Victoria Defrancesco Soto: Rubio’s two-stage strategy of showing the GOP he’s conservative while signaling to the general population that he is also compassionate is the reason for his recent coyness on the issue of immigration.
Republicans at Home, and at Heart
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Steve Hochstadt: Romney and his campaign advisers know that he was not telling the truth on that Boca Raton tape. But a bigger mistake was to put into the same basket all the people he doesn’t like.
Women & Latinos in 2012: Final Words
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Unai Montes-Irueste: In this election, Democrats and Republicans alike care deeply about the answers to these two questions: Are you a woman? Are you Latino?
Romney Tax Return Provides a Window to His Soul
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Walter Brasch: What does matter is that by stonewalling, obfuscating, and refusing to give full disclosure, he appears to have something to hide.
Romney Still Fails to Make the Sale
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Gil Troy: In a country that loves to see candidates grow and evolve, with a media primed to write the redemptive campaigning comeback story, Romney never seems to get better as a candidate, never has that turnaround moment.
Santorum and Satan: Three Speeches
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Steve Hochstadt: I believe in Kennedy’s America. Not in Rick Santorum’s, where those who do not agree with him have been captured by the Devil.
Mitt: We’re No Longer in an Etch-a-Sketch World
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Robert Reich: There will be too many videos of Willard “Mitt” Romney during the primary saying things that were designed to appeal to increasingly far-right, far-out GOP primary voters – but will strike most Americans as bizarre if not despicable.
Challenging Ron Paul’s Followers on Racism
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Mark Naison: Ron Paul’s presidential run, either as a Republican or an independent, cannot gain traction without gaining support from at least some people of color, leftists and liberals.
Are Mitt and Newt Channeling their Inner Progressives?
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Robert Reich: Gingrich has tried to defend himself by saying Freddy paid him as a “historian,” but anyone with half a brain knows Freddy wasn’t interested in history.
The New Culture of Making Nothing Out of Something
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Anthony Samad: The Los Angeles taxpayer would be astonished with the number of unexcused absences council members have, but these two small-minded council persons — Parks and Perry — wanted to send a message and get some press out of it—and they did.
Herman Cain: Brainwashing
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Steve Hochstadt: According to Cain, most African Americans are unable to escape the mind-control black magic of those long-time political criminals, led by their Brainwasher-in-Chief, Barack Obama.
Rick Perry, Social Security, and the Ghost of Barry Goldwater
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Mark Nevin: In the 1964 presidential campaign, Republican Barry Goldwater initially criticized Social Security but then backed away from that criticism after he fell under attack from fellow Republicans. Despite his backpedaling, Goldwater could never shake the label of Social Security foe. Might current Republican front-runner Rick Perry be in a similar situation?
‘10 Commandments Judge’ Running for President
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Walter Brasch: The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was removed from office for defying the Constitution and a federal court order is one of 14 major candidates running for the Republican nomination for the presidency.
GOP Has an Extremist Problem
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Brent Budowsky: Now Rick Santorum attacks John McCain on the issue of torture. It is amazing — a major party has a pro-torture wing.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Mitt
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Robert Reich: With Trump, Gingrich, Bachmann, and possibly Palin now in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, “GOP” is starting to mean Goofy, Outrageous, and Peculiar. Mitt would pose the most serious challenge to a second Obama term.
Jon Huntsman Makes His Moves
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Brent Budowsky: It is easy to conceive of Huntsman running a New Hampshire primary campaign that widens his criticism of China well beyond strong condemnation of Chinese human-rights abuses.
New York Times Promotes Newt Gingrich
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Paul Hogarth: The guy is openly calling on House Republicans to shut down the federal government (again!), as he wrote in an op-ed for yesterday’s Washington Post. It raises a question I’ve asked before – why is Newt Gingrich relevant, and why is the Beltway media giving him this attention?
Sarah Palin’s Presidential Strategy, and the Economy She Depends on
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Robert Reich: The Republican establishment doesn’t get it. Celebrity is part of The Palin Strategy – as is avoiding the insider game. She doesn’t want to do what Huckabee, Pawlenty, Gingrich, or Romney have to do. She has an outside game.
Weapons of Masturbation
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Robert Illes: Christine O’Donnell; Her idiocy, past and present, has made her a national figure, with millions of dollars flowing into her campaign.
Meg Whitman: A New Era in California or Just Opportunistic Politics
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Wais Hassan: Whitman’s Spanish-language makeover in the general election is a major shift from the tone that she struck in the GOP primary, when the challenge from conservative Steve Poizner pushed her to the right on the issue.
Nurses Have Whitman on the Run
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Randy Shaw: Two weeks into her general election campaign, Meg Whitman has already proved that she has not followed politics in recent years. How else to explain her already picking a fight with CNA and Rose Ann DeMoro that the candidate cannot win, and that makes her look worse with each passing day?
The Republican Party in Disguise
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Steve Hockstadt: The Tea Partiers are not what they seem. They say they’re about freedom, not party, that they just want government off their backs. They appear to attack incumbents of both parties. So why are they all Republicans?
Is America’s Second “Redemption Period” Coming To Fruition?
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Anthony Samad: With a conservative court, you never know…we just may be witnessing something we never expected to see. Neither did those living during Reconstruction. Somebody is waiting to “redeem” America a second time. It may be the national debate of the 2012 or 2016 Presidential elections. We just need to know what that really means, in terms of the return to yesterday in America. It’s not impossible…
McCain Hopes for A Win, Obama Aims for a Mandate
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Senator John McCain’s campaign should be experiencing a surge in this final week of the campaign, a narrowing of the gap between him and his opponent Senator Barack Obama. In almost every campaign since 1988, except for when Senator Bob Dole lost to President Bill Clinton in 1996, the eventual losers experienced a last minute [...]
Edwards The Confessor vs. McCain’s Ongoing Philandering
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Frankly, for decades my view is that if someone wants to fool around on their spouse, it’s their business and we should all butt out. Even presidential candidates are entitled to a sliver of privacy. But we live in an age that craves mixing its puritanical attitude about sex with a voyeuristic demand for celebrity [...]
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