Mark Stricherz is a journalist and author who writes about politics, elections, and cultural issues. He contributed political analysis and commentary to The Weekly Standard between 2003 and 2014, covering topics including campaigns, social conservatism, and the intersection of morality and politics. He is the author of 'Why the Democrats Are Blue,' examining the Democratic Party's transformation on cultural issues.
For months, Senate candidate Cory Gardner has been attacked as an extremist on the issues of abortion and Obamacare's contraception mandate. His response has been to disavow his support for a 2010 personhood amendment in Colorado and to support over-the-counter access to birth control. But a few…
When his House subcommittee held the forum “After Newtown: A National Conversation on Violence and Severe Mental Illness” in March, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) received bipartisan praise for what was to be the first of three hearings on the topic. Murphy, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s…
Forty years ago this summer, in July 1972, social liberals made their political debut at the Democratic National Convention. Gloria Steinem- and Gore Vidal-style activists were not shy about their goals. The women’s rights movement had secured two major victories that spring, Title IX funding and…
Around the time Theodore H. White ended his Making of the President series, Jules Witcover emerged as his de facto successor. Witcover wrote big, sprawling books about the modern presidential campaign. By himself, he wrote three dealing with the 1968 presidential race--The Resurrection of Richard…
WHEN HOLLY BURKHALTER IS NOT working, she often unwinds by taking her dog over to Congressional Cemetery in southeast Washington, D.C., and letting the German shepherd roam around the historic graveyard. Burkhalter is the chief lobbyist for Physicians for Human Rights and a member of the Council on…
WHEN PHIL BURRESS goes home at night, his phones and doorbell ring long past suppertime. Burress is the chairman of the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, a coalition seeking to put an initiative on the ballot in November that would amend the state's constitution to ban homosexual marriage…
BILL CAIN is a classic New Deal Democrat. Eighty years old, Cain grew up and lives in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, an old steel town about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. He graduated from Greensburg High, was drafted into the Marines during World War II, and supported his wife and six kids on the…
IN DECEMBER 2001, Karl Rove gave a provocative impromptu speech about the decline of the religious right. As a rule, presidential political strategists aren't paragons of forthrightness, but on this morning at least, Rove seems to have been wearing his neutral analyst's suit. Claiming that 19…
FAYE WATTLETON, former president of Planned Parenthood, announced some "alarming" news in late June. Her organization, the Center for the Advancement of Women, had commissioned Princeton Survey Research Associates to do a major study on contemporary feminism. The result was "Progress and Perils: A…