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American politics and the big picture
In an interview in Ohio on Monday, Mitt Romney said he would “take a lot of credit” for the fact that the U.S. auto industry has rebounded. That’s a remarkable statement. In fact, it’s an outrageous statement. When the auto manufacturers were bailed out in late 2008, Mitt Romney was out of ...
Torture doesn’t work. There has never been much reason to believe that it does. Now Reuters reports that a three-year investigation by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence committee confirms what we already knew: there's little evidence that our so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques ...
Being an expert means never having to say you’re sorry. If it turns out you’re wrong about something—about, say, whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or whether there was a housing bubble—that’s okay. As an expert you must have had good reasons for being wrong. Anyone who got right what you ...
When Rick Santorum dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination, it removed the last real obstacle standing between Mitt Romney and the nomination. The race has really been over for a while. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul remain in the race, but Romney has more than three times more delegates ...
Earlier this week I argued that the Affordable Care Act should be ruled constitutional. There are genuine reasons to be concerned about the scope of Congress’ commerce power, which has been used to justify the federal laws concerning what appear to be non-commercial issues that could easily be ...
President Obama said Monday that overturning the Affordable Care Act would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step.” But by all accounts oral argument in the Supreme Court went badly for supporters of Obama’s health care law. In one exchange, Justice Anthony Kennedy—who is widely expected to be ...
Mitt Romney will win the nomination. Rick Santorum’s victory in Louisiana only delayed the inevitable. Santorum gained just 5 delegates in Louisiana on Romney, who is still 295 delegates ahead. Romney has won 55% of the delegates available so far, and needs just 45% of the remaining delegates to ...
How would you describe the Republican candidates? A Washington Post/Pew Research poll conducted two weeks ago asked respondents what one word came to mind when they heard the name of different Republican candidates. “No” was one of the top words for each candidate. But that doesn’t really mean ...
After Mitt Romney’s 12-point win in Illinois, it’s difficult to see how anyone else could win the Republican nomination. His lead in the delegate count over Rick Santorum has expanded to 300 (although the Santorum campaign argues hopefully that his count will be a little higher than most think ...
Rick Santorum had a great day on Tuesday, winning the Republican primaries in both Alabama and Mississippi—a state in which no poll had shown Santorum in the lead. Newt Gingrich, whose campaign said had to win both states to in order to remain a credible candidate, came in second in both. Mitt ...
Over the weekend, I looked back at this blog’s most popular posts from 2011. I like to believe they were popular because readers found them interested and recommended them to their friends. But of course they may simply have been the most timely posts or the ones with the most titillating headlines ...
After more than two years of writing this blog, I still haven't learned how to predict how people will respond to my writing. The posts I am most proud of—and the ones I work the hardest on—often get relatively little response, while posts I dash off on the spur of the moment are sometimes the ones ...
Mitt Romney is looking more and more like the inevitable Republican nominee. Romney won 6 of the 10 Super Tuesday states, including the crucial state of Ohio. He won the majority of the delegates at stake. He now has more delegates than the rest of the field combined, and more than twice as many of ...
Here’s what we can expect for Super Tuesday. Mitt Romney will win his home state of Massachusetts, the neighboring state of Vermont, and Virginia, where Ron Paul is the only other candidate on the ballot. Rick Santorum will win Oklahoma. And Newt Gingrich will win his home state of Virginia. When ...
Whatever happens next week on Super Tuesday, the race for the Republican nomination is likely going to go on for a while. By winning the Arizona and the Michigan primaries on Tuesday and the Wyoming caucus last night Mitt Romney reaffirmed his status as the favorite to win the nomination. Political ...