This piece was originally written for The Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog on April 20, 2013: In the aftermath of the gun control vote, Joe Scarborough and others who favored the measure could be heard maintaining with steely resolve, “This issue is going to backfire on the opponents in the 2014 election.” Well, maybe. I …
In Slate, Will Oremus reports the very good news that non-partisan citizen efforts in California and Arizona have attracted lawsuits from aggrieved professional politicians. Excellent news! The cure seems to be working! “Often,” explains Oremus, “congressional gerrymanders are the result of bipartisan compromise—an agreement that allows the majority party to solidify its hold on the …
At the risk of making myself part of a set of Russian nesting pundits, please let me take this opportunity to endorse Fareed Zakaria‘s column in yesterday’s Washington Post about how to escape our dysfunctional politics, which is itself an endorsement of a column former Republican congressman Mickey Edwards wrote for the The Atlantic. Edwards …
You don’t have to listen to me; listen, if you prefer, to Karl Rove. Six weeks ago, I wrote a post that argued that anybody who wants to end the bitter partisanship that has metastasized in Washington shouldn’t direct his or her protests to the White House or to Congress, but should instead address their …
“I don’t believe the American people want us to focus on our job security, they want us to focus on their job security,” President Obama said at his face-off with Republican members of the House yesterday. In fact, one of the keys to getting Washington focus on our job security, and any and all other …