If cliches are the enemy of good writing, they can also be the core of successful speeches. Putative presidential contender Tim Pawlenty killed the crowd at CPAC this afternoon, and perhaps no line drew more applause than this string of platitudes. “We’ve had enough of the hype and speeches filled with rhetoric that soars — but takes us …
I wrote earlier this week about Orrin Hatch’s Tea Party courtship. Yesterday, Hatch won a bit of conservative cred for his voting record, notching a perfect score — one of 12 — on the American Conservative Union’s index. ACU is also the host of the festivities at CPAC, but some of the event’s attendees may not have heard Hatch aced …
Mitt Romney isn’t quite ready to formalize his bid for the Republican nomination, even if his wife gave him the green light when she introduced Romney Friday morning at CPAC. But it’s clear that Romney is in. The theme of his speech was “Believe in America,” and the content was similarly squishy: thick with platitudes, light on policy …
The Tea Party doesn’t have a leader, but it does play favorites. Several of them turned up Tuesday night for a Congressional town hall hosted by the Tea Party Express and billed as the first of its kind. Crammed into an airless conference room at Washington’s National Press Club, the standing-room crowd was energized and eclectic. A …
…According to the CGI masters at Taiwan’s NMA News. Their version of events depicts Arianna Huffington as the Wicked Witch of the West, admonishing the blogosphere to ignore the site’s financials; Tim Armstrong fleeing a sinking ship on a rickety lifeboat and convincing credulous board members he can wind back the clock to 1997; and a …
Guns are as charged a topic as ever. But when the President takes up the issue in the near future, as aides have indicated he’ll do, there are a multitude of measures he can endorse without endangering himself politically. Here’s my story on Time.com.
Ever since they pledged to cut spending by $100 billion during their first year in control of the House, Republican leaders have slowly backpedaled away from that promise. For one thing, it was never entirely precise; the figure was measured against President Obama’s 2011 budget, which was never adopted. (As a result, the government is …
“It feels a little lonely right now,” Sen. Claire McCaskill said Tuesday. Flanked by a trio of Republicans, the Missouri Democrat was on hand for a Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday to unveil a new bill to rein in spending. If McCaskill was feeling isolated, it’s because of her partners on the bill, not because the measure itself …
One day after a Florida judge ruled the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is unconstitutional, Senate Republicans kept pushing to combat the law in the legislative branch.
After the GOP’s weekly lunch, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, told reporters in the Capitol that he would tack an amendment to repeal the …
Jay Carney, our former TIME colleague and the communications director for Vice President Joe Biden, will be named the new White House press secretary, according to Administration officials White House chief of staff Bill Daley.
Carney joined Biden’s staff in 2008 after 20 years at TIME, including a stint as Washington Bureau Chief. …
–The Senate strikes a deal on rules reform. As we previewed earlier this week, the push to overhaul the filibuster system, led by Democrats Harkin, Merkley and Udall, petered out. In the end, reformers were left with a pact that ends secret holds, trims the number of presidential appointees that require confirmation votes and bars the …
–New York Times boss Bill Keller goes long on the paper of record’s interactions with Julian Assange.
–Centuries of legal precedent be damned, Republican state legislators in Idaho have introduced a “nullification” bill as part of a plan to fight the PPACA on states-rights grounds. More states are mulling similar …
