[ Posted Monday, March 21st, 2016 – 17:19 UTC ]
No matter what the next primary election results show tomorrow night, one thing seems to be certain: we are in for a long slog of delegate-counting before either party's nominee is crowned. On the Republican side, this is leading to more and more desperation from the party's bigwigs, as they clutch at the thin straw of somehow yanking the nomination away from Donald Trump at their convention. All of this is going to take time to play out, but we're just going to leapfrog over it all for now and assume for the purpose of this conversation that Trump does emerge victorious as the Republican Party presidential nominee. Whether a third-party conservative challenge emerges or not, this means the next big question has to be who Trump is going to pick as his running mate. So buckle your seatbelts, because this is likely going to be just as bumpy a ride as the rest of the GOP nomination process has so far been.
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[ Posted Friday, March 4th, 2016 – 17:09 UTC ]
It's been a wild and crazy week -- so much so, in fact, that we're going to start with a quote we never thought would become appropriate to use in a column about politics. It's from the movie Taken, where Liam Neeson's character utters the classic line: "Now's not the time for dick-measuring."
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[ Posted Friday, February 26th, 2016 – 18:23 UTC ]
That title, of course, refers to the most recent Republican debate, where in a fit of frustration the caption writers at CNN just gave up and ran "Unintelligible yelling" as the caption. Yep, that about sums it up, doesn't it?
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 26th, 2016 – 18:12 UTC ]
Every so often, I feel moved to write a column that is no more, really, than spiking a metaphorical football in the endzone. To put it a different way, sometimes I write my opinion about something political only to then be almost immediately vindicated by someone much further in-the-know than I ever could be. Today is one of those days, so if you're not interested in me indulging in a little gratuitous back-patting, then I'd suggest you stop reading this now.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 20th, 2016 – 17:02 UTC ]
Yesterday, Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president. "Of course she did," was the most common reaction to this news -- heard from both left and right. It is not only the most natural progression, but in fact it completes a circle of sorts. Because Palin really was the original Trump, in the world of Republican politics. Which is why I blame John McCain more than anyone else for the fact that Donald Trump is the clear frontrunner of the Republican pack right now. McCain's pick of Palin as running mate truly set the stage for where the GOP finds itself now.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 12th, 2016 – 22:23 UTC ]
Tonight, Barack Obama gave his final State Of The Union speech, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley gave the Republican response. Both speeches were unusual -- not in a negative way, but in a more literal "not the usual thing" sense. Obama's speech was not a laundry list of legislative agenda items, but rather a definitional moment for Obama and for the Democratic Party platform. Haley's speech was not a vitriol-filled rejection of all things Democratic while glossing over her own party's faults. The speeches, or at least the general tone of them, were actually more similar than different (again, not on policy but rather on tone).
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[ Posted Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 – 21:03 UTC ]
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
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[ Posted Friday, December 18th, 2015 – 19:24 UTC ]
Welcome to our year-end awards columns!
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[ Posted Tuesday, December 15th, 2015 – 23:33 UTC ]
Once again, welcome to a post-debate column. As always, these are my own snap reactions, uninfluenced by what others are thinking or saying. Also as always, any of the quotes below were hastily jotted down, and may not be word-for-word accurate. That's enough of an introduction, at this point, so let's just dive right in.
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[ Posted Wednesday, December 9th, 2015 – 18:29 UTC ]
On Monday, I took a look at the Republican nomination race, so I thought it'd be fair to check in today with the Democratic contest. One obvious reason why I (and others in the political commentary world) have been paying so much more attention to Republicans is the continuing volatility of the GOP campaign, which still has (as of this writing) 14 official candidates running. By comparison, the Democratic race is a lot more calm after half the field has already dropped out, which has left only three candidates still in the contest: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley.
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