National Party News

How ironic that as soon as Michael Steele, the RNC chairman, announced that the Republicans didn’t have a chance to capture the House, Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd announced that they were quitting the Senate.

Steele is brilliant. His strategy must have been to fake them out. Tell the Democrats that we don’t have a chance to win so they feel more comfortable in calling it quits.

History turns in a moment: Harper’s Ferry, Trafalgar, Dien Bien Phu. The Democrats may have seen such a moment with Sen. Ben Nelson this week in Nebraska, so it might be worth marking that page. At year’s end it is worth looking forward to what is likely to rise ahead. These four will be key: Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and William Daley.

We need to cut Michael Steele some slack. If someone is willing to pay him big bucks to make a speech, he'd be a fool to say no. True, he has gotten into trouble about some of the dopey things he's said, but he may as well make some money for them.

It's not that there's a conflict of interest; Democrats in particular should realize that. They constantly charge that Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Steele heads a party that always favors the wealthy — those who can afford to pay for his words of wisdom.

The United States Senate is marching toward history this week, but not the kind they will welcome once the dust settles from the fallout of the healthcare reform debate. There are so many political favors buried in this bill that reporters simply don’t have the time to uncover them all. Read more...

There was a time — before Starbucks, before Bill and Hillary, before the Rolling Stones — when liberals supported working-class people. No longer. But back then no one represented the strong and fearless heartbeat of American working people like West Virginia coal miners. They were the stuff of legend chronicled in folklore, bluegrass and folk music. In the ’50s we’d listen in pained silence for word about mine disasters, even way up here in New England. We shared in the lives of the miners. If they could find the strength to survive in the mines, we could survive on the surface. They were the canaries of our own desire. No longer, as the recent occurrence at Sundial, W.Va., makes clear.

It's a crying shame that the Republican Party continues to allow former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to go off half-cock on issues that only in the long run harm the party, not withstanding her own political future.

I'm sorry, Americans are beyond questioning President Barack Obama's birthright. They don't believe for a second that Medicare administrators want to institutionalize Euthanasia for seniors. Read more...

A.B. Stoddard and Republican strategist John Feehery discuss how the Republican Party could open itself up to a centrist base, and how the abortion amendment might be the downfall of the Democrats' healthcare bill.

Progressives who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate the inauguration of the president to bring the change they thought they had won in election 2008 are asking: What kind of change did we win?

Now the House of Representatives has passed the healthcare bill, though the most transforming policy, a single-payer system, was not even brought to a vote! For the base of the Democratic Party, it was bad enough there was never a push for the most progressive policy, members were afraid to even vote on it!

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told us all we needed to know this week about the divide that threatens the Democratic Party's majorities in next year's midterm elections.

"We got walloped," said Warner, a former governor of Virginia, about Democrats losing both gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, in his home state by 17 points.

Sarah Palin couldn't deliver New York's 23rd district for Republicans with her endorsement of Conservative third-party candidate Doug Hoffman, but candidates across the country are still scared of the power of Palin, Tea Parties and the Club for Growth combined.

The morning after Hoffman went down and a Democrat was elected in NY-23 for the first time since 1870, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) got to work soliciting an endorsement from Palin for his campaign to win President Barack Obama's old Senate seat next year. Read more...