Mark Schmitt

As The New York Times reported last month, many of the big political money committees on the Republican side take the form of 501(c)4 nonprofits. (c)4’s are tax-exempt but contributions to them are not, and they are allowed to engage in lobbying and some political activity, as long as electoral politics is not their “primary […]

There’s a particular tone that many young Washington pundits adopt (having learned it from the masters) that seems counterintuitive and knowing, and yet manages to be predictable and hilariously naive at the same time. Here’s a classic example of it, from Josh Kraushaar, editor of The Hotline, in a regular column whose name, “Against the […]

Today’s big political profile is Todd Purdum‘s “The Man Who Never Was,” in Vanity Fair, in which the intrepid reporter smacks his forehead in astonishment! John McCain, it turns out, might never have been much of a “maverick” after all, but simply a run-of-the-mill Washington operator: What happened? What happened to that other John McCain, […]

Yes, the Republican Party seems to have gone a little nuts, at least in Delaware, or as Jon Chait explains it well, it is “reaping the whirlwind” for its choice to cast political debate in the Obama era in apocalyptic terms. But let’s recognize, as Mike Castle apparently didn’t, that it’s not just an existing […]

At The New Republic, John Judis today offers a lengthy “Response to My Critics” — those of us who challenged his hyperbolic account of the president’s “Unnecessary Fall.” While I’m one of four critics he links to, Judis barely touches the points in my “Tale of Three Presidencies,” which mainly concerned his failed attempt to […]