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Hugh Hewitt
Professor Hugh Hewitt is a lawyer, law professor and broadcast journalist whose nationally syndicated radio show is heard in more than 120 cities across the United States every weekday afternoon. Professor Hewitt has been a frequent guest on CNN, Fox News Network, and MSNBC, and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. Hewitt writes daily for his blog, HughHewitt.com, which is among the most visited political blogs in the U.S. He is also a weekly columnist for The Washington Examiner and Townhall.com.
Writer's WebsiteThe GOP’s Immigration Mess
On Saturday I will be debating Mark Kirkorian on immigration policy before the National Review Institute.
I am a “wet,” on the topic. Have been since I opposed California’s proposition 187 in 1994.
Mark, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, is a “dry.”
Here’s the interesting thing about out...
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Hugh Hewitt: A gloomy swearing-in
Attendance at Monday’s inauguration is expected to be down by almost a million from the 2009 swearing-in of President Obama.
Why? President Obama ran the most negative, content-free presidential campaign in modern American history, and since his re-election has worked to reinforce his partisan edge, not soften it.
His two press conferences since Nov. 6...
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What’s Happening in Williamsburg: The GOP “Retreats”
The welcoming remarks of an unidentified member of the senior GOP House leadership to the assembled Republican conference gathering for a “retreat” in Williamsburg have leaked:
Welcome to Williamsburg, Members of the House Republican Conference. We hope you enjoy your retreat.Perhaps we should begin with that age old tradition: Look to your left....
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Hugh Hewitt: The milk carton Republicans
Bill Bryson’s “In a Sunburned Country” is a must-read for anyone headed to Australia. But, even if you aren’t headed Down Under, the story Bryson relates of the Aussie Prime Minister Harold Holt has some relevance this week.
Holt simply vanished into the surf in December 1967. His body was never recovered, and various wild speculations...
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Get A Bill Passed, Mr. Speaker
Republicans are 1-4 against President Obama, having lost two elections and two big showdowns with him. The only time the GOP won a round was after the blowout of 2010, and that win was limited in time –a two year extension of the Bush era tax rates.
There are at least three more showdowns with the president ahead, one of them in the immediate future as the...
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Hugh Hewitt: What Speaker Boehner should say at the Republican Party retreat
Ghostwriting is supposed to be anonymous, so you won’t know what I have penned for others over the years.
Here’s the exception to the rule, since I wasn’t asked to write it: John Boehner’s brief address to the upcoming GOP House retreat.
“Thank you and thanks to Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., for organizing this weekend. The...
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The GOP and Round Two
President Obama won the first round of his second term, but thanks to Mitch McConnell the beating wasn’t as severe as it could have been.
The period between the election and the turn of the calendar was dominated by the president, with Speaker John Boehner as his foil. The Speaker always seemed to assume the president was negotiating in good faith, even as the...
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Hugh Hewitt: The Grand Bargain of 1790
Jon Meacham’s wonderful new biography, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, has within it four pages of particular interest to today’s governing class in D.C.
In late April 1790, the new United States was poised on its first fiscal cliff, a massive public debt held by many but not all states, dating from the Revolutionary War. Some states had acted...
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‘The Great Divider’ preps for term two
President Obama used the six weeks after his election to remain in full campaign mode and attack the GOP relentlessly with the intent of marginalizing House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, as an effective leader of the Republican opposition.
He succeeded. Decisively. And thus defined his second term as a bitter grind before it even began, just as he signaled to...
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Memo to the Speaker and the GOP Caucus
Many of you are preparing to break your word to your supporters and vote to raise taxes.
You have talked yourselves into believing that there is no choice. You fear the voters’ wrath because the MSM tells you a failure to reach a deal with the president will produce that wrath. This is the MSM we all know is so fair and disinterested on such things.
You are...
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On Cleveland Sports and the House GOP
As a lifelong and long-suffering Cleveland sports fan, I know what happens next to the House GOP: a demoralizing loss, followed by a pledge of rebuilding and perhaps a coaching/managerial change.
Indeed, that is what is underway with both of the clubs I have followed for 50 years. Terry Francona has arrived in the Indians’ dugout and the front office has just...
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Hugh Hewitt: Rescuing Defense from the fiscal hostage crisis
Concern for national security has defined the GOP since Ike, but that priority has been missing from the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.
The House Republicans could easily pass and send to the Senate a bill exempting the Department of Defense from the sequester and thus removing our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines from the impact of the looming...
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Defending Defense: How the GOP Can Escape the Budget Box Canyon
Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio wowed the Beltway conservatives last night, which is a little bit like the British cheering a successful evacuation from Dunkirk. The GOP indeed lives to fight another day, and that day will be here quickly as 2014’s candidates are already declaring –Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito for the United States Senate in West Virginia...
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“Not A Moment To Be Lost”: Ayotte, Cruz, Kyl and Capito Show The Way
The only thing worse than losing in politics is quitting after a loss since the vast and great American sport of politics never stops, and increasingly doesn’t even pause for the holidays.
Which is why I am grateful for Kelly Ayotte, Ted Cruz, Jon Kyl and Shelley Moore Capito.
In the weeks since the election, New Hampshire Senator Ayotte could have gone to...
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David Mamet’s The Anarchist: The New Left’s Terrible Triumph
In New York Friday to appear on Sean Hannity’s program, I stayed an extra day to catch an early performance of David Mamet’s new play The Anarchist, now in its second week of previews. Sitting next to Marcello, a Brazilian venture capitalist, we chatted about the election just past.
“I do not understand you Americans. Dogs on car roofs?...
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Memo to the States’ Governors and AGs on The Decision On Obamacare’s Exchanges: Go Churchill Or Go Home
With the president mobilizing for a barnstorming tour in support of massive tax hikes and to, in effect, overturn last week’s vote to keep the House in GOP hands and the gavel in John Boehner’s –details here on the president’s plan– the GOP is getting organized in the House and laying down markers.
The media is focused on...
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