So drastically shorter primary phase, much earlier nominating convention, many fewer debates. Aren’t all of Reince Priebus’s structural reforms basically aimed at dramatically reducing the time period in which the actual Republican party base is on display for the public at large?
Hillary Clinton announces her support for gay marriage.
There’s nothing binding about today’s RNC self-examination report, but it’s still a remarkable document and comes perhaps the closest of anything since the election to the big, fundamental reckoning that the GOP needs to go through not just for its own good but for the good of the country. Benjy Sarlin picks out the top 6 highlights from the report.
Sahil Kapur’s initial report on today’s Supreme Court oral argument in the Arizona voter registration case.
The two biggest political stories of the day — the RNC’s release of its reaction to the party’s 2012 drubbing, and Tom Perez’s nomination to be President Obama’s Labor Secretary — couldn’t be more perfectly suited for each other. Two great tastes that taste great together.
The RNC report is called the Growth and Opportunity Project, and it effectively turns the GOP’s determination to avoid rethinking its economic policies — and to instead focus exclusively on making marginal inroads with minority voters — into the party’s official strategy.
Enter Tom Perez. Read More
I’m excited to announce two new members of the TPM team: Hunter Walker and Zoe Schlanger. Details after the jump. Read More
Theda Skocpol is one of sharpest and most interesting minds in the USA when it comes to understanding the policy underpinnings of the US welfare state. What really sets her apart, though, is combining that grasp of the formal policy issues with the politics which really drives the future or non-future of political reform in the US. She was an author we read back when I was an American History graduate student in the 90s and I was honored later to get to know her as a regular email correspondent.
In January she published this fascinating and important paper on the politics of global warming in the USA.
And now she’s agreed to join us for a Live Chat tomorrow afternoon at 5:30 PM at TPMPrime. If you’re a member, you can submit your questions here now.
Please join us. This is really a treat.
You may have heard the story today of a guy in one of the dorms at the University of Central Florida who shot himself and had hundreds of rounds of ammunition and explosives. It turns out he was planning a mass shooting, according to police investigators. He set off an alarm hoping to set up a turkey shoot as panicked students evacuated the building. But police seem to have arrived on the scene so quickly that “his timeline got off,” in the words of the university police chief, and he turned the gun on himself.