Mitt Romney

The Religion Card Is Turned Face Up

Is a religious war breaking out in the Republican Party? On Friday, Pastor Robert Jeffress of the 10,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas took the podium at the Values Voter Summit to introduce and endorse Rick Perry. Gov. Perry, said Pastor Jeffress, is a leader with “a strong ...

The End of Pax Americana?

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Observing the correlation of forces in this city and the intensity of conviction in the base of each party, the outcome of the ongoing fiscal fight between Barack Obama and the Tea Party Republicans seems preordained. Deadlock. There will be no big jobs-for-taxes deal. The ...

Can a Geriatric Germany Save Europe?

As Greece lurches on the precipice of default on its sovereign debt, a default that could bring down banks across Europe and precipitate a global financial panic, a consensus is building that there is but one way out. First, a structured default on the Greek debt, giving creditors a major haircut, ...

Tea Party voters

Subdividing America—to Win

“Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. “Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of ...

Whose Country Is It, Anyway?

For the third straight year, the median income of the typical American family fell in 2010. Adjusted for inflation, it is back where it was in 1996, the longest period of zero growth since the Depression. And the poverty rate has inched up to 15.1 percent. Both figures, however, should be put in ...

Setting Grandma’s Hair on Fire

Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme for these young people,” said Gov. Rick Perry in his first debate as a presidential candidate. “The idea ... that the current program is going to be there for them is a lie.” Pressed by the moderator, Perry did not back down. He doubled ...

George W. Bush

What 9/11 Wrought: The Bush Legacy

In Cairo in 1943, when the tide had turned in the war on Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, who had embraced Joseph Stalin as an ally and acceded to his every demand, had a premonition. Conversing with Harold Macmillan, Churchill blurted: “Cromwell was a great man, wasn’t ...

How Capital Crushed Labor

Once, it was a Labor Day tradition for Democrats to go to Cadillac Square in Detroit to launch their campaigns in that forge and furnace of American democracy, the greatest industrial center on earth. Democrats may still honor the tradition. But Detroit is not what she was, not remotely. And ...

A Conspiracy of Counterfeiters

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” “Lenin was certainly ...

Why Are We Baiting the Bear?

Is the Senate trying to reignite the Cold War? If so, it is going about it the right way. Before departing for a five-week vacation, the Senate voted to declare Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be provinces of Georgia illegally occupied by Russian troops who must get out and return to Russia. The ...