Jerry Drucker: Evasion is what the GOP is really good at doing. Senator Kyle of Arizona: “It wasn’t intended to be a factual statement.” It was intended to be a 97% lie.
Extortion Politics
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Robert Reich: Monday Standard & Poor’s (hardly a beacon of reliability after the Crash of 2008, to be sure) downgraded America’s credit outlook. Expect more downgrades if the game of chicken continues.
Everybody Blinked
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Anthony Samad: We certainly saw Congress’ version of “stupid” last week when they threatened (and are still threatening) to shut down the federal government. The danger of politics is that it is open to disingenuous interjection where it ends up becoming more foolish banter than courageous engagement.
What Is a Republican? — Part 2
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Ted Vaill: The ultimate Republican strategy for the 2012 election is this: they know that they will lose if the economy continues to improve and unemployment figures drop substantially.
GOP Overreach
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David Love: Republican overreach is in the air. You can see it, smell it, taste it everywhere, as you have in years past. And the only surprise is that it happened so quickly this time around.
California: Where Elections Don’t Matter
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Joseph Palermo: We elected a Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in the State Assembly and the Senate. Yet five members of the Republican minority once again are in the driver’s seat and they’re determined to run the state right over the cliff.
Women Will Decide 2012
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Brent Budowsky: Republicans face the real possibility that 2012 will bring them not a gender gap, but a gender deluge.
The Republican Shakedown
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Robert Reich: As long as Democrats refuse to talk about the almost unprecedented buildup of income, wealth, and power at the top – and the refusal of the super-rich to pay their fair share of the nation’s bills – Republicans will convince people it’s all about government and unions.
Kentucky AFL-CIO Head: GOP Out to Destroy “Whole Union Movement”
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Berry Craig: If a tea party Republican wins this November’s election, the Scott Walker agenda will be on Kentuckians with a vengeance. We will be another step closer to right to work for less, repeal of prevailing wage and attacks on public sector workers and their unions.
The Republican Strategy
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Robert Reich: The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.
The Rally Against State Immigration Legislation Continues
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Seth Hoy: Until people honestly consider how these copycat laws will affect their own fiscal bottom lines—states with ailing budgets are only going to enforce themselves in the same tired and costly circle without really solving our federal immigration problems.
Crying Wolf – The Republican Playbook
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Peter Dreier: Now that the Republicans control the House of Representatives, expect to hear a lot more complaints from business, corporate-sponsored think thanks, and their political allies in Congress about “job-killing” government regulations.
The New War Congress: An Obama-Republican War Alliance?
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David Swanson: The most silvery of possible silver linings here may lie in the possibility of a reborn peace movement. George W. Bush’s new memoir actually reveals the surprising strength the peace movement had achieved by 2006.
Needed: A Competency Test for Elected Officials
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David Love: Where do they find these people? I’m talking about those crazy-talking Tea Party types, ultra-conservative Republicans posing as legitimate lawmakers and politicians, some of them even passing themselves off as senators, members of Congress and governors.
Rand Paul and Rebel Flag Republicans
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Berry Craig: Paul, who beat moderate Democrat Jack Conway, ran unabashedly as a tea party Republican. In Kentucky and elsewhere, a lot of latter day Johnny Rebs seem to be tea party Republicans.
Out of the Ashes, We Can Build a Strong Progressive Movement
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Tracy Emblem: The lesson from Tuesday is simple. Democrats must be unified and elect real progressive democratic leaders that stand up for the people on the nation’s issues.
Buenos Dias Democrats!
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Mario Solis-Marich: The power of Latino voters has increased dramatically and for the first time in history the Democrats are in catch up mode with the nation’s newest voting bloc.
Not a Post-Mortem: Checking Debris After a Big Wave
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John Peeler: The Republican takeover of the House was largely a matter of taking back the seats they lost in the last two elections, many of which are either majority Republican or conservative enough to have voted for McCain in 2008.
After the Midterms: Why Democrats Move to the Center, and Republicans Don’t
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Robert Reich: Republicans are cynical about politics from the jump. Political cynicism fuels them. Democrats are idealistic about politics. When they become cynical they tend to drop out.
The GOP Is Blowing It
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Brent Budowsky: Every time a Republican predicts the GOP will win the Senate and 70 seats in the House, more Democrats become scared stiff and decide to vote, and more moderates worry about partisan gridlock and the arrogance of Republican power.
Lemon Pledge
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Tom Degan: And of course, just like their silly “Contract with America” sixteen years ago, the voters will more-than-likely hand the congressional majority back to these corrupt dingbats on Election Day. And when the 112th Congress is sworn in this January, their so-called “pledge” (just like the contract of yore) will be rendered merely as dust in the wind.
The Moderates’ Lament
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Tina Dupuy: The current Republican Party is counting on the Tea Party’s morphing into the attack wing of the GOP – isolating moderates and anyone with genuine new ideas. And that means there will be Representatives who are not actually representative.
Smile, You’re a Liberal After All!
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Steven Conn: As midterm elections approach, conservatives seek to return America to the way things used to be. Not so fast, argues historian Steven Conn, unless you really want racial segregation, child labor, voting discrimination, and all the other things that old-time conservatives once supported.
Breaking the Eleventh Commandment
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Tina Dupuy: The Tea Party’s premise is like phoning someone you’re mad at because they won’t call you back and telling them never to call you again. That’ll show ‘em you aren’t crazy!
How Corporations Own Congress
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Shamus Cooke: A “lesser of two evils” approach to politics equals evil politicians for labor, no matter who wins. In fact, the lesser-evil Democrats have become increasingly evil over the years, to the point where the party as a whole is more Conservative than the Nixon-era Republicans.
Book Burning and the New Red Scare
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Tom Hall: As the new Tea Bag Republicans virtually guarantee gridlock and a forced double dip depression, the voters will again turn on them, giving a chance, in 2012, to candidates who offer real solutions, real progress, real hope. If we can find any.
Forecasting the 2010 Congressional Elections
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Ted Vaill: There is hope, in spite of what the pundits say, if we work hard over the next two months to get progressive Democrats elected.
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us
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Berry Craig: Bottom line: It’s plain loco for liberals to punish Democrats for being insufficiently liberal by staying home on election day and letting the Obama’s-a-Kenyan-Islamo-Socialist crowd win.
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