National Party News

And House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) thought he had had the worst week in Washington, D.C. Seems Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele came to Boehner's rescue with a blunder so amazing — well, to borrow some of Boehner's metaphor, it is kind of like comparing a nuclear weapon to an ant.
 
Last night Steele was caught on camera claiming that Afghanistan was a war of President Obama's choosing, not something the United States wanted to engage in, and that the one thing you don't do, if you are a student of history, is to "engage in a land war in Afghanistan." According to an account in The Hill, Steele even went so far as to say President Obama was trying to be "too cute by half" in demonizing the war in Iraq while deeming Afghanistan the right war. Read more...

While this will cause some gnashing of teeth in the West Wing of the White House, and is one of the great ironies of our political age, former President William Jefferson Clinton is the one person in America who can save the Democratic Party from the kind of defeat in November that could destroy the Obama presidency.

The best-case outcome for Democrats today is that if they don't lose control of the House or the Senate, they will lose enough seats to make Washington completely ungovernable, and make the Obama agenda completely unpassable, and politically destroy the two years leading into the presidential campaign of 2012.

I have a theory about the differences between a Republican primary and a general election. To win a Republican primary, you have to win a majority of white men. To win a general election, though (and this is in Senate seats and in politically competitive House seats), you have to win a majority (or at least get fairly close) of white married women.

Two articles caught my eye this morning. The New York Times has a front-page article about a new strategy from House Democrats, which presents a clear contrast from the House Republicans. Where Republicans announced an aggressive push to interact with the voting public with a new campaign called America Speaks Out, the Democrats took a different tack. They avoided the people.

Specifically, according to the Times, they avoided town-hall meetings. Read more...

Anxiety over the growing fiscal crisis has prevented the Democratic majority in Congress from being able to write a budget this year, so divided are they over spending, deficits and debt. Their struggle this week to find the votes for a "jobs" bill that would extend unemployment insurance (not paid for) and business tax cuts arose from the same political pressure — more and more Democrats are joining Republicans, demanding that government start paying for what it spends.

Read more...

A.B. Stoddard is joined by Chris Kofinis and John Feehery, Democratic and Republican strategists, to discuss the Tea Party's relationship with the GOP and the administration's reaction to the Gulf oil spill.

A little more than a year ago, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) came up with what I thought was a smart idea. He convinced a group of distinguished Republicans, including Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, that the GOP needed to spend some time listening to the voters to find out what they wanted from their government.

He founded the National Council for a New America with that express purpose. Why don’t we just listen for a change?

Utah Sen. Bob Bennett's (R) failure on Saturday to secure his party's nomination to fill another term reveals many truisms beginning to form during this election cycle — some of them more a reflection on the sitting senator and his own failings than some political juggernaut movement bending conservative candidates to its every whim.

Over the past several weeks we have received an unusual volume of mail requesting that research and writings be done regarding the Republican Party and its significance in advancing the plight of American blacks in this nation.

While pollsters and high priest of blackness continue to remind us that black support for the Republican Party has significantly dropped since the election of President Barack Obama, we don't hear much about the many serious black conservative candidates running for Congress today with an excellent shot at winning.

After spending an entire year on healthcare reform, it appears congressional Democrats, sinking in the polls, have now decided to push on regulatory reform, revisit oversight of regulations for the mining and oil drilling industries and pass energy reform and — yes — an immigration overhaul as well. This is the definition of bring it on. Read more...