Pete Spiliakos

I’m now on twitter.  https://twitter.com/petespiliakos . . . . Continue Reading »

Maybe the most underreported political story is that President Obama just is not that popular. He has a 50.3% percent job approval rating in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. Obama only barely gets the approval of the median American. It isn’t like the Republicans have to work against . . . . Continue Reading »

It is too bad that this Phillip Klein article hasn’t gotten a lot more play. Klein points out that out that there isn’t even one panel on health care policy at the Conservative Political Action Conference. I remember seeing a speech by Chris DeMuth in the late-1990s where he said that . . . . Continue Reading »

I can’t do enough to recommend this Ross Douthat blog post about the David Frum-William Voegeli exchange over at the Claremont Review of Books. Douthat agrees with Voegeli that it is a good (and necessary) thing that Republicans followed Paul Ryan in embracing premium support Medicare because . . . . Continue Reading »

Via Reihan Salam, Jed Graham argues that the labor market faces some serious downside risks in the coming year as a result of Obamacare regulations and taxes coming on line in the while the economy remains fragile.  Graham believes that the cuts in the sequester would allow Obama to blame the . . . . Continue Reading »

Angelo Codevilla described the revolt of the Republican “country class” in which Goldwater won the Republican presidential nomination and Ronald Reagan eventually won the presidency. Codevilla traces the divisions within the Republican party to the New Deal where the Bob Taft wing . . . . Continue Reading »

Carl wrote a terrific piece about what he called our Liberal-Ivy ruling class and I found this passage from Angelo Codevilla to be quite striking: Thus by the turn of the twenty first century America had a bona fide ruling class that transcends government and sees itself at once as distinct from . . . . Continue Reading »

1. So the sequester was the Obama team’s idea and, if the sequester actually happens, a plurality of the public is going to blame the Republicans. 2. Sequester, fiscal cliff, debt ceiling. Do any of these terms have any meaning to the average person? 3. Obama got a bunch of tax increases with the . . . . Continue Reading »

In the last few presidential elections, the strategy of the Republican presidential candidate has been to talk about abortion only when asked. The purpose seems to be to signal pro-life views while not alienating voters for whom abortion is a low priority issue. This strategy is about mobilizing an existing voting base and not at all about persuasion. It is almost an exaggeration of the general Republican approach to electoral politics recently… . Continue Reading »

In the last few presidential elections, the strategy of the Republican presidential candidate has been to only talk about abortion when asked. The intention seems to be to signal pro-life views while not alienating voters for whom abortion is a low priority issue. This strategy is about mobilizing . . . . Continue Reading »