Month: June 2014

June 27, 2014

The unanimous Supreme Court decision Thursday striking down a Massachusetts law allowing 35-foot buffer zones outside abortion clinics raises questions about what happens when constitutional rights collide. The court ruled that the state’s buffer zones infringe the free-speech rights of those who want to protest abortions performed in the facilities. But what about the privacy rights of the clinic patients asserted in the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade and previous Supreme Court decisions that have upheld buffer-zone laws?
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June 26, 2014

Howard Baker was elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee in 1966. He later told people that when he arrived in Congress, he was taken aside by Norris Cotton, a Republican from New Hampshire, who asked whether he could smell the marble. “I didn’t know marble had a smell,” Baker replied, according to a Tennessee congressman who told me the anecdote. “Well, white marble, the kind around here does. And when you can smell it, you’ll like it. And you’ll be ruined for life,” Cotton advised.
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June 25, 2014

Much has been made of the fact that Democratic voters–including African-Americans–helped give six-term Senate incumbent Thad Cochran the narrow margin he needed to beat back a challenge from conservative tea party challenger Chris McDaniel in Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary in Mississippi. But perhaps more important, Mr. Cochran, in cobbling together his victory margin, employed the most basic rules of politics as articulated by one of the great liberal legislators of the 20th Century, former House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Mr. O’Neill counseled that all politics is local, and that voters like to be asked.
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June 24, 2014

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on Political Reform has spent the past year assembling a “blueprint” for electoral changes and congressional reforms to encourage greater citizen engagement in the political process. It should, however, be no surprise that a report from a Washington organization headed by former members of Congress would take a decidedly insider view of what needs to be done to reform our politics and would offer, by its own admission, only “incremental” reforms.
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June 19, 2014

Gallup’s finding that only 7% of Americans have significant confidence in our ineffectual and polarized Congress explains why much of the public seems to have tuned out politics and why so many people don’t think it matters whether they vote. But David Wessel is right to sound the alarm. Ultimately, a dysfunctional Congress threatens the nation’s future. As Mr. Wessel wrote, numerous domestic issues need to be addressed, as does the crisis in Iraq. President Barack Obama will have to work with members of Congress in both parties to determine a way forward.
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June 18, 2014

Will the poor presidential ratings revealed in the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll affect how the U.S. responds to the crisis in Iraq? Just 37% of Americans approve of President Barack Obama’s handling of foreign policy, an all-time low for this survey. A majority of Americans–54%–say they believe he is no longer able to lead the country and get things done. Americans are evenly divided–50-50–on whether they believe the Obama administration has competently managed the federal government.
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June 12, 2014

A new Pew Research Center survey on political polarization proves what most people already know about this nation’s political life: that Americans engaged in the political process and who identify with a party are more polarized than they have been in two decades. The extensive survey of 10,000 Americans is the largest study of U.S. political attitudes ever undertaken by Pew. Intense partisans believe people in the opposing party “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being,” the study found.
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June 11, 2014

Many will chalk up House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s surprise primary defeat to the tea party. But there was no national tea-party presence or spending in the contest, though conservative radio host Laura Ingraham did appear in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District last week on behalf of challenger David Brat and suggested tongue-in-cheek that the president should have traded Rep. Cantor for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl instead of five Taliban leaders.
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June 11, 2014

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s unexpected defeat in Virginia’s Republican primary has led many people to wonder how challenger David Brat could have pulled off such a decisive victory without warning signs showing up in Mr. Cantor’s internal polling, which had predicted him easily winning re-election. The reason is that Mr. Brat won by enlarging the primary electorate in this solidly Republican 7th District, which runs north of Richmond.
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June 10, 2014

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham tops the list of Republican senators once thought to be vulnerable to a tea-party challenge this year who are now expected to easily win reelection. The South Carolina primary is Tuesday, and a recent Clemson University Palmetto Poll found Sen. Graham leading a field of six challengers by a commanding margin: 40 points. In second place is state Sen. Lee Bright, polling at nine points. None of the other five challengers garnered more than 5 percent in the poll.
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