Posts tagged Tea Party

Return Address

333
3 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

Tonight, Pres­i­dent Obama returns to give the first State of the Union Address of his sec­ond term.

The President’s annual State of the Union address has evolved over time. As we’ve noted before on these pages, the Con­sti­tu­tional man­date only spec­i­fies that the Pres­i­dent must, accord­ing to Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 3:

… from time to time give to the Con­gress Infor­ma­tion on the State of the Union, and rec­om­mend to their Con­sid­er­a­tion such Mea­sures as he shall judge nec­es­sary and expedient …

That is, on occa­sion, he must tell Con­gress how things are going, and what he wants them to pass as leg­is­la­tion. There’s no require­ment of a speech, no require­ment of it being annual, and no require­ment of it being any par­tic­u­lar time of year.

But tra­di­tions form, and the live, tele­vised annual speech before Con­gress has become the stan­dard. Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton turned them into thereto­fore unseen spec­ta­cle, in a man­ner he reprised at last year’s Demo­c­ra­tic National Convention.

And, along the way, the oppo­si­tion party’s responses to the State of the Union Addresses became part of the tra­di­tion as well. Until recently, that meant a sin­gle oppo­si­tion speech. Begin­ning in 2011, though, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michele Bach­mann (R-​​Stillwater, MN) gave the first Tea Party response, dis­tinct from that of the Repub­li­can Party.  (more…)

Shampoo, Reince, Repeat

34
3 months ago
by Michael Weiss in
More of the same?

More of the same?

It’s a bat­tle on which fil­istro has spilled much dig­i­tal ink, but we’ve just wit­nessed another round. Does the Repub­li­can Party have a pol­icy prob­lem or a mes­sage prob­lem? Does the Party need to shift to the left or to the right, and do they need to clean up their messaging?

The answers were all over the map, depend­ing on whom one asked.

Ari Fleis­cher sees a “tale of two par­ties”, but he views the bifur­ca­tion as between the Gov­er­nors’ man­sions and the national offices, rather than between the estab­lish­ment and the Tea Party. He also notes a grow­ing demo­graphic issue that is work­ing in the Democ­rats’ favor: “Demo­graphic changes in Amer­ica are changes in the Democ­rats’ direc­tion. We have to fig­ure out how to make it come our way.” His solu­tion is to explain to peo­ple with more pig­ment that they should focus on the social con­ser­vatism they have in com­mon with the GOP, and ignore the racial hatred so many white Repub­li­cans feel toward them.

It’s not just lib­er­als who see the racist vein in the Repub­li­can Party. (more…)

Fiscal Cliff Diving

12
9 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Back in May, I pre­dicted a series of likely bud­get con­fronta­tions fac­ing Con­gress late this year or early next: the expi­ra­tion of the pay­roll tax hol­i­day, the need to again raise the debt ceil­ing, expi­ra­tion of the Bush tax cuts, the seques­tra­tion of funds man­dated by the last debt ceil­ing deal, the annual Octo­ber 1 end of the fis­cal year, and pos­si­ble moves on spend­ing, Social Secu­rity, and Medicare. Last week, I gave an update deal­ing with seques­tra­tion, and another update this week on votes con­cern­ing the Bush tax cuts.

These impor­tant issues might go in unex­pected ways. Yes­ter­day, in a rel­a­tively quiet no-​​drama bipar­ti­san deal, lead­ers of both Houses and both major Par­ties reached agree­ment to keep the fed­eral gov­ern­ment run­ning until after the Novem­ber elec­tion. It’s but a six-​​month con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion, which means they’ll have to come back to the sub­ject next year, but they got it done two months early instead of wait­ing until well after the last minute.

This may point in some new direc­tions, though I doubt we’re about to see a bed of roses. Well, maybe the thorns part. (more…)

LIBOR Pains

21
10 months ago
by Monotreme in

One thing that unites the Tea Party and Occupy move­ments is a hatred of the chi­canery that dragged the world into finan­cial cri­sis start­ing in late 2007.

Anger unites these oth­er­wise dis­parate move­ments. Anger over the world­wide finan­cial cri­sis, huge com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages paid to those who failed to exer­cise fidu­ciary restraint, and the sub­se­quent $700 bil­lion Trou­bled Assets Relief Plan (TARP) bailout of banks deemed “too big to fail”.

In 1913 Europe, a series of treaty alliances amongst unsta­ble par­ties ensured that once a match was set, all hell would break loose — and did. The match was the June 28, 1914, assas­si­na­tion of Arch­duke Fer­di­nand in Sara­jevo. A month later, the Guns of August were mow­ing down young men worldwide.

Ninety-​​eight years later, almost to the day, a spark may have been struck, the spark which lights the hydrogen-​​filled diri­gi­ble of the finan­cial cri­sis’ bad actors.

It’s all about LIBOR, and a eight-​​hundred-​​trillion dol­lar LIBOR pain. (more…)

State of Play: Utah as a Red-​​State Bellwether

18
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Map of Utah Coun­ties. Source: geol​ogy​.com

Demo­c­ra­tic and Repub­li­can state con­ven­tions were held in Utah Sat­ur­day, April 21. Each party chose can­di­dates for statewide and multi-​​county offices.

On the Demo­c­ra­tic side, things were pretty calm. The Democ­rats don’t hold much power in Utah pol­i­tics, and there were no major con­tro­ver­sies. I’ve been to past state Demo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tions, and the over­all air is like a high school pep rally for a los­ing team that every­one is com­pelled to attend. The Democ­rats only have one Con­gres­sional seat — more on that later — and have not been a sig­nif­i­cant force in state pol­i­tics since 1966. Cur­rently, the State Sen­ate has 22 Repub­li­cans and 7 Democ­rats, while the State House has 56 Repub­li­cans and 17 Democ­rats. All the Democ­rats are from the Salt Lake and nearby Park City areas, with the excep­tion of one lone Demo­c­ra­tic State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Chris­tine Watkins, who lives in Price, in the coal-​​mining east-​​central part of the state.

There is much more activ­ity on the Repub­li­can side. Remem­ber that in 2010, U.S. Sen­a­tor Bob Ben­nett was unable to make it past the sec­ond round of bal­lot­ing which sent now-​​Senator Mike Lee (R-​​UT) and Tim Bridge­wa­ter into the pri­mary, which Sen­a­tor Lee won.

Could the Tea Party repeat this feat in 2012, with Sen­a­tor Orrin Hatch (R-​​UT), who has served for 36 years?
(more…)

Yesterday’s Important Votes

20
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Yes­ter­day, Michael posted up a list of impor­tant bal­lot ini­tia­tives and elec­tions to watch. Today, let’s recap what we know as of this writ­ing (2 am EST) and what’s still out there.

Sixty/​forty splits were the order of the day, with many ini­tia­tives being decided by that mar­gin. Only a cou­ple of races are close: a Wash­ing­ton state trans­porta­tion tax ini­tia­tive and con­trol of the Vir­ginia State Sen­ate. We will be watch­ing those through the day Wednes­day, but the Vir­ginia race in par­tic­u­lar may not be decided for a week or more.

The title color indi­cates my best guess of whether the results favor the left (blue), the right (red), or neither/​mixed (gray).

 

(more…)

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