Partisan political change tends to move glacially. The South was ruled by Democrats pretty much forever until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon discovered the “Southern Strategy.” Even then it took another 20 years for Republicans to make the South their center.
Likewise New England was rock-ribbed Republican from the Civil War until cracks began to show in the sixties. Only in the last decade has New Hampshire lost much of its GOP sheen and Maine still has two Republican Senators.
The turning point was the same — …

 
Is there an echo in Pennsylvania? You better you bet.
Republicans and especially hard-core conservatives are foaming at the mouth over the defection of Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter, decrying him as another Benedict Arnold. One of the most fevered cries is that Specter put politics ahead of principle. Whether you believe that or not (if the principle Specter is upholding is to win then I guess he’s being principled…) it has brought the battle for the soul of the GOP to the forefront. And the front page of the New …

 
It’s a recurring theme of Get Real but only because Republicans keep doing things that prove the point. The Pity Party seems absolutely bent on self-destruction by following all the old rules for the old game that they can’t stop playing.
 
Take John Boehner, leader of the House Republican minority. Sunday George Stephanopoulos had him on to talk about the Republican alternatives to Barack Obama’s proposals including on global warming:
…the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we …

There a few things more certain in life than this: Hyper-partisans (left and right) will twist everything and anything to fit their worldview. Today’s case in point comes courtesy of Red State and a contributor who speculates that the Somali pirates who have attacked and apparently captured an American-flagged cargo vessel did so because they know Barack Obama is a wuss.
While the author is correct no U.S. flagged vessel has been successfully attacked by pirates to this point it’s worth noting how few American-flagged vessels there are any more. The …

 
Nope. No way. Not gonna vote for it. Not gonna support it. Not gonna do it. Republicans are not gonna play ball with any Democratic bill, initiative, thought, proposal. House Dems could propose a resolution that “America is great” and Republicans would all vote “No” instead proposing a resolution stating “America is the greatest.”
 
That’s how Washington is working these days and it’s driving even some Republicans to warn the party is becoming the House of No to it’s own detriment.
Newt Gingrich told a group of Missouri college students that Republicans …

 
So the first special election of the new year has come and gone and like so many elections nowadays, it’s too close to call. With all the regular votes counted across 10 upstate New York counties Democrat Scott Murphy leads Republican Jim Tedisco by 59 votes out of the almost 145 thousand cast. We should have a winner, with any luck, in a few weeks…or months.
In the meantime there are a few things we now know that we could only guess at before the voters spoke:

In claiming that this would …

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (kids: a long time ago people listened to music on things called records and sometimes they got scratched and skipped and played the same little section of a song over and over and over and…oh never mind) Republicans just don’t get it.
The kerfuffle over Barack Obama’s “Tonight Show” appearance is so incredibly telling — and sad if you were hoping for a reasonably adept opposition to push back on Barack occasionally. The usual suspects and brothers in arms — The New …

Rish Limbaugh is an idiot.
No, liberals, not because he makes outlandish statements about Democrats that rarely have even the scent of truth. Rush Limbaugh is an idiot for helping Barack Obama marginalize the Republican Party in it’s hour of need.
Some Obama supporters have worried that the President was foolish in even acknowledging the existence of Radio Rush after the talk-show host said he hoped Obama would fail. They said Obama only gave the Rotund One more attention and therefore more power.
Exactly.
At a time when the Republican Party is in a …