[ Posted Thursday, May 17th, 2012 – 17:59 UTC ]
The thought which keeps flitting through my mind is whether the Republicans are going to face their own "PUMA" problem this fall. For those who don't remember the term from 2008, PUMA stood for "Party Unity, My Ass!" and was the rallying cry of the non-existent hordes of pro-Hillary Democrats who were reportedly going to cause major disruption at the Democratic National Convention, and then throw the election to John McCain in the fall.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 – 15:11 UTC ]
Is the Republican Party going to have a PUMA problem on their hands during their national nominating convention? I'm not, of course, referring to the possibility that mountain lions will be stalking folks inside the convention center, but rather that a group of folks under the "Party Unity, My Ass!" banner will disrupt what is supposed to be a well-scripted and well-choreographed coronation.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 – 17:11 UTC ]
The filibuster is in the news these days, it seems. Harry Reid recently admitted on the Senate floor that he had been wrong not to follow the push by progressives in his own party to revamp the filibuster rules when he had the chance. Now, it seems, there's a lawsuit which will attempt to convince the Supreme Court to overturn the filibuster as being unconstitutional.
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[ Posted Monday, May 14th, 2012 – 16:40 UTC ]
For now, I'm just going to go with my gut. Paying little or no attention to actual polling (where it even exists -- it's still mighty early), instead I lay out today the states I'll be watching closely, and how I think the chips will fall in November based only on my gut feelings. If this sort of thing doesn't interest you, well, there's plenty of other stuff on the internet to look at, right?
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[ Posted Friday, May 11th, 2012 – 15:03 UTC ]
We're throwing our usual format away today, because this was a momentous and historic week in American politics, and we thought it needed the entire column to address. Call it an extended rant, rather than talking points. There are two parts to this rant. The first is positive. The second is negative. Then, I (hopefully) change it all back to positive at the end.
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[ Posted Thursday, May 10th, 2012 – 16:36 UTC ]
Senator Richard Lugar's loss in his Republican primary in Indiana this week continues a trend which has been evident for at least the past two decades in American politics -- the matchup of our political divide with our ideological divide. What this means for the future is really anyone's guess, other than that "R" or "D" after a politician's name is a lot easier to "read" these days.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 – 14:56 UTC ]
The media -- pretty much all of them -- just got "played," by the Obama campaign. And they don't even realize it yet. What we just witnessed, for roughly the past four days, was not a "breaking story" or even an "evolution" of any sort. What we just witnessed, capped this morning by President Barack Obama's statement of support for gay marriage, was nothing more than the introduction of a new (political) product. It was a "new and improved" product rollout -- nothing more, nothing less.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 – 16:14 UTC ]
Larry McCarthy is one of the driving forces behind the Restore Our Future super PAC. This group is going to be Romney's chief attack dog in the battle for the airwaves for the next six months. Meaning McCarthy is going to have an enormous influence on how the Romney campaign slings mud. And McCarthy is a mudslinger extraordinaire -- he's a master of the art form.
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[ Posted Monday, May 7th, 2012 – 15:00 UTC ]
The Republican primaries, for all intents and purposes, are over. Mitt won. But since this has become general knowledge, I certainly haven't noticed Mitt tacking anywhere but far to the right. Perhaps he took a "centrist" position in there somewhere, and I just missed it. Or perhaps, as I started with, he is just now realizing the corner he's painted himself into.
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[ Posted Friday, May 4th, 2012 – 16:36 UTC ]
If you've been hiding under a rock somewhere all week, you may have missed the fact that an anniversary just happened. One year ago this past Wednesday, special operations forces killed America's "Enemy Number One," Osama Bin Laden. When it happened, it was a time for some sober reflection -- and some unsober and spontaneous celebration on the streets. Whether such was a good thing or not, it is what happened.
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