The manhunt continues in the snow-covered mountains east of Los Angeles for the ex-LAPD officer suspected of going on a shooting rampage this week. Photos from the multiple crime scenes ranging from LA to San Diego to Big Bear.
TPM Reader JB (a former GOP staffer if I remember right) doesn’t think either side of the current GOP struggle has reckoned with the first decade of this century …
I don’t think I rely on analysis dripping with the smugness and self-satisfaction your correspondent NS displays.
Instead, let’s eschew the pop psychology jargon and look at the public record. Both the Tea Party types and the big GOP donors represented by Karl Rove were fully on board with just about everything the Bush administration said or did. For all their zeal now, the only major policy issue on which Republicans now aligned with the Tea Party ever clashed with Bush was immigration reform — for which Bush himself, remember, didn’t actually fight that hard.
It probably didn’t surprise anyone that Chris Christie called out the former White House doctor who publicly said his obesity might cause him to die in office. But apparently Christie called Dr. Connie Mariano at home and chewed her out over the phone about her observations.
Eastwood on RNC chair speech: Mofos, that’s just how I roll. Watch.
Mississippi Republicans fight amongst themselves over whether to implement a state health care exchange as envisioned by ‘Obamacare’ or force the federal government to impose a non-state-customized one on the state.
The weird thing of course is that the option that keeps more control at the local level is the one that people ‘feel’ like makes you more pro-Obamacare. So the most conservative state officials need to demand the one-size fits all model — basically a parody of conservative grievances about the federal government.
TPM Reader NS tries to get a handle on what the GOP civil war is really about …
OK, so yeah, life is a battle. Struggle underlines most political philosophy in one way or another, and building capacities to engage those struggles, violently or non-violently, is an interesting way to think about how forms of communication develop and are employed.
The nation’s biggest teachers’ union has sent an open letter to President Obama ahead of this year’s State of the Union address. And notably voting rights are at the center of their agenda and concerns.
Hacker gains access to Bush family email accounts — and discovers more of George W.’s original paintings.
Dick Morris says he’s the guy to help moderate the GOP and make it viable in national elections. “I showed Democrats how to move center,” Morris said. “Now, I want to help do the same thing with the Republican party.”
The Movement guys must love that.
When I first saw the news of Karl Rove’s Conservative Victory Project and its effort to smack down the 2014 crop of Senate Tea Party candidates I thought it was a fun but not terribly consequential story — or rather a knock off version of a fight we’d see for real months or maybe even years in the future. But now I think this is for real, like this is the battle actually being joined. Read More