On Sunday afternoon, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee awarded the sport’s fourth and final playoff spot to Alabama over Ohio State. It’s clearly the most controversial pick of the committee’s four-year tenure. One immediate question is this: What four-team playoff field would the…
When Auburn upset #1 Alabama in the Iron Bowl on Saturday evening—a day after #2 Miami managed to lose by double-digits to #70 Pittsburgh (5-7)—it seemed like chaos was once again reigning over college football. And in a sense, it was. Yet, at the same time, Alabama’s loss actually helped shrink…
The best regular season in sports is heading toward its climax. On Halloween, 17 teams still had a shot of making the College Football Playoff (CFP), and I predicted that many top teams would lose in the weeks to come. Two weeks later, the number of undefeated or 1-loss teams has dropped from 17 to…
On Saturday morning, ESPN College GameDay host Rece Davis speculated about which conferences might not get a team into the College Football Playoff (CFP), saying, “I think the Big Ten is in a little bit of trouble if they don’t have an undefeated champion, or even if Wisconsin is the undefeated…
Perhaps more than any other major sport, college football revels in predictions. The sport’s preseason polls get a lot of attention, and the expectations they set continue to influence the rankings for much of the season. But at some point—like about now, with the season’s midpoint nearly upon…
Congressional members and staffers generally act like their fellow Americans sit around waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to release scoring of major legislative proposals, much like they await the release of March Madness brackets. The truth is that most Americans hardly care what the…
In passing Obamacare, its supporters promised the moon. Obamacare was allegedly going to cost $938 billion over ten years, result in 23 million people getting insurance through its exchanges as of 2017, reduce the typical family's premiums by $2,500 a year, and make sure that if you liked your…
With Obamacare unraveling in almost all ways, it's time to unravel the phony accounting practices that have allowed it to hide some $104 billion in federal spending. Under Obamacare, this money has been paid directly to insurance companies as outlays, yet it has gone into the books as "tax cuts."…
There has been a lot of speculation about what will happen to various people if Obamacare is repealed and replaced with a conservative alternative. Would millions lose coverage, as some have claimed, because they couldn't keep their plan and couldn't afford a new plan? Or would people be freed up…
Republicans rode their near-unanimous support for repealing Obamacare to big wins in the elections of 2010, 2014, and 2016. Now, having won control of the House, Senate, and White House largely on the strength of that clear and courageous commitment, some Republican officeholders are thinking that…
Part of why Obamacare is so unpopular is that it is neglects the typical American. As Republicans deliberate over an alternative to Obamacare, this provides a huge opening.
In the pre-dawn hours (stateside) on Sunday January 29, arguably the two greatest players in tennis history will take the court in the Australian Open final. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the only two men to have claimed at least 14 grand slam singles titles while winning each of the four slams,…
In Federalist 48, James Madison writes that, far from having three "coequal" branches of government—an erroneous claim that's commonly asserted today—the "legislative department derives a superiority in our governments" from having "more extensive" constitutional powers that are "less susceptible…
It is an amazing fact that the individual mandate to buy health insurance largely originated with policy wonks and politicians on the conservative side of the aisle. This ill-conceived and unconstitutional (despite the opinions of five justices) idea eventually became perhaps the most despised part…
On the last full day of the Obama White House—a phrase conservatives have waited eight long years to utter—it's worth recalling the Obama administration's own arguments about the connection between Obamacare's "community rating" mandate and runaway health costs.
A new report, cited in various media outlets, claims that repealing Obamacare would "cost roughly $350 billion" over a decade and "leave no funds available for 'replacement' legislation." In truth, repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a good conservative alternative would cut federal spending…
When it comes to trying to decide what the worst part of Obamacare is, there's no shortage of contenders. From a constitutional standpoint, the worst part is its unprecedented individual mandate. From the standpoint of the republic's overall well-being, the worst part is its consolidation and…
Since November 8, Democrats have been searching for a scapegoat. Hillary Clinton's defeat couldn't possibly signal voters' rejection of the liberal policies that Barack Obama advanced and Clinton vowed to continue, so progressives are on a quest to find the real culprit. They have thus far floated…
Since November 8, Democrats have been searching for a scapegoat. Hillary Clinton’s defeat couldn't possibly signal voters' rejection of the liberal policies that Barack Obama advanced and Clinton vowed to continue, so progressives are on a quest to find the real culprit. They have thus far floated…
Opponents of Obamacare should be greatly encouraged by President-elect Donald Trump's pick of House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Price, an M.D., has advanced the most serious Obamacare alternative to date on Capitol Hill. His legislation…
Tuesday night, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee will declare which four teams would make the playoff if the regular season were to end today. A week from now, the committee will decree what four teams will make the playoff for real. As with all progressive-style "elite" or "expert"…
The College Football Playoff Selection Committee is charged with deciding which four teams to invite to college football's postseason playoff. It's hard to imagine an easier scenario for the 12-person committee than for there to be only four major undefeated teams, one from each of the four…
In the small town of Geneva, Ohio, 50 miles to the northeast of where the Indians and Cubs split the first two games of the World Series, Donald Trump lit into something just a tad less American than baseball or apple pie: Obamacare.
In 2008, the year that Barack Obama was elected as president, the combined annual profits of America's ten largest health insurance companies were $8 billion. Under Obamacare, the ten largest health insurers' annual profits have risen to $15 billion. This is another fine example of the natural…
President Obama and Hillary Clinton love to talk about the "20 million people" who've allegedly been added to the health insurance rolls under Obamacare. But in truth, a lower percentage of Americans have private health insurance now than in 2007, even though Obamacare is the law.
If further evidence were needed that this country faces two choices going forward on health care, a leaked Hillary Clinton email just provided it. The choices we face are (a) the repeal of Obamacare and its replacement with a conservative alternative, or (b) a government monopoly. Obamacare cannot…
Amid ongoing concern that President Obama will bail out his insurance company allies who've lost money selling Obamacare, his own Justice Department has now effectively admitted that he has no legal authority to do so. In a brief filed in federal court, the Justice Department argues that the…
College football's polls rank teams even before the season starts, speculating about how good teams will be before they ever play a down. But the Anderson & Hester College Football Computer Rankings (which I co-created) reward teams for what they've actually done this season, and only this season,…
President Obama got a fair amount of good press a few weeks ago when it was reported that Americans' incomes had risen. But that was from 2014 to 2015. During 2016, Americans' incomes have dropped.
Hillary Clinton's campaign has been critical of Donald Trump's alleged coziness with Russia. This could boomerang on Clinton, however, and not just because of her own lead role in the Obama administration's failed attempt at a Russian "reset." Perhaps because it hit the newsstands before the…
Hillary Clinton doesn’t want to talk about Obamacare, but her husband clearly feels no such reluctance. Bill Clinton—who has his finger on the pulse of public sentiment to a greater degree than either President Barack Obama or Hillary—spoke rather freely about Obama's signature legislation early in…
From September 25 to October 1, Donald Trump spent more than eight times as much on television and radio advertising as he did during the prior week, according to newly released tallies from the Associated Press. Trump also widened the map and adopted a more offensive posture, adding five…
The conventional wisdom among Donald Trump's supporters is that his success doesn't rely much on political ads. The evidence suggests otherwise. As Trump's ad spending has risen, the race has tightened. As it has dipped, his polling deficit has widened.
In his latest assault on the separation of powers, President Obama seems poised to take unilateral executive action—in direct defiance of legislation he signed—to bail out insurance companies under Obamacare. In its above-the-fold story on Friday, the Washington Post mischaracterizes Obama's power…
While waiting for a chance to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a conservative alternative, there are right ways and wrong ways to address its 2,400 pages of shortcomings. The right way was recently demonstrated by a group of five Republican senators, who proposed a bill to offer millions of…
One of the most discouraging things about the future of our republic is the creeping indifference, on all sides, to the constitutional separation of powers.
Barack Obama reportedly had Tim Kaine on his shortlist for consideration for vice president in 2008 but was concerned about Kaine's lack of foreign policy experience. Kaine has since helped shore up that hole in his resume by being on the Senate Armed Services Committee for the past three years.…
One of the most pervasive myths in American politics is that a “Big Blue Wall" will protect Democratic presidential nominees, perhaps even those who lose the popular vote. In truth, this electoral Blue Wall is more like a collection of disconnected forts—some imposing, some not—and the loss of any…
In the Washington Post, Michael Gerson argues the thing that might cost Hillary Clinton the election is something that neither presidential candidate is spending much time talking about: Obamacare. He writes that immigration may be "the main motivating issue" that gets voters to turn out, but "the…
On Wednesday, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post all ran above-the-fold, page-1 headlines touting recent gains in income for the typical American household. President Obama appeared at a political rally in Philadelphia and, after citing these gains and the existence of…
It's bad enough when the federal government compels private American citizens to buy a product from a private company for the first time in all of United States history. It's worse when there's no choice of product.
For the Washington Post editorial board, nothing about Donald Trump's immigration positions—his determination to enforce United States immigration laws, his focus on American workers, his commitment to stopping President Obama's unconstitutional executive actions—makes much sense. (Amusingly, the…
It's hard to think of a more irresistible morsel of dubious conventional wisdom than the claim that, driven by demographic change, the presidential electoral map now greatly favors the Democrats. The latest propagation of this myth is found in a long piece by National Review Online's chief…
It has long been obvious that it's not too hard to design a health-care plan that beats Obamacare. Nonpartisan scoring now finds that the House Republican health-care plan (released earlier this summer) would beat Obamacare in terms of reducing premiums, reducing federal spending, increasing access…
Many Obamacare supporters have been taking solace in their belief that Aetna's recent decision to pull out of all but four government-run exchanges was a result not of Obamacare's slow-motion death spiral but of Aetna's playing politics with the Department of Justice, which has blocked the…
Recent polling finds that Democrats Russ Feingold (Wisconsin), Evan Bayh (Indiana), and Michael Bennet (Colorado) are all doing quite well in their respective Senate races versus Republicans Ron Johnson, Todd Young, and Darryl Glenn. But essentially all of that polling was done before Aetna…
There has been a lot of speculation in recent days about whether Donald Trump is profoundly changing his position on immigration. On Wednesday night in Jackson, Mississippi, he sure didn't sound like it.
With Aetna’s announcement that it is pulling out of most government-run exchanges, Obamacare's death spiral has begun to accelerate. Few but the sickest or most heavily subsidized people want anything to do with the (inaptly named) Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's high-priced,…
The problem with Democrats' approach to tax reform is that they want to increase taxes, and their plans would generally stymie growth. The problem with Republicans' approach to tax reform is that their plans, while pro-growth, too often neglect Main Street Americans and too often aren't fiscally…
Coming into Rio, few people expected 31-year-old Michael Phelps, swimming in his fifth Olympics, to become the most decorated swimmer in this year's games. With the swimming competition now completed, however, that's exactly what transpired. Phelps finished with five gold medals (the most of any…
My friend Jay Cost (a fellow non-fan of the current Republican nomination system) outlines a scenario in which Donald Trump could lose to Hillary Clinton by an electoral-vote tally of 396 to 142. This is certainly possible, if the Trump campaign goes into a complete tailspin. But if Trump gets out…
In the wake of the Democratic convention, some foot-in-mouth comments by Donald Trump, and a poll bounce for Hillary Clinton, much of the political class has decided that the presidential race is all but over. But across most of America, voters are at least as apt to be swayed by issues as by a…
The recent release of anemic quarterly economic-growth numbers for 2016 has revived the debate over the Obama economy. Some say it has been okay; some say it has been lousy. In truth, the economy under President Barack Obama has been historically bad. How bad? Adjusted for inflation, average yearly…
In a Health Affairs article, Loren Adler and Paul Ginsburg from the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution make the rather counterintuitive claim that Obamacare has actually lowered health insurance premiums. They boldly assert that "average premiums in the individual market actually…
As Jonathan Last recounts, Barack Obama's speech Wednesday night was the most motivated, focused, and impassioned address that he has given in some time And that certainly isn't due to his long-time love of Hillary Clinton. Rather, with Donald Trump having pulled even—or slightly ahead—in the…
As of 5:00 P.M. EST on Tuesday, FiveThirtyEight's state-by-state, polls-only forecast for the November 8 general election showed a projected tally of 269 electoral votes for Hillary Clinton and 269 for Donald Trump. FiveThirtyEight projects Trump to win all 24 of the states that Mitt Romney won,…
Washington, D.C., isn't the only place where the separation of powers and constitutional forms are under attack. In Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe was rebuked by his state's Supreme Court on Friday for his attempt to circumvent the language of the Virginia Constitution—and the will of the…
On Tuesday night, House speaker Paul Ryan gave a surprisingly enthusiastic speech on behalf of Donald Trump, imploring Republicans to give it their all in 2016 and "unify this party" in the interest of achieving "a conservative governing majority."
One thing that it would seem nearly all conservatives and/or Republicans could agree upon is that, in the midst of a crime uptick and in the waning months of a soft-on-crime liberal presidency, now is not the time to pass "criminal justice reform" of that president's liking. But apparently that's…
Hillary Clinton has escaped indictment, but the FBI’s characterization of her as having been "extremely careless" in using multiple "personal servers" to send "Top Secret" emails—and as perhaps not having been "sophisticated enough" to understand classified markings while serving as U.S. secretary…
NBC News's First Read has the list of those "in the hunt" to be Donald Trump's vice-presidential pick down to five names, the same number that Trump gave Monday morning to the Washington Post. Both lists include one name that would likely doom Trump's candidacy: retired Army general Michael Flynn.…
A recent WEEKLY STANDARD editorial highlighted how the federal government is hiding some $104 billion in federal spending by falsely labeling Obamacare's outlays to insurance companies as "tax credits." Now a 157-page investigative report released by two powerful House committees—Ways and Means in…
Four months out from the general election, most pundits and commentators are acting as if Obamacare will have little effect on the results of this year's races. But given Obamacare's extraordinary unpopularity, that's hard to believe. Obamacare is horrible for middle-class Americans: It worsens…
For six years, it has been abundantly clear that Americans want Obamacare to be repealed—but only if a well-conceived conservative alternative is positioned to take its place. That's why the recent release of the House GOP health care plan is a big deal. The new plan would of course repeal…
As I highlighted in a recent WEEKLY STANDARD editorial, Obamacare has invented a dangerous new way to hide federal spending, including more than $100 billion designed to look like tax cuts.
As Chris Deaton reports, President Obama thinks “VFW halls all across America" have a warped view of the economy. Thanks to "some cable news stations" and "right-wing radio"—as Obama tells it—Americans falsely believe that the economy isn't roaring, that a lot of people are paying more in income…
At the Federalist, Rachel Lu grants that it's likely good politics, as I argued at National Review Online, for Donald Trump to oppose the Obama-led "criminal justice reform" efforts currently being debated in Congress. (Trump did in fact recently criticize such efforts.) She writes, however, that…
Obamacare has raised Americans’ health-insurance premiums, sapped their liberty, caused millions to lose their doctors, and funneled huge amounts of power and money to Washington. It has become a vehicle for executive lawlessness - a federal judge recently ruled the Obama administration has been…
As Congress follows up its serious flirtation with open-borders "immigration reform" by debating open-jails "criminal sentencing reform," and as the Obama administration calls young criminals "justice-involved individuals" (you can't make this stuff up), Donald Trump has now weighed in strongly on…
In its latest assault on traditional Americans mores, federalism, the separation of powers, and common sense, the Obama administration is now claiming that a federal law passed more than 40 years ago (Title IX) somehow requires all public schools across America to provide access to bathrooms and…
Obamacare has caused health insurance premiums to skyrocket. It has caused millions of Americans who liked their health plans to lose their health plans. It has caused doctor and hospital networks to narrow. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obamacare exchanges in Alabama and Alaska will…
There have been two defining moments in Paul Ryan’s political career: The first was his leading the opposition to Obamacare in 2009 and 2010. (Can anyone forget the "Health Summit," or his short speech on the night of the Obamacare vote in the House?) The second was his getting essentially the…
Republicans and their allies seem determined to try to blame their electoral woes on anything other than their own poor messaging, their failure to listen to Main Street voters (a fact that Donald Trump capitalized on) and their woefully deficient nomination process (which has now produced Trump as…
It has long been hard to see why John Kasich has remained in the presidential race. The slim rationale for his candidacy going into last night was that, even though Kasich had lost every state but his own and had failed to come within ten points of the winner in 32 of 34 states, he would do well in…
Donald Trump continues to argue that the Republican presidential-selection process is “rigged" and that any result other than his getting the party's nomination would be an affront to democracy. The response that "Trump knew the rules" is true but isn't the strongest rebuttal to his claim. The more…
Donald Trump was asked this week, “Do you believe in raising taxes on the wealthy?" He replied, "I do. I do—including myself. I do."
In recent weeks, John Kasich’s most important support has come from the Wall Street Journal editorial board. The Journal's opinion pages have published perhaps a handful or two of pro-Kasich pieces—roughly as many as the number of counties that Kasich has won to date outside of Ohio. It is…
There is no denying the dominance of Donald Trump’s performance in his home state of New York, in which he got 60 percent of the vote. Still, it is perhaps interesting to note that, with more than 99 percent of the vote counted in the Empire State, Ted Cruz got more votes in Wisconsin (a state with…
John Kasich has now won his first county in more than a month—Manhattan. That brings Kasich's nationwide tally for number of counties won, outside of his home state of Ohio, to 7. So for every state won by Donald Trump (20, not counting New York) or Ted Cruz (10, not counting Texas), Kasich has won…
If you like your UnitedHealthcare Obamacare plan, that doesn’t mean you can keep your UnitedHealthcare Obamacare plan. That's because the nation's largest health insurer is bailing on the central policy initiative of the Obama presidency.
In a recent piece at New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait writes that “Republican alternatives to Obamacare have lain just over the horizon for half a dozen years" yet somehow never come into view. He asserts, "The reason the dog keeps eating the Republicans' health-care homework is very simple: It is…
The key domestic policy fight of 2017 will be over Obamacare. If it is repealed, then the centerpiece of the Obama presidency will lie in ruins. If not, then President Obama will have been what he set out to be: a sort of Reagan of the left—a transformative president who will have profoundly…
Exit polling from the Wisconsin primary shed some light on which of the three remaining GOP candidates might have the best chance of uniting the Republican party going into November. Voters were asked about their "feelings" if Donald Trump, John Kasich, or Ted Cruz were elected as president.
With his win in Tuesday’s open primary in the blue state of Wisconsin, Ted Cruz has now beaten Donald Trump in 11 of 21 states that have been contested to date outside of the South. Cruz has now beaten Trump in three Midwestern states (Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota—with Cruz having finished second…
On three separate occasions, I’ve written about the determined struggle of one man in the face of appalling political correctness, anti-Americanism, and bureaucratic senselessness. In Orcutt, California, about an hour north of the Reagan Ranch on the beautiful Central Coast, Steve LeBard has been…
Three years ago, on the eve of Obamacare’s implementation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that President Obama's centerpiece legislation would result in an average of 201 million people having private health insurance in any given month of 2016. Now that 2016 is here, the CBO says…
John Kasich is now 0-for-30 in races outside of his home state of Ohio, and he has managed to finish second in just four of those states. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, has eight wins and thirteen runner-up finishes, not counting the win in his home state of Texas. One would think there would no longer be…
Many Republicans likely went to bed last night with Donald Trump dominating in Arizona, on his way to 58 electoral votes there. But on the night, Trump once again failed to get 50 percent of the vote. In fact, based on the 99 percent of precincts that have reported (as of 3:30 PM EST) in Arizona…
Charles Krauthammer, Chris Wallace, and others have recently speculated that part of John Kasich’s purpose in staying in the Republican presidential race—thereby preventing Ted Cruz from having a one-on-one shot at Donald Trump—is the Ohioan's desire to be Trump's running mate. Whether that is…
At the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone offers an excellent analysis of why John Kasich’s continued presence in the Republican presidential race enables Donald Trump, even as many Republicans and Republican-leaning pundits try to avoid facing up to this reality. In a piece entitled, "Only Ted…
The wide swath of Washington and New York Republicans and Republican-leaning pundits who really don’t want a Ted Cruz or Donald Trump presidency are moving deeper into denial. Their latest fantasy is that John Kasich can still become the GOP nominee. Never mind that Kasich has already been…
With the March 15 slate of Republican primaries in the books, 29 of the 50 states have now voted. Donald Trump, the leader, not only hasn't won half of the votes to date (and hasn't even won half of the votes in a single state), but he hasn't even won three-eighths of them. Rather, Trump has won 37…
Donald Trump deserves credit for coming out with a sketch of an Obamacare alternative. Unfortunately, his plan would not rescue us from Obamacare. Instead, it would further balloon the national debt, keep one of the worst parts of Obamacare in place, not encourage people to shop for value, keep…
From the perspective of the majority of Republican voters who don’t want Donald Trump to win the party's nomination, last night was a mixed bag. On the one hand, Trump won three out of four states, including by far the biggest one (Michigan), winning all three by double-digits or (in the case of…
Amid the incessant talk of Trump “inevitability," voters' verdicts seem to be telling a rather different story. For the week including "Super Tuesday" and "Super Saturday," Donald Trump won 300 delegates (40 percent of the 750 delegates allotted across those 15 states and Puerto Rico), while Ted…
With 100 percent of the precincts reporting in Saturday’s four GOP presidential contests, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz were separated by only 234 votes (out of a total of 622,579 cast), as Trump got 230,443 votes to Cruz's 230,209. The candidates' respective percentages of the vote on "Super Saturday"…
In Thursday’s Republican presidential debate, Ted Cruz called Obamacare "the biggest job-killer in America." Chris Wallace had asked Cruz what he would do to bring manufacturing jobs back to Detroit (the site of the debate) and the rest of the country, and the Texas senator replied, "The way you…
Fifteen states have now voted in the Republican presidential race, or 30 percent of the total. Those states have accounted for 28 percent of the delegates that will ultimately be awarded nationwide. (They will eventually account for 29 percent, once all of their delegates have been allocated.) So,…
With Super Tuesday now behind us, 15 of the 50 states have voted. If this were the Indianapolis 500, only 150 of the 500 miles would now be completed. Donald Trump has won won a plurality of the vote in 10 of the first 15 states—while Ted Cruz has won a plurality in 4 and Marco Rubio in 1—but the…
In winning Texas by 16 points, winning Oklahoma, winning (as of this writing) Alaska, and finishing second in Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Tennessee, Ted Cruz has now solidified his grip on second place in the GOP presidential race. He increased his lead over Marco Rubio in states won, votes…
Having inexplicably loomed beneath the surface during most of the GOP presidential campaign, has Obamacare now emerged as a major weakness of Donald Trump? The issue's ultimate effect on the Republican frontrunner will largely hinge on whether Ted Cruz decides to release an Obamacare alternative…
During the last Republican presidential debate in Texas, Donald Trump spoke of his sister, a liberal activist judge who he says would make a “phenomenal" Supreme Court justice, and defended her against criticism she has received "for signing a certain bill"—his words—from the bench. He then said…
A great many people have argued in recent days that Marco Rubio's strategy—of not attacking Donald Trump, playing for second, and hoping the field gets culled—looks like a political loser. A newly released Florida Quinnipiac poll offers further evidence to support this claim. The poll finds that,…
The notion of Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, once widely thought to be an impossibility, is now widely being described—in respectable circles, nonetheless—as a near-inevitability. Generally sensible and level-headed people are starting to concoct all sorts of crazy plans to…
GOP voters are in a fighting mood. They aren't much interested in business-as-usual, political niceties, or even conservative purity. They want someone who will take it to Washington—someone who will go there and fight for change.
In his speech following the South Carolina Republican primary, Ted Cruz said that “we are the only campaign that has beaten, and can beat, Donald Trump." The second part of that (the "can beat" part) is certainly debatable—Marco Rubio would beg to differ, and perhaps neither one of them can beat…
The most unpopular part of Obamacare now has a champion in the Republican presidential field. Via the Right Scoop, Donald Trump was asked on Thursday night by CNN's Anderson Cooper, "If…there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, what's to—why would an insurance company not have a…
To hear some on the left tell it, the Supreme Court would be hamstrung if it had to function for a year or more without a ninth justice. What to do in the event of a 4-4 tie? This would not have been viewed as a problem, however, by America's Founders, who created a Court with an even number of…
The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that, for the first time in the past 100 days (based on polling listed by Real Clear Politics), Donald Trump trails nationally in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The WSJ/NBC poll was taken entirely after the South Carolina GOP…
In the South Carolina Republican debate, Ted Cruz said of fellow Republican senator Marco Rubio, “Marco went on Univision in Spanish and said he would not rescind President Obama's illegal executive amnesty on his first day in office." Rubio replied, "I don't know how he knows what I said on…
Ronald Reagan’s "eleventh commandment"—"thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican"—may be an unnecessarily strict standard, but the Republican presidential field could at least try to observe a twelfth commandment: Thou shalt avoid calling one's fellow Republican a liar.
The sad passing of Justice Antonin Scalia—who did more than any other member of the judicial branch over the past three decades to exercise judgment instead of will, thereby becoming one of our finest-ever "bulwarks of a limited Constitution"—makes the upcoming presidential election even more…
Now that Bernie Sanders has routed Hillary Clinton by 22 points in New Hampshire, the American people might be curious to learn more about some of his specific policy proposals, starting with his tax plan. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has scored Sanders's plan and has found it would cause the…
Among the two candidates whose results look at all like those of an eventual GOP presidential nominee, polling suggests that Ted Cruz would do significantly better than Donald Trump in the general election. According to the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls, Cruz would fare 5 points…
With more than 90 percent of the New Hampshire returns having come in, here are a few thoughts:
The American Founders designed a federal government of separated powers: They authorized Congress to pass the laws, the president to execute them, and the Supreme Court (and "such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish") to apply them in judicial proceedings. But…
In the aftermath of the 2012 election, conservatives/Republicans generally split into two camps about where the movement or party needed to head next. One camp thought the key was to do a better job of making the case for conservative principles and policies (and to do a better job of developing…
The Des Moines Register, whose poll is generally regarded as the gold standard of Iowa polling, has released its final results before Monday’s Iowa caucuses. It finds Donald Trump in first place, with 28 percent support, and Ted Cruz in second, with 23 percent support. No one else is within a dozen…
Nobody dominated the final pre-Iowa Republican debate, but it was a spirited affair that will likely affect the outcome of the caucuses. The questions from Fox News were a bit all over the place and sometimes seemed to be asked more from the perspective of the Obama White House than from that of…
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who has expressed concerns about Donald Trump's commitment to conservatism and the Constitution, campaigned for Ted Cruz in neighboring Iowa on Tuesday and followed that up by campaigning on Wednesday for Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. In between campaign stops, Sasse…
When Barack Obama took office, America’s national debt was $10.6 trillion. It's now $19.0 trillion—an increase of $8.4 trillion in just seven years, or $1.2 trillion per year.
The Real Clear Politics average of recent polls finds that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are each ahead of Hillary Clinton in head-to-head polling, while Clinton is ahead of Donald Trump. Clinton leads Trump by a tally of 45 to 43 percent. Meanwhile, Rubio leads Clinton by 46 to 44 percent, and Cruz…
Bill Kristol argues that because Republican presidential candidates aren’t focusing on such issues as Obamacare and Supreme Court appointments—crucial issues on which Donald Trump is quite vulnerable—GOP voters are becoming "increasingly comfortable" with the notion of casting a ballot for Trump. A…
Obamacare is closer than ever to being repealed. Congressional Republicans recently took one of their most assertive actions against it to date, while the centerpiece of the Obama presidency is playing out even worse than most of its opponents predicted. What’s missing is a presidential contender…
Monday night’s terrific championship game between Clemson and Alabama—the same matchup the old Bowl Championship Series system would have produced—capped yet another splendid college football season. Unlike in so many other sports, the format produced a champion that actually was the best team on…
President Obama vetoed legislation today that would have repealed most of Obamacare. Congress passed the legislation using the same "reconciliation" process that Democrats used to get Obamacare across the finish line in 2010. That process allows senators to circumvent the filibuster and pass…
Ten prominent policy experts have released a new Obamacare alternative published by the American Enterprise Institute. The most important part of any Obamacare alternative is how it would address the longstanding inequality in the tax code (which favors employer-based insurance over individually…
With a deadline looming, congressional leaders unveiled "sweeping" tax and spending legislation late last night. The result makes one wonder whether congressional Republicans negotiate directly with President Obama on these deals, or whether they just send corporate lobbyists to do so, thereby…
When the Democrats passed Obamacare (without a single Republican vote), part of how they were allegedly going to pay for it was through a "Cadillac tax" on expensive employer-based insurance. Yet, this week, many Republicans are working with Democrats to delay or even repeal this tax. For three…
The College Football Playoff Selection Committee's 4-team playoff field generated very little controversy this season, but the process—and the rankings that it yielded—raised two concerns for future seasons.
Obamacare has an incurable preexisting condition: It eats away at the private insurance market on which it relies. That market cannot survive Obamacare's hubristic mandates, and Obamacare cannot survive the collapse of that market. On their present course, both are doomed.
With the conference championship games all set for this coming weekend, we are now down to nine teams vying for four playoff spots. The Big 12 champion, Oklahoma (#3 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings), will all but certainly be one of those four teams. (The Big 12 has no conference championship…
There are only two weeks remaining in college football’s regular season (three, counting Army-Navy), and it’s becoming pretty clear which teams still have a shot at making the 4-team playoff field. Last week, 16 teams still appeared to be alive. Now, with Houston, TCU, and Utah having lost, that…
With just three weeks remaining in the best regular season in all of sports—a regular season whose greatness largely results from the smallness of the playoff field to follow—various teams’ prospects for making the 4-team College Football Playoff are starting to take shape. Here’s a rundown of…
We are just a year from November 8, 2016, and the election that will largely determine the fate of Obamacare, and the news isn’t good for President Obama’s centerpiece legislation. Premiums continue to rise, doctor and hospital networks continue to shrink, Americans continue to balk at buying…
Pop quiz: Was the percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born higher in 1860, 1880, 1920, or on July 1, 2015? If you answered “2015,” you’re right. The portion of the U.S. population that is foreign-born is now 13.5 percent, surpassing even the tallies for 1860 (13.2 percent), 1880…
For 16 years, the Bowl Championship Series focused fans’ and reporters’ attention on teams’ actual success in winning games against strong opponents. Just over a year into the new Selection Committee era (in which 13 people determine which teams will be invited to a 4-team playoff), it’s clear…
Today, in his remarks to the House of Representatives following his election as speaker, Paul Ryan reiterated his belief that “we can renew the America idea.” This recalls Ryan’s excellent speech on the fateful night of the Obamacare vote, on March 21, 2010, when he proclaimed,
On a crazy college football Saturday that saw Michigan State pull out about the most improbable win since Stanford’s band came onto the field against Cal 33 years ago, the LSU Tigers beat previously undefeated Florida and claimed the top spot in the Anderson & Hester Rankings. In three weeks, the…
It has been clear for some time that Republicans need just two things in order to repeal Obamacare—a winning alternative and political willpower. The jury is still out on how much of the latter the party possesses. But when it comes to uniting around a well-conceived alternative that can pave the…
I largely agree with Lee Smith’s take on the collision between Ruben Tejada and Chase Utley in the bottom of the 7th inning at beautiful Dodger Stadium on Saturday. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Utley isn’t “to blame for Tejada’s injury”— to me, Utley’s excessively late slide deserves a…
With crime rising in America and police increasingly under siege, many Senate Republicans have decided it’s a good time to liberalize federal sentencing policies—and to do so “quickly.” One has to wonder at Republicans’ timing. At what would appear to be a Richard Nixon or Rudy Giuliani moment,…
One of the least-reported substantial policy victories in recent years was stopping Obamacare’s insurer bailout through last fall’s CRomnibus bill. Now we can attach a price-tag to that victory: $2.5 billion. That’s how much taxpayers would have been funneling to President Obama’s…
The Republican congressional leadership has been nominally--but sometimes it seems only nominally--committed to repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a conservative alternative. Now one of the two leading candidates for House majority leader—the number-two position in leadership—is Dr. Tom…
Donald Trump’s newly released tax plan would add a staggering $10 trillion to the national debt over a decade, according to scoring by the Tax Foundation, a well-respected (especially in conservative circles) nonpartisan source. To put that into perspective, that’s more debt than Barack Obama—by…
Jake Tapper and CNN pretended during the Republican presidential debate that Obamacare doesn’t exist. But Republican voters won’t follow suit. Instead, they are likely to cast their votes largely based on who looks most committed to repealing President Obama’s tenuously perched signature…
One of the worst things about Obamacare is that it provides taxpayer funding of abortion. This is one of the nearly countless reasons why Obamacare must be repealed, and it’s one of the core reasons why it is crucial for Republican presidential candidates to show they have an alternative that…
At a speech at President Reagan’s alma mater on Thursday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker challenged his GOP rivals on Obamacare. Walker highlighted his own Obamacare alternative, promising he would send it to Congress on Day One. Observing that members of Congress “need a little incentive to get…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has long observed that Obamacare, which President Obama pitched as a great deal for Americans of all stripes, is really only for the near-poor and near-elderly—at the expense of the middle class and the young. While only a small minority has benefitted from the 2,400-page…
So far, the Republican presidential contest has been light on Obamacare, with Scott Walker — who has essentially championed the 2017 Project’s “Winning Alternative to Obamacare” — providing a noteworthy exception. Since Obamacare is the biggest issue of Barack Obama’s presidency, why are most GOP…
One of the most disturbing aspects of living through the Obama presidency is reading every week or two about some new decision that has been decreed by the executive branch rather than voted upon by the legislative branch. Time and again, things that — in a constitutional republic — should be…
On August 18, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker became the first leading Republican presidential candidate to release a full-fledged Obamacare alternative. Walker’s alternative would fully repeal Obamacare and provide the sort of real reform for which Americans have long been waiting. But there has…
The opening Republican presidential debate was a spirited affair, but missing was any serious discussion of Obamacare, the domestic centerpiece of Barack Obama’s presidency. The moderators asked only two Obamacare-related questions. One elicited Donald Trump’s assertion that a government monopoly…
About five hours south of San Francisco, where Kate Steinle was murdered in broad daylight by an illegal immigrant, another illegal immigrant has been charged with raping and savagely beating an Air Force veteran to death with a hammer. According to police, Marilyn Pharis, 64, was sleeping in her…
While liberals have expressed their outrage at the cruel killing of Cecil the Lion while mostly ignoring the grisly Planned Parenthood videos, the response from conservative pundits has largely been to emphasize the moral hierarchy of the two crimes. Conservatives have argued that what Planned…
The mainstream press corps and (at least privately) many Republicans officeholders have adopted two seemingly irreconcilable positions. They claim Obamacare is politically toxic for Democrats yet is somehow immune to repeal by Republicans (even after President Obama leaves office). A recent piece…
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in King v. Burwell, most signs point toward Obamacare becoming the defining issue in the 2016 election. That puts Republicans in an advantageous position, as it’s a lot easier to propose and defend an alternative to Obamacare than to defend Obamacare. …
The Supreme Court’s ruling in King v. Burwell is disappointing. But it also provides a welcome moment of clarity: We can finally dispense with the false belief that the Supreme Court will save us from Obamacare. It is perhaps a blessing for the cause of repeal that all eyes will now turn to the…
After the Democrats passed Obamacare without a single Republican vote, Republicans generally (and wisely) united around the notion that they shouldn’t pursue partial repeal or “fixes” to Obamacare. Rather than willingly giving Obamacare a newly bipartisan sheen, they publicly committed to…
In the initial years following Obamacare’s passage, Republicans remained solidly united on one crucial point: Obamacare needs to be repealed and replaced, not “fixed.” But some Republicans and center-right pundits have since decided that trying to fix the president’s signature legislation is a…
According to Gallup, only 7 percent of Americans want immigration levels to increase, while 86 percent either want them to remain at current levels (47 percent) or decrease (39 percent). With most current and prospective Republican presidential candidates tripping over each other to vie for that 7…
Scott Walker’s recent comments suggesting that the United States’s policy on legal immigration should be focused on what’s good for American workers — a seemingly obvious point that nevertheless has ruffled feathers — offers further evidence of the Wisconsin governor’s political savvy. When two of…
If there is anything that liberals and Big Business can seemingly agree upon, it’s that we don’t need an approach to immigration that benefits Main Street. It remains to be seen whether anyone running for president will seize this opening and buck the liberal-corporate consensus, but in the…
Now that the Supreme Court has held its oral arguments in King v. Burwell, the case has somewhat receded from the headlines. But conservatives would be wise to use this period between the oral arguments and the Court’s ruling, expected in late June, to encourage Republicans to unite around a…
The Wall Street Journal editorial board greets the announcement of Ted Cruz’s presidential candidacy by taking the Texas senator to task for, of all things, being too much like President Obama. The Journal notes that both men decided to launch a White House run as a 40-something first-term senator…
It has now been five years since President Obama signed Obamacare into law — and more than two years and two months since any poll found it to be popular. The last time a poll found Obamacare to be popular was during Obama’s first term.
The consensus across America, and perhaps especially along the I-95 corridor, seems to be that Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are on a nearly inevitable collision course, with one or the other poised to be declared president-elect on November 8, 2016. At a minimum, they are viewed as the…
Given that Obamacare’s supporters like to take the Congressional Budget Office’s overly optimistic scoring of the president’s signature legislation as gospel, it’s fun to look at how poorly Obamacare is actually doing in relation to earlier CBO projections. When the Democrats rammed Obamacare…
Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who rode his opposition to Obamacare to a seat in the Senate, has introduced legislation that should help Republicans avoid turning a potential victory at the Supreme Court into a defeat for the cause of repeal. Sasse’s bill, introduced yesterday evening, is designed to keep…
Five years ago this month — on the night the Democrats passed Obamacare through the House without a single Republican vote — Paul Ryan proclaimed on the House floor, “This moment may mark a temporary conclusion of the health-care debate, but its place in history has not yet been decided. If this…
Over the past few days at CPAC, Sean Hannity has asked various prospective Republican presidential candidates to list their “top five agenda items.” Former governor Jeb Bush’s list did not include repealing Obamacare.
Next Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether the Obama administration has been illegally providing taxpayer-funded subsidies in 36 states under the guise of implementing Obamacare, and there’s been much debate about what Congress should do if the Court rules that the…
Obamacare is an affront to American principles. It amounts to an unprecedented consolidation of money and control in the hands of the federal bureaucracy. It forces private citizens to buy a product or service of the government’s choosing for the first time in history, and it bans millions of…
On Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, which really does merit a federal holiday, it’s worth noting that there is no federal holiday called “Presidents’ Day” — nor should there be. The lone federal holiday in February is “Washington’s Birthday.” (If only more Americans would call it that!) Many states,…
The Huffington Post’s Jeffrey Young and Jonathan Cohn declare that “putting together a real Obamacare alternative will take more time — and more genuine interest — than Republicans have.” In truth, such Obamacare alternatives are already available to Republicans. These include the 2017 Project’s…
In today’s Wall Street Journal, my friend Tevi Troy and Scott Gottlieb unwittingly demonstrate why King v. Burwell has always been a dangerous case for advocates of repeal. As they highlight, a favorable ruling at the Supreme Court may give Republicans just enough rope to hang themselves.
In the official Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, newly elected Iowa senator Joni Ernst stressed the importance of combating liberals’ “stale mindset” that has “led to failed policies like Obamacare,” while reaffirming Republicans’ commitment to…
Wednesday evening’s Fox News Special Report featured the following exchange between Bret Baier and House Speaker John Boehner:
In a 60 Minutes interview with Scott Pelley, parts of which aired on Sunday, House speaker John Boehner and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made it sound like they are no closer to producing the elusive Obamacare alternative than they were five long years ago.
Republicans have now won two Obamacare elections, the first in 2010 and the second in 2014. (In 2012, their presidential nominee chose not to engage on the issue.) In the lead-up to their latest victory, Republicans ran far more ads against Obamacare than either party ran for or against anything…
While college football fans were riveted to the two playoff games on New Year’s Day (make that one-and-a-half playoff games, as the second half of the Rose Bowl was hardly must-see T.V.), some commentators could hardly wait to seize the moment to criticize the Bowl Championship Series (BCS),…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with the 2017 Project's Jeffrey H. Anderson on Obamacare and what the GOP can do to stop it in 2015.
Most college football fans are happy that the sport has adopted a 4-team playoff. The method of selecting those four teams, however, is another matter. This past offseason, McLaughlin & Associates asked self-described college football fans this question: “As you may know, college football will…
In Thursday’s lead editorial, the Wall Street Journal argues that congressional “Republicans can’t win by shutting down the government”; thus, they should not attempt to deny President Obama the funding he needs to carry out his unconstitutional executive amnesty for 5 million illegal immigrants. …
For the past decade, the Bowl Championship Series unfailingly provided the matchup for college football’s national title game that reflected the public consensus. (In the six years prior to that, the BCS’s record was spottier, but after 2003-04, its formula was wisely streamlined, and its…
With just two weeks to go before it announces its 4-team playoff field, the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee is underrating teams from the two strongest conferences — the Southeastern and Pac-12 — and overrating those from the other three major conferences—the Big 12, Big Ten, and…
On Sunday, President Obama tried to explain why his decision to violate his duty to faithfully execute the laws on immigration, in plain defiance of the constitutional separation of powers, won’t pave the way for future presidents to do the same on tax laws. It didn’t go well:
George Washington, 1796:
Congressional Republicans’ internal debate over how to respond to President Obama’s impending lawless executive amnesty is being characterized as a battle between “immigration hawks” and those who want “to show Republicans can govern.” But that description is inapt, and it does a disservice to the…
With three weeks to go in college football’s regular season, Alabama has vaulted to #1 in the Anderson & Hester Computer Rankings. The 1-loss Crimson Tide, which beat previously undefeated Mississippi State on Saturday to move up from #3, edged undefeated Florida State in this week’s rankings…
Two well-placed sources on Capitol Hill say that the Congressional Budget Office effectively used Jonathan Gruber’s model to score Obamacare. That model favors government mandates over market competition and claims that essentially the only way to achieve a large reduction in the number of…
Does this week’s battle between Mississippi State and Alabama involve the nation’s #1 and #3 teams, or #1 and #5? Well, it depends whether you ask the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee or the Anderson & Hester Computer Rankings. Pretty much across the board, the former has a…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with the 2017 Project's Jeffrey H. Anderson on the Obamacare lies.
Jonathan Gruber, a key architect of Obamacare (and also of Romneycare), has been caught on camera by the Daily Signal offering up insights on the “stupidity of the American voter” and on the importance of using a noble lie (or lies) in passing Obamacare.
President Obama has always wanted to be a historic president. In an election that was driven by Obamacare, he took another big step toward that end on Tuesday — just not in the way he intended.
Anti-Obamacare ads are dominating the airwaves in the election’s stretch run. According to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, Republicans ran nearly 13,000 anti-Obamacare ads in Senate races during the week of October 20-26. That’s after they ran nearly 12,000 anti-Obamacare ads during…
It is becoming increasingly clear how important it is to liberals to try to insulate Obamacare from what is shaping up as another “shellacking.” Sure, a few months after House Democrats passed Obamacare (over unanimous Republican opposition), they lost more House seats (63) while also losing…
Ed Gillespie continues to close the gap on Mark Warner in the Virginia Senate race, causing Real Clear Politics to move the race from “Likely Dem” to “Leans Dem.” Virginia is currently the only Senate race in that category, which suggests it’s the GOP’s best chance to stage a substantial upset on…
Without offering an alternate theory for President Obama’s 42 percent approval rating — which was about the same even before it became obvious his foreign policy had tanked — the mainstream media is insisting that Obamacare isn’t driving this election. But Republican ads in Senate races say…
A Gallup survey earlier this month showing that Americans oppose Obamacare by a margin of 53 to 41 percent was the 150th poll listed by Real Clear Politics during President Obama’s second term to find Obamacare unpopular. The number that found it to be popular was zero.
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