Much has been said of Romney’s basic lack of concern about facts in this campaign. All campaigns bend facts, misrepresent things, and occasionally lie, but few do so with the boldness of Romney. After picking Paul Ryan, Romney’s campaign, in a Rove-esque maneuver, blitzed Obama over Medicare. The campaign claimed Obama took money from Medicare [...]

Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan for his vice president. The office of the vice president is almost entirely irrelevant; so it’s not clear why this really matters. Paul Ryan’s most notable “achievement” is his proposed budget. The budget is an absolute train wreck that doubtlessly owes its provenance to Ryan’s comical affection for Ayn Rand. [...]

In the aftermath of Citizens United, outside political spending has become unleashed. This new political reality troubles many, especially those on the left. With no checks on outside political spending, those with the most money can spend an unlimited amount of money to influence elections. We’ve seen how ugly this can get with [...]

The fans of Ron Paul often describe him as a principled man. Unlike other politicians who swing with the wind and pander, Paul sticks to his guns and says what he means. Or so the story goes.

When stories about Ron Paul’s decade-long racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and otherwise disgusting newsletter surfaced, the Ron [...]

With inequality growing, middle-class wages stagnant, lower-class wages falling, record high corporate profits, and substantial high-end income growth, a presidential campaign centered on class is not out of the question. Mitt Romney — who almost perfectly embodies the greedy, privileged, Wall Street Banker stereotype — would be an incredible candidate for just such a campaign. [...]

In my long Ron Paul post, I left out a point I wanted to make about Paul’s dog-whistle politics. For those unfamiliar with the idea, dog-whistle politics is “a type of political campaigning or speechmaking which employs coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has [...]

Like Kevin Drum, I have a hard time imagining Ron Paul actually winning the GOP nomination. But with Paul’s recent surge in the Iowa polls and Nate Silver projecting a 20% chance of a Ron Paul Iowa victory, it might be worthwhile to actually dedicate a post to his strange and [...]

Thomas Friedman’s article on an upstart third party in Sunday’s New York Times has been generating buzz. Friedman explains that the new party — Americans Elect — will be one of a radical centrist variety. Eschewing the normal nominating processes, it will harness the power of the internet to nominate its own candidates [...]