An Arizona political non-profit that spent millions in 2012 supporting Republicans and opposing President Obama told the IRS in September that it would not spend money to influence elections, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. The organization, Americans for Responsible Leadership, run by a group of mostly little-known Arizona Republicans, also spent millions of dollars…
Tag: gop
Ten People We Are Grateful Are No Longer Members Of Congress
Under the Twentieth Amendment, “[t]he terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January.” Accordingly, as of this very moment, many members of 112th Congress are now unemployed. Here are ten that…
Analysis: Republicans start new Congress bruised and divided
In the wake of bruising fights in their own ranks over the “fiscal cliff” and aid for victims of superstorm Sandy – Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives open a new Congress on Thursday more divided than ever. While their leader, Speaker John Boehner, seems in no danger of losing his position because of…
CNN Poll: Are GOP policies too extreme?
Just over half the public says that the GOP should give up more than the Democrats in any bipartisan solution to the countrys problems, according to a new national survey. And a CNN/ORC International poll also indicates that a slight majority of Americans sees the Republican partys policies and views as too extreme, a…
House GOP Committee Chairs Will All Be White Men In Next Congress
House committee chairs are typically chosen based on their seniority on the committee, and most committees dont have Republican women or minorities at senior levels. In addition, there just arent that many House Republican women and minorities to go around. In the 113th Congress, which kicks off in January, House Republicans will have 20…
Americans’ Preference Shifts Toward One-Party Government
A record-high 38% of Americans prefer that the same party control the presidency and Congress, while a record-low 23% say it would be better if the president and Congress were from different parties and 33% say it doesn’t make any difference. While Americans tend to lean toward one-party government over divided government in presidential election…
46 Republicans Claim Wind Credits Are Too ‘Costly’ After Voting To Retain Billions In Big Oil Subsidies
The future of wind tax credits is still tied up in Congress as the clock runs down to extend the production tax credit for wind (PTC) expiring at the end of the year. This week, 47 House Republicans urged House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to let them expire. Although GOP districts hold 81 percent of…
Romney Tax Returns: Days Late, Dollars Short, Still Incomplete
The top-line takeaway from the returns isn’t particularly good—his 2011 tax rate was 14.1 percent, below the effective tax rate for most Americans despite Romney’s vast wealth. (The middle 20 percent of householdspaid a 16 percent federal income tax rate in 2010). Most of Romney’s income is from capital gains, which is taxed at a lower…
The Problem of Conservative Intellectuals
Alas, all of the alleged crimes these conservative “intellectuals” attributed to Obama and the MSM were imaginary. The ineptitude of the Romney campaign—as well as their own commitment to the ignorance (and ideological obsessions) of their respective constituencies—has led them to make themselves appear ridiculous before the world. Television and radio bookers, university lecture agents,…
Mitt Romney will probably get 95 electoral votes from ‘moocher’ states. Obama will probably get 5.
Mitt Romney’s comments on the 47 percent of Americans who make too little to pay income tax and “will vote for this president no matter what” are causing him some political problems this morning. But could they cause him any electoral problems? Is he really insulting anyone who would already be willing to vote for him? Actually, yes. The…
U.S. state officials in stealth mode on health exchanges
Republicans working on exchanges have been accused of party disloyalty, and that opposition has intensified after the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act in late June. In Colorado, Tea Party members tried to expunge Republican Amy Stephens for co-sponsoring exchange legislation. In Michigan, the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity circulated petitions to kill…
The GOP Throws a Tampa Tantrum
A major American political party, shorn of all moderating influence, has finally, unalterably, gone insane. The striking thing is how many of the estimated 15,000 journalists who were with me in Tampa for the 2012 convention were missing this story of a lifetime—one sixty years in the making. To be fair, the dramaturgy confused a…
Yelp flamewar breaks out over pizza owner’s Obama bearhug
The latest comments on Big Apple Pizza’s Yelp page aren’t about anchovies. After President Obama stopped by and received a bear hug from owner Scott Van Nuzer, comments started being posted on the pizza shop’s page on Yelp, a site for posting reviews of local businesses. With two 5-star reviews dating back to 2009, Big Apple…
Romney Says He Supports Popular Obamacare Provisions On NBC, Quietly Reverses Hours Later On Conservative Website
This morning on NBC, Mitt Romney said that “there are a number of things that I like” about Obamacare and suggested he would retain: 1. The guarantee that insurance companies couldn’t discriminate against people with pre-exisiting conditions, and 2. The provision that allows young adults to stay on their parents plan. Watch it: Just hours…
15 Percent of Ohio GOPers Say Romney Deserves Credit for Bin Laden Raid
In what some (one guy on Twitter) have called “a stroke of comic genius,” Public Policy Polling decided to ask Ohio Republicans who they thought “deserved more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. In what some (my colleague Tim Murphy) have called “the greatest thing ever,” a full…
Republicans, the Post-Truth Party
The acceptance speeches by Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney at the GOP convention were only slightly more grounded in reality than Clint Eastwood’s conversation with an empty chair. Ryan is infamous for his pack of lies, from the attempt to blame President Obama for the closing of a Wisconsin GM factory that began shutting down…
GOP Nominee Ryan: I Didnt Vote For The Defense Cuts I Voted For
Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has gotten in hot water before for criticizing President Obama for the very same defense cuts that he voted for in 2011. When confronted with this incongruity today on Face The Nation, Ryan simply denied that he ever voted for the cuts, telling an incredulous Norah O’Donnell that he didn’t actually vote…
How Romney’s Economic Plan Would Gut Infrastructure Investments (Like Levees)
As Romney tours the storm damage, it’s worth notingthat government-funded levees prevented far greater damage from occurring in New Orleans, seven years after the city was battered (and the levees failed) during Hurricane Katrina: Isaac’s whistling winds lashed this city and the storm dumped nearly a foot of rain on its desolate streets, but the system…
How The Media Soft-Plays Paul Ryan’s Lies: ‘Factual Shortcuts,’ ‘Perceived Inaccuracies,’ ‘Questionable Claims’
Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) speech to the Republican National Convention last night was chock-full of bald-faced lies. For example, Ryan blamed the Obama for S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating (despite the fact that S&P blamed GOP policies) and blasted Obama for failing to heed the Bowles-Simpson debt commission (which Ryan torpedoed). Yet political reporters…