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“It’s Still Extortion For The Sake Of Extortion”: Republicans Are Fighting...
We have two interesting theories today about what’s happening in the House. One is from Neil Irwin, who posits that it’s all about a sunk costs fallacy — Republicans are mistakenly continuing to ask...
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“Standing Wrong”: Old Conservatives Can’t Learn New Tricks
If President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats wanted to maximize the political advantage they’re getting from the shutdown/default crisis, they’d agree to at least one part of the short-term...
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“A Love Story For The Ages”: Republicans And The Sequester
The deal allowing the government to reopen today included a mandate that the House and Senate engage in a new round of budget negotiations, with the lawmakers involved facing the unenviable task of...
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“Reality Is Not, And Never Was The Point”: The Tea Party’s True Believers...
Yay. Yippee. Woo hoo, even. It was a nick-of-time rescue, like when Polly Pureheart is whisked off the railroad tracks right before the train comes barreling through, or the correct wire is snipped and...
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“Rule And Ruin Party Crashers”: The Tea Party’s Drive For Ideological Purity
In the late nineteen-sixties, Mitch McConnell came to Washington to work as an aide to Senator Marlow Cook, a Kentucky Republican. Cook backed clean-air standards and limits on strip mining. It was a...
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“Holding A Blank Ransom Note”: GOP Had A Plan On the Debt Ceiling, But Now...
Last spring, House Republican efforts to hold the debt ceiling hostage quickly became a fiasco – Democrats refused to play along and Congress passed a clean increase. Last October, House GOP efforts to...
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“And Here We Go Again”: Republicans Are Really, Really Bad At Hostage...
For some time, I’ve been arguing that we should not just extend the debt ceiling but get rid of it altogether. It’s a weird historical anomaly that serves no practical purpose other than allowing the...
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“Voting For Default”: Paul Ryan’s Embarrassing Debt Ceiling Vote
After Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) decided to put a clean debt ceiling bill up for a vote yesterday evening, he had a new challenge: finding enough Republican votes to go along with the Democrats to...
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“A Galloping Conservative Radicalism”: If Republicans Want Respect, They Need...
One of the central provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform package was the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is charged with preventing banks and other financial...
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“Boehner’s Imaginary Allegations”: Speaker Still Struggling To Explain...
No one seems quite as happy about House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) anti-Obama lawsuit as President Obama himself. For the West Wing, the Republican litigation helps prove to the public, in a...
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“The GOP Didn’t Deserve To Win”: Congressional Republicans’ Behavior Over The...
Voters on Tuesday gave Republicans control of the Senate. But the GOP did not earn this victory. That’s not because Senate Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), deserved to win in...
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“How The GOP Made Fiscal Responsibility Look Irresponsible”: It’s A Matter Of...
It’s a minor miracle: Both houses of the Republican-controlled Congress have passed a budget. Now, that’s the easy part compared to getting appropriations bills to Obama’s desk that he will actually...
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“They Want To Torch Washington, Not Run It”: GOP’s Kamikaze Caucus Takes Out...
“I consider this a victory for the crazies,” said one Republican congressman who attended the meeting in which Speaker John Boehner shocked the political world by announcing his resignation. Boehner,...
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