Reading the Bill is a Waste of Time

Bruce Bartlett articulates something that I've been wanting to write about for a while about the "read the bill" nonsense, and since he did a better job of it than I would have, I'll just direct you to him: The 1,990-page length of the health reform bill is once again bringing forth demands that members of Congress be required to read ...

Republicans Win Big in Local Races

The loss of a Republican seat in NY-23 under highly unusual circumstances notwithstanding, yesterday was a good day for Republicans. After crushing defeats in successive elections, they won back the Virginia governor's office in a blowout and knocked off a billionaire incumbent governor in New Jersey despite having their vote split between two candidates. I would, however, resist the temptation ...

Lobbying and Sunk Costs

Economist David Zetland explains the political economy of lobbying by auctioning a dollar bill for $3.75. As he explains: This set of incentives ("on the margin") makes it rational to keep raising the stakes given that you have bid because winning always has a higher payoff than losing. The "right strategy" is, of course to not bid at all. (As Joshua, the ...

Recession Over, Obama Takes Credit

As widely expected, the Powers That Be have declared the recession  over, while cautioning that the economy still has a long way to go.  And, of course, the Obama administration is crediting its stimulus packages for the good news. It might not feel like it to most voters, but the U.S. economy is growing again after a more than a year ...

Libertarianism Not an Ideology

IOZ (whose identity is apparently a mystery) sums up a recent debate that's been brewing on several of the blogs I frequent: When Kerry Howley made the irrefutable and yet quixotic point that any proper concern with liberty, whether practical or, ahem, merely philosophical, must grapple with the strictures of cultural mores and social conventions, for they affect the lives and ...

McConnell: No Retalliation

Olympia Snowe and other wayward Republicans will be subject to strong persuasion but no punishment from the caucus, Senate Republican leaders tell Politico. [caption id="attachment_42848" align="alignright" width="297" caption="Mitch McConnell and his deputies in the Senate Republican leadership are responding very cautiously to Olympia Snowe's decision to become the first GOP vote for a Democratic health care reform bill. Photo: AP ...

European Left Down But Not Dead

The magnitude of the win of Angela Merkel's coalition, coming on the heels of a center-right romp in the recent European Parliament elections and the ouster of several conservative governments in recent months, has spawned much hand-wringing about the decline of Europe's Left. I round up and analyze some of this commentary in my New Atlanticist essay, "Whither Europe's Left?" Ultimately, I ...

Republicans a Regional Party?

Steve Benen puts together a chart based on DailyKos' weekly State of the Nation poll and notices that the GOP has virtually no support outside the South: In case anyone's having trouble reading the visual, the Republican Party's favorability is very weak in Northeast (7% to 87%), and only marginally better in the Midwest (13% to 78%) and West (14% to ...

Elections and Protests

Andrew Sullivan seems to argue that the losing side in an election thereby loses the right to protest: It's perfectly proper - even admirable - to demonstrate and argue against the new administration's ideas, but it's also worth recalling that this plan in its essentials was an integral part of the president's campaign platform and his party's effective manifesto. It was ...

Heckling the President

In his Daily Beast debut, Alex Massie rises in defense of Joe Wilson's outburst. No, not so much whether Obama was lying in this particular instance but rather the very notion that it's "inappropriate" to heckle the president.  The whole piece is worth a read but here's a taste: Trivial though it may seem, this brouhaha highlights a great flaw ...

Thomas Friedman Extols the Virtues of Communism

Thomas Friedman's latest column, in which he argues Communist China's system is preferable to ours because it "can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century," has quite naturally generated a heated response in the blogosphere, with everyone from Reason editor Matt Welch to National Review's Jonah Goldberg to ...

Who Cares About McDonnell’s Thesis?

Virginia GOP Gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonnell is taking quite a bit of flak for a thesis he wrote in college in 1989.The media spotlight is on gubernatorial hopeful Robert McDonnell who is currently launching his 2009 campaign for governor of Virginia. McDonnell finds himself in hot water for his 1989 thesis, which outlines a position hostile to women's interests and ...

Winning the Healthcare Debate

Gene Lyons has written a column headlined "You won't win the healthcare debate by calling people stupid racists." The piece isn't worth reading, I'm afraid, after the headline -- which Lyons probably didn't write. But the title is right on. It's a truism of public debate that you will never persuade those who disagree with you by dismissing them ...

American Political Math

When Republicans controlled the presidency and had strong majorities in the House and Senate, I often read calls from bloggers on my side of the aisle for purging the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) from the ranks.  After all, the likes of Arlen Specter and  Lincoln Chaffee were a giant pain in the butt and always seemed to be in ...

Elections Don’t End Debate

While I share Michael Tomasky's disdain for people carrying signs about "the blood of tyrants" while protesting democratically elected leaders, he goes too far here: There was an election. One guy one, another guy lost. It wasn't disputed. It wasn't decided by an ideologically divided Supreme Court, which gave the win to the guy who won fewer votes. This election wasn't ...