Mary Lynn Jones

Last week, House Speaker Dennis Hastert gathered Republican Party members for a “mandatory” conference meeting to discuss what to do about the $521 billion federal budget deficit, according to The Hill. Afterward, he said, “Nothing is sacred in this business. Everything is on the table.” Not exactly what a Republican representative running for re-election — […]

There have been plenty of stories written in recent weeks about how the Bush administration has ignored rules of good governance in order to further its partisan agenda. But Republicans on Capitol Hill have been just as brazen, and Democrats are finally ready to strike back. Last fall, GOP leaders held the Medicare reform vote […]

Over the weekend, political observers made much of the fact that a new poll showed John Kerry would defeat President Bush by 49 percent to 46 percent if the general election were held today. Of course, the election is not being held today, and Kerry’s numbers probably owe more to renewed press and public interest […]

There are plenty of people eating crow today as pundits, pollsters and politicians who had predicted a Howard Dean victory in Iowa realized just how far off they were. But all of the signs that political experts usually rely on had suggested a Dean win. That means experts should throw out conventional wisdom as they […]

Democrats need to stick to their guns on Capitol Hill. As lawmakers and political observers have suggested — and as a recent numerical analysis by CQ Weekly confirmed — Congress is at its most partisan level in decades (except, perhaps, for the 1995 session after Republicans took over Capitol Hill). In the Senate, Republicans voted […]

It’s a new year, but Republicans in Washington are using the same screwy logic as ever. President Bush’s fiscal year 2005 budget will once again be in the red, this time to the tune of at least $450 billion, according to Sunday’s New York Times. While defense and homeland-security spending will rise, Bush plans to […]

It’s almost the new year, which means that the pre-primary presidential campaign is just about over and that the real race to the White House is set to begin. But before we bid adieu to 2003, let’s look back at some of the lessons we’ve learned from the 2004 Democratic contenders. The first is that […]

During a radio show on which I appeared Friday, a caller said he was upset that ABC News had decided to stop assigning embedded reporters to the presidential campaigns of Carol Moseley Braun, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton. My question is: Why? I understand that it’s important to hear from all nine presidential candidates so […]

President Bush signed the Medicare reform bill Monday morning. Later that afternoon, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) held a rally for a group of lawmakers and senior citizens who were opposed to the bill. The event was a photo op, to be sure, but it was also a fitting end to Pelosi’s first year as House […]

November was not kind to John Kerry. The Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential hopeful got the kind of media ink that campaign press secretaries dread. To wit: “Kerry Fires Campaign Manager; Democrat, Lagging Behind Dean, Hopes to Redirect Candidacy” (The Washington Post, Nov. 11); “Kerry Tries to Rejuvenate His Faltering Campaign” (USA Today, Nov. 24); […]