It looks like another Iowa Supreme Court justice may lose his job this year. Conservatives are once again railing against one of the judges who legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa. Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent social conservative on the local scene who led an anti-retention campaign against three of the state's supreme court justices in 2010, announced last month that he was spearheading an effort to make sure David Wiggins doesn't succeed at the polls this November.
Paul Ryan might be a familiar pretty face among the wonky set, but for most voters he is an unknown figure, a minor House representative from someplace in the middle of the country whose name they first encountered at the start of the month. His primetime premiere at the GOP convention last night was supposed to be his coming out moment, an occasion to sell voters on the idea that he is a leader they can see leading the country. Instead, Ryan revealed that he cannot escape the conservative think tank culture that spawned him. It is sure to satisfy the rightwingers who filled the convention hall in Tampa, but the vice=presidential candidate offered little of substance or style for those yet to be decided voters.
It's almost four years since the economy cratered, yet 11 million homes—accounting for 23 percent of all outstanding mortgages— remain underwater. The Obama administration's efforts to shore up the housing market by offering incentives for refinancing, rather than the government directly purchasing loans, has been an utter failure; countless homeowners have been left desperately negotiating with their lenders to modify the terms of their loan and more often than not, being tossed onto the street by mortgage servicers.
August hasn't been too kind to Mitt Romney. He started the month trying to recover from a summer jaunt abroad at the end of July, which was supposed to be an easy string of photo-ops but turned into a Griswoldian comedy of errors. It all might have been forgotten if the running-mate rollout went well. But that didn’t happen, with Paul Ryan receiving the lowest approval rating among voters since Dan Quayle.
"There's a woman in Chicago," Ronald Reagan told an audience in New Hampshire while campaigning in 1976. "She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veterans benefits on four nonexisting deceased husbands. And she's collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000." The story—an exaggerated account of a 47-year-old black woman on the South Side of Chicago—played on racial stereotypes that struck a chord with white, suburban voters. The specter of the “welfare queen” has been with us ever since.
