Blog: TAPPED

Jonathan Chait may have just unlocked Mitt Romney‘s strategy: Yes, conservatives have developed a series of policy stances — say, that subsidizing and regulating private health insurance is the greatest threat to freedom in American history. Rather than treat this as a principled view, Romney simply treats it as an atavistic expression of hostility toward […]

Last night’s Republican debate was interesting for many reasons, but the thing that made me angriest was this, from Herman Cain: WALLACE: …and we all share in the happiness about your situation. But, you say if Obamacare had been in effect when you were first being treated, you would dead now. Why? CAIN: The reason […]

Yesterday, at a meeting with journalists and bloggers at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz spoke about the organization’s efforts as it prepared for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. During the conversation, I asked the chair about Obama’s potential difficulties with Latino voters. Between the failure to shepherd the DREAM Act […]

According to a new survey from Quinnipiac University, in Florida Rick Perry’s Social Security message — “it’s a Ponzi scheme” — resonates with a whole lot of GOP voters. Among Republicans, the only voters allowed to participate in the state’s Republican primary, 52 percent say that a “Ponzi scheme” is a fair way to describe […]

Behold the muffin of tyranny. (Flickr/devlon duthie) What, would you say, is the worst waste of taxpayer money we’ve seen in recent years? Maybe that $6.6 billion in cash — yes, pallets full of bricks of $100 bills — that went missing in Iraq? (Or maybe the whole Iraq War, but whatever.) Nah, it’s a […]

So you’re thinking about voting for Rick Perry in the Republican primary in your state, but you feel like he hasn’t given you that cheek-flapping feeling you get when you’re plunging to earth at 500 miles an hour, experiencing g-forces that could rip the eyeballs out of your head? Well, your wait is over: If […]

The Atlantic‘s James Fallows, among the most reasonable and thoughtful people in Washington, responds to a crude article by Elliot Abrams that appeared on his magazine’s website by writing a characteristically reasonable and thoughtful post explaining why Abrams’ approach to criticizing the Obama administration is enormously unhelpful. Not only is the piece, as Fallows says, […]

My article in the Prospect‘s October issue is up at the homepage. It’s a long feature, but here’s a quick version: After the Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, social conservatives at the local and national levels joined forces to attack the court. They used a once-obscure procedure of judicial selection to kick […]

Since entering the Republican presidential primary in August, Rick Perry has led the pack in South Carolina — according to Public Policy Polling’s most recent survey of the state, Perry led the entire field by at least twenty points. Shortly after that poll was released, I spent some time in South Carolina, and found that […]

Republicans’ response to Obama’s deficit-reduction plan — which calls on millionaires and large corporations to pay higher taxes — predictably consisted of two terms: “job creators” and “class warfare.” Who are these job creators, anyway? They want you to think it’s small businesses, but Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on millionaires wouldn’t affect 98 percent […]