Matt Lewis at the Daily Caller asks a very valid question: Should the Republican nominee follow a model that talks about the “makers and takers” – or instead, stress a more inclusive message about building strong communities? I’ve written a lot lately about how conservatives should stress a more communitarian (not selfish individualism) message as an electoral response to Obama’s […]

Pew reports: At a time when the Republican Party’s image is at a historic low, 62% of the public says the GOP is out of touch with the American people, 56% think it is not open to change and 52% say the party is too extreme. Opinions about the Democratic Party are mixed, but the […]

The geek in me enjoys these things - RSVP at http://www.spreecast.com/events/virtual-brown-bag-mobilizing-inclusion. Via the Monkey Cage: Jessica Feezell sends the following announcement: On Tuesday, March 5th at 1:00 PST, the Western Political Science Association will launch their new bi-monthly “Virtual Brown Bag” series where we will discuss a new book written by authors affiliated with the WPSA. This Virtual Brown […]

[amazon_enhanced asin="0300166788" container="div" container_class="right" price="All" background_color="FFFFFF" link_color="000000" text_color="0000FF" /] From the description: Which get-out-the-vote efforts actually succeed in ethnoracial communities—and why? Analyzing the results from hundreds of original experiments, the authors of this book offer a persuasive new theory to explain why some methods work while others don’t. Exploring and comparing a wide variety of […]

From Campaigns and Elections: Republican brains are more sensitive to, and will respond faster to, sudden stimuli such as noises and/or threatening visual images. It appears that the degree to which a Republican brains responds to sudden stimulation directly relates to the degree that the Republican will support policies that protect their existing social structures from change. […]

As Republicans I do feel it's not enough to say "jobs" and "recover", but well paying jobs offering families a chance at a middle class life and retirement. Unfortunately  many say there's no entitlement to that and while that may be true from a philosophical aspect, I do believe in promoting policies that afford that opportunity to as […]

Ramesh Ponnuru: TODAY’S Republicans are very good at tending the fire of Ronald Reagan’s memory but not nearly as good at learning from his successes. They slavishly adhere to the economic program that Reagan developed to meet the challenges of the late 1970s and early 1980s, ignoring the fact that he largely overcame those challenges, and now […]

Ramesh Ponnuru of the unassailable conservative magazine National Review points out what Reagan really said about government being the problem: Conservatives should retain their skepticism about government intervention, the preference for letting markets direct economic resources and the zeal for ending government-created barriers to economic growth that they inherited from Reagan. In his first Inaugural Address, Reagan famously said that […]

Dick Morris, who oversaw the 2012 Republican takeover of the US Senate, the election of President Romney (or President Cain, President Gingrich, or the severely conservative President Romney, who actually did better in the polls when embracing his moderate past), and the expansion of the GOP in the US House, says get rid of the RINOs. On […]

Permanent payroll tax cut to help working class Americans? Of course, the "fiscal cliff" fight was over keeping tax cuts for the highest earners, while the middle and lower classes were largely bargaining chips that got cashed out. Let's add this to the pile of reasons a permanent cut to the payroll tax will help the working class: Their […]