Category Archives: Featured

26,794

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Since the grand opening of Healthcare.gov – the federal home of Obamacare – on October 1, 2013, the federal government has been able to sign up only 26,794 people.

26,794 people is something short of what the Administration of Barack Obama had hoped for, had sneered at Republicans for doubting, and had assured the American public it was on target to produce.

Put another way, after spending over three years and, according to the Washington Post, between $170 and $300 million (just for the website), the geniuses at the Department of Health and Human Services have been able to sign up the equivalent of the entire population of … Carbondale, Illinois (Pop. 26,241).

If you’re looking for something to compare all this with, Amazon.com gets about 4.3 million unique visitors – per day; almost 129 million per month.

According to NBC News, HHS has had a “goal of 7 million newly signed up by the end of March” 2014. Continue reading →

The Great War

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Frank Buckles is dead. He didn’t die this week. He died in February 2011 at the age of 110.

Why do we care? Frank Buckles was the last living American veteran of World War I.

At the time, World War I was not known as World War I. It was known as “The Great War.” We didn’t know we were going to have to number world wars back then.

The shorthand for the beginning of The Great War is this (from PBS.org):

— On June 28, 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife are assassinated in Sarajevo. Continue reading →

Candidates Matter

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Chris Christie won in New Jersey; Ken Cuccinelli lost in Virginia. Whatever can we make of that?

I was in a wonderfully interesting meeting yesterday with a man named Brian Loughnane who is the Federal Director of the Liberal Party of Australia. Under the odd-to-our-ears naming conventions, the Liberal Party of Australia is the center-right party and currently controls the government under Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

In the course of our conversation at the International Republican Institute offices in downtown DC, we got into a discussion of Tuesday’s election results. I said I could describe the results in two words: Candidates matter. Continue reading →

The Men in the Mirror

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I have never heard anything more pathetic in my life.

Jason Johnson, the brains behind the Ted Cruz operation, inked a column in Red State, blaming the Republican Establishment for Ken Cuccinelli’s loss in Virginia.

This is the same guy who advised Ted Cruz (I assume, since he is the brains in the Cruz Operation) that urging House and Senate Republicans to shut down the government would be a smart political strategy. Continue reading →

You Can’t Fake Credibility

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

“Authenticity is vitally important in politics. If you can fake that, you have it made.”

That’s an old Washington joke. Ha Ha. You might be able to fake authenticity, but you can’t fake credibility.

And that’s a problem for President Obama.

His credibility is now shot, thanks to the provable lie that helped him pass his signature legislative achievement.

When the President promised that the American people could keep their health care insurance under Obamacare, he knew he was lying. But the voters bought the lie, hook, line and sinker.  Continue reading →

The Race in Virginia

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

“Don’t it make my brown eyes blue.” That’s what Crystal Gayle sang in 1997.

“Don’t it make my Red State blue,” is what the Republican Party will probably be singing on Wednesday morning.

If Ken Cuccinelli gets within 10 points of Terry McAuliffe in tomorrow’s election, it will be a pretty big shock. And, you never know. It will be a low turnout election, and low turnout elections tend to work out pretty well for the Republican Party.

The Macker is a notoriously weak candidate, but he is a likeable guy who is exceptionally good at raising money.

With McAuliffe, ethics has trumped issues to become the number one reason to vote against him. Continue reading →

Obamacare Spiraling Downward

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I am not cheering as I write this column. The Presidency of Barack Obama is spiraling downward largely because of Obamacare and it is not clear to me that Mr. Obama can avoid a Presidential face plant.

Earlier this week Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, testified before a House committee about the ongoing disaster that is the Obamacare website.

She didn’t know who was responsible or what went wrong any more than she could have pulled out a stack of code three feet high and walked the Committee Members through it line-by-line. Continue reading →

Never Forget the Dream

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Originally published on The Hill.

Two analyses of the current political environment recently caught my eye and caused me to rethink the GOP’s current positioning on the economy.

The first, put out by the nonprofit group American Principles in Action, aggressively challenged the conclusion reached by a so-called “autopsy” put out by the Republican National Committee, which basically said that the Republican Party needed to appeal to more moderate voters by being less offensive to minority groups.

Instead, according to this group, “Republicans urgently need to construct a conservative economic message that connects to working and middle-class voters’ present economic concerns.” Continue reading →

Random Thoughts: RINOs & Rumors

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

You’re a RINO!

No! You are!

I am not! You’re a big ugly RINO! And your mother dresses you funny!

RINO stands for Republican In Name Only. I got called a RINO because I hung out with “moderates.” It used to be a slam against Republicans who didn’t toe the conservative orthodox line.

I helped former New York Rep. Amo Houghton start the Republican Main Street Partnership, an organization he founded and funded to expand the influence of Republicans (and he hoped, ultimately, Democrats, too), who occupied the center of the political spectrum. Continue reading →

Symptom, Not the Disease

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

You can fix a website. You can’t fix Obamacare.

At least, you can’t fix Obamacare easily.

It is not clear yet if the problems that currently plague the Obamacare website are an early indicator of a program that is going to be a wild success or an unmitigated disaster.

You can make the case that the problems that have plagued the program are caused by a system that is oversubscribed, that too many people want to get into it and that is why it crashed. You can also make the case that this situation is endemic of a law that has been poorly thought out and will never work in the real world. Continue reading →

How Far the Establishment Has Fallen

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I’m thinking about getting t-shirts made, emblazoned with the words, “I am the establishment.”

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh attacked me on his radio show, basically accusing me of being part of the “establishment” because I had the temerity to suggest that if Ted Cruz, the Texas Senator, wants to accomplish anything in Washington, he probably shouldn’t go out of his way to alienate every single other member of the Senate (other than his buddy Mike Lee).

Otherwise, he would make a fabulous radio talk show host. Continue reading →

Bipartisan Spirit of a Bygone Era

BY ROBERT H. MICHEL
Reprinted from The Washington Post

Try as he might, Speaker Tom Foley could not gavel the House to order. It was Nov. 29, 1994, the last day of the 103rd Congress. I had just offered a resolution honoring him, and the speaker was being given a standing ovation for his 30 years of service. Our fellow members would not sit or quiet down.

It was a fitting tribute to a great public servant who assumed the mantle of leadership in the House at a difficult time.

Tom had just been defeated for reelection, and I was retiring. In an unprecedented gesture of goodwill and comity, Tom invited me to assume the chair on the speaker’s podium while he gave his farewell address. For the first time in 40 years, a Republican presided over the House, if only for a few minutes. Continue reading →

It Happens in Threes

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

They say it happens in threes.

Three men who made a significant, if a disparate, impact on Washington died over the last week.

Bill Young

You could find Bill Young on the far end of the last row of the House floor, holding court in the Florida corner, when he wasn’t managing bills as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee or in the Committee offices, trying to get the leadership to be more reasonable in their allocations. Continue reading →

Sell the UN

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

During the presidency of George W. Bush, member states of the United Nations declined to re-elect the United States to one of the seats reserved for Western States on the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

They elected, instead, France, Austria, and Sweden.

The Bush Administration was unmoved by the slight, pointing out that the UN Human Rights Commission routinely elected such paragons of human rights as Rwanda, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Somalia, and Uganda. Continue reading →

The Good News

BY JOHN  FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I want to focus on the good news.

The good news is that Barry Black, the Senate Chaplain, has come out of this entire mess as the only clear winner. His sermons have been on point, passionate, realistic and deeply spiritual. And he is now a rock star (as much as a Senate Chaplain can become a rock star).

The good news is that the government is finally open again.

The good news is that we didn’t default on our debts.

The good news is that the stock market largely ignored what was happening in Washington, figuring that we would figure it out. They were right. Continue reading →

Explaining Boehner

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

So, why did John Boehner make one last effort to get the House Republicans to vote on one final unified offer yesterday?

On its face, the Speaker’s Hail Mary Pass seemed risky.

The Senate was close to reaching a final agreement, which Boehner’s announcement seemingly scotched. The clock was ticking towards the final countdown until financial Armageddon. The stock market was getting nervous. The ratings agencies were none-too pleased and getting increasingly agitated with the Washington shenanigans. Continue reading →

Republicans, Democrats, & the Righteous Few

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

Righteousness.

There is no word that better explains the intractable nature of our government’s dysfunction, particularly now in the throes of frozen federal appropriations and a looming debt ceiling crisis.

Righteousness is a noun that describes an attitude that results in behavior “arising out of an outraged sense of justice or morality” (the appropo Webster definition). It is a behavior rooted in a sense of such uprightness that it is essentially free of guilt or sin. The righteous feel absolved from any need for self-judgment or self-reflection.

Can I have an amen?

We have heard President Obama again and again refuse to negotiate and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warning of Armageddon if no one acts. We have listened to Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee pontificate about the immorality of compromise, and we have heard the same refrain from dozens of Members of Congress from Justin Amash of Michigan to Continue reading →

Shooting the Messenger

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I didn’t believe the polls in 2008.  I thought there was a secret group of voters who would come out to vote and propel John McCain to the White House over Barack Obama.

I believed the polls in 2010 because I thought that the American people were all on board to reject the President’s signature achievement, Obamacare.

I didn’t believe the polls in 2012. I thought the methodology was wrong. How could they oversample Democrats so much and how could independent voters skew so much towards Romney and have him still losing? Continue reading →

Elections Have Consequences

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I’ve been doing a lot of TV since the shut down began. Specifically I’ve been doing one or both of Anderson Cooper’s programs at 8 PM Eastern and/or 10 PM Eastern.

In almost every one of those programs whoever is to my Left says that President Obama has been elected twice on the program of ObamaCare and, as ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES, Republicans should back off, roll over, and accept their fate as having lost the Presidency in 2008 and 2012.

There is something to that. I’m not sure I remember either election turning on the fulcrum of ObamaCare but that might be because Mitt Romney didn’t have a good answer opposing ObamaCare because of the Massachusetts plan that was adopted when he was Governor – ObamaCare lite. Continue reading →

Time to Bring in The Closer

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

It is time for President Obama to bring in the Administration’s version of Mariano Rivera.

They need a closer. And that closer is Joe Biden.

Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have fallen to 37%, chiefly because he refuses to negotiate with Republicans. The House Speaker has basically begged the President to do what every other President in American history has done: negotiate.

But the President and his chief ally on the Hill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, either won’t negotiate or can’t negotiate.

The White House is so convinced that they have the winning strategy that they even put out a meaningless veto threat on the Republican bill to name a so-called “negotiating committee” on legislation that will never reach the Senate floor. Continue reading →