Mitt, Ron, Rick, And Newt: The Pockmarked GOP Class Of 2012

The chubby Colorado boy gave Mitt Romney a $1 bill.

It’s for good luck, the boy whispered, in that race. Mitt Romney flashed the boy an aww-shucks grin and dug into his wallet to repay him.

But there was one problem: Mitt Romney only saw a hundred and a couple of twenties. He peered around the dusty diner. He hemmed and he hawed. He tried to buy time. An alert aide wanted to slip Romney a crinkled $1 but the former governor refused. He peeked deeper inside his wallet and fished out a $5.

“We’ll give you an Abraham Lincoln back,” he chuckled. A tad too hard, perhaps. A tad too long, certainly. And then Mitt Romney went back to glad-handing the diners over potato taters, joking that he, too, was unemployed.

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The Electability Of Mitt Romney

Well, he said it. So vote for him.

The Santorum Surge: One Man’s Culture War Is Another’s Flaccid Flop

You know your party is having a bad election year when it’s only February and they’re already screeching about social issues. After all, opposing parties generally save the sideshow gimmicks until the tail end of the race, when the galvanizing potential of rational arguments has diminished and a few successful stump speeches built on divisive demagoguery may be the difference between the Oval Office and the equally circular process of finger pointing until you find out precisely where you went wrong. But in a sea of blunders, hysteria and snarls that now define a major political party in decline, it might be easier if you instead ask where—if anywhere—you went right. Or actually, it might be better if you didn’t ask anything at all. Rather, you must distract.

That’s exactly what today’s Republican Presidential contenders, namely Rick Santorum, are doing. And in some ways, it makes sense: the economy is on the rise, Obama’s approval ratings are no longer below freezing, and his administration has demonstrated its foreign policy prowess by successfully removing two of the world’s most despised men—Osama bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi—from power. Not too shabby given that Obama accomplished all of this while dealing with a House and Senate led primarily by individuals with as much flexibility as slabs of granite.

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Patriarchy In America

Meet the House Oversight Committee as they meet to discuss birth control and religious liberty. Curious enough, they’re all men.

The Komen-Planned Parenthood Controversy: Why It Spiraled Out Of Control

As Americans try to make sense of the political frenzy that was the Komen-Planned Parenthood debacle, many wonder why there was such an intense battle to begin with over Komen’s withdrawal of funding to Planned Parenthood. While the 72-hour crisis was an important PR lesson, the complex political motivations as part of a broader culture war are the feud’s main legacy.

Closer inspection reveals that despite being a fund-related issue, money was a nominal one for Planned Parenthood: the organization would have only lost funding for a mere 5% of the breast exams they currently conduct. Rather surprisingly, Planned Parenthood’s response to Komen was the result of a freak political storm born in the House of Representatives during the winter 2011 budget crisis.

Amid this unsightly blotch in our history, Congress failed to come to a consensus regarding much of anything. Still, the House was able to pass a bill to help balance the budget, which included a later-added provision concerning Planned Parenthood. This provision sought to eliminate all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, which legislators believed would save $363 million per year.

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