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Why John McCain Hates Republicans Again

Jonathan Chait — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:23:43 GMT

John McCain is a cranky man in general, and the latest punks he told to get off his lawn include tea-party hoodlums Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. (Addressing the latter, McCain growled, “maybe the senator from Utah ought to learn a little bit more about how business has been done

Everybody Loves Germany Now

Jonathan Chait — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:38:20 GMT

In what has to be history's greatest public relations turnaround, a BBC poll finds Germany to be the most admired country in the world. There are still plenty of people alive who fought that huge war they started. Not to mention the huge war they started twenty years before that,

Obama Guards His Left Over Terrorism

Jonathan Chait — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:43:48 GMT

President Obama’s speech today defending his conduct in the war on terror was notable for what he was defending it against — not against the soft-on-terror (and maybe sorta-kinda-Muslim) attack that Republicans have lobbed against him since he first ran for president, but against critics on the left. It is

The IRS Scandal Is Becoming a Conspiracy Theory

Jonathan Chait — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:23:33 GMT

The Internal Revenue Service scandal remains alive and well as an agency screwup story. But agency screwup stories, even ones centering on the agency Republicans most despise and deliberately hobble, have limited political utility. What Republicans want is for the IRS story to be an Obama scandal. And as an

The Climate-Change Wars Begin This Summer

Jonathan Chait — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:33:23 GMT

The biggest piece of President Obama’s second-term agenda is his widely expected plan for the Environmental Protection Agency to issue new carbon regulations for power plants, a move that could bring the United States in line with the greenhouse-gas-reduction goals it agreed to in Copenhagen and open the way for

Biden Praises Jews, Goes Too Far, Accidentally Thrills Anti-Semites

Jonathan Chait — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:44:10 GMT

Joe Biden spoke last night in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month. Biden has long, deep ties to the Jewish community — Obama actually picked him in 2008 in part to reassure skittish Jewish Democrats. Biden indeed offered fulsome, heartfelt praise in his remarks, before wandering into highly uncomfortable terrain

Life in Ohio, a Continuing Series

Jonathan Chait — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:13:11 GMT

The whole IRS scandal is just the sort of thing that happens when a sensitive government agency requiring technical proficiency and political sophistication is headquartered in Ohio. In other Ohio news, a research firm used voice-recognition software to analyze 600,000 phone calls. Guess which state uses the highest rate of

Keynes Skeptics Find New Economic Poster Boy

Jonathan Chait — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:31:16 GMT

The most prominent serious economic case against using stimulus to fight the economic crisis — the Reinhart-Rogoff 90 Percent Threshold of Death — has collapsed ignominiously, leaving true believers in austerity grasping for some justification that isn’t based on simple data errors. Washington Post editorial writer Chuck Lane has a

New Crazy Black Republican Is Craziest Black Republican Yet

Jonathan Chait — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:32:01 GMT

The Obama presidency has been a golden era for right-wing kookery. Many aspects of this kookery, like gold fetishism or threats to default on the national debt, are simply too esoteric to filter into the general public and haven’t hurt the party’s image. Where Republicans have suffered damage is when

Weekend GOP Almost-Impeachment Update

Jonathan Chait — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:48:25 GMT

The wackiest Republicans have been ready to impeach Obama from day one; the slightly more thoughtful members of the party are taking a wait-and-see approach. They are considering impeachment, but they aren't quite there. They are perhaps waiting for evidence that somebody in the Obama administration, at any level, broke any

Republicans Shouldn’t Let the Facts Speak for Themselves

Jonathan Chait — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:23:28 GMT

As the investigative phase of the Obama presidency commences in earnest, Republicans are promising that their overriding goal is to proceed cautiously and let the facts speak for themselves. “We have stuff here that’s real, so you don’t need the distraction of politics to give people an excuse to say

House Republicans Plot Debt-Ceiling Strategery

Jonathan Chait — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:00:00 GMT

House Republicans have been meeting to figure out their next strategy on the debt ceiling. The last time, if you recall, President Obama insisted he would not pay a ransom in order to get the House Republicans to do something they agreed had to be done to avert financial catastrophe.

No, Obama — I Said More Bullsh*t, Not Bulworth

Jonathan Chait — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:38:38 GMT

Peter Baker reports that President Obama occasionally fantasizes, as many presidents do, of imitating a 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a politician who suddenly started saying exactly what he thought: Mr. Obama also expresses exasperation. In private, he has talked longingly of “going Bulworth,” a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren

Moderate Rob Portman Not Quite Ready to Impeach

Jonathan Chait — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:58:43 GMT

We all know that Rush Limbaugh and Michele Bachmann are saying crazy things like it's their job, because it is their job. But at this point in the story, it's worth checking in with the sane wing of the party, such as it is. What say you, Senator Rob Portman?

How Obama Can Escape the Scandal Cloud

Jonathan Chait — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:15:58 GMT

The cloud of scandal is hard to escape — mainly because they tend to be large and amorphous, like, you know, clouds. The scandal cloud formed, as I argued today, because three events came together in just the right sequence so as to create the impression that we had “three

Romney Adviser: Everybody Loves Donald Trump! Right?

Jonathan Chait — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:20:41 GMT

Mitt Romney was probably going to lose last year regardless of what he did, but he did make some puzzling moves, such as appearing with Donald Trump to accept a high-profile endorsement. Today Romney strategist Stuart Stevens told National Review this move did not hurt Romney at all, because there

The Strange Creation of the Obama Scandals

Jonathan Chait — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:52:56 GMT

The sudden barometric change in Washington has arrived so rapidly that it is hard to comprehend. “The town is turning on President Obama,” announced Politico honchos and custodians of the conventional wisdom Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, and they’re right. Republicans are gleefully unleashing a vast investigative apparatus; erstwhile supporters like

Give Back that Pulitzer, Wall Street Journal Editorial Page

Jonathan Chait — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:52:36 GMT

The recent slowdown in health-care costs is one of those facts, like climate change or the rapid growth after Bill Clinton raised taxes, that flummoxes American conservatism. The slowdown of health-care costs is one of the most important developments in American politics. The long-term deficit crisis — those scary charts

Rubio Demands Resignation of Nonexistent IRS Commissioner

Jonathan Chait — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:30:21 GMT

Pretty much everybody agrees that the Internal Revenue Service did some terrible and potentially very dangerous things when it engaged in a one-sided investigation of right-wing abuse of tax-exempt groups engaging in political advocacy. But everybody agreeing is a problem if you’re a politician looking to boldly stake out a

How Jason Richwine Passed Immigration Reform

Jonathan Chait — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:12:07 GMT

The fallout from the Heritage Foundation’s immigration reform study has developed into a watershed moment for the prospects of passing a bill. The release of the study prompted a fierce backlash from proponents of reform, which compounded when Dylan Matthews reported that Jason Richwine, a co-author of the study, wrote