Federal Election Commission filings released this week showed that conservatives groups are amassing an ocean of cash for the 2012 presidential campaign. Thanks to the likes of the Koch brothers, the Walton clan and other of the usual suspects on...
Friday's promising employment report showing that the U.S. added 243,000 jobs in January is just the latest sign of a slowly improving American economy. But that good news for the American people is bad news for the "Hope America Fails"...
Last summer, Congress ended the debt ceiling hostage-taking drama by agreeing to $1.2 trillion in automatic budgets cuts, half of them from the Pentagon, if a so-called "super committee" failed to come up with a plan to do so. Of...
One day after branding President Obama "really out of touch with what's happening in America," Mitt Romney marked his Florida primary victory by declaring, "I'm not concerned about the very poor." Of course, back in December Romney announced that "I'm...
On Monday, the New York Times claimed that many of the Republican governors who swept to power on 2010 "are adopting decidedly more moderate tones as they begin their sophomore year in office." But that premature conclusion was belied by...
Behind almost all of the disturbing issues raised by Mitt Romney's jaw-dropping tax returns stands one largely unchallenged conservative article of faith. Much lower tax rates for capital gains than income earned through labor, conservatives claim, spur investment, catalyze economic...
President Obama, Mitt Romney has declared repeatedly, "believes America should become a European-style welfare state." While Newt Gingrich warned of the Democrats' "secular-socialist machine," Rick Santorum insisted "President Obama is for income equality. That's socialism. It's worse yet, it's Marx
When it comes to paying his taxes, Mitt Romney may not have broken the rules; he just plays by a different set of them. His sub-15 percent effective tax rate revealed that Romney used his carried interest exemption, not-so-blind trusts,...
The least surprising element to Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union address was the Republican talking point that the President's policies have "made our economy worse." Speaker John Boehner regurgitated that point five times during his pre-buttal on Fox...
On Monday, goaltender Tim Thomas of the Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins became just the latest high profile athlete to snub President Obama by refusing to attend a White House ceremony honoring his team. Nevertheless, Thomas' insult to the presidency...
"Where's the beef?" With that sound bite, Walter Mondale deflated the insurgent bid of the "candidate of new ideas" Gary Hart for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination.* Twenty-eight years later, rising Republican White House hopeful Newt Gingrich may be about...
Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary by playing the victim card. Now, Mitt Romney hopes to win the Republican nomination by doing the same thing. But while Gingrich's ploy of portraying himself as the latest conservative target of a...
Over the past few days, conservative forces have mobilized to protect Mitt Romney from incoming fire over his rapidly multiplying tax scandals. Former Bush press flack Ari Fleischer and the Wall Street Journal editorial page predictably - and comically -...
As the outcry grows over Mitt Romney's shockingly low 15 percent tax rate, his bitter rival Newt Gingrich rushed to his defense. "My goal is not to raise Mitt Romney's taxes," Gingrich declared," It's to let everybody pay Mitt Romney's...
As the imbroglio grows over his mystery IRS returns, GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney is confronting not one but three tax scandals. It's bad enough that Romney pays only about 15 percent of his income to Uncle Sam each year, a...
Mitt Romney made twin revelations on taxes during last night's GOP debate in South Carolina. First, after previously claiming "I don't put out which tooth paste I use either," Romney suggested he might release his tax returns in April after...
If nothing else, Mitt Romney seems dedicated to proving that repetition of a lie will make it true. On no point is Romney's tilting against the windmill of truth more comically pathetic than his long-ago debunked claim that President Obama...
For any American concerned about the federal budget deficit, job one must be to collect all of the tax revenue owed to the United States Treasury. That's why supposed Republican deficit hawks simply aren't serious about the national debt. After...
His Democratic foe, Mitt Romney declared, would "drag America down to Europe's standards." His opponent represents, Romney insisted, "the old, classic, European caricature that we describe of big government, big taxation, welfare state." But those now-familiar slanders weren't directed at...
The past week has been a very good one for Mitt Romney's 17 grandchildren. On Wednesday, Romney told a New Hampshire audience he wanted to leave all of his estimated $250 estate to his grandkids. Then on Monday, a new...
A friendly piece of advice to John McCain: never use the words "Iraq" and "as I predicted" in the same sentence. After all, from his predictions of a short war in which Americans would be "greeted as liberators" and his...
In October, Mitt Romney famously advised struggling homeowners, "Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it...
That Mitt Romney's tax plan delivers a windfall for the wealthy and boosts the burden on lower income families while piling up trillions in new debt should come as no surprise. After all, that's true of every contender in the...
As their uncomfortable joint appearance Wednesday in New Hampshire made clear, 2008 GOP rivals Mitt Romney and John McCain really don't like each other. With good reason. Four years ago, Romney suggested McCain's out-of-control temper made him unfit while the...
Among the confused delusions vomited forth by Tea Party members was their comic slander of President Obama as both a fascist and a socialist. Now, those casual comparisons of Obama to Marx and Hitler are becoming commonplace among the Republican...
For months, likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has made Barack Obama's supposed "failure of leadership" a centerpiece of his campaign. But like his ill-advised comparison of President Obama to Marie Antoinette, Romney's sound bite could well boomerang. After all,...
If nothing else, 2011 was the Year of the Great Republican Lie about taxes. Desperate to preserve low rates for the richest Americans, GOP leaders pretended tax cuts increase government revenues, pay for themselves and magically spur supposed "job creators."...
Now just three days away, the Iowa caucus has entered its final, sentimental phase. With his presidential prospects rapidly vanishing, Newt Gingrich cried when asked about his mother. The increasingly likely GOP nominee Mitt Romney did not. But when it...
In 2008, the campaign of John McCain - a hundred-millionaire who literally lost count of how many homes he owned - tried to portray Barack Obama as an out-of-touch, arugula-eating elitist who vacationed in exotic Hawaii. Now Mitt Romney, the...
Why is Mitt Romney alone among the Republican presidential candidates in refusing to release his tax returns? And why is the former Massachusetts Governor also the only major GOP contender not calling for the complete elimination of the capital gains...