NewsTrust - Republican Party - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

The Missing Link From Killeen to Kabul

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - THE dead at Fort Hood had not even been laid to rest when their massacre became yet another political battle cry for the self-proclaimed patriots of the American right. Their verdict was unambiguous: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born psychiatrist of Palestinian parentage who sent e-mail to a radical imam, was a terrorist.

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Why Are the Loudest Political Voices the Most Extreme?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ABC News - By Lee Dye - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - Those bombastic self-appointed spokespersons who rant from both the political right and left are likely driven by the conviction that their extreme views are shared by the majority of the members of their political party, but they are probably wrong, according to new research.

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Paranoia Strikes Deep

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:18:04 -0800

New York Times - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - If the G.O.P. essentially shrinks down to a rump party across America, the country could become ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

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Obama Faces His Anzio

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Nov. 06 (Opinion) - President Obama chose a cautious approach rather than bold action on the economy, and the decision may haunt Democrats for years to come.

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Hark! The Voters Speak!

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Gail Collins - Nov. 05 (Opinion) - Endorsements don’t work if they’re oblique and half-hearted, as if they had been sent via Candygram.

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North and South in the Republican Party

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Megan McArdle - Nov. 05 (Comment) - Rural areas have a farmer's contempt for welfare, and the entire upstate region knows too well that the taxes and regulations imposed by the rich downstate voters are crippling their economy. No, this is not libertarian cant; it's obvious to basically anyone who spends any time there. New York has onerous business taxes, a deeply problematic workman's comp system, and various rules about public sector unions that are slowly destroying the budgets of the local cities. Combine this with a whole lot of cold weather, and there's no way they can attract new businesses to replace the big industrial plants they've lost.

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It Doesn't Mean Squat

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Marc Ambinder - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - Along with tarot cards and goat entrails, a lot of people believe they can divine hidden meaning from the results of off-year elections, like the ones in Virginia, New York and New Jersey on Tuesday. I'm skeptical. For one thing, nobody bothers to wait for the polls to close anymore--the "meaning" of the results has been hammered out in advance. A GOP sweep will be taken as proof that conservatives are resurgent and President Obama's agenda is in trouble, while Democratic wins in New York and New Jersey--Virginia is hopeless--will demonstrate that conservatives have gone off the deep end. (Any other combination will mean a dull night for cable television.)

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The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - This week’s election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.

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Olympia's 'Betrayal'

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Mickey Edwards - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - For weeks, as the Senate Finance Committee moved toward a final vote on a health care reform bill, public attention focused sharply on a single member of that committee, Olympia Snowe of Maine. That focus told us a lot about her: how she came to conclusions, what values motivated her, what life experiences had shaped her. But now the question is not about Olympia Snowe but about her Republican colleagues. We know a lot about Olympia; how other Republican Senators react to her departure from the party script will tell us a lot about them. Most importantly, their reaction to Snowe's exercise of independent judgment will tell us how they see their own roles as members of Congress. Is their loyalty to their party or to their oath of office; to the club they belong to or the Constitution they swore allegiance to? To be clear, there are valid reasons to oppose almost every item in the Democrats' health care proposals just as there are sound reasons to support them. What a constitutional democracy requires is not consensus but thoughtful consideration of alternatives and vigorous advocacy of differing views. The question is how one decides on a course to be followed. Democracy, after all, is not about policy but about process: not what policies one chooses to adopt but how important policy decisions are reached. To this point, it is not a distinction many Republicans have understood.

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Healthcare has rationing in abundance

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Doyle McManus - Oct. 11 (Opinion) - Late last month, as the Senate Finance Committee labored to produce its version of a healthcare bill, the Republican whip, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, renewed an old warning. If the federal government intervenes to hold healthcare costs down, Kyl said, the result would be something nobody wants: rationing. "The federal bureaucrats would, in effect, reduce the payment to providers, forcing them to reduce the care," Kyl warned. "It's not the government directly that is actually rationing care; now, we wouldn't want to do that. We cut the providers to the point that they have to do it instead -- and that result is still rationing. As far as the patients are concerned, it's still the same result."

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The Politics of Spite

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

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Op-Ed Columnist: The Wizard of Beck

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Brooks - Oct. 02 (Opinion) - There is no power behind the media curtain for talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. They claim to represent a hidden majority but, in fact, represent a mere niche.

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Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - Unlike liberal critics of capitalist inequities, of course, Beck and his claque are driven by an over-the-top detestation of government. Washington is always the enemy, stealing their hard-earned money to redistribute it to the undeserving and shiftless poor (some of whom just happen to be immigrants or black). Though there is nothing Obama can do to stop racists from being racist, he could help stanch the economic piece of this by demonstrating how a reformed government can at times actually make Americans’ lives better. That’s what F.D.R. did, and that’s the promise Obama made, swaying some Republicans and even some racists, during the campaign.

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Limbaugh: We need segregated buses

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Sep. 17 (Opinion) - On school bus attack that police now say wasn't racially motivated: "I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America."

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What mean-spirited Rep. Joe Wilson tells us about the nation's character

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By E.J. Dionne - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - The far right has decided that extremism in assailing Obama is no vice. As for immigrants who are here illegally, those who go to an emergency room receive medical attention, and they should. No doctor I know, whatever his or her politics, would deny treatment to a sick person on the basis of immigration status. Forget compassion and consider self-interest. Aren't you better off if the person working next to you who has a communicable disease has early access to care?

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GOP frets it's too surly with the fringe on top

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Peter Wallsten - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - you have to be aware that there's a line where legitimate concerns begin to collapse into paranoid fantasy." Frum and other establishment Republicans have begun to speak out in recent days against the influence of those spreading theories on the Internet, such as the idea that President Obama is ineligible to be president, or that he is a Communist, or that his allies want to set up Nazi-like detention camps for political opponents.

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American Politics stands at a crossroads

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Walter Russell Mead - Sep. 14 (Opinion) - Walter Russell Mead, PoliticoAmerican politics stands at an unusual crossroads. Buoyed by victories in the 2008 election and feeling vindicated by the financial crisis. liberal Democrats headed into 2009 feeling that their hour had come. The fallacies of Reaganite free-market economics had been exposed; Americans were returning to the old time religion of the New Deal. History, which for liberal Democrats had been running disastrously off the rails since Richard Nixon's election in 1968, was finally back on track.

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The Red Scare Returns

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Thomas Frank - Sep. 10 (Opinion) - Today, from the floor of town-hall meetings and the heights of the Republican Party, alarmed Americans fret about secret socialists and denounce the president as a dictator. They make plans to pull their children out of school rather than have them exposed to his hypnotic oratorical powers. They quail at imaginary death panels, storm at imaginary threats to gun rights, and froth at an imaginary birth-certificate scandal. And it has required only eight months of Democratic administration to bring the right to a boil.

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It Gets Worse

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Joe Klein - Sep. 04 (Opinion) - Could I just say that the intensity of this getting pretty scary...and dangerous? We are heading toward a cliff and the usual brakes of civil discourse are not working. Indeed, the Republicans have the pedal to the metal

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Missing Richard Nixon

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - In the Nixon era, leaders in both political parties were capable of speaking rationally, and decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now.

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Majority Rule on Health Care Reform

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Aug. 30 (Editorial) - In recent weeks, it has become inescapably clear that Republicans are unlikely to vote for substantial reform this year. Many seem bent on scuttling President Obama’s signature domestic issue no matter the cost. As Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, so infamously put it: “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

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Change is tough. So liberals can't just leave it to Obama

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Michael Tomasky - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - I must report to you that the mood is somewhat grim these days among American liberals. Some feel President Obama has already sold them out. Others are angrier at conservatives and their deliberate lies about aspects of healthcare reform. But even many in this latter cohort think the White House hasn't been pushing back against the lies hard enough. Either way, expectations are diminished – nerves are fraying, temples are greying.

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The Guns of August

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Aug. 23 (Opinion) - The simmering undertone of violence in our politics seems to be getting darker.

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America the delusional --

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Tim Rutten - Aug. 20 (Opinion) - you can't make this stuff up--but lots of people are, and they're being encouraged to do so by those in the republican party who think that defeat of the ...initiative at any cost is the gop's only hope of substantial recovery in the midterms.

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Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreason

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Aug. 19 (Opinion) - This tendency to simply deny inconvenient facts and invent a fantasy world isn't new; it's only becoming more heightened. It ran through the Bush years like a dash of bourbon in water. When it became clear that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, the US right simply claimed they had been shipped to Syria. When the scientific evidence for man-made global warming became unanswerable, they claimed – as one Republican congressman put it – that it was "the greatest hoax in human history", and that all the world's climatologists were "liars". The American media then presents itself as an umpire between "the rival sides", as if they both had evidence behind them.

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