rd Amendment gets three electoral votes which is why there are 535 voting Members of the House and Senate but 538 electoral votes. One half of 538 is 269. Thus, the magic number to be able to take the Oath of Office on January 20, 2013 is 270 – half of the electoral votes plus one.

I took your valuable time to remind you of all that because as you listen to geniuses like me on TV and radio for the next seven months talk about how many women are voting for Obama; how many men are voting for Romney; how many religious conservatives and how many college students will actually turn out to vote you should keep all that in mind. Continue reading →

Civility Isn’t Easy

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

This will be a test. A civility test. I want to talk about this Rush Limbaugh v Bill Maher business of using really bad words to describe people they don’t agree with.

This is not a discussion about contraception or Obama-care or Women’s reproductive rights or free speech.

It will be a discussion about civility. Of which we are in dreadfully short supply these days.

Those of us who are professional political hacks – Republican and Democrat – have been taught since kindergarten that the way to win is to draw the starkest possible distinction between your candidate and your opponent.

If your opponent says it’s dawn, you claim the man was probably up partying until all hours and can’t tell day from night. If your opponent says it’s a nice day, you turn it into a full-blown attack on his belief that global warming is killing baby seals. Continue reading →

Class Warfare Within GOP

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Mitt Romney won a big victory and that win should propel him to the nomination sometime by June, given the vagaries of the proportional delegate system put in place by the Republican National Committee.

But Romney shouldn’t feel that comfortable with his position in the party or with the state of his party at the moment. Sarah Palin can be dismissed as a goofball and an idiot for continuing to embrace Newt Gingrich, despite the former Speaker’s trouncing in the Sunshine State. But she speaks for many of the goofballs and idiots who make up a fairly large chunk of the Republican/Tea Party base.

And those goofballs/idiots could make up the critical difference between winning and losing in next November. Continue reading →

Politics Take Dangerous Turn

BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from the Washington Times

In the past few weeks, leading Democrats in Congress have called Tea Party members terrorists, said they should go to hell and accused them of wanting to lynch black people. Last weekend at an event attended by President Obama, the head of the Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa Jr., attacked the Tea Party, screaming, “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches [Tea Party members] out and give America back to an America where we belong.” (Note: The president was not on the platform when Mr. Hoffa spoke.)

So far, neither the president nor any prominent Democrat has condemned such remarks – even though the phrase “take out” is commonly used to describe an act of criminal homicide. Thus, Mr. Hoffa’s statement might rise to the level of incitement to violence. Continue reading →