Steve Hochstadt: Romney’s clumsy attempt campaign to use alleged Jewish gullibility to knock his opponent isn’t about Jews at all. It is part of a larger effort by conservative Republicans to use Jews to win Christian votes.
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?
Die! Die! Die!
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Tom Degan: I’ve been saying for quite some time that the GOP is the party of the plutocracy, and that it has been hijacked by a cabal of white-collar criminals, half-wits and crazy people. I’m not giving away any state secrets here.
The Republican Weapon of Mass Cynicism
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Robert Reich: If we can’t trust government at a time like this, whom can we trust? Corporations? Wall Street? Bill Gates and Warren Buffett? Or is each of us now simply on our own?
A President Standing In Quicksand
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Joseph Palermo: Obama and the Democrats are in trouble politically not because they did too much to help hurting Americans, but because they did too little.
Republicans Not Anti-Science, Just Pro-Politics
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Tina Dupuy: The GOP treats science as their illegitimate love child. They deny its existence for political purposes, while quietly funneling child support to it.
The Texas Economic Model
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Steve Hochstadt: Republicans don’t mention poverty, because they don’t plan to do anything about it. The millions of poor Americans are invisible to Republican politicians. They pretend that trickle-down economics will reach the poor, but it hasn’t and won’t.
Race and Anti-Obama ‘Hysteria’
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Berry Craig: The hysteria about Obama, although some of it may be related to philosophical objections to central authority, is largely rooted in race.
Is Obama the Best Republican President Since Lincoln?
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Tina Dupuy: Historians agree the best Republican President was also the first: Abraham Lincoln. Who’s second runner up? Which President has represented Republican values best? Easy. President Barack Obama.
What Do Republican Politicians Believe?
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Steve Hochstadt: Displaying scientific illiteracy or telling disaster victims that their suffering is God’s punishment won’t create one new job. Scaring Americans about Social Security, the most successful social program in American history, won’t improve economic confidence.
Obama Betrays the EPA
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John Peeler: In what has become a pattern for Obama, he backed down, adopted the essentials of the Republican argument, and left his own EPA Director swinging in the wind.
Libertarians, Watch Out!
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Steve Hochstadt: The Republican dream is a libertarian nightmare – the “free market” is free to watch you all the time. Big Brother isn’t a government camera. It’s a corporate cookie right in your computer.
Prettying the Porker’s Puss, Republican Style
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Berry Craig: This union-card carrying Hubert Humphrey Democrat from Kentucky — where Steve Beshear, our second-term-seeking, union-endorsed Democratic governor is up two dozen points over his Scott Walker-wannabe Republican challenger in a recent bellwether poll — hopes Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s “way forward” will include a recall election that will unemploy him, too.
Congratulations Republicans!
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Steve Hochstadt: In 2011, the Republican strategy has been crowned with total success. They have managed to make the US government into a laughing stock, a global symbol of incompetence. Public confidence in government is at an all-time low.
Forget Rick Perry – Mitt Romney Is Perfect for the GOP
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Tina Dupuy: For the last 30 years at least, the Republicans have been relentlessly, uniformly hawkish – but mostly with other peoples’ children. This disconnect was made evident in the ’08 election when soldiers donated money to candidate Barack Obama 6-1 over Senator John McCain.
Republicans Like Leopards Never Change Their Spots
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Sy Slavin: Republicans like the proverbial leopards never change their spots. In 1935 they tried to kill Social Security – today using the same vile tactics; they are trying to do the same.
What Brings Democrats and Republicans Together: A White President?
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Anthony Samad: The rise of the Tea Party wouldn’t have taken place had we had a white president. Blink if you want to…but the fact this has not happened to any other President has raised my “Race-dar,” beyond anything ideological battles could muster. Race(ism) has not disappeared in this country. It’s just been codified.
What the Debt Ceiling Deal Means for Foreign Policy
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Rebecca Griffin: Depending on whom you ask, the Pentagon either got a free ride or the deal decimates the military budget. Given the leverage that Republicans had in this debate, it’s not surprising that the Pentagon got off easy in the first round of cuts.
Republican Double-Dip: What Must Be Done
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Robert Reich: Now that we’re slouching toward a double-dip recession, the only hope is voters will tell their members of Congress to stop obsessing about future budget deficits and get to work on the real crisis of unemployment, falling wages, and no growth.
Kamikazes, Nazis and Republicans
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Bill Fletcher: We should get away from thinking of the Tea Party elected officials as crazy. They are not. They are no more crazy than the Japanese Kamikaze pilots in 1945. They are just as determined and wish to create maximum damage.
The Debt-Ceiling Deal Disaster
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Brent Budowsky: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) could not deliver enough Republican votes. He was some 40 votes short. At the very moment when Democrats had leverage, they still caved and asked for and received nothing in return.
Don’t Fall for GOP “Budget Crisis” Lie
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Robert Reich: Republicans are using what would otherwise be a routine, legally technical vote to raise the debt limit as a means of holding the nation hostage to their own political goal of shrinking the size of the federal government.
Americans Elect?
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John Peeler: Disillusioned liberals ought to know that if this effort takes off, it is very likely to siphon votes away from Obama and facilitate a complete Republican takeover of the federal government.
Will Obama Ever Hold the Republicans Accountable?
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Paul Loeb: Obama has forgotten the basic lesson of negotiation — you don’t hand everything over before you start, particularly to people who have utter contempt for your values and goals.
Won’t You Come Home, Jim Crow?
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Tom Degan: The Republican party is at this very moment mounting a campaign that, if successful, will disenfranchise the voting rights of African Americans – and everyone else who tends to vote left-of-center – all across America. Isn’t that sweet?
Democrats Score More Victories in Wisconsin Recalls
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Paul Hogarth: Republicans are so concerned about what will happen on August 9th – when six GOP state senators are subject to recall – that they have gone full speed ahead to pass a hyper-partisan gerrymandered map, while they still control the legislature.
Banana Republicans
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Brent Budowsky: The extreme hard-line attitude of many Republicans has significantly raised the prospects for a national default and rating agency downgrades that would sweep across the nation and many states, causing an economic cataclysm and public outrage unlike anything ever seen in the history of the republic.
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It’ll Be an All-Cuts Budget “Deal” (Just Like California)
Joseph Palermo: The debt ceiling gambit that Republicans in the House of Representatives have used to tie the U.S. government in knots in recent months is simply the California GOP’s tactic writ large.