Apparently, Obama’s BP Oil Spill performance has been a total disaster. Just check the news. He’s weak, aloof, unemotive, Maureen Down explains. “Mr. President, take command,” David Gergen urges on CNN. James Carville exhorts: “This president needs to tell BP, “I’m your daddy.” And Peggy Noonan, writes, simply, for WSJ: “I don’t see how you politically survive this.” Count me among [...]
In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,there has been no shortage of finger-pointing. There’s plenty of blame to go around, no doubt, but there is one group that the Right has mysteriously implicated in this disaster: environmentalists. In an editorial in the Washington Post last Friday, Charles Krauthammer wrote that environmentalists are partially to blame for the spill [...]
Sam Barr’s most recent post makes the rather shocking claim that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky being vacated by the retiring Jim Bunning, is a racist, or at least that he is not a non-racist. Sam deduces this from the fact that Mr. Paul is not a “consistent libertarian,” that he “picks and [...]
As I said yesterday, the Kentucky Senate race between Rand Paul and Jack Conway should be a real battle. Paul is probably not helping himself by insisting, as many libertarian ideologues but few Senate hopefuls do, that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was wrong to ban racial discrimination in private establishments like restaurants and movie theaters. INTERVIEWER: Would you have [...]
Since the recent explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the politics of the climate bill have become more complicated, according to the New York Times. The newly perceived safety risks make it difficult to include increasing offshore drilling as part of any new policy. The Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill is being pitched as an energy independence and climate [...]
That’s right. That’s Mark Warner, junior Democratic Senator from Virginia, who won an astonishing 65% of the vote in 2008 (besting Obama by 12 percent), after a highly acclaimed term of Governor from 2002-2006. That’s the same Mark Warner who was rumored to be considering a Presidential run in 2008, a favorite among the establishment elite for his mixture of [...]
This week’s big environmental news, namely that President Obama has authorized major offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska, may not be popular with the left but it’s hardly a surprising move, or a necessarily wrong decision. Although he long opposed (and still does oppose) drilling for oil in Alaska’s spectacular Bristol Bay, Obama has consistently been [...]
The Obama administration environmental agenda reemerged on Thursday with the announcement of additional restrictions on strip mining, new fuel efficiency standards for cars, and expanded offshore drilling. These measures may have some merit, but a solution to America’s energy problems will require more comprehensive reform that reduces carbon emissions, eliminates dependence on foreign energy, minimizes economic impact, and is politically [...]
How much have Texan oilmen shaped America? Reporter Brian Burrough follows his last corporate epic, Barbarians at the Gate, with a new book, The Big Rich, replacing skyscrapers and three piece suits with oil wells and Stetson hats. It is a sprawling story set across several continents, chronicling gumption, love, betrayal, politics, family squabbles, and Muammar al-Gaddafi. But if the [...]
Congressional campaigns hinge on local issues This year’s election season was a tough one for Republicans running for Congress. Throughout the summer, leads in national polls and in underlying dynamics allowed Democrats to shape the tenor of many races. Yet history shows that national advantage often transfers to the ballot box in unexpected ways. While the national political climate impacted [...]
The GOP's push to recovery is not an easy one
After Barack Obama’s victory on Tuesday Paul Krugman wrote that the election wasn’t “just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.” Krugman seemed to suggest that people like Karl Rove are monsters because they contributed offensive ideas to the American political discourse, like the [...]
“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them,” Caroline Kennedy wrote in January in her endorsement of Barack Obama. From the start of his campaign, Barack Obama has wrapped himself in the mantle, and the myth, of the Kennedy family. But by turning down public financing for the fall [...]
Republicans lately seem to be trying harder to be funny than ever before. And in many cases, they’re actually succeeding—albeit in a a “Charlie Cook thinks we’re screwed anyway, so we might as well stop pretending to take ourselves seriously” kind of way. First there was this web ad put out July 29 by the RNC right after Barack [...]
