Political Commentary

August 19, 2014

Racing Through Nature by Froma Harrop

The story of a young man's speed-hiking the 2,663-mile Pacific Crest Trail has raised some environmentalist eyebrows, albeit only slightly. He was racing from California's border with Mexico to Washington state's with Canada.

The cause was a good one -- to raise money for the families of cancer patients. And it wasn't like he was making noise and pollution.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

August 19, 2014

Hillary Clinton Not Campaigning Much for her Party in 2014, Unlike Richard Nixon in 1966 By Michael Barone

Just about everyone noticed Hillary Clinton's scathing comments on President Obama's foreign policy in her interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg.

But almost no one has noticed where Clinton hasn't been seen. That's on the campaign trail or at fundraisers for Democrats running for the Senate.

August 15, 2014

Fidelity to Principle Can Make Needed Flexibility Impossible By Michael Barone

Politicians have ranges of positions of varying widths that they find acceptable. Hillary Clinton, like her husband, has a very wide range of stands she finds acceptable, depending on timing and circumstances. President Obama's range of acceptable positions has been far narrower

This is reflected in their attitudes about military action in Iraq. Clinton was for it in 2002 and was against it by 2007. Obama was always against what he called a "dumb war."

August 15, 2014

Ranting About Robin Williams, Limbaugh Exposes a Hole in His Own Soul By Joe Conason

Having infuriated millions of Robin Williams fans with insensitive remarks on the late actor's suicide, Rush Limbaugh now blames the "liberal media" and "despicable leftists" for distorting his innocent message.

This is an old dodge for Limbaugh. Yet however he parses his language, there can be no doubt that he sought to exploit a tragic event for what he likes to call "political education." His attempt to brand Williams' suicide with "the leftist worldview" was perfectly plain. And as usual, his alibi is plainly false.

August 14, 2014

Neil deGrasse Tyson Is a Nice Man By Froma Harrop

When I first encountered Neil deGrasse Tyson, I thought, "What a nice man." He was on the TV screens at New York's Hayden Planetarium, where he's director, urging us to behold the wonder of -- to use the biblical term -- the heavens.

August 14, 2014

2014: More Than a Backlash From 2008 By Sean Trende

The 2014 Senate elections are not shaping up to be particularly favorable for the Democrats. While there are still scenarios where they could walk away breaking even, or even gaining a seat or two, those scenarios are pretty far-fetched. Current predictions vary somewhat, but seem to center around Republicans picking up somewhere between five and seven seats, with the overall range of possibilities a bit wider.

August 13, 2014

Mindless Drones By John Stossel

Drones -- unmanned flying machines -- will soon fill our skies. They conjure up fears, especially among some of my fellow libertarians, of spying and death from above.

These fears aren't groundless. President Bush approved the use of armed drones against suspected terrorists overseas, and President Obama vastly increased their use. Drones have killed thousands of people in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, countries against which we have not declared war.

August 12, 2014

Three Hundred Years Later, Americans Owe a Debt to King George I By Michael Barone

Three hundred years ago, on Aug. 1, 1714, by the Julian calendar (Aug. 12 by the Gregorian calendar we use now), Queen Anne died. She was just 49 years old, but was weakened by obesity, gout and the effects of 17 pregnancies, from which only one child lived beyond infancy -- William, Duke of Gloucester, who died of smallpox at age 11 in 1700.

August 12, 2014

Who Cares What Ideology Drives the High-Speed Train? by Froma Harrop

In Texas, a private company wants to build a bullet train joining Dallas and Houston. In California, the state is raising its own billions to create a very fast ride between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Two very different ways to fund high-speed rail, but they have one thing in common. They bypass the thousand-car pileup that is Washington politics.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

August 11, 2014

Ebola's Message: Foreign Aid and Science Funding in a Time of Global Peril By Joe Conason

Most Americans have long believed, in embarrassing ignorance, that the share of the U.S. federal budget spent on foreign aid is an order of magnitude higher than what we actually spend abroad. Years ago, this mistaken view was amplified from the far right by the John Birch Society. Today, it is the tea party movement complaining that joblessness and poverty in the United States result directly from the lamentable fact that "President Obama keeps sending our money overseas."

August 8, 2014

Primaries Show Republican Voters Wary of Tea party Candidates, Skeptical of Party Establishment by Michael Barone

The standard thing to say about the various Republican primaries this year is that the tea party movement has lost one race after another. That's a defensible conclusion but also an oversimplification.

I see more turbulence and undercurrents among Republican primary voters than usual. The evidence is that incumbents -- both those the mainstream media call tea partyers and those they call the party establishment -- have been prevailing by tenuous margins in primaries that in the pre-tea party years would almost certainly not have been seriously contested.

Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, (www.washingtonexaminer.com), where this article first appeared, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at

www.creators.com.

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August 7, 2014

Selling to 'Minimalists' Is Surprisingly Easy By Froma Harrop

It matters not whether you are sizing up, sizing down or sizing sideways. Merchants have products to help you on your way to the life you think you want.

Before L. Frank Baum published his first Wizard of Oz book in 1900, he helped create the modern consumer society by totally redesigning store windows in Chicago. Gone were the storefront piles of everything in the shop. In their place, Baum fashioned theatrical scenes using mechanical butterflies, incandescent globes and the simple presentation of select items -- all to build a mood, a desire for the whole fantastical "lifestyle" package.

August 7, 2014

House 2014: Handicapping The “Drive to 245” By Kyle Kondik

A Republican at the end of 1928 could look back on the previous few decades and smile: His party was quite clearly the dominant force in American politics. Starting in 1896, Republicans had held the White House for 24 of 32 years, interrupted only by the GOP split that helped Democrat Woodrow Wilson get elected in 1912.* Another Republican, Herbert Hoover, was about to stretch that streak in the White House to 28 of 36 years.

In the House, Republicans also had held control for 24 of 32 years, and Hoover’s 444-electoral vote landslide in 1928 boosted the House GOP majority to 270 seats, a Republican edge whose size was only eclipsed by the 302-member Republican caucus elected in 1920 (the House expanded to its present 435 seats in 1913).

August 6, 2014

Patrolmen Without Borders By John Stossel

If I drive across a U.S. border, I expect to stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint. But imagine driving to the grocery store, or Mom's house, well inside America, and being stopped by the Border Patrol. Many Americans don't have to imagine it -- it's how they live.

August 5, 2014

Blue vs. Blue Does Not Equal Red by Froma Harrop

They are all Democrats, blue and blue. But like Republicans, they have opposing visions duking it out in the primaries.

August 5, 2014

Big Government Worked Better in the Industrial Age; Not so Much in Digital Era By Michael Barone

Earlier this week, I was thinking of writing a column about the lying and duplicity of Obamacare backers who argued that the difference between provisions providing subsidies in states with state-run health exchanges and providing no subsidies in states with federal exchanges resulted from inadvertence or a typographical error.

Typical among them was MIT health care expert Jonathan Gruber. The folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute found video of him in 2012 arguing that all or most states would create their own exchanges because they wouldn't get subsidies if they let the federal government run their exchanges. That was just a "speako" (the oral equivalent of a typo), Gruber replied.

August 4, 2014

From Clinton to Obama: Why GOP Impeachment Fever Is Now So Predictable By Joe Conason

Making predictions is a perilous practice for any political journalist. Too often, the would-be seers turn out to be dead wrong -- as can be attested to by George Will, Michael Barone, Larry Kudlow and the humiliated boy genius of Fox News, all of whom projected a big victory for Mitt Romney in 2012.

Yet there is at least one future event that could be safely forecast years ago, almost as soon as President Barack Obama entered the White House: a movement among House Republicans to impeach the president.

August 1, 2014

Bipartisanship is Alive and Well, but not in the Obama White House By Michael Barone

Bipartisanship is dead. That's the conventional wisdom, and there's a lot of evidence to support it.

But there's evidence to the contrary as well. On two important issues, veterans' health and job training, congressional Republicans and Democrats have, with little notice, reached constructive bipartisan agreements.

July 31, 2014

What’s the Matter With Kansas — And Hawaii? By Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley

Royal Blue Hawaii and Ruby Red Kansas are two of the most predictable states in presidential and Senate elections. Yet both states have incumbent governors from the dominant parties who are fighting for their political lives. What gives?