BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JAN 6

Another year is in front of us, and with it the ritualistic adoration of resolutions, promises, and agendas.

In politics, promises are king. They rule the  rhetoric, produce prolific, big block headlines, raise expectations, generate motion, and usually, accomplish nothing. It is because they are ritualistic that they survive.

Agendas are similar. They are just something we have to have at the onset of each new day, week, month, year, and millennia.  Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
JAN 4 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

Welcome to the first workday of 2016 and maybe the first day of World War III.

The last two World Wars started when a couple of countries got into it and everyone else began to choose sides.

Over the weekend, the Saudi Arabian government executed 47 people including one senior Shiite cleric who had been an outspoken opponent of the Saudi rulers.

The Iranians immediately set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. The Saudis immediately emptied its embassy of diplomats, cut off diplomatic ties, and ordered the Iranian mission out of Riyadh within 48 hours. Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
DEC 29  |  Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

In a properly functioning democracy, politicians would work extra hard to make certain that the very, very wealthy would pay an appropriate amount of taxes.

In a dysfunctional political system, where the exceedingly wealthy (and by exceedingly wealthy, I mean billionaires and multi-millionaires), have an outsized access to the political class, closing down the tax loopholes seems to be damn near impossible.

The New York Times just published an expose about how the super-wealthy avoid paying taxes. “With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
DEC 21  |  Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Wanda: Was it shrewd? Was it good tactics or was it stupid?
Otto: Don’t call me stupid.
Wanda: Of course not! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I’ve known sheep that could out-wit you! I’ve worn dresses with higher IQ’s, but you think you’re an intellectual, don’t you ape?…. Let me correct you on a few things. Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not “Every Man for Himself.” And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked ’em up.”

I have been thinking about this great classic movie, “A Fish Called Wanda”, and Otto, played by Kevin Kline. Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
DEC 17  |  Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

As Europe was engulfed in its second violent, all-encompassing war of the 20th Century, America split into two camps.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt became increasingly concerned about the brutality of the Nazi regime, and he engaged in a campaign to guide the United States into an alliance with Great Britain.

Others were not interested in getting America involved in another European War.

Industrialists including Robert McCormick, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, William Regnery, who will later become famous for becoming the publisher of conservative writers, Sterling Morton of the Morton Salt Company, and many others came together in opposition to Roosevelt’s efforts. Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
DEC 16 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

I have found some of the previous debates cringe-worthy, but as the candidates have been through this five times, been on the stump for months, have had to answer questions from both print and TV reporters almost daily, and have had time to cull their advisors to get to the ones who know what they’re talking about; last night’s was pretty good.

I agreed with whomever pointed out that listening to the three Senators debate the finer points of second degree amendments in years-ago immigration legislation that never became law is tedious for most of us. Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
DEC 16  |  Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

When Bruce Thompson and Jim Brady started selling a tax reform plan in the late 1970’s, they didn’t get into specifics or try to educate people on the intricacies of tax policy.

They stuck to big themes and creatively captured the attention of the media and the American people.

Thompson was the tax counsel for Delaware Senator Bill Roth and Brady was Roth’s mouthpiece and they were selling the legendary Roth-Kemp tax reform plan that would later become the central component of the Reagan economic agenda. Continue reading →

BY B. JAY COOPER
DEC 14 | Reprinted from The Screaming Moderate (bjaycooper.com)

The cable news networks are cleaning up financially through the Republican presidential debates. The ratings are through the roof, which means the networks can charge more for the ads during those debates.

What useful information has come out of those debates to help a voter make a choice on a candidate is another question.

These “debates” usually involve a panel of questioners with the rules typically being something like: Candidates get one minute to answer the question and 30 seconds to rebut an attack on themselves. After that, it’s a free for all with candidates interrupting each other trying to get their share of air time – between the ads that interrupt the program. Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
DEC 7 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

Put aside, for the moment, today’s date.

Last night, President Barack Obama delivered a speech that was as defensive in nature as President Jimmy Carter’s “national malaise” speech on July 15, 1979.

Carter never actually used that phrase, but it stuck nonetheless because of the tone he took:

“It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.” Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
NOV 30  |  Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Originally published in The Hill

My dad died from Parkinson’s disease the day after Thanksgiving at a veterans home in Manteno, Ill., which is about 45 minutes to the southwest of Chicago.

That brought me home to Illinois to visit with my family and help with the arrangements. If you are looking for a poster child of all that is wrong with America, Illinois would be a good place to start.

Illinois is bankrupt. It doesn’t make payments to its local schools because it doesn’t have any money. Illinois has the lowest bond rating of any state in the union (Puerto Rico is not a state). The political class has betrayed my home state, mortgaging the future by postponing hard decisions for generations.  Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
NOV 19 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

The other day I wrote a column in which I suggested “The easiest and safest approach [to dealing with terrorists hiding as refugees] is to close the border, TFN – ’til further notice.”

I am far from a Tea Party, ultra-conservative Republican. In fact, I call myself a Trotskyite Republican which doesn’t mean anything but is way more fun to say than “RINO.”

Still. Taking a bit more time to figure out what we want to do, and how we want to do it seems to make some sense. Continue reading →

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  NOV 15

They are still counting the bodies in Paris: 129 dead, including a young college student from California, Nehomi Gonzalez, just 23. There were 362 wounded.

There were six simultaneous assaults in Paris by at least eight suicide commandos, seven of whom died and one apparently in jail in Belgium.

It was an internationally organized terrorist assault with effective command and control, accomplices in several countries (one assailant apparently made his way disguised as a refugee through Greece and Serbia). It was so unconscionable, uncivilized, but more tragically, no longer unimaginable. Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
NOV 13  |  Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I wasn’t smart enough to major in Philosophy when I was in college.

I was never patient enough to wade through Hegal or willing to take the vow of poverty that seemed to be what waited for me at the end of the long arduous road to a Philosophy doctorate.

Philosophy majors crept into the news thanks to the Republican debate the other night. Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
NOV 02 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

Fred Thompson died over the weekend.

You’ve read the obits and know about his rural Tennessee roots, his work as the chief Republican lawyer on the Watergate Committee, his service as a U.S. Senator and, of course, as Arthur Branch, the fictional district attorney of New York on the TV show Law & Order.

I didn’t know Fred for most of his life. Like most of us, I knew of Fred. It was during the brief time of his campaign for President in the 2008 cycle. Continue reading →

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  OCT 15

“We came here to get something done. We always lock horns. We always argue. We never agree. I think it is about time, for once in a long time, we find common ground and agree.

“I want to get something done that is achievable. I don’t want to keep talking grand bargains that never happen. I want to see where we can get something done that is achievable and go for that.”

Those are the words of Congressman Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin whiz who is now the sought-after candidate for Speaker of the House. Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
OCT 1  |  Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The Republican Party was founded upon the ashes of the Whig Party, which collapsed over the issue of slavery.

And ever since that time, the Grand Old Party has had a bit of a wild ride.

Two House buildings are named after former GOP Speakers of the House who faced a rambunctious caucus.

Speaker Joe Cannon governed the House with an iron fist until a bloc of progressive Republicans demanded that he give up his Chairmanship of the Rules Committee and otherwise give them more access to power.   Continue reading →

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  SEP 29

House Speaker John Boehner said in his first post-retirement interview on CBS’ Face the Nation that it takes more courage to do what you can do than to try to do what you can’t.

The Speaker could have said that better, but his observation sums up quite well the philosophy of governance that has been both the accelerator and brake of his journey through Congress.  The statement also defined one of the most debilitating divides in politics and government, a divide that not only defined and confined his Speakership but will undoubtedly do the same for the next, regardless of whose it is.

The King is dead, long live the King.   Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
SEP 23  |  Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

On the eve of the Pope’s visit to Washington, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan announced that he would moderate a panel of Presidential candidates in South Carolina with Senator Tim Scott on the issue of poverty.

As a former Budget Chairman and as a practicing Catholic, Ryan has two deep interests in the issue of poverty. First, when people are stuck in an endless cycle of poverty, it costs the Treasury a bunch of money. And as Francis reminds us, helping the poor is the duty of all Catholics. Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
SEP 14  |  Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Originally published in The Hill

First it was ObamaCare. Then it was immigration. And now, it’s Planned Parenthood.

So many who constitute the Tea Party wing of the Republican conference want to see their leaders wage war against President Obama.

They want to see a good fight. They want to see Congress use the power of the purse to defund and destroy key liberal initiatives, mostly those initiated by the former senator from Illinois.

The leaders want to wage a good fight, too. They don’t want to be seen as kowtowing to Obama. They use heated rhetoric to register their disgust with the president’s priorities. They sympathize with their political base. Continue reading →