Is Obama Overrated?
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 24th, 2010 4:31 am by HL
Is Obama Overrated?
David Paul Kuhn, RealClearPolitics
CNN political analyst Gloria Borger recently posed a question: “How does the great communicator, Barack Obama, lose a communications battle?”The assumption is revealing. The Obama hyperbole has gradually faded into reality. Said to be a brilliant politician. Said to be a great communicator. The conventional perceptions of Obama were flawed from the outset. The political class has gradually come to recognize those flaws in isolation. But enough aberrations construct a norm. The presumed exceptions become the rule. And in time, the premises themselves require reexamination. Receive…
The GOP Divide: K Street vs. Tea Partiers
Timothy Carney, DC Examiner
Bob Dole, once the standard-bearer of the Republican Party, parlayed his political clout into personal wealth, and now he’s putting that wealth to work against a conservative Republican Senate candidate in a general election. Dole, now a lobbyist at Alston Bird, contributed $1,000 on Aug. 11 to the independent Senate campaign of Charlie Crist, who left the GOP in April.Dole’s may be an extreme case — because he’s actually backing a non-Republican — but it epitomizes the fundamental split within the Republican Party.
Australia Sends a Message to Its Political Class
Maintain the Bush Cuts; Now That’s Rich
Paul Krugman, New York Times
We need to pinch pennies these days. Don't you know we have a budget deficit? For months that has been the word from Republicans and conservative Democrats, who have rejected every suggestion that we do more to avoid deep cuts in public services and help the ailing economy.But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.
GOP Poised for Big Gains in Governorships
Lou Cannon, Politics Daily
It is a recurrent conceit of Democrats and Republicans alike that a great political realignment that will produce a lasting majority lurks just around the corner. In the more than two decades since Ronald Reagan left the White House, the U.S. electorate has been divided roughly equally. But when President George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, his strategist Karl Rove interpreted the outcome as a harbinger of long-term Republican control. Rove wasn't alone in this view. With the GOP holding the White House and Congress and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, some …