Rush Limbaugh is not a fan of the new report released this morning by the Republican National Committee about what the party needs to do to rebrand itself, saying the RNC completely misunderstood the lessons of the 2012 election.”The Republicans are just getting totally bamboozled right now. And they are entirely lacking in confidence. Which is what happens to every political party after an election in which they think they got shellacked,” the influential conservative radio host told his listeners this morning. “They think they got landslided, but they didn’t.”Continue Reading… … Read More
Romney to GOP: “I’m sorry”
Mitt Romney has a long and unique relationship with CPAC. In 2007, the former Massachusetts governor was a star, winning the CPAC straw poll as the conservative alternative to the more moderate front-runner, John McCain. A year later, Romney used the venue to make the surprise announcement that he was dropping out of the race. Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, who was tasked with introducing him, said last week on her radio show that she was given just a minute or two to rewrite her speech.In 2009, with the fiery Tea Party movement on the rise, a Yoda-like Romney warned conservatives against giving in to anger; in 2010, as a slew of young politicians was about to be sent to Congress, Romney was well received as a seasoned statesmen; in 2011, angling for the GOP nomination again, he tossed out right-wing red meat about Saul Alinksy and socialism to keep Ricks Perry and Santorum at bay.Continue Reading… … Read More
Mitt loves fluffernutter!
Tagg Romney posted these pictures of Mitt Romney on Instagram, in the process of celebrating his 66th birthday.[embedtweet id="311526609322639360"]Continue Reading… … Read More
You call this immigration reform?
Remember when a big takeaway from the 2012 elections was the changing political calculus behind immigration reform? After Republicans got trounced among Hispanics and Asian Americans, the political logic of legalization seemed all but inevitable, setting the stage for the passage of comprehensive immigration reform early this year.Fast forward four months, and we remain mired in the same tired debates we were having back in 2007.It was rational to assume that the election of 2012 would augur trouble for the partisans of business-as-usual in immigration policy. For a time, Republicans were thought to have learned a lesson or two from their historically pitiful performance at the polls among voters of color (with their share of the Latino vote plummeting from 44% in 2004 to 27% in 2012).Continue Reading… … Read More
12 for ’12: The year in politics
To close out 2012, I’ve looked back at each month and selected one individual who loomed large in the news and whose story tells us something significant about the year in politics. This is an admittedly imprecise exercise. Not all months are created equally. There are some months when multiple people could have been chosen; in other months, the pickings were slim. And in some cases, the names I’ve chosen offer a reminder that in political journalism, what seems vitally important one day can seem trivial the next. Anyway, on to the list:January: Newt GingrichTo anyone who’d just been teleported from the year 1999, the scene in Charleston, South Carolina on the night of January 21 had to be impossible to fathom: There was Newt Gingrich, the man who’d been marched off the political stage by his own party after a disastrous four-year run as House Speaker, declaring victory in a Republican presidential primary. And not just any primary: South Carolina, a historically pivotal early contest. And not just a victory – an absolute landslide.Continue Reading… … Read More
Is the right-wing media bubble impenetrable?
Republicans are responding to their recent losses not by moderating their rhetoric or rethinking their policy preferences, but by retreating deeper into the conservative bubble — and hardening it lest any objective reality intrude.In the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn approached the idea that villifying half the country as lazy “takers” dependent on the largesse of the makers may not be a way to win over the masses. He wrote, “Maybe Americans who have reason to feel insecure about their futures don’t find a government that promises to be there for them when they need it all that menacing.” But he then rejects the notion and calls for better propaganda. “Conservatives’ top priority,” he writes, “should be promoting an alternative—that in a highly competitive, global economy, the only real economic security for ordinary Americans is the security of opportunity.”Continue Reading… … Read More
