Today In The Washington Examiner March 30, 2011

Michael Barone - Is the Tea Party pooped? It must keep making its case



Has the wind gone out of the sails of the smaller-government movement? Is the Tea Party movement going through a hangover?






Susan Ferrechio - Politics at the heart of budget stalemate


As Democrats and Republicans wrangled for the second straight week over how to fund the government for the remaining six months of the fiscal year, Senate Democrats gathered on a conference call Tuesday morning to coordinate the message they would deliver to Capitol Hill reporters. But the senators didn't realize that reporters were already on the line and unwittingly exposed the raw politics behind the current budget stalemate.






Brian Hughes - For some, Obama speech raises more questions than it answers


President Obama is facing a chorus of questions over his national address on U.S. military actions in Libya, concerns intensified Tuesday as setbacks suffered by anti-government rebels appeared to undermine the sense of inevitability Obama conveyed about Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi giving up power.






David Freddoso - Pawlenty's strong showing in the Insiders' poll


Many Republicans are currently lamenting the fact that for the second election in a row, they are entering the cycle with a distressingly lackluster field of candidates to take on Barack Obama. Of course, that may not be the real problem, or not the biggest problem, anyway. George W. Bush was not a terribly impressive candidate in 2000. Read More






Mark Tapscott - Rasmussen: Only 16 percent think country would be better off if most incumbents are re-elected


How's this for a conversation opener at your next Capitol Hill fund raiser? "A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 16% of Likely U.S. Voters feel that, generally speaking, it would be better for the country if most incumbents in Congress were reelected. That’s a seven-point drop from 23% last August and down from 19% in February 2010. "Fifty-six percent (56%) say it would be better if most incumbents were defeated and 28% are not sure. Read More






Philip Klein - What Barbour's embrace of Huck tells us about his prez campaign


When I interviewed Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and researched his background as part of a long feature story I wrote for the April edition of the American Spectator, one of the things that became apparent was that it was very hard to get him to say a bad word about anybody, and that at least among Republicans, it was hard to get anybody to say a bad word about him. Read More






Mark Tapscott - Dean favors government shutdown because 'I know who's going to get blamed'


National Journal reports that former Democratic presidential aspirant and Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean says he "would be quietly rooting" for a government shutdown in the current budget showdown with House Speaker John Boehner and Republicans on Capitol Hill. “If I was head of DNC, I would be quietly rooting for it,” said Dean while speaking on a National Journal Insider’s Conference panel earlier today. Read More






Gene Healy - Obama's Libya speech and the royal 'I'


In a speech of over 3,000 words, the word "Constitution" never appears, "Congress" appears only in passing ("consulting the bipartisan leadership of Congress"), and the word "war" shows up only once--not, perish the thought! in reference to the ongoing "kinetic military action," but in the context of "sectarian war" as one of the dangers to be avoided as the Arab world liberalizes. Read More






Michael Barone - D.C. house prices up, America's down


The latest Case-Shiller home price index is out today, and the big news is that prices are down in 18 of 20 markets surveyed. The one-year drops are particularly large in Phoenix (-9.1%), Detroit (-8.0%), Portland (-7.8%), Minneapolis (-7.6%), Chicago (-7.5%), Atlanta (-7.0%), Tampa (-7.0%), Seattle (-6.7%).


What were the exceptions to the rule? San Diego (+0.1%) and Washington (+3.6%).Read More






Michael Barone - Blacks fleeing blue states


Like me, Walter Russell Mead has been studying the 2010 Census figures with the aid of this excellent interactive graphic by the New York Times. He focuses in this terrific American Interest blogpost on the fact that the black population has been declining in what he calls “blue state America”—states and cities with high state government spending, generous welfare benefits. Read More