Let us pause a moment to admire the collective wisdom of the intertubes, which has come up with the pitch-perfect reaction to the debt-limit compromise. A YouTube slow-clap campaign.
The new print issue of TIME (available to subscribers) tries to make sense of the debt-limit mayhem that just consumed Washington. In it, I have a piece taking stock of the Tea Party’s amazing ability to commandeer the debt debate. What interested me most is how the Tea Party succeeded through playing by its own [...]
While Washington was dealing with the absolutely crucial debt ceiling waste of time, the world has remained in business…or, perhaps, in chaos. Libya, for example. No sooner did the primary western countries, including the U.S., recognize the Libyan rebel “government,” than did that government start fracturing. A military leader was killed because he was thought [...]
The White House will try its hand at yet another jobs pivot. Larry Summers puts a double-dip recession at one in three. Tim Geithner will stick around. Has Obama been ineffectual in dealing with Republicans in Congress, or just limited by the nature of his office?
Texas Governor Rick Perry is not just any federalist. He is the grand poobah of federalists, an alpha-dog federalist, a federalist other federalists dare not challenge. His call for state sovereignty and a limited federal encroachment on “liberty” has been a central plank of his political rise. There is an entire section on his official [...]
Last week I wrote about the dark side of the Iowa straw poll. Today comes new reason to be down on that strange Republican ritual, which will be held 10 days from new in Ames. The context is that Tim Pawlenty’s campaign is taking flack over the revelation that two of its key Iowa advisers [...]
Here is House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) in an interview today with the Wall Street Journal: People are tired of the pain. They want to be given some hope. I think that sensible prudent fiscal management will be a foundation for that. We need to lay out a vision for how America can lead [...]
Except for forgetting squeaky-voiced Harry Reid’s name, confusing Eric Cantor with Eric Clapton and concluding that “everybody is really happy” with the end product, this analysis seems pretty accurate.
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The conventional wisdom now dictates that every time a debt-ceiling hike comes up for a vote, Republicans will threaten to torch Uncle Sam’s credit rating unless their demands are met. Just take Senator Mitch McConnell, Washington’s most transparently devious operator, at his word: “In the future, any President, this one or another one, when they [...]
