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Republicans Need Colin Powell's "No-Holds-Barred" Debate
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2009 Comment (10)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Being rendered by the electorate in 2008, for all intents and purposes, temporarily irrelevant, Republicans are engaged in something that resembles, in its intensity, a shooting war for control of what remains of the brand and its political apparatus.
Many of the party's leaders and pretenders to leadership are busily fighting over what amounts to being the absolute rule of the smallest hill in the biggest part of the land. Rather than seek ways to broaden the party's appeal—in campaign school we were taught that winning was about addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division—they are seeking at all times and in all ways to sharpen the knife's edge in an effort to hone the most conservative—and therefore most exclusive—platform possible.
This is a foolish strategy.
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California Rejects Higher Taxes—Obama, Reid and Pelosi Should Take Note
Tweet Share on Facebook May 20, 2009 Comment (11)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
California voters Tuesday put the truth to the lie that the tax rebellion has come to an end. Almost two-thirds of the electorate (65.4 percent) cast ballots against Proposition 1A, a measure which would have increased taxes in the cash-strapped "Golden State" by $16 billion.
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Obama Can Act Responsibly on Guantanamo or Please the Liberals, But Not Both
Tweet Share on Facebook May 20, 2009 Comment (12)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In a stunning example that where you stand, in Washington, depends on where you sit, Senate Democrats handed Barack Obama the first major defeat of his presidency by refusing to fund his effort to close the U.S. detention facility for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat said the plan to close "Gitmo" is not dead but that funding will not be forthcoming until Obama devises an "acceptable plan to handle the closure and transfer the detainees," the Associated Press reported Tuesday. Durbin's announcement means that Senate Democrats are now in line with their colleagues in the House of Representatives on what became a signature issue, linked to an important Obama promise, during the 2008 presidential campaign.
To put this in perspective, it's as though the Republicans on Capitol Hill decided-while the majority party in Congress-to withhold funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan until President Bush could show them a plan for winning the war.
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Obama's Notre Dame Speech Was an Alarming Violation of Church-State Separation
Tweet Share on Facebook May 18, 2009 Comment (98)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There are a number of dimensions to the controversy over Notre Dame's granting of an honorary degree to President Obama as well as to the speech he gave there at Sunday's graduation ceremony. As someone who is not Catholic—but who does have Catholic roots in my family tree—I had not intended to add my thoughts to the commentary so ably provided on both sides of the issues by so many others.
Having read the speech, after being urged to do so by my Thomas Jefferson Street colleague Mary Kate Cary in her Monday post, it occurs to me however there is much about its message that should give all people of faith reason to pause.
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Gingrich Is Right on Pelosi: Her Spin on Torture Is "Vicious and Dishonest"
Tweet Share on Facebook May 15, 2009 Comment (33)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is on dangerous ground.
Her explanations about what she knew about "waterboarding" and when she knew it have been through so many printings they are already in the paperback edition. Having expected to use the torture issue as a hammer to whack the Bush administration well into the next election cycle—all the better to deflect attention from her party's legislative agenda—she now finds herself at the center of the debate herself, having now claimed the Central Intelligence Agency lied to her.
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Homeland Security's Napolitano Working to be First Obama Cabinet Member Axed
Tweet Share on Facebook May 14, 2009 Comment (19)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano certainly seems to be working very hard toward becoming the first Obama cabinet official to get the ax. As both Robert Schlesinger and I have written about here on the Thomas Jefferson Street blog, Napolitano came under fire in mid-April after a report titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" was published on the department's website.
The report, really an exercise in political profiling, was prepared for state and local political officials, allegedly to help keep them informed about the activities of political extremist groups on the right. But what it amounted to, as I wrote at the time, was "Little more than a nine-page screed against phantoms" employing McCarthyist tactics to smear anti-tax groups, anti-abortion activists, Second Amendment supporters, returning veterans, and others using broad brushstrokes. Nevertheless, Napolitano said she stood by the report, saying at the time she had been briefed on the topic before it was released.
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Poll Shows Obama, Democrats' Liberal Economic Agenda Losing Voter Support
Tweet Share on Facebook May 13, 2009 Comment (13)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Even before the White House announced its record, $1.8 trillion, single-year deficit projection, the Republicans were gaining considerable ground on the Democrats among voters who expressed a preference concerning which party is better able to handle the country's economic woes.
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Obama's Spending a Shaky Foundation for Consumer Confidence
Tweet Share on Facebook May 12, 2009 Comment (3)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
On Monday the White House revised the upcoming year's deficit projections upward to nearly $2 trillion, a single year record. Budget Director Peter Orszag blamed the gap in expenditures over receipts on the economic crisis Barack Obama inherited upon taking office.
Strictly speaking, this is an inaccurate assessment in that it fails to acknowledge the record amount of spending Obama and the Democrats in Congress have proposed, promoted, and authorized in an effort to stimulate the economy. To them, as it is for many of Obama's supporters around the country, the bad news is still all Bush's fault.
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Obama Must Stop Blaming Bush, Accept Responsibility for Failing Economic Policies
Tweet Share on Facebook May 11, 2009 Comment (219)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
According to White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, as Reuters reported Monday, "High U.S. budget deficits are being driven by an economic crisis that President Barack Obama inherited."
That really says it all.
It is true that the U.S. economy was in bad shape when Obama came into office. But he and his top appointees want us to believe that their preferred solution—pushing huge increases in federal spending in his so-called economic recovery act and his budget for the upcoming fiscal year though Congress to prime the Keynesian pump, putting money in the hands of their political constituencies—are in no way related to the just announced record $1.8 trillion federal deficit.
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Obama Offers Unserious Spending Cuts. Congressional Democrats Reject Them Anyway.
Tweet Share on Facebook May 8, 2009 Comment (2)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Having surfed across his first 100 days on a flood of new spending, President Barack Obama is now trying to tack back toward the center. Or at least he is trying to look like he is trying to.
