Watch the new “value party” in action

By Gautham Rao / November 21, 2004

After basking in the glorious afterglow of election night, the Republican Party has some choices to make. Will it (quite literally) see the light and put every page of the Bible into statutory form? Or will it somehow maintain its appeal to independent and swing voters by holding God’s will at bay? Ground zero in...

Why the GOP is ashamed of Keyes

By Gautham Rao / October 28, 2004

I know, I know. He’s a homophobe, he doesn’t believe in reproductive rights, he’s against stem-cell research, he wants to privatize Social Security, he wants a national flat tax, he doesn’t believe in any firearm regulation, and he’s a pro-tort reform, pro-voucher, pro-school prayer, anti-sex education conservative. But those are reasons for liberal disgust. What...

White House sidesteps 9/11 commissions

By Gautham Rao / April 20, 2004

The behavior of the current White House towards the 9/11 commission has gone so far beyond the pale that former Watergate investigators—and even perpetrators—are outraged. Everybody knows that the self-styled “war president” fears political fallout from the commission’s findings. Yet, in a nationwide poll taken early this month, 56 percent of Americans believed that the...

No Child Left Behind Act splits Bush allies

By Gautham Rao / February 24, 2004

Conservatives, it seems, are suffering from a bad case of buyer’s remorse. They are finally beginning to understand what the rest of this country has long known: the Bush administration’s domestic agenda is a rudderless ship whose captain is either incredibly disconnected from reality or consciously misrepresenting reality. We can all agree that this administration...

Tim Russert’s non-interview with the president

By Gautham Rao / February 13, 2004

A few weeks ago, Tim Russert phoned the Bush administration and requested an interview with the President. The White House curtly refused, knowing that the President had nothing to talk about other than the Mars rover. Once Bush’s poll numbers began slipping, somebody somewhere in the West Wing thought it wise to call Russert back....

What the State of the Union should have said

By Gautham Rao / January 30, 2004

It was a happy morning after for Peggy Noonan. With a radiant glow, the Reaganite “journalist” gleefully declared that the State of the Union to which she contributed was “fact-filled, dense, and not airy.” Indeed it was “dense,” and I think it is safe to say that the speech was about as “not airy” as...

Clark, Dean discover sweaters, sex

By Gautham Rao / January 16, 2004

With the Iowa caucus before us and the New Hampshire primary just around the corner, I thought I might say a bit about the key candidates running for president. On the Republican side, President Bush is meeting the strongest challenge of his career from Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. Running on a pro-war, pro-tax cut,...

Bush administration mistreats military

By Gautham Rao / November 21, 2003

The Bush administration is either incredibly out of touch with the medical care of America’s troops, or it knows about major problems but simply doesn’t care. You decide. In January, when the President actually had the decency to visit wounded troops, he said: “Having been here and seeing the care that these troops get is...

Racism in the Republican Party

By Gautham Rao / November 6, 2003

Leave it to President Bush to draw attention to the issue that scares his GOP handlers the most: good ol’ fashioned racist Republicans. You know who I’m talking about—the old schoolers that just won’t go away: Strom, Trent, Orrin. For some reason, the Republican establishment doesn’t like too much public attention cast on these guys—preferring...

Angry liberals are the only ones conducting meaningful dialogue

By Gautham Rao / October 28, 2003

Over the past few months, you may have noticed the right wing’s long, pointed finger (which finger is unclear), aimed at “angry liberals”—Howard Dean, Paul Krugman, Al Franken, Joe Conason, Molly Ivins, and others. These liberals seem to have pretty good grounds for being mad about the way things have been going over the past...