Columns ‹ Opinion
“War on the Middle Class”? – It’s the Values, Stupid
As the presidential contest heats up, President Obama and his Democratic allies will only intensify their attack on Mitt Romney’s Republicans for waging “war on the middle class.”
The best GOP response to this charge is to insist that liberals have been assaulting middle-class values for years—and it’s those values, not government giveaways, that...
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Obama’s Deepening Hole
A raft of new polls underscore the political free fall Barack Obama finds himself in.
As an incumbent president matched against a nominee from the other party who survived a grueling primary season, Obama should be rolling in dough and enjoying a double-digit lead nationally and healthy head-starts in the key battleground states.
Instead he finds himself in a...
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Economic Truth is In the Numbers
The outcome of the upcoming electoral battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will depend on public perceptions of the president’s economic stewardship, with particular emphasis on his performance on the all-important issue of jobs.
Has the White House compiled an impressive record of “putting Americans back to work” as the Democrats proudly boast,...
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Team Romney Invades The Chicago Gang’s OODA Loop, With An Assist From New Media
Rich Stowell is a citizen-soldier. I met him in the summer of 2010 when he was assigned to shepherd me around Kosovo on my visit to the California National Guard deployed there.
Rich is also a citizen-journalist, one who is very kind to me in his most recent column for the Washington Times. I don’t mention him because of that column, but because it...
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Baby Names and Gender Differences
According to the widely accepted stereotype, young adults in the United States tend to disregard traditional gender roles and minimize distinctions between male and female. But when it comes to naming their babies—one of the bigger decisions any couple is likely to make—official reports show that today’s child-bearing generation affirms age-old...
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Talk Radio, Online College, Deep Content and the 2012 Campaign: Embracing the Disruption
What do New York Times’ columnist David Brooks, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, and Thomas Nelson Publishing Chairman Michael Hyatt all have in common?
In addition to being guests on my radio show yesterday, that is?
Each is thinking long and hard about the spreading disruption brought about by the new media revolution.
In a May 3rd...
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GOP’s Worst Nightmare: Electoral Stalemate, Constitutional Crisis
In looking ahead toward the November election, Republican strategists should take proactive steps to avoid a damaging, dangerous conclusion to the presidential race and to prevent the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama.
The problem stems from the lopsided margins President...
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The Return of Rev. Wright and the Small Donor Surge To Romney
“He is a bitter man…Jeremiah Wright is a joke…[What] Obama’s crazy preacher is saying this week” is a “side show.”
These quotes are from my interview Wednesday with Bloomberg View’s Jonathan Alter, the transcript of which is here.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright is relevant again, and about to get even more relevant, and it...
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Banning Crosses, Erasing History
A simmering controversy surrounding the “Ground Zero Cross” exposes the intolerance and absolutism behind ongoing battles over religious symbols on public property. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not Christian conservatives who normally start these bitter disputes. It’s more often atheist activists who seek to alter the long-standing...
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“Leading from Behind” On Same Sex Marriage: The President’s Foreign Policy Finds Its Domestic Policy Expression as Joe Biden Pushes Barack Obama To Flip Flop On Marriage, Again.
President Obama is a thorough-going man of the left obsessed with power and thus in re-election, so his decision Wednesday to declare for same sex marriage is hardly a surprise. The only surprise is that his timing was so nakedly political and reflexive. The president was pushed into declaring his support by his Vice President and his Secretary of Education, and...
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The Last Boomer?
If Mitt Romney succeeds in his quest for the presidency, the media will focus on his status as the first Mormon in the White House. But it’s even more significant that he’d represent the last of another controversial cohort: the final Baby Boomer to occupy the Oval Office, or even to top the ticket of a major political party.
After more than twenty years...
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The Student-Loan Scam
Does it make sense for the government to take taxes from the big majority of Americans who never managed to win college degrees in order to subsidize the pricey education of the fortunate few who get to attend top universities?
Why is it fair to increase burdens on stressed-out working families so the feds can reduce future interest payments on student loans...
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An Indictment of the President’s Touchdown Dance
On Tuesday morning the Wall Street Journal carried a very unusual op-ed.
The author was a former Attorney General of the United States, Michael Mukasy, who had served on the federal bench for 18 years before taking on the top job in federal law enforcement. As a federal district court judge, Mukasey had presided over the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman, the “blind...
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Leaders from Nowhere—and Everywhere
The two candidates for president share more than their Harvard Law degrees and their fiercely competitive instincts: both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney convey an odd but undeniable sense of rootlessness, bearing connections to so many different corners of the country that they don’t seem to originate from any place in particular.
That disconnect from any...
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A Strong Nominee In A Strong Position: Romney Turns On The Engine
The zombie narrative of a brokered convention is dead, and Politico is having to lay off the brokered convention team.
Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee and a very strong one who has emerged from the primary process focused on the economy and in a dead heat with the president.
Romney’s speech last night was the best he has given, and it must reflect the...
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The Battle of the Buzzwords, 2012
Presidential campaigns often reduce themselves to words or phrases, slogans or gaffes.
These fragments actually represent much more than the specific words employed, but very often condense enormous themes, important differences or character issues into a compact but complete message package. Five examples of years defined by a few words:
1976: Poland is free....
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