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Latest Articles: The Water Cooler
Obama's India Trip -- Not As Expensive As You May Have Heard
Post Date: 2010-11-04 13:13:55 by Brian S
33 Comments
No, President Obama's trip is not going to cost $200 million a day. That figure -- first thrown out by a single Indian media outlet and now viral on conservative talk radio -- is wildly, wildly off the mark. The problem is that the costs for these trips are impossible to determine, for many of the president's expenses would be incurred whether he was visiting India or Atlanta or simply hanging around the White House. Obama's India trip starts an Asian swing that includes South Korea, Indonesia and Japan. The administration isn't inclined to detail costs, most of which deal with security. "The numbers reported in this article have no basis in reality," said ...
Just 32% Of Tea Party Candidates Win
Post Date: 2010-11-03 19:50:34 by Brian S
4 Comments
From NBC's Alexandra MoeFor all the talk of the Tea Party's strength - and there will certainly be a significant number of their candidates in Congress - just 32% of all Tea Party candidates who ran for Congress won and 61.4% lost this election. A few races remain too close to call. In the Senate, 10 candidates backed by the Tea Party ran and at least five were successful. (Race in Alaska has not yet been called.) In the House, 130 Tea Party-backed candidates ran, and just 40 so far have won. Identifying Tea Party candidates is undoubtedly inexact. Our criteria, generally, was to include anyone who has either been backed by a Tea Party group or has identified themselves as a ...
Report: Michele Bachmann To Run For GOP Leadership Position
Post Date: 2010-11-03 17:17:38 by Brian S
3 Comments
The tea party made historic gains in Tuesday's midterm elections and if one Minnesota Republican has her way, the movement may be in line for a high ranking leadership position. A report at Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment website indicates that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) will enter the race for Republican Conference Chairman, the fourth most powerful position in the House. Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) announced Wednesday that he was stepping down from the position. "Now that we have restored a Republican majority to the House of Representatives and I have fulfilled my commitment to the Republican conference, my family and I have begun to look to the future," Pence wrote in a ...
Midterm Elections a Big Win for Hawks; Pro-Intervention Republicans to See Major Gains in Influence
Post Date: 2010-11-03 13:15:40 by Brian S
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Though the reality is that most of the Congressional races in the US amounted to a race between a pro-war candidate and an even more pro-war candidate and most of the discussions of foreign policy between the two centered on which was which, the results of the election as they trickle in reveal a big win for the “even more pro-war candidate” types both in seats and influence. Rep. Eric Cantor As the Republicans consolidate control over the House of Representatives and score big gains in the Senate, their most hawkish members are eagerly snatching up key foreign policy positions, with Howard McKeon (R – CA) looking to head the Armed Services Committee and bringing his support ...
Most Voters Think House GOP Likely To Disappoint By 2012, Rasmussen Reports
Post Date: 2010-11-03 12:40:53 by Brian S
1 Comments
The polling firm Rasmussen is out with a relatively shocking poll given the results of yesterday's election. Here's the gist: Hold the celebration. Most voters expected Republicans to win control of the House of Representatives on Election Day, but nearly as many expect to be disappointed with how they perform by the time the 2012 elections roll around. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds, in fact, that 59% of Likely U.S. Voters think it is at least somewhat likely that most voters will be disappointed with Republicans in Congress before the next national elections. That includes 38% who say it is Very Likely. More details here. And before ...
Pence To Step Down As No. 3 House GOP Leader
Post Date: 2010-11-03 12:08:21 by Brian S
3 Comments
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top House Republican who's been considering a possible bid for the White House is stepping down from the House GOP leadership team. Indiana Republican Mike Pence says he's considering new opportunities to serve his state and the nation and might not be able to pledge to serve a whole term as GOP conference chair. Pence is a darling of social conservatives and has made political trips to states such as Iowa that host early GOP presidential contests. He is also strongly in favor of tax cuts and a streamlined federal government. Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas said he would seek the post.
Bush Considered Dropping Cheney From 2004 Ticket
Post Date: 2010-11-02 19:03:05 by Brian S
18 Comments
President George W. Bush considered dumping Vice President Dick Cheney from his 2004 reelection ticket to dispel the myths about Mr. Cheney’s power in the White House and “demonstrate that I was in charge,” the former president says in a new memoir. The idea came from Mr. Cheney, who offered to drop out of the race one day during a private lunch between the two men in mid-2003. “I did consider the offer,” Mr. Bush writes, and spent several weeks exploring the possibility of replacing Mr. Cheney with Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, before opting against the switch. “While Dick helped with important parts of our base, he had become a ...
ABC News Kicks Breitbart Off Town Hall Panel
Post Date: 2010-11-02 17:45:51 by Brian S
7 Comments
Hours after this story's publication on Monday evening, an ABC News spokesman told Yahoo News that there's "technically a scenario" in which the network would air Breitbart's words during its election coverage. Network spokesman Jeffrey Schneider reportedly cautioned that Breitbart had "exaggerated the role he would play," making it necessary for ABC to clarify that offering on-air political analysis "was never the role he was supposed to play." HOWEVER (update Nov. 2, 4:45 p.m.) ... The following day, as prime-time election coverage drew nearer, ABC changed its position once again, sending a short letter to Breitbart explaining that the ...
Barbour: Tea Party-Backed Winners To Vote With GOP
Post Date: 2010-11-02 12:14:03 by Brian S
3 Comments
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A leading Republican Party figure says tea party-backed congressional candidates who win elections Tuesday will consider themselves part of the GOP when they come to Washington. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour noted in a nationally broadcast interview that candidates such as Senate hopeful Rand Paul in Kentucky ran under the Republican banner, and had started out as Republicans. Interviewed with Democratic Party chairman Tim Kaine on NBC's "Today" show, Barbour said that if tea party-backed candidates had run as independents, "that would have been Tim Kaine's fondest dream," because it would have divided the conservative vote. Kaine said ...
Jewish Democrats: Republican Majority Controlled By Nazi Reenactors And Their Friends
Post Date: 2010-11-01 17:14:49 by Brian S
6 Comments
Two prominent Jewish Democratic congressmen stepped up their attacks against the Republican candidates on Friday for their “inadequate moral position”. New York Representative Steve Israel and Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz expressed their concern over the "trivialization of Holocaust" in Republican campaigns and a recent proposal by Minority Whip to separate the aid to Israel from the foreign aid package. Rep. Israel said he was concerned with "what will happen when the time comes to govern and the Congress is potentially run by the Republican majority – by Nazi reenactors and their friends." Israel referred to a scandal involving the ...
Jeb Bush: Looming Victories ‘Not A Validation’ Of GOP
Post Date: 2010-11-01 14:48:42 by Brian S
5 Comments
Republicans are set to win big in Tuesday's midterm elections but one influential Republican is telling his party not to mistake victory for approval. "The looming victories for Republican candidates next Tuesday is not a validation of the Republican Party at all," former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) said in an interview with The New York Times. Big wins would reflect "a repudiation of the massive overreach" by the Democrats and "disgust by the political class," he said. "It could create a middle ground," the former governor told The Times. "Or it could create a dismemberment of our political parties." That middle ground may be elusive if some ...
Congresswoman Says Estate Tax Rise Has Some Planning Death
Post Date: 2010-11-01 13:49:50 by Brian S
2 Comments
CHEYENNE -- U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis says some of her Wyoming constituents are so worried about the reinstatement of federal estate taxes that they plan to discontinue dialysis and other life-extending medical treatments so they can die before Dec. 31. Lummis, a Republican who holds her state's lone seat in the House, declined to name any of the people who have made the comments. But she said many ranchers and farmers in the state would rather pass along their businesses -- "their life's work" -- to their children and grandchildren than see the federal government take a large chunk. "If you have spent your whole life building a ranch, and you wanted to pass your ...
Next For GOP Leaders: Stopping Sarah Palin
Post Date: 2010-11-01 00:14:10 by Brian S
21 Comments
Top Republicans in Washington and in the national GOP establishment say the 2010 campaign highlighted an urgent task that they will begin in earnest as soon as the elections are over: Stop Sarah Palin. Interviews with advisers to the main 2012 presidential contenders and with other veteran Republican operatives make clear they see themselves on a common, if uncoordinated, mission of halting the momentum and credibility Palin gained with conservative activists by plunging so aggressively into this year’s midterm campaigns. There is rising expectation among GOP elites that Palin will probably run for president in 2012 and could win the Republican nomination, a prospect many of them ...
The Grand Old Plot Against the Tea Party
Post Date: 2010-10-31 19:45:04 by Brian S
20 Comments
ONE dirty little secret of the 2010 election is that it won’t be a political tragedy for Democrats if a Tea Party icon like Sharron Angle or Joe Miller ends up in the United States Senate. Angle, now synonymous with racist ads sliming Hispanics, and Miller, already on record threatening a government shutdown, are fired up and ready to go as symbols of G.O.P. extremism for 2012 and beyond. What’s not so secret is that some Republicans will be just as happy if some of these characters lose, and for the same reason. But whatever Tuesday’s results, this much is certain: The Tea Party’s hopes for actually effecting change in Washington will start being dashed the morning ...
Alaska Station Says Breitbart Web Site Audio Attack Is Bogus
Post Date: 2010-10-31 18:34:28 by Brian S
3 Comments
Is another Andrew Breitbart Web site production about to be unmasked as bogus? Breitbart's Big Journalism site is making an incendiary accusation: That reporters at the Anchorage CBS affiliate KTVA were caught conspiring to damage Tea Party Senate candidate Joe Miller. Big Journalism posted a snippet of audio allegedly showing this: It features KTVA reporters talking among themselves while -- unbeknownst to them -- they were accidentally being recorded on the voicemail of Miller's campaign manager. But it's unclear from the recording precisely what, if anything, was being plotted. And now the station is adamantly denying the charges, claiming the audio was clipped and taken ...
Tea Party Kingmaker Becomes Power Unto Himself
Post Date: 2010-10-31 14:50:22 by Brian S
2 Comments
On election night last year, South Carolina’s freshman senator, Jim DeMint, convened a conference call with 4,000 supporters to declare the next battle: conservatives had to rally behind Marco Rubio, a relative unknown who was trailing the establishment candidate in the Republican Senate primary in Florida. “His win is going to send shock waves through Washington,” Mr. DeMint proclaimed. A year later, Mr. Rubio is leading in Florida, having driven his primary opponent out of the Republican Party. Other DeMint-backed candidates in the House and the Senate have ridden the same anti-establishment wave from long shot to likely. And the boast that Mr. DeMint made on that call ...
Republicans Try to Lower Expectations
Post Date: 2010-10-31 14:46:33 by Brian S
4 Comments
Even as surveys predicted a huge night for Republicans on Tuesday, leaders of the party on Sunday sought to play down expectations. Senator John Cornyn, the Republican of Texas charged with running the Senate’s election efforts this year, said on ABC’s “This Week” that he doubted Republicans will take over the Senate. “I’m not predicting that we will get the majority this cycle,” Mr. Cornyn said. “I think it probably is going to take two cycles, but there is certainly a potential there, depending on just how high and how broad this wave election is.” In a separate appearance, Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, ...
Tea Party Movement Alienating Young Voters
Post Date: 2010-10-30 19:20:04 by Brian S
3 Comments
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The tea party is failing to woo young voters despite a loose structure that could make it easier for those under 30 to achieve leadership roles, analysts and political activists say as the grass-roots movement prepares to flex its muscles in midterm elections. A survey released Oct. 21 by Harvard University's Institute of Politics showed that only 11 percent of those 18 to 29 consider themselves supporters of the tea party, and analysts say the leaderless movement's ties to social conservatism and rhetoric in favor of an earlier America are hampering its appeal. Despite widespread voter anger ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections, the tea party has been a ...
Senate GOP Leaders Look to Water Down Tea Party Ideology
Post Date: 2010-10-29 21:06:08 by Brian S
9 Comments
“You might as well know right now … that the Tea Party, no matter how successful it is at the polls in November, will certainly betray the party of liberty,” wrote Lew Rockwell, proprietor of LewRockwell.com, on September 22. In addition to identifying philosophical problems among Tea Party candidates, Rockwell explained that “once they take office … the serious problems begin. They are leaned on by their new colleagues, the party elites, related financial interests, the press, and the entire system of which they are now part. Are they going to make themselves enemies of that system, or are they going to work within the system in order to achieve reform, and not ...
Megachurch Pastor Comes Out Of Closet
Post Date: 2010-10-29 19:21:12 by Brian S
0 Comments
ROCKDALE COUNTY, Ga. -- The pastor of a Rockdale County megachurch has publicly announced he is gay. Jim Swilley, bishop of Conyers’ Church in the Now, said he hopes his coming out will change attitudes toward homosexuality. “I know a lot of straight people think it is a choice. It is not,” Swilley told Channel 2’s Diana Davis. Swilley, 52, founded the church 25 years ago. He seemed the stereotypical picture of a pastor, with four kids and a wife who doubled as his associate pastor. But Swilley said he's known he was gay since he was little boy. He said his wife, Debye, also knew his secret from the start. “I think some women marry gay men because they ...
John Boehner Is the Enemy Obama Needs
Post Date: 2010-10-29 15:47:00 by Brian S
0 Comments
Amid the misery of the moment, here’s something Democrats can look forward to: President Obama is about to get his foil. He’s needed one throughout his career. In 2007, it was the contrast with Hillary Clinton that accentuated Obama’s freshness and authenticity. In 2008, it was during the presidential debates—where McCain looked erratic and uninformed and Obama looked analytical and centered—that Obama put the race away. In 2009 and 2010, by contrast, Obama has had no one to contrast himself with except for George W. Bush, and that stopped working long ago. ...
Boehner, Cantor Take Different Sides On Nazi Reenactor Iott In Ohio
Post Date: 2010-10-28 20:09:40 by Brian S
0 Comments
In a departure from House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is planning to campaign with GOP House candidate Rich Iott despite the controversy over his Nazi-reenactment hobby. The two leaders have taken different sides after photos of Iott dressed in Nazi garb surfaced on the Internet earlier in October. Cantor has denounced Iott, who was removed from the GOP's Young Guns program — and website — shortly after the flap. But Boehner still backs his campaign and will attend an event supporting Iott in Ohio on Saturday. Cantor, during a recent appearance on Fox News, responded to Democrats' criticism of Iott by condemning him and his ...
GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann Might Not Support Boehner For Speaker
Post Date: 2010-10-28 20:02:49 by Brian S
2 Comments
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) suggested Thursday that she might not support John Boehner (R-Ohio) as the next Speaker. Bachmann, a prominent conservative lawmaker with ties to the grassroots Tea Party movement, said she would only support Boehner as the next Speaker if he were the only candidate available. "Right now, we don't know exactly who the candidates will be. It may be John Boehner," Bachmann said in a debate on Minnesota Public Radio. "If John Boehner's the only candidate running, I'll be voting for John Boehner."I would look at all the candidates and weigh it accordingly," she added.Some Republicans have been reluctant so far to commit ...
Rove Questions Palin’s ‘Gravitas’ For Presidential Bid
Post Date: 2010-10-28 14:49:26 by Brian S
2 Comments
The former senior adviser to George W. Bush and Republican strategist Karl Rove told a British newspaper that Sarah Palin may not be presidential material. In an interview with the Telegraph, Rove said voters were unlikely to see someone who has her own reality TV show as a good candidate for president. "With all due candor, appearing on your own reality show on the Discovery Channel, I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of 'that helps me see you in the Oval Office,'" he said. The documentary series "Sarah Palin's Alaska" will be premiering on TLC on November 14. The TV show is produced by Mark Burnett, who has produced shows such as ...
Poll: Miller Falls To Last Place
Post Date: 2010-10-28 11:47:41 by Brian S
4 Comments
After several rough weeks on the campaign trail, a new poll out of Alaska shows Republican Joe Miller has fallen to last place in the three-way Senate race. A Hays Research Group poll released Thursday showed write-in candidates, presumably meaning Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in the lead with 34 percent, Democrat Scott McAdams with 29 percent and Miller with 23 percent. Murkowski is waging a write-in bid since losing the Republican primary to Miller. Miller's plunge in the new poll comes on the heels of several misfires in the local and national press. Most recently, Miller's employment records from his job as a part-time attorney with local government were unsealed Tuesday, in which he ...
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