Joe Scott: The Body Politic

Lessons Mitt Romney Learned

30 May 2012 |permalink | email article

LAST WEEK, as the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus noted Wednesday, two insightful profiles of Mitt Romney’s parents offered an implicit, and disappointing, contrast with their more successful son. New York magazine’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells describes the force of nature that… read full story

Hard Right: No Waver on Obamacare

30 May 2012 |permalink | email article

PUSH BACK matters in the murky world of Republican politics. No sooner had some rational House members begin warming to some provisions of President Obama’s health care law, influential conservative groups warned the GOP not to waver on their… read full story

“Obamacare” Decision: Which Side Hurt Most?

29 May 2012 |permalink | email article

Obamacare’s fate will be decided by a landmark Supreme Court decision in June but some Republicans have been privately considering a plan to reinstate some of its popular provisions if the law is struck down. That possibility, Talking Points… read full story

Romney’s ‘68 Defeat, Lessons for Mitt

28 May 2012 |permalink | email article

WHEN George Romney, the Michigan governor ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, he believed that his deep faith in the institutions of American life would be enough to beat back his party’s radical wing, he was badly… read full story

National Circus: 044, Booker, Bain

27 May 2012 |permalink | email article

Frank Rich, the longtime and perceptive political observer for the New York Times, has shifted to New York magazine. He has some tart comments on last Sunday’s “Meet the Press” kerfluffle when ambitious Newark Mayor Cory Booker called President… read full story

Brown’s Approval Slips; Tax Ballot Issue Alive

25 May 2012 |permalink | email article

THE HONEYMOON appears to be ending for Gov. Jerry Brown. For the first time in a major California poll since he took office a plurality of likely voters disapprove of the job he is going, according to a Public… read full story

Campaign Trail: Private Equity Tales

24 May 2012 |permalink | email article

Mitt Romney tells Time that he has spent his career as a job creator as opposed to Barack Obama whose experience is as a politician and a community organizer. The president has taken aim at Romney’s record at Bain… read full story

WMR: Candidate of the Few

23 May 2012 |permalink | email article

As Robert Shrum, the Los Angeles native and legendary Democratic strategist points out in The Week (May 21), Mitt Romney’s first television spot offers no clues about what really makes him tick. In contrast the Obama commercial on Bain… read full story

Bain Capital: Middle Class Vs. Rich?

22 May 2012 |permalink | email article

President Obama flew into Chicago set on ending the war in Afghanistan—and left his hometown engaged in a new war over Bain Capital with Mitt Romney. “When you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm,… read full story

Parsing Obama-Romney Polling Data

21 May 2012 |permalink | email article

MITT ROMNEY, according to polling by the New York Times and CBS News, is decidedly unpopular with his approval rating floating around 30 percent, according to Andrew Rosenthal, the New York Times editorial page editor since January 2007. Other… read full story

Europe, Obama Favor Growth, Not Austerity

20 May 2012 |permalink | email article

LEADERS of the world’s richest nations joined together on Saturday at Camp David, Md., to back more pr-growth policies to stem the deepening debt crisis in Europe, as President Obama for the first time received wide support that Europe,… read full story

GOP ‘Super PAC’ Attack Foiled

18 May 2012 |permalink | email article

MITT ROMNEY on Thursday condemned plans by Republican strategists and TD Ameritrade billionaire Joe Ricketts to run a $10-million advertising campaign linking President Obama to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his incendiary former pastor, about race-related sermons. “I repudiate that… read full story

Obama, Boehner, Debt-Ceiling Hike

17 May 2012 |permalink | email article

President Obama and House Speaker Boehner clashed during a White House meeting Wednesday, with Boehner telling the president he was “not going to allow a debt-ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt, according to his office. Obama… read full story

Congress: Another Debt-Ceiling Crisis?

16 May 2012 |permalink | email article

House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday in a talk before a Fiscal Summit in Washington he will insist on spending cuts in exchange for a vote in Congress to raise the nation’s debt limit, creating a year-end showdown that… read full story

JPMorgan Chase and Volcker Rule

15 May 2012 |permalink | email article

REGULATION is the new buzz word in the banking world even though, as Paul Krugman writes, current right-wing mythology has it that bad banking is always the result of government intervention or meddling liberals in Congress. Regulators are putting… read full story

House GOP Vote: Bias Against Gay Troops

14 May 2012 |permalink | email article

During the week in which President Obama announced his support for the expansion of the right to marry to all Americans Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee turned back the clock and passed two measures to undermine both… read full story

GOP Leaders, Gay Marriage, Near Silence

13 May 2012 |permalink | email article

THE instant conventional wisdom was that if Barack Obama endorsed gay marriage it would hand Republicans a powerful issue in an election year. Instead, as Politico notes, it has landed like a feather. Except for Ed Gillespie, a key… read full story

An apology-too-cute-by-half

12 May 2012 |permalink | email article

A Bullying Story about how Mitt Romney harassed a prep school classmate nearly 50 years ago and who later came out as gay, first reported by The Washington Post, has created a perception problem for the presumptive Republican presidential… read full story

Gay Marriage: The 2004 Election

11 May 2012 |permalink | email article

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S decision Wednesday to support gay marriage has raised intense questions about the political impact it might have on the outcome of the November election. In 2004 Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for President George W. Bush’s campaign, was… read full story

Obama: Make Same-Sex Marriage Legal

10 May 2012 |permalink | email article

O44, after “evolving” for almost two years on the issue of same-sex marriage publicly endorsed it on ABC News, taking an historic stand on one of the most politically contentious social issues in American history. “I’ve always been adamant… read full story

Mitt: Amnesia on Auto Bailout?

09 May 2012 |permalink | email article

When Romney appeared at a Cleveland TV station to take credit for rescuing the automobile industry on Monday his claims didn’t hold up. Steve Ratner, the “auto czar” who advised the White House on the auto rescue, told TPM… read full story

Europe to GOP: Austerity Is Big Loser

08 May 2012 |permalink | email article

FRANCOIS HOLLANDE is the new French president, the first Socialist elected to the Elysee Place in 17 years. The center-left politician made it clear that painful austerity is untenable not only in the Fifth Republic but also in Greece… read full story

Romney’s Jobs Growth Failure

07 May 2012 |permalink | email article

THE former governor on Friday blasted Obama, noting that the economy added only 115,000 jobs in April. He said that in a normal recovery “we should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs per month.” Aping George W. Bush… read full story

Arnold: Bring GOP ‘Big Tent’ Back

06 May 2012 |permalink | email article

Former Gov. Schwarzenegger, in a Sunday Los Angeles Times op.ed, said it’s time for California Republicans to abandon their “small tent” mentality and embrace the true Reagan, who believed in solutions and compromise. He recalls that it was… read full story

Romney, Bork and Extreme Legal Views

04 May 2012 |permalink | email article

ROBERT BORK has been one of the most divisive figures in American law and a right-wing standard bearer in Republican politics for nearly 40 years as a New York Times editorial recently pointed out. In 1973, when he was… read full story

Obama Turns Page; Krugman Opines

03 May 2012 |permalink | email article

The President, speaking from Bagram Air Base on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s killing, squandered an opportunity to fully explain his exit strategy from a war in Afghanistan that Americans are desperate to see brought to an end.… read full story

Medicare Savings; SCOTUS Poll Plunge

02 May 2012 |permalink | email article

Obamacare is savings seniors billions on prescription drug costs by bridging a coverage gap. Over 220,000 beneficiaries have saved an average of $837 in the first three months of 2012, the Medicare agency said Monday. The savings were wrung… read full story

Mitt’s Electoral Vote Challenge

01 May 2012 |permalink | email article

IT should not come as a surprise that Mitt Romney has a narrow path to win the presidency in November. A detailed examination of the electoral map means he will need 270 electoral votes to defeat Barack Obama. An… read full story

Joe Scott 3: The Body Politic