National Politics
On the radio, Dan Yorke is talking about the possibility of Condoleezza Rice’s ascension to the post of Secretary of State. Yorke speaks often and forcefully in support of women’s rights and respectful treatment of them, so I’m sure it pains him to say it, but he’s concerned that Condoleezza’s gender will represent a problem…
In Sunday’s ProJo, M. Charles Bakst, erstwhile stakeholder of the political commentariat of Rhode Island, took Sen. Lincoln Chafee to task for his waffling on both supporting fellow Republican President Bush and staying a Republican at all. His flirtation with bolting the party — and, more especially, his decision not to vote for George W.…
Arianna Huffington has an article on her blog nominally analyzing how Kerry’s reluctance to talk about foreign policy contributed to his defeat, yet in her detailed tactical description how foreign policy came to be muted, she doesn’t tell us what she thinks that the Kerry campaign should have been saying. She attributes the avoidance of…
I’d like to offer a suggestion to the conservatives mounting a challenge to Arlen Specter’s chairmanship of the Senate judiciary committee. They need to do a better job explaining what exactly the powers of a committee chair are, and exactly how a committee chair can frustrate the appointment process in a way that any other…
My latest article for TechCentralStation, on the subject of the Democratic party and national security issues, ran today. As luck would have it (or maybe it’s my vast network of spies in the vast right-wing conspiracy), the article serves as something of a response to blog entries from Kevin Drum and Matt Ygelsias (scroll up)…
And having opened talking about the local roots of this blog, I now move immediately to a national-level post… The (mostly tongue-in-cheek, I think) talk about some sort of red-state blue-state secession has me feeling like I’m living in the Bizarro World. I have a track record on the issue of secession. I’ve written a…
As detailed in this morning’s ProJo, Karl Rove went into a deep statistical analysis of where the Republicans gained in the electorate during the recent elections. One of his examples, surprisingly, was the increase the President enjoyed in garnering the vote of Rhode Islanders. Kerry carried Rhode Island with 59.4 percent of the vote. Mr.…
U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee (RINO, RI) has promised to remain a Republican, offering the supremely confidence-inspiring declaration: “Yes, at this stage, that is my intention.” In a sad echo of President Bush’s overused phrase in the first debate, Chafee says it is also his intention to “work hard to regain the support” of Republicans. Personally,…
John Fund documented in yesterday’s Opinionjournal, that more and more states are tending towards one-party rule at the state level. This is an intersting trend. If you believe what people say about voting for “the best candidate” instead of party affiliation, you would expect, at the local level, less dominance by any single party, because…
Now for my first self-promotional plug. My most recent post at my personal blog, The Ocean State Blogger, deals with Blue New England’s place in a Red Nation and in it I allude to the Republican party being the real “big tent” party in the nation. Additionally, I recently posted on some of the Rhode…