Author: Norman Leahy

The biggest election issue for 2024 is getting even bigger. It’s the federal deficit, which is expected to balloon to $2 trillion at the end of the current fiscal year (Sept. 30). Let’s be clear: the massive, bipartisan wave of deficit spending over the last few years has already pushed debt levels to eye popping highs. What is causing the surge in red ink this time? As The Washington Post reports, it caught official observers by surprise: “To see this in an economy with low unemployment is truly stunning. There’s never been anything like it,” [former Obama administration economist Jason] Furman…

The next Republican presidential debate will be held Sept. 27th at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. As debates go it’s not likely to change many minds, or move many polling numbers. But there’s something else afoot at the Reagan Library, and not just there. The Reagan and a dozen other presidential libraries signed a rare joint statement supporting basic democratic values, and the need to respect those with whom we may disagree. It was a thinly veiled shot across the bow of those candidates who have a demonstrated contempt for debate, civility and the institutions of government:…

What’s a presidential front-runner to do when the rest of the field is gasping for air/attention/money/relevance? If you’re Donald Trump, your various advisors are busy thinking about what other tax to cut should your guy win in 2024. Which would be a passable general election strategy, except for the particulars of what’s under discussion and the unavoidable fact that the federal government is drowning in debt. More on that in a bit. First, The Washington Post reports on what taxes might be cut in a second Trump term: Trump and his advisers have discussed deeper cuts to both individual and…

Former vice president and current GOP presidential candidate Mike Pence is back in The Wall Street Journal making the case that Republicans need to reject populism, and get behind a conservative if they want to win in 2024. It’s a point Pence has made repeatedly in the current campaign, but as yet, there seem to be no buyers among Republican primary voters. What aren’t they buying, exactly? The things that made the party a success – supporting limited government, fiscal probity and a strong national defense. These days, such niceties are memory holed in favor of something sinister: …a populist movement…

The federal government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, and this year it may end with a bang. Or, more accurately, a government-wide shutdown. The reason is the same as it was back in May: a group of Republicans believe Uncle Sam spends too much and needs to make cuts. Were that all they believed, we might be getting somewhere. But many of these same GOP lawmakers are veering from the fiscal script, saying they won’t vote to keep Uncle Sam’s lights on unless the House begins impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden. According to reporting in The Hill: Rep.…

A few weeks ago, there was a burst of press coverage of a Montana court ruling in favor of a group of teenagers who sued the state over its climate change policies. A “landmark” decision said The New York Times. “Monumental,” according to the plaintiffs’ lawyer. A ruling that joins a smattering of others in creating “a government duty to protect citizens from climate change” said NPR. And so on. Except the decision was decided on narrow grounds, and most critically, didn’t put a Montana judge in charge of fighting climate change. Not because the plaintiffs didn’t try to get…

Former federal judge Michael Luttig, one of the more formidable, conservative proponents of the theory that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars Donald Trump from seeking office, took to the website formerly known as Twitter recently to push back on criticism that Section 3 has long been a dead letter. Luttig says the Section is alive, well, and fully applies to Donald Trump. In three separate posts Luttig writes: Section 3 is in the Constitution of the United States and it applies to the former president, whether one believes it should apply or should not apply. Arguments that the…

The sliver of the Republican Party that has waged a loud and persistent “war on woke” culture/corporations/campuses, etc., is learning a hard lesson. Outside the hothouse atmospheres of the very online and the professionally upset, no one seems to care about wokeness. Instead, they are worried about bread and butter issues like jobs, wages and inflation. And among likely Republican voters, the biggest draw isn’t wokeness but law and order. A New York Times poll found that given a choice between a candidate dedicated to “defeating radical ‘woke’ ideology in our schools, media and culture” or one who “focuses on…

There’s a wealth of new polling data on the Democratic presidential nomination contest, with polls from The Wall Street Journal and Associated Press both finding that even Democratic voters are concerned that President Joe Biden is too old to run. The AP/NORC poll of adults (not registered voters) found that 77 percent of respondents believed Biden was too old to serve another term. And for the hardened Team Blue partisans who shout “ageism!” at such findings…69 percent of self-identified Democrats said Biden’s age is a big issue (among Republicans, it was a whopping 89 percent – which shouldn’t come as…

Labor Day weekend was long held as a signal that political campaigns were about to get fully, completely, underway. This Labor Day weekend might signal the opposite – that the race for the GOP presidential nomination is all but over. The latest polling data from the Wall Street Journal shows that among self-described Republican primary voters, former President Donald Trump has expanded his lead over the rest of the field, with 59 percent saying he’s their first choice for the nomination. That’s up from 48 percent back in late April. As for the competition….Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is currently the…