Pete Spiliakos

It looks like the Republican National Committee might be planning to “limit the number of debates and taking steps so that the forum is friendlier.” I think making the presidential debate forum “friendlier” is a mistake. A “friendly” debate allows snake oil . . . . Continue Reading »

Carl and Peter are right to focus on the combination of statism, lawlessness and raw injustice that characterized Jim Crow. The consciousness of Jim Crow influences how people hear contemporary debate. Lots of well meaning Tea Party folks talk about taking the country back, worry about losing . . . . Continue Reading »

I agree with about eighty percent of this Liz Mair post. Some of it is similar to the stuff I wrote yesterday, but better written and more detailed. One area where I slightly diverge (not really disagree) is in her description of the Republican disadvantage in technology. Mair writes that many tech . . . . Continue Reading »

Karl Rove has a new scam plan to vaccum money from gullible donors who don’t know that he is out of touch save the Republican party. Rove’s super-PAC is supposedly going to help “electable” Republicans against unelectable Tea Party insurgents. Who knew that the problem was . . . . Continue Reading »

Matt Lewis writes over at the Daily Caller:  Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and conservative new media outlets are powerful, to be sure — but can they compete with the evening news, the New York Times, and Hollywood, etc.? I don’t think that is quite the right way to think of it. Fox . . . . Continue Reading »

See if you can find a clip of Senator Ted Cruz taking apart Chuck Hagel today.  Hagel  came off incredibly shifty and dishonest, while Cruz showed that being rhetorically tough doesn’t mean being bombastic or rude.  Something about Cruz’s calm, unforced courtesy made the . . . . Continue Reading »

Consider yourself warned, 1. It turns out we had slow economic growth last quarter. Actually worse than that. It appears that the economy actually shrank a bit - though the GDP estimates are approximations so we might actually have merely had very slow growth. I’ve read somewhere that a sharp . . . . Continue Reading »

My daughter has pneumonia so blogging is going to be light for a little while, but I have a little time now . . . David Weigel is a little too snarky (though I should talk) in this post, but he does include a revealing comment from Senator Ted Cruz.  Cruz is an exceedingly articulate and . . . . Continue Reading »

If we were having a surge rather than a drawdown in Afghanistan, would we still have gotten last week’s announcement opening the ground combat arms to women? . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m not even thinking about the next presidential race, but, if I had to make a choice right now for Republican nominee, it would be Bobby Jindal (since Mitch Daniels seems out of the running.)  I got around reading his big speech yesterday (h/t to Julie Ponzi) and here are a few hasty . . . . Continue Reading »