Newt Gingrich or Woody Allen: Who's More Honest About Cheating?
Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and not-quite-official 2012 Republican presidential aspirant, has been spouting dumb comments and tossing rhetorical stink bombs for decades. He recently suggested that President Barack Obama is "so outside our comprehension" that his behavior can only be explained by his supposed "Kenyan, anti-colonial" mindset. During the 1990s, his political action committee, GOPAC, disseminated a memo to Republican candidates with a list of suggested words they should use when describing Democratic opponents. That list included "sick," "pathetic," "betray," "bizarre," ...
Mitt Romney: How Long Can He Steer Clear of GOP Craziness?
Mitt Romney, the sort-of second-place finisher in the 2008 Republican presidential sweepstakes, is taking a different approach this year. Rather than trying to create an early splash, Romney is taking his time in declaring a presidential bid and, as The New York Times puts it, "is operating in a cautious, low-key fashion . . . with limited news coverage." The conventional view is that the former Massachusetts governor is doing so to avoid becoming the official front-runner -- a position that would place a large bull's eye on his back. But there may be another reason: He doesn't want to live in ...
Huckabee's Slide: From Anti-Elite Demagoguery to Right-Wing Buffoonery
I wrote too soon. On Tuesday, I posted a column declaring that Mike Huckabee's new book, "A Simple Government," "is an assault on thinking." My point: in this tract the former Republican governor of Arkansas and failed 2008 contender strikes an anti-elite pose, demagogically bashes policy experts, and attacks the Obama administration for being inexperienced and not sufficiently simple. But that's nothing compared to the crackpot crusade he's been on this week. It all began when Huckabee appeared on right-wing Steve Malzberg's radio show in New York City, seconded Malzberg's demands for more ...
Huckabee's New Book: Playing for Simple Minds?
Mike Huckabee, whether or not he's running for president, has decided the path ahead for him is demagoguery. The former Republican governor of Arkansas, who kind of finished second in the 2008 GOP presidential contest (it's complicated), is mulling another run, and in the meantime he has produced the obligatory campaign book. Titled "A Simple Government," this book is an assault on thinking. Let's start with Huckabee's big beef against President Barack Obama, for, as a campaign book, it's raison d'etre -- oh, sorry about the French -- must be to make the case that the author ought to be where ...
Roger Ailes' Sex-and-Lies Tale: There Is Something Different About Fox
If a television anchor were caught -- on tape! -- encouraging a colleague to lie to federal investigators in order to protect a high-profile friend, do you think he or she would still have a job? Probably not. But if you run a network and if it's Fox, well, then . . . On Thursday, The New York Times broke one of those deliciously dishy New York political-media exposés involving bold-face names. According to legal papers filed in a civil suit, in 2004 Roger Ailes, the pugilistic head of Fox News, encouraged Judith Regan, a flashy publisher, to lie to federal investigators about an affair she ...
Government Shutdown: Who Wins -- or Loses?
Is House Speaker John Boehner wilier than Newt Gingrich? In the mid-1990s, Gingrich, then the speaker, enthusiastically charged into a budget face-off with President Clinton that led to not one but two government shutdowns. (One lasted five days; the other, 21.) Gingrich emerged wounded from the battle -- which had been waged over the GOP's calls for deep spending cuts -- and Clinton went on to win reelection in 1996; his Democrats netted nine seats in the House. The politerati's consensus since then has been that this fight was Gingrich's Waterloo, the beginning of the end for him. Now ...
John Boehner's 'Naked Lunch' Moment
Does House Speaker John Boehner have any shame? You don't have to answer. That's a rhetorical question. This past week, the Republican from Ohio put on one of the crassest performances seen in Washington in years. In a matter of seconds, he reached a level of hypocrisy that far exceeded the standard political norm and demonstrated that (despite his habit of crying at the first sign of an emotional moment) he has little empathy for many of his fellow Americans. You will recall that during the 2010 congressional elections, Boehner had essentially only one thing to say: "Mr. President, where ...
Mitt Romney: Adult or Empty Suit?
Mitt Romney's crew likes to bill the straight-from-Central-Casting GOP presidential contender as the "adult" among the Republican 2012 wannabes. But the speech he delivered at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday was full of schoolyard immaturity. The gathering itself, the most prominent annual hoedown of conservative activists, was an out-of-touch affair. While much of the world was gripped by the pro-democracy uprising in Egypt, CPAC speakers, including many GOP presidential aspirants, derided Obama as an America-hating socialist hell-bent on weakening and/or ruining this ...
Rumsfeld: MIA on the True Costs of the Iraq War
I was reading Donald Rumsfeld's just-released memoir, "Known and Unknown," when I came across a passage that brought me to a dead stop: "The U.S. military involvement in Iraq has come at a high price. Combat took the lives of thousands of American servicemen and -women and left many more wounded. The U.S. Treasury spent hundreds of billions of dollars. The prolong war also poisoned our politics at home." What's missing from this picture? A hundred thousand or so dead Iraqi civilians. Iraq Body Count website, which keeps track of reported civilian casualties, reports that since the U.S. ...
Glenn Beck: Should Fox Toss Him Out of the Coop?
Glenn Beck is walking toward a cliff -- or running, or skipping. The question is, will Fox News go flying over the edge with him, or give him a push? For years, Beck has pitched various conspiracy theories with a rather predictable thrust: The left is out to take over and/or destroy the United States. (The relationship between assuming control of the country and scheming its decimation has always been a bit fuzzy.) And his targets have been sinister lefty outfits that are not household names: the Tides Foundation, ACORN, and others. As long as Beck stuck to this classic tale -- secret commies ...
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