Paul Ryan

The GOP Healthcare Mess

Paul Kleyman

Starr worries that congressional Republicans are not only acting to repeal President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), but aim to restructure Medicaid into a program with federal-budget caps so tight it would break down one of the principal Great Society health protections of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Medicaid and the Medicare program have been fundamental to health care in the United States since 1965. 

The Problem With the Republican Healthcare Plan

Marty Kaplan

They must be baffled by how devoid of mojo their old battle cries have become. “Jobs-killing Obamacare” packs no punch in an economy that’s added more than 10 million jobs since the Affordable Care Act passed. “Disaster” and “death spiral” sound demented to someone who’s gone from no insurance to comprehensive coverage. “Higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher co-pays” may in some cases be accurate, but for Americans long suffering from rising prices, the real news is the slowing of the rate of increase.

Why the GOP Dislikes Donald Trump

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

They fear that he will actually be the party’s nominee. And if so, what will that do to the party? GOP leaders from House Majority leader Paul Ryan to Arizona Senator John McCain sweat that Trump could not only cost the GOP any shot at the White House but blow their majority hold on the Senate as well. The one thing that would almost certainly insure that is if the sentiment voiced by the conservative activist about Trump is not just a bad case of momentary blowing smoke.

Donald T. Sterling, Ted Nugent, and the Rise of Racist Rants

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald T. Sterling is no aberration. On an audio recording that allegedly captures Sterling telling a girlfriend that he doesn’t want African-Americans at “my games” ignited a furor. But it’s part and parcel of an increasingly rotten and ugly saga that has become all too familiar in recent days. In quick succession, GOP rocker and pitchman Ted Nugent maligned President Obama as a “subhuman mongrel.

The Rise and Fall of the Republican Party

Tyler Huggins

Post-Romney/Ryan defeat, Republicans ordered an autopsy report on their '12 campaign season. The report, entitled the Growth and Opportunity Project exposed several large anachronisms and rifts in the party. To quote directly from the report: "These are voters who recently left the Party [sic]. Asked to describe Republicans, they said that the Party is 'scary,' 'narrow-minded,' and 'out of touch" and that we were a Party of 'stuffy old men.' This is consistent with the findings of other post-election surveys." 

Elections 2012: A Lollapalooza of Lies

Thomas Adcock

Republicans, meanwhile, went about lying with their customary abandon. They slandered the president as, variously and sometimes all at once, Kenyan-born (Donald Trump’s meme); an apologist for Islamic terrorism (Mr. Romney himself, in accusing the president of sympathizing with Benghazi murderers); a secret homosexual (Jerome Corsi, a popular conspiracy theorist and member of the Romney campaign press corps); and a heretic of possibly Christian persuasion who, in supporting same-sex marriage, has “shaken his fist at God” (the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy).

Elections: Mormons in Arizona Remain Undecided About Romney

Valeria Fernandez

There are close to 400,000 registered Latino voters in the state, up 23 percent from four years ago, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO). There are a similar number of Mormons living in Arizona, though the community has a longer and more established history of voter turnout. And this year, observers say, Republicans are counting on their vote. 

V.P. Debate Moderator Flubs Social Security, Medicare Questions

Paul Kleyman

As the vice presidential debate’s referee, Martha Raddatz of ABC News is getting high marks almost all around for regaining a modicum of respect for the media, following Jim Lehrer’s limpid performance in the first presidential debate. What’s being widely missed by the ringside scorekeepers, however, is that while Raddatz is getting a pass for dwelling too much on foreign policy — after all, her colleagues allow, she is a foreign correspondent -- she badly flubbed the portion of the debate devoted to entitlement programs.

#IHeartPresidentialElections: Obama, Romney and the Social Media War

Loren DiBlasi

Once again, the Obama campaign has done a great job of engaging voters through the two most popular social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, with Romney right on his tails. Ironically, the candidates’ official sites appear to be nearly identical to each other; loaded with pictures, facts, and links for visitors to click if they happen to be feeling generous, they seem more like personal blogs than campaign sites. This sort of behind-the-scenes, intimate approach works well for both candidates. President Obama’s Twitter account, for example, often feels like an extension of his own diary. 

The American Spirit, Lost and Found

Thomas Adcock

The spirit of John Hancock and his gang of aristocrats——optimists all who risked their lives and property as signatories to revolution——is rare. Regrettably, that optimistic spirit——that spirit that drives all American progress——has been at historic odds with an uncharitable impulse among the American people: a selfishness that paradoxically afflicts both the afflicters and the afflicted, as we see in this election season.

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