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The death threats are already flowing in.... SURPRISE!!

Ten years ago this month, Congress enacted the third major tax cut of the George W. Bush administration. Its centerpiece was a huge cut in the tax rate on dividends. Historically, they had been taxed as ordinary income, but the Bush plan, enacted by a Republican Congress, cut that rate to 15 percent. The tax rate on ordinary income went as high as 35 percent. This initiative originated with the economist R. Glenn Hubbard, who had been chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers when the proposal was sent to Congress. Mr. Hubbard was a strong believer that the double...

Back in their day, the tea party folks were riding high, fueling indignation over alleged government-run death panels, a treasonous Federal Reserve and the like. They commandeered sparsely attended Republican primaries, managing to nominate for Senate seats a dabbler in witchcraft in Delaware, holders of strange views on rape in Missouri and Indiana, and in Nevada, a candidate suggesting armed insurrection if her people didn't win elections. All lost -- some in races an old-fashioned Republican would have won. In the interest of party self-preservation, Republican leaders sidelined the more extreme tea partiers, or tried to. Meanwhile, the tea party's...

(Read the whole article) Things will probably have to get a whole lot worse before a critical mass of voters choose the path of despair that the National Journal warns against: the point where they exit the game. The difficulty is that the restraint does not so far seem symmetric. What is perhaps most disturbing is the sheer effrontery of the administration. They seem unabashed and oblivious to the damage they are causing. They are telling lies that nobody can be expected to believe, almost as if the stranger hiding under the marital bed explains that he’s looking for change...

Conservative activist and political pundit Gary Bauer believes former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would make a "fantastic" United States senator. A recent Republican survey showed the high-profile former GOP vice-presidential nominee with a two-percent edge (32% to 30%) over Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell for the right to challenge incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Begich next year. Joe Miller, the tea party-backed nominee in 2010, finished a distant third with 14 percent. The poll was commissioned by the Tea Party Leadership Fund, which is hoping to convince Palin to enter the race. Thus far she has not expressed any public interest...

Less than a month remains before the June 4th special election for Congressman in Missouri's 8th Congressional District. Both major candidates continue to get endorsements from within their own party. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has endorsed the Republican contender Jason Smith while the Democratic contender has received an endorsement from Governor Jay Nixon. Others running for the open seat, that was vacated when Jo Ann Emerson resigned, include Constitution Party candidate Doug Enyart, Libertarian Bill Slantz and two write-in candidates Thomas Brown and Doctor Robert George.

The top advisor to last year’s Republican nominee predicted Wednesday that if Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, she will lose in a Democratic primary. Clinton is widely thought to be the strongest 2016 presidential contender in either party, with high approval ratings and early poll numbers that show her beating top Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio in their home states. But Stu Stevens, the senior advisor to Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid, told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by National Review that Clinton wouldn’t survive a Democratic primary. “I would predict that if Hillary Clinton runs, she’ll lose...

Forget background checks and gun control, divisions within the GOP on immigration, and Republican intransigence on negotiating a budget deal with the president. The current triple play of Benghazi, the IRS and now the Justice Department’s seizure of journalists’ phone records has the potential to be a political game changer for 2014. It’s hard to overstate the potential significance of the past week. What we are witnessing is nothing less than a dramatic reversal of the nation’s political narrative — from how bad the Republican brand is and how President Barack Obama is going to mobilize public opinion against the...

My rule of thumb is that a vast majority of alleged political scandals will have less electoral impact than the conventional wisdom initially holds. There are two main reasons for this. First, voters weigh major issues like economic performance and the conduct of foreign wars heavily in making their decisions, leaving relatively little room for everything else. Second, the news media may overplay the lead story, scandalous or otherwise, on any given day, even though it may turn out to be relatively unimportant in the context of a multiyear political cycle. But the recent admission by the Internal Revenue Service...

If you are a Conservative, you may have gotten a few e-mails from a Washington, D.C. based group called the Tea Party Leadership Fund. These letters will be signed by a man named Todd Cefaratti. The letter states they are looking to “Draft Sarah Palin” into making a run at Alaska’s Senate seat in 2014, a seat now held by democrat Mark Begich. This of course has caused quite a stir, and unfortunately many have sent their hard earned money to this crew. Recently, the group commissioned a poll of Alaskans, looking to legitimize their efforts. Harper Polling found these...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, folks, on this IRS business, I think the 2010 midterms really shocked the Democrats. I think they might have expected to maybe lose some seats, although, actually, my memory -- no, no, no, no, no, my memory is that they thought with the overwhelming popularity of Obama it might be the first time that a sitting president's party increased seats. Well, it wouldn't be the first time. I think Bush did it. But they were clearly hoping for at least a draw. In the 2010 midterms they got shellacked. It's one of the reasons I...

A top GOP critic pushed back Sunday on charges that Republican efforts to investigate last year's Benghazi attack are designed to inflict political damage on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "Hillary Clinton's not a target," said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa on NBC's Meet the Press. "President Obama is not a target." Issa, who heads a panel probing the assault on the diplomatic outpost that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, said he will seek depositions from Benghazi review board heads Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the...

A new Harper Polling poll shows a plurality of likely Alaskan Republican voters support their former Governor, Sarah Palin, as a U.S. Senate candidate in the 2014 GOP primary over Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and 2010 Senate candidate Joe Miller. The survey of 379 likely Republican voters found that 32 percent support Palin, whereas 30 percent support Treadwell and 14 percent support Miller. The Harper Polling poll, conducted via telephone on May 6 and May 7 on behalf of the Tea Party Leadership Fund, found that 45 percent of likely GOP voters think Palin would “fight hardest for conservative values,”...

Four Colorado Democrats, including Senator Angela Giron, face recall efforts. (Opposing Views) Colorado Democratic lawmakers face recall efforts after their gun control votes. FOX News reported: Colorado Democratic lawmakers who recently helped pass some of the toughest gun-control laws in the country now face the political backlash of recall efforts. Two groups are targeting state Rep. Mike McLachlan and state Sens. Angela Giron, Evie Hudak and John Morse. The Democrat-controlled legislature passed bills that ban magazines holding more than 15 rounds and require background checks for all gun transfers. They were signed into law in March by Democratic Gov. John...

Rep Steve Stockman (R-TX) giving away a Bushmaster AR-15 on July 4. People who visit his re-election website--www.stockman2014.com--can find a link marked "Enter To Win An AR-15." Under this are the words, "Click here to enter to win the gun Obama doesn't want you to have." Once you click where instructed, you are asked to enter your name, zip, and email and that's that--you're entered into the drawing and are added to his online mailing list. Democrat National Committee Communications Director Brad Woodhouse reacted to news of the give away by pointing out this was the same gun Adam Lanza...

One of the Democrats’ most veteran strategists warns that the party is “in decline” and “at considerable risk” when President Barack Obama is no longer on the scene. “Since Obama was elected President, the Democrats have lost nine governorships, 56 members of the House and two Senate seats,” Doug Sosnik, the political director in Bill Clinton’s White House, writes in a new memo. While Republican branding problems get the lion’s share of attention, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating has declined by 15 points since Obama took power. A Pew Research Center survey this January showed that the Democratic Party was...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is swatting down criticism from GOP ranks that he isn’t conservative enough, saying in an interview airing Friday that he’s a “damn good Republican.” “Is it a fair question to ask that if you ran as a Republican for president of the United States, what Republican Party do you see that would support your candidacy out there right now? How would you survive a primary process on the current set-up of the Republican Party?” NBC’s Brian Williams asked Christie, who is considered to be mulling a 2016 run. “Listen, I think very well. I’ll worry...

In this video, both Andrew Klavan and I TEAM UP to get to the bottom of Benghazi. I also ask students on campus what they think of the scandal and... surpriiiise! They'd never heard of that Benghazi dude!

Illinois Republicans have just forced state party chair Pat Brady to resign because of his support for gay marriage. What is this, Alabama? Brady, rather famously, came out in support of gay marriage in January of this year, and even made phone calls to lawmakers urging them to support gay marriage legislation before the Illinois legislature. And now he’s politically-dead, killed by a Republican party so permeated with hate and intolerance that even in a moderate-Republican state like Illinois, the GOP just couldn’t stomach having a fag-lover as party chair. This is why I, an Illinois Republican, left my party...

Disgusted and fed up like the rest of us, Sarah Palin rips members of the Republican Party a new one over their support for the so-called “Marketplace Fairness Act” a sales tax on internet purchases. More new taxes? How can we be divided on new taxes? In this horribly weak economy with an over-reaching, over-spending, anti-small-business government continually making the wrong decisions, Republicans can’t even stay committed to “No New Taxes”? Please step away from your Washington, DC bubble and get back in touch with the hard working people who sent you there. Read the planks in our party’s platform...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s aides met recently with staffers of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to warn them: Targeting vulnerable Democrats like Arkansas’s Mark Pryor on gun control could backfire on the party, several sources told POLITICO. It didn’t work. Ads from the Bloomberg-funded Mayors Against Illegal Guns are going up soon in Alaska, Arkansas and North Dakota — three states with Democratic senators who broke with the White House on last month’s background checks vote. The group is also moving as many as 60 field organizers into about a dozen states where senators — Democrats and Republicans —...

The Center for American Progress says the Senate’s pending immigration bill will help legalize 32.5 million migrants over the next 10 years. The estimate is only slightly less than the initial 33.5 million estimate prepared by NumbersUSA, which opposes the bill. Both groups produced similar estimates, but couched them very differently, for very different political purposes. The NumbersUSA group said their estimates were cautious, while the Center for American Progress (CAP) group said their April 30 study shows the Senate bill will actually reduce the current inflow of immigrants. Their similar estimates match the May 3 prediction of a 32.7...

On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” former Clinton adviser James Carville said that Sen. Ted Cruz will be a force to be reckoned with should he decide to run for president in 2016. The Canadian-born Cruz, Carville noted, hails from the more ideological wing of the GOP, while the last two Republicans to unsuccessfully run for president, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, were both inherently moderate and compromise-friendly. “I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years. I further think that he’s...

A new Quinnipiac poll comparing potential Democratic candidates for 2016 comes to a familiar conclusion: Hillary Clinton, if she decides to run, would absolutely dominate the competition. The poll has 65 percent of potential Democratic voters picking Hillary Clinton as their presidential nominee in 2016. That's in line with multiple recent polls — including from Gallup, PPP, and PublicMind — showing Clinton as the overwhelming favorite in a Democratic primary. What's interesting about the Quinnipiac poll is that it conducted a separate survey in which Clinton was removed from the race. Which Democrats come out on top if Clinton decides...

Gun control advocates are in hysterics, using frenzied, emotional attacks against Senators who opposed gun control last month in hopes of changing the momentum. This explains why Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) has been targeted in New Hampshire, and it's why Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly have been targeting Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in Kentucky. Staunch gun control supporters saw Sandy Hook Elementary as their opportunity to secure more gun laws, but now they see that opportunity fading away....

You just have to shake your head at some liberals who think that having a baby is like catching a disease. Mitt Romney gave the commencement address at Southern Virginia University, a largely Mormon school, where he told the grads to marry young and have children. He quoted Psalms 127: Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in...

Chris Moody @Chris_Moody South Carolina Dem Party Chairman says he hopes candidate Vince Sheheen will send "Nikki Haley back to wherever the hell she came from." 6:43 PM - 3 May 2013 35 Retweets 3 favorites The last time we heard from South Carolina Democratic chairman Dick Harpootlian, he was drawing comparisons between Republican Gov. Nikki Haley and Adolf Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun. That was last September, and something tells us Harpootlian hasn’t spent the past several months in charm school. At a Democrat party dinner tonight attended by Vice President Joe Biden, Harpootlian rallied his troops to send Haley...

There will almost certainly be an aspect of the National Rifle Association's convention — which opens today in Houston — that feels like a victory celebration. By organizing and agitating its members, the organization was able to kill a Senate compromise on background checks, steamrolling over an ineffectual Organizing For Action. But as discussion of reviving that deal heats up, the NRA may finally face a real roadblock: public opinion. Prior to the April 17th vote — which failed to end a Republican-led filibuster on a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks — there were certainly coordinated organizing efforts. Mayors...

Prominent tea party members are preparing for big wins in 2014 due to negative fallout from President Obama’s signature health care reform. Now that Democratic Party leaders, along with White House officials, are predicting some glitches in the law’s implementation, 2014 elections are shaping in conservatives’ favor — and tea partiers are hoping to capitalize, United Press International reported. The GOP is especially eyeing the Senate as a possible gold mine. “Information has already shown itself to be a series of political time bombs,” said Matt Kibbe, the president and chief executive of FreedomWorks, in UPI. “The only way you...

Yesterday, I noted Sen. John McCain’s recent comments, where he lamented: “There are times these days when I feel that I have more in common on foreign policy with President Obama than I do with some in my own party.” Today, my bloggingheads colleague Bill Scher ups the ante, positing the theory that a Rand Paul nomination for president might cause the McCains of the world to jump on the Hillary bandwagon. From his column at The Week, Scher asks: Where might the “new Republican internationalists” go if Paul wins this intra-party battle? Considering that likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton...

When former President Bill Clinton spoke at Georgetown University on April 30, he told Democrats to keep pushing gun control because it's a winner. This is strange advice coming from a man who watched his party endure a loss of historic proportions in 1994; a loss attributed in large part to the fact that he and his fellow Democrats pushed an "assault weapons" ban onto the American people. Clinton spoke of this loss while at Georgetown, telling the audience, "The fact that we had majority support didn't amount to anything, it's always the intensity of support that you have to...

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told Boston’s conservative radio host Howie Carr on Wednesday that the political momentum is starting to turn against the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill. When Carr asked the senator if this process behind the push for this bill is the “same thing as Obamacare” where “we have to pass it so we can read it,” Sessions replied: “Absolutely, it really is.” “That is exactly what it is,” Sessions said. “They’re selling the sizzle. They’re selling the smell. And it’s a shoe leather instead of a steak.” Carr said that though everyone...

Last night in Washington, Joe Biden stated that abused women fear getting "raped again by the system." He also made the push that Washington, D.C. should be its own state, with two U.S. senators. Via the pool report: Piles of Bidens are here. In addition to Kathleen [Biden's daughter], VP Biden's wife Jill, his sons Beau and Hunter, and his granddaughters Maisy and Finnegan are also here. VP Biden began his remarks by praising Kathleen for the passion she brings to the cause. He described his initial push for VAWA in the early 90s, when "nobody thought very much of...

On yesterday’s edition of “All In with Chris Hayes” we were greeted with narrative creation at its finest as host Chris Hayes attempted to define the arguments in favor of Voter Identification laws in North Carolina as merely the spoils of victory as opposed to any type of actual reasoned position.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) HAYES: If a skeptical person looks at what’s going on in north carolina and says, look, this is why we had elections, we had elections, the republicans won, they won the governorship, they haven’t had it since 1988, they’ve got all three branches of state government for the first...

During the 2012 election cycle I occasionally ran stories declaring that various Republicans being touted as White House material “will never be president.” Sarah Palin after her narcissistic Gabby Giffords meltdown; Newt Gingrich early in his race-baiting campaign; Mitt Romney after his British Olympics screw-up. I batted 1.000 for that cycle, but it was easy. In 2016, Republicans won’t be facing a Democratic incumbent, so somebody has a shot. I recently wrote that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will never be president, due to his out-of-control anger issues, but candidly, I think that’s my riskiest one yet. I feel no...

Sarah Palin's supporters are urged to contribute money toward recruiting her to run for the U.S. Senate, the Tea Party Leadership Fund said. "We know that, with Sarah in the Senate, conservatives across America can rest a little easier at night knowing she's at the watch," an email from Todd Cefratti of the Leadership Fund, sent this week to supporters, read in part. She would run against incumbent Mark Begich, D-Alaska, the Los Angeles Times noted....

Can the Tea Party and establishment, moderate-minded conservatives ever reconcile? At The American Prospect, Abby Rapoport cites a new study as evidence it won't happen. [T]he gap between the two groups is huge. In the YouGov survey the study uses, more than two-thirds of Tea Partiers put themselves in the two most conservative categories on economic policy, social policy, and overall policy. Only 23 percent of non-Tea Partiers place themselves in the most conservative categories on all three issues; nearly 40 percent don’t locate themselves in the most conservative categories for any of the three policy areas. Most jarring: On...

"Do the words 'Senator Sarah Palin' excite you?" That's the opening line of a recent email by The Tea Party Leadership Fund, which is trying to draft the former Alaska governor and past Fox News commentator to run for the Senate in 2014. The fund argues Palin has a clear path to victory in part due to recent polling showing incumbent Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat, with less than 50 percent of the vote. But, it being a draft, the group hasn't talked with Palin about whether or not she's interested. And Palin – whose PAC didn't respond to request...

Today at his press conference, Barack Obama told reporters he didn’t know anything about the reported Benghazi whistle-blowers who were being threatened by the State Department. But he rushed back to the microphone to talk about the gay NBA play Jason Collins who came out of the closet yesterday....

<p>It is a shopworn technique of hard-line conservatives to declare themselves men and women of principle in contrast to those other Republicans — the ones, you know, who pass legislation and try to represent their constituents. It is both self-serving (presuming principles are of no matter to opponents) and lazy in that it is always easy to say no, ridicule compromise and remain pristine rather than trying to improve legislation or introduce an alternative.</p>

Former Rep. Ron Paul said the law enforcement that swarmed around Boston in the days following the marathon bombings was scarier than the actual terrorist attack. “The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city,” he said on the Lew Rockwell website, Politico reported. “This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.” The terror attacks on April 15 in Boston killed three and injured 264. Mr. Paul, a former libertarian political candidate who served in Congress as...

Despite assurances by the likes of Nate Silver that these are solid polls showing "Overwhelming majorities of 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks," I have previously noted my skepticism of these claims. To me, it wasn't too surprising that the Senate voted down the gun control bill about 10 days ago. My concern is that people were really just being asked about whether they wanted to keep criminals from getting guns, not about the particular legislation being voted on by the Senate. Well, now there is another poll by the PEW Research Center that...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) told a group of patriots at the FreedomWorks Texas Summit that fellow Republican Senators yelled at him and Rand Paul and Mike Lee for threatening to filibuster the Democrats’ gun control legislation. “We’ve had probably five or six lunches with a bunch of Republican senators standing and looking at Rand and Mike and me and yelling at us at the top of their lungs. I mean really upset. And they said, ‘Look, why did you do this? As a result of this I go home and constituents are yelling at me that I gotta stand on...

Sarah Palin reared her head in American airspace this weekend. As the country’s media, entertainment and political elite gathered in Washington, D.C., for the annual roast that is the White House Correspondents Dinner, Palin could not resist lobbing darts from afar. “Yuk it up media and pols,” she tweeted. “While America is buried in taxes and a fight for our rights, the permanent political class in DC dresses up and has a prom to make fun of themselves. No need for that, we get the real joke.” She panned the event again in a second tweet: “That #WHCD was pathetic....

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would have won the presidency if the white and black turnout rates had stayed at their 2004 levels, according to a new analysis of 2012 election. “The battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same,” according to The Associated Press’s summary of research by William Frey, an expert at the Brookings Institution. Overall turnout declined from 62 percent in 2008 to 58 percent in 2012, Frey reported. The drop-off reduced the overall turnout by...

Frank Luntz may smugly believe that Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and other right wing talk radio hosts are "responsible for the stark polarization within the nation's political discourse" and therefore "problematic" for the Republican Party. I submit the problem is that Luntz, and a misguided over-reliance on focus groups, has neutered and thus destroyed any semblance of courage in the GOP's message. Luntz is conflating, as many wonks and number crunchers do, cause and effect with regard to the bigger realities and polarization. The country is polarized because, well, we are polarized. Rush and "the great one" didn't make it...

WASHINGTON -- We are passing through something more than a period of disappointing economic growth and increasing political polarization. What's happening is more powerful: the collapse of "entitlement." By this, I do not mean primarily cuts in specific government benefits, most prominently Social Security, but the demise of a broader mindset -- attitudes and beliefs -- that, in one form or another, has gripped Americans since the 1960s. The breakdown of these ideas has rattled us psychologically as well as politically and economically. In my 1995 book, "The Good Life and Its Discontents," I defined entitlement as our expectations "about...

I would like to start (IMMEDIATELY) the process to dispose of Rhino John McFrain McCain. I need to know the documents necessary to start that process (IMMEDIATELY - not tomorrow but TODAY). I need to know who to start the process with, Documents necessary and anyone who would be able to start a web site just to get signatures and get the ball rolling. JonGaltSr (Freeper since 1995 (or manybe it was 1996). Thanks

In the two-year cycle of the political calendar, it is candidate-recruitment season—the time when Washington operatives fan out across the country to size up the political horseflesh. In the months to come, they will meet with scores of state legislators, small-town mayors, community activists, and upstanding business owners, gauging which ones might have what it takes to run for a House or Senate seat, or for governor or state treasurer. These political scouts will take many qualities into account, from life story to speaking ability to baby-kissing skills. But they will be looking, in particular, for a few good women....

Vice President Joe Biden joined Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) at a forum hosted by the McCain Institute in Arizona Friday, where the pair discussed the recently defeated gun-control measure. Biden told the crowd that last year’s massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., has changed American attitudes about guns, even though the Senate rejected legislation to expand background checks on gun purchases. “Newtown was, to sort of use that old cliche, the straw that that broke the camel’s back,” Biden said, according to the Arizona Republic. “There was a fundamental change, in my opinion, in public attitudes about guns....