BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

In the Feehery family primary, held over the Holidays, Ron Paul won a surprisingly high percentage of votes. While he didn’t win, he had committed delegates who argued forcefully for his positions.

Mitt Romney won the primary, but just barely.

Ron Paul may be a conspiracy theorist. He might be a nut job. He might be a racist, homophobe, anti-semite and a variety of other things that he has been charged with over the last month or so. I don’t know. And I can tell you that the Ron Paul supporters don’t care.

What Ron Paul brings to the equation is the pure philosophy of the populist Republican. He is running against government, which is smart, because the government is less popular than the bubonic plague right now.

He is against the Federal Reserve, which is politically smart, because most Republicans hate Ben Bernanke.

He is against the police state. He wants to legalize drugs, internet gambling and a variety of other victimless crimes.  That fits in with the voters who are sick and tired of cops telling them what to do. (more…)

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BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

We are now inside of a week until the waiting-with-baited-breath Iowa Caucuses.

Every four years everyone looks at who has won in Iowa and who ended up as the nominee and makes the very persuasive case that the Caucuses are not predictive of the ultimate primary process outcome. I said on Anderson Cooper last night that Iowa caucus voters don’t pick winners, but they do a great job of identifying losers.

The reasons are: There are 49 more primaries and caucuses to go after Iowa – more if you include delegates from Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the District of Columbia. So, a victory in Iowa punches a candidate’s ticket at least through South Carolina, but there are no guarantees after that.

Second, this only happens once every four years and there is almost always an incumbent running in one of the party caucuses so they don’t count. (more…)

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BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The top headlines in some American newspapers on Christmas Eve:
“Bombings in Syria Cast Doubt on Ability of Arab Monitors to Stem Violence”
“Wave of Street Robberies”
“DC Air Jordan Frenzy Leads to Arrests”
“Payroll Tax Fight Leaves Hill Republicans Divided and Angry”
“Clash Over Regional Power Spurs Iraq’s Sectarian Rift”
“Justice Department Cites Race in Halting Law over Voter ID”
“Protesters Flood Moscow Streets”

Those headlines reflect only one of many worlds in which we live.

While negative news permeated the media, people all over the country, young and old, toured neighborhoods gazing at homes decorated with lights, wreaths, and plastic reindeer, or listened to Christmas carols on radios, in churches and schools and shopping malls. Normally sedate people were adorned in Santa hats, Christmas ties, red and green clothes, with smiles directed at complete strangers.

Thousands of people went to K-Mart and Walmart stores and paid off the layaway plans of hard-pressed parents buying Christmas gifts for their children. (more…)

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BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Allow me a day of what, bragging? Whining? Maybe both.

Today I turn 65.

When I was a kid I don’t think I knew anyone who was 65. I thought people who were 35 were old. When I was a kid 35 was the new 65.

I am not one of those people who rue birthdays that are divisible by five. Thirty bothered me because it was the passage between being young and being a grownup, led by the fact that The Lad was born. None of the next six have given me pause.

This one didn’t either, until last Thursday. (more…)

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BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change at TCBmag.com

Carnac holds an envelope to his forehead. “Sondheim Rhyme & Tebow Time,” he says. Ed McMahon echoes, in his trademark basso mundo, “Sondheim Rhyme & Tebow Time.” Carnac looks askance and then blows open the envelope to read the question . .

Sorry, you’ll have to wait for it until I’m done writing this.

Stephen Sondheim, genius creator of stupendously artful, clever, and Tony award-winning musical theater, wrote a book (Finishing the Hat) a while back, and then another recently (Look, I Made A Hat). Both are really wonderful perspectives/critiques on writing, composing, thinking, and creating. Sondheim, who wrote many smash shows—Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, West Side Story, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, and Sunday in the Park with George—pens his masterpieces using the following three mantras: (more…)

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BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I understand that national polls traditionally haven’t meant much, because voters in California and Missouri are not going to their local fire stations and high school cafeterias two weeks from tomorrow to vote in the Iowa caucuses.

But, with the advent of social media and the enormous attention being paid to the debates, the ebb and flow of support for one or another of the GOP candidates in national polls can’t help but have an effect on voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and the other early states.

SIDEBAR

We’ve long since memorized the primaries that will be held in January. It’s time to begin committing to memory February’s contests:

Feb 4 Nevada (Caucus)
Feb 4-11 Maine (Caucus)
Feb 7 Colorado (Caucus)
Feb 7 Minnesota (Caucus)
Feb 28 Arizona (Primary)
Feb 28 Michigan (Primary)

END SIDEBAR

The biggest effect good national poll numbers is on fundraising. Donors in New York and California don’t typically decide on which campaign to support solely based on how they’re doing in Iowa or South Carolina, but in large part how they’re doing in polls reported by Gallup and the Associated Press. (more…)

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BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

One of the failings of our system of governance, former Republican Leader Bob Michel once observed, is that you can no longer tell where the campaigns end and governing begins.

That trend has defined American politics for sometime. The differences between campaigning and governing have gotten less and less apparent. And this year, they seemed to have disappeared all together, after a brief flurry of off-again, on-again, off again, bipartisan, bicameral, bi-branch exchanges that showed promise, but no permanency.

The combatants in American politics, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, have dropped any pretense of governing. It is all campaigning, all the time. And no one did it in more grandly than the President.

Oregon Rep. Greg Walden said the other day that he has never seen a President step away from governing the way President Barack Obama has. Previous presidents who served in divided government where Republicans controlled one part and Democrats the other chose not to cut and run in the face of serious challenges. Ronald Reagan didn’t. Nor did George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton. When the country’s challenges demanded it, they stepped up, not away. They found common ground, sorted through the politics and partisanship, made decisions and resolved contentious issues like taxes, Social Security, budgets and welfare reform.

When President Obama was asked on 60 Minutes:  “Isn’t it your job as president to find solutions to these problems, to get results, to figure out a way to get it done?”’ the response was pretty much no. The President said it was his job to present the country with a vision, presumably so others could govern. (more…)

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BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from FeeheryTheory.com

It has been a long time, but the Appropriations Committee has finally got its mojo back. And Hal Rogers, the first term Chairman of the once powerful and feared Committee, is the chief reason why.

The House completed work on all of its appropriations work for the first time in years, and that was chiefly because of the quiet persistence of Chairman Rogers.

The Appropriations committee’s work can be mind numbing. When I worked fo House Minority Leader Bob Michel, I used to have to sit on the House floor when the Subcommittees be grinding through their schedule in the dog days of summer, churning through amendments and fighting over obscure funding projects. Some of the disputes seemed pretty insignificant to a young staffer like me. (more…)

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BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The final debate prior to the January 3 Iowa Caucuses was held in Sioux City last night. The race is no less fluid with 19 days to go than it was last summer. Newt Gingrich had jumped out to a huge lead a week ago, but that lead has (depending upon which poll you look at) has either diminished, or evaporated altogether.

After the first 20 minutes of Kumbaya, the questions turned to Gingrich. The second tier candidates were unabashed about piling on.

Here’s how I think the seven candidates did last night.

Newt Gingrich: (26.0% in the RealClearPolitics.com summary of Iowa Polls) Last week we were waiting to see how Newt handled being the front-runner and he handled it pretty darned well. Last night we were waiting to see how he handled watching his support erode in the face of a determined opposition. (more…)

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BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

LegisStorm has just announced the first successful electronic publication of all Congressional staff salaries for the past 10 years.

Go ahead. Click on the link above (Congressional staff salaries) and type in a few names of people you have known who worked on Capitol Hill since 2000. LegisStorm seems to think they have uncovered the Holy Grail lost since antiquity.

Big deal. Congressional staff salaries and office expenses have been public knowledge ever since the first Congress sat in 1789.

Did you know that 2/3’s of the 14th Congress were voted out of office in 1816?  ’Why?’ you might ask.

Because the 14th Congress voted themselves a hefty pay raise to the lofty sum of $1500 per year. Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House, got the gargantuan (for then) salary of $3000.

Mr. Clay almost was defeated himself in 1816 in which case, the nation may never have come to know just how brilliant he was as a legislator and the ‘Uncompromising Compromiser’ as the authors of the great book, ‘Henry Clay: The Essential American’, Daniel and Jeanne Heidler, chose to characterize him. Read it over these holidays and learn more about how our government matured into the form it is today under his leadership in the early days of the Republic.

Here’s the problem with the reporting of congressional salaries nowadays:  There is never any context in any reporting about them to provide the public any idea of what our elected representatives, senators and staff do on a regular day in Congress. (more…)

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