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November 14, 2010

Two Wonks with One Plan About Too Much Debt By Debra J. Saunders

The draft deficit-reduction proposal released last week by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and retired GOP Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming -- the co-chairmen of President Obama's bipartisan commission on reducing the national debt -- has the feel of what two wonks might draw up on cocktail napkins in a bar. It's a bit too easy for two unelected guys to hash out a plan that tells other people what they have to give up -- just to be fair.

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November 13, 2010

The Unrecorded Moment By Susan Estrich

I can't quite remember certain things that happened in college, particularly during my junior year "abroad" at Dartmouth. I'm sure some of that is age (in this case, a rare blessing), but the larger part is that I don't want to remember. And I can't imagine wanting anyone else to, either, at least not with any greater accuracy than their equally limited memory should allow.

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November 12, 2010

GOP Freshmen Will Hold Boehner to His Big Promises By Michael Barone

For political junkies of a certain age, it was a given that the House of Representatives would always be controlled by Democrats. They won the chamber in 1954 and held on for 40 years -- more than twice as long as any party in American history had before.

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November 12, 2010

It's "OTB" Time: One-Term Barack By Larry J. Sabato

The wreckage of the Democratic Party is strewn just about everywhere. President Obama’s carefully constructed 2008 Electoral College breakthrough is now just broken, a long-ago memory of what might have been a lasting shift in partisan alignment.

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November 12, 2010

The World Against Bernanke By Lawrence Kudlow

The great Bernanke QE2 debate continues to heat up. In the run-up to the G-20 meetings, China, Russia, Germany and others have all come out against the Federal Reserve's quantitative-easing agenda. They don't want hot-money excess dollars to flow into their higher-yielding currencies.

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November 11, 2010

2010 By the Numbers By Larry J. Sabato

SENATE

37
The number of Senate races on the November ballot, the most since 1962.

2
The number of appointed U.S. senators to survive the election, Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). The four others didn’t run: Ted Kaufman (D-DE), Roland Burris (D-IL), George LeMieux (R-FL), Carte Goodwin (D-WV).

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November 11, 2010

Cheese Subsidies Are Full of Holes By Froma Harrop

How interesting that one arm of the Agriculture Department is promoting sales of cheese as another urges the public to eat less of it for health reasons. Your tax dollars at work fighting other tax dollars.

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November 11, 2010

A Note on Health Care Reform By Joe Conason

Overstating the importance of a midterm election is understandably tempting for politicians and pundits, especially when the partisan turnover reaches historic proportions, as it indisputably did on Nov. 2. It is a temptation to which Republicans and conservatives seem particularly vulnerable.

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November 10, 2010

Those 10 Pounds By Susan Estrich

Ten pounds separate me from most of the clothes in my closet. They are the cause of regular disaster in dressing rooms.

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November 10, 2010

From Hawks and Doves to Owls and Vultures in Foreign Policy By Tony Blankley

Last weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tried his hand at dissecting GOP foreign policy attitudes. I commend the senator for trying to come to grips with this vital question that is getting so little, if any, national discussion.

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November 10, 2010

Pelosi's House with No Center By Debra J. Saunders

Imagine if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were a Republican. Imagine that the Republicans, including many moderates, just lost more than 60 House seats in the worst rout a party has experienced since 1938. Yet the hard-core conservative speaker -- of whom, polls show, a majority of voters have a decidedly unfavorable opinion -- decides to run for the step-down position of minority leader.

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November 9, 2010

"GOP Poised to Reap Redistricting Rewards" by Michael Barone

Let's try to put some metrics on last Tuesday's historic election.

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November 9, 2010

Obama in Indonesia By Froma Harrop

Barack Hussein Obama, the mixed-race president born in Hawaii, partly educated in Indonesia -- defender of a controversial Islamic center near ground zero in Manhattan -- is tentatively scheduled to visit Jakarta's Masjid Istiqlal, the largest mosque in Southeast Asia. Mercifully, the American elections are over.

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November 7, 2010

Nancy Pelosi, Superhero By Susan Estrich

Really, what did you expect?

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November 6, 2010

Obama: The “Anti-Stimulant” By Howard Rich

Mere days after winning the presidency on the strength of his proposed “middle class tax cuts,” U.S. President Barack Obama switched gears and began outlining his vision for a massive “economic stimulus” – one that he promised would create three million jobs.

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November 6, 2010

The Democrats Did Good By Froma Harrop

The Democrats did good. Not in the election -- they did pretty miserably there. But they did good for the country. They led America back from the brink of economic disaster.

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November 5, 2010

The Tea Party and the Midterms by Joe Conason

The urge to punish politicians is understandable no matter who is in power, because they inevitably disappoint the fond hopes of their admirers and raise the hackles of their detractors -- and yet that same urge is almost never satisfied for long.

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November 5, 2010

The Good News for Democrats Is That They Saw It Coming by Scott Rasmussen

Back in December 2009, a full 11 months before Election Day, a Democratic strategist concluded that if the Rasmussen Reports Generic Congressional Ballot data was accurate, Republicans would gain 62 seats in the House during the 2010 elections.

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November 5, 2010

The Public Is Watching by Tony Blankley

Removing the snake from the garden with a stick was a rejection of the snake, but should not be seen as particularly an endorsement of the stick -- except as the closest available tool with which to eject the snake.

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November 5, 2010

Brown Won -- and Whitman Lost Big By Debra J. Saunders

At his post-victory news conference Wednesday morning, Governor elect Jerry Brown showed why he won the election with a million votes to spare. He's steeped in the issues, he listens to what is happening on the ground, and he's not afraid to mix it up.

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