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Game Change Or More of the Same?
Here are some remarks I made to NABPAC that I thought I would share with you. It was a status quo election. Or was it? The players all seem exactly the same. Barack Obama. John Boehner. Harry Reid....
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Electing A Speaker
It took two months in the 34th Congress to find somebody who had enough votes to be Speaker. The Whig Party had collapsed a half decade before the Civil War started, and no party had enough votes to...
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Return to Regular Order
Will the 113th Congress mark the return of regular order? Some conservatives and the Wall Street Journal have decried a broken Congressional process where most deals are concluded behind closed door....
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The Business of Business
“The chief business of the American people is business.” Calvin Coolidge said that to a group of newspaper editors in 1925, smack dab in the middle of the Roaring 20’s, a decade of brisk economic...
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Rules Are Made to Be Broken
My cousin Barry once said to me, with a mischievous grin, before he got in trouble with his parents, “rules are made to be broken.” That certainly is the case these days with the so-called Hastert...
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Catfish Nation
We live in a catfish nation. “Catfish” is a television show on MTV about people who lie about themselves. According to the New York Times, “a so-called catfish is the engineer of the false online...
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More on the Majority of the Majority
I have been thinking a bit more about Denny’s Hastert’s famous dictum on the majority of the majority. It is still a very good guideline for how to keep the job of Speaker of the House. But it...
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Obama The Great?
Historians will rate President Barack Obama as one our nation’s greatest Presidents. The question is: Was he any good? That the history profession is dominated by a liberal elite comes as no...
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Learning From Obama
The President’s second inaugural brilliantly pushed forward his political agenda in ways that Republicans need to understand and learn from. Republicans will never be able to outbid the President when...
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Half-Empty, Half-Full
I am a “glass half-full” kind of guy. I try to find the positives in life and not dwell too much on the negatives. When you work in the leadership of the Congress for 15 years, you get used to...
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Redemption
Mark Sanford is Set to Do Penance for His Affair in the House Mark Sanford is set to return to Congress. For those who don’t remember him when he was first in the House of Representatives, Sanford was...
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The Hatfields and McCoys
First published on The Hill “These guys are like the Hatfields and McCoys. That’s why they can’t get anything done in Congress.” My cab driver pretty much nailed it on the head. Relations between the...
View ArticleLeaders and Followers
At my gym, they put little inspirational quotes up on the wall to get you to work out harder (that’s the theory, at least). “Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” was last Tuesday’s quote, attributed...
View ArticleConfab on Immigration
Republicans are having a confab on immigration as I write this entry. I imagine that none of them like the Senate product. I don’t blame them. I don’t like what the Senate produced, even though, had I...
View ArticleThe Club Strikes Out Again
So, the Club for Growth is up to its old tricks. The group of bilious billionaires who gave us Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, Joe Miller, and other losers is now trying to replace Mike Simpson with...
View ArticleThe Imperfect Storm
As members of Congress prepare to depart for the August break at the end of the week, they will be packing talking points from their caucus messaging packets that seek to explain why Congress hasn’t...
View ArticleIt’s All On Obama
The Syrian vote, if it happens at all, is all on Obama. He can’t blame the Republican leadership. He can’t blame the news media. He can’t blame the British, the Russians, the French, the United...
View ArticleWelcome Back to the Congress
Dear Representative or Senator: Welcome back to Washington. I hope you had a nice break and you are ready to work hard on behalf of the American people. The first step in working hard for the people is...
View ArticleAmerica Needs A Bench Coach
My 7 year-old son plays for a Little League team, the Angels, which is a pretty funny name for a bunch of rambunctious little boys. Baseball isn’t the fastest game in the world, especially for 7...
View ArticleRX Drugs: 10 Years
Ten years ago, Congress was in the process of passing a controversial piece of legislation, which the president would sign on Dec. 8: the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization...
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