Better Off Than Four Years Ago? I'd Say By Froma Harrop
Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign zinger is back in 2012.
Political Commentary
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September 6, 2012
September 5, 2012
What I Ask of Romney and Obama By John Stossel
The Republican Convention ended on the theme "Believe in America." That sounded nice, but it was just another platitude. Mitt Romney's speech was filled with platitudes: "We will honor America's democratic ideals. ... We're united to preserve liberty."
September 4, 2012
Inspiring but Not Slick, Romney Showed Right Stuff By Michael Barone
The 40th Republican National Convention is now history, and political strategists and pundits are poring over the poll numbers to see whether Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are getting a post-convention bounce in what have been very closely divided polls.
August 31, 2012
Foreign Affairs: How Romney's Millions Went Tax-Free Overseas By Joe Conason
On the same day that Mitt Romney cracked his birther "joke," new evidence indicated that he and his partners at Bain Capital have used questionable methods to avoid federal taxes -- including a scheme that transforms corporate stock into untaxed offshore "derivatives" and a practice that converts management fees into capital gains, which are taxed at a far lower rate.
August 31, 2012
Conventions Don't Matter -- and Mean Even Less By Scott Rasmussen
Political junkies get excited about the Republican and Democratic national conventions, but for many Americans they provide a stark reminder of how out of touch our political system has become. The strange rituals and bad jokes seem oddly out of place in the 21st century, almost as strange as seeing an engineer use a slide rule rather than an iPad to perform some complex calculation.
August 30, 2012
Bad Immigration Ideas From All Directions by Froma Harrop
No balanced talk of immigration reform is expected before the November election. But that need not stop the airing of proposals, some of them semi-formed, some half-baked.
From the left, we have the TRUST Act, a bill passed by the California Legislature and now awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown's uncertain signature. It would require local law enforcement to defy some federal requests to hold arrested illegal immigrants pending checks for criminal records. That would force police to break either state law or federal law. The TRUST Act's sponsors should know that immigration is a federal responsibility in California as well as in Arizona.
August 30, 2012
Romney Pins Hopes on Being Different From Obama By Michael Barone
TAMPA, Fla. -- The Republicans who are assembled here have been told time and time again that Barack Obama's great advantage over Mitt Romney is likability.
August 29, 2012
The Star of Last Night Was Ann Romney By Lawrence Kudlow
In front of a spirited crowd that packed the Tampa Times Forum, Chris Christie gave a solid speech which echoed Mitt Romney's programs consisting of substantial budget cuts, tax cuts, and entitlement reform.
August 29, 2012
The War on Drugs: Because Prohibition Worked So Well ... By John Stossel
Forty years ago, the United States locked up fewer than 200 of every 100,000 Americans. Then President Nixon declared war on drugs. Now we lock up more of our people than any other country -- more even than the authoritarian regimes in Russia and China.
August 28, 2012
Bush Is Not in Tampa, but His Ideas Are By Froma Harrop
The name of George W. Bush graces no chair at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. The 43rd president left behind monumental deficits and an economy in tatters. Republicans hold him responsible for the party's straying from its alleged small-government ethic. They want the public to forget the man.
August 27, 2012
GOP Convention: No Suspense, Little Drama, Lots of Show By Michael Barone
Today, the 40th Republican National Convention assembles in hurricane-threatened Tampa, Fla. Seven days later, the 46th Democratic National Convention will assemble in presumably non-hurricane-threatened Charlotte, N.C. Thousands of delegates, many thousands more press personnel and even more political enthusiasts will be on hand.
August 24, 2012
The Wrong Kind of Experience: Paul Ryan's Big Foreign Policy Credential By Joe Conason
Defending himself against the perception that he has no significant foreign policy experience, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has drawn fresh attention to one of the most controversial acts of the past decade: the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq before U.N. weapons inspections were completed.
August 24, 2012
Romney, Obama Both Struggle to Connect By Scott Rasmussen
When Republicans formally nominate Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan next week, the race against President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will be officially underway. Yet while the two teams represent different ideological views, different upbringings, different faith backgrounds and different experiences, neither of them has yet inspired any confidence among voters.
August 23, 2012
Akin's Consistency Is GOP's Real Problem By Froma Harrop
The political convulsion over Missouri Republican Todd Akin's bizarre talk of "legitimate rape" highlights an issue that the GOP had buried in its campaign.
While the U.S. senatorial candidate's grasp of reproductive science is shockingly lacking -- he said real rape victims rarely get pregnant -- his position that abortions be banned with no exception for rape happens to be in the new Republican Party platform. It is a stance that most Americans, including most registered Republicans, disagree with and probably didn't know was an official party position. Now they do.
August 23, 2012
GM Goes From Bad to Worse Despite Obama Bailout by Michael Barone
Readers with long memories may recall that Charles E. Wilson, president of General Motors and nominee for secretary of defense, got into trouble when he told a Senate committee, "What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for the country."
August 22, 2012
Who Is Paul Ryan? By John Stossel
I wanted to like Paul Ryan. Before he was nationally known, Rep. Ryan visited me at ABC, and we went to lunch. He was terrific. He was a rare politician, one who actually cared about America's coming debt crisis and the unfairness of entitlements. He even talked about F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom"! If only more politicians thought that way.
August 21, 2012
The Delusions in Ryan's Medicare Vision By Froma Harrop
Paul Ryan has bold economic ideas. Or maybe he doesn't. It's really hard to know what Mitt Romney's VP pick thinks, since his budget plan includes Obamacare's $716 billion in Medicare savings over 10 years, but his election plan has him saying he would restore those spending cuts. Romney is accusing president Obama of "robbing" that money from today's beneficiaries.
August 20, 2012
Romney and Ryan Turn the Tables on Obama By Michael Barone
Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan was supposed to be a problem for the Republicans. So said a chorus of chortling Democrats. So said a gaggle of anonymous seasoned Republican operatives. All of which was echoed gleefully by mainstream media.
August 17, 2012
Ryan's Hope: Voodoo Economics Still Isn't a Plan By Joe Conason
By naming Paul Ryan as the Republican vice presidential nominee, Mitt Romney has endorsed what used to be known as "voodoo economics" -- and restored that special brand of Republican superstition to the center of national debate.
To take Ryan seriously, as all too many pundits and politicians insist we must, requires everyone to behave as if the plans he produced as House Budget Committee chairman represent a meaningful effort to improve the nation's fiscal future. Sooner or later, however, real analysts will scrutinize the Ryan budget using honest math instead of humbug and magic.
In fact, they already have done so -- and that is where the myth of Ryan as a serious, scrupulous and bold reformer begins to disintegrate.
August 17, 2012
Reaction to Ryan: A Gap Between Mainstream America and Official Washington By Scott Rasmussen
One of the things Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate ensures is a series of polling questions over the coming months asking voters what's more important: creating jobs or cutting government spending; helping the economy or cutting deficits; repealing the president's health care law or focusing on the economy.
