Tag Archives: Obama

The First Amendment Under Siege | USNews.com | 5.23.13

It has been a bad few weeks for the First Amendment. The sinister commonality to the Internal Revenue Service and AP scandals and the James Rosen affair is that each appears to have been (strike “appears “: each was) an attempt to suppress a core American right. Freedom of the press was clearly the target [...]
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The AP, the IRS and President Obama’s Leadership | HughHewitt.com | 05.21.13

It will come as no surprise to anyone when I say that Washington is in full scandal mode these days. I attended a Washington dinner this past week — one of those fancy affairs in a fancy room with fancy speakers, fancy food, and funds raised.  There may be a dozen such events a night [...]
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Watergate, Monicagate, and Benghazi | HughHewitt.com | 5.13.13

During Watergate, President Richard Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, became infamous for such remarks as, “This is the operative statement; the others are inoperative” in the face of the developing scandal.  Say what you want about Mr. Ziegler, who passed away a decade ago, that phrase was at least an admission that something the presidential [...]
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Question re. Benghazi: Does this Administration Have Any Idea How to Handle a Crisis? What is the Protocol? | HughHewitt.com | 5.08.13

Today the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on Benghazi. In case you’ve missed all the scuttlebutt, Wes Pruden, editor emeritus of the Washington Times, has an excellent curtain raiser in his paper this morning (http://tinyurl.com/ccrzea2). The committee will hear that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cut out her department’s counterterrorism experts [...]
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Two Examples: Obama On How NOT To Lead. Thatcher On How TO Lead. | HughHewitt.com | 4.08.13

If you want a measure of what it means to have an administration in Washington that puts failed ideology first, take a look at last week’s jobs report.  If you want an example of how a president should be acting in a time like this, look at how Margaret Thatcher, who passed away this morning, [...]
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The Case for More Sequester | USNews.com | 4.08.13

I’m guessing you missed the latest troubling economic news. I am not talking about last week’s unemployment figures. A record 90 million Americans are now out of the workforce, taking the U.S. labor participation rate back to Carter administration levels – 63.5 percent. The White House tried to blame The Sequester. But the job trend [...]
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Obama’s Quiet Declaration of War on Oil and Gas Production | USNews.com | 03.18.13

Last week, the president traveled to the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago to deliver what the White House billed as a major speech on energy. To see what is wrong with the administration as it enters its second term, you could do worse than carefully reading that address. Despite the speech’s “energy” label, the oil [...]
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President’s Second Term Prescription: Poison Pill Politics | HughHewitt.com | 2.20.13

FoxNews.com posted a home page story this evening that began, “President Obama pinned the blame on Republicans Tuesday for looming spending cuts that may be triggered by what was originally a White House proposal….” Well, duh. Hasn’t staging one deadlock after another been the Obama White House’s transparent game plan since Day One of Term [...]
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What Will Tonight’s SOTU Tell Us? | Ricochet.com | 2.12.12

Do we even need to ask?  Mr. Obama’s recent inaugural address was 1937 all over again.  It seems government can achieve anything by decree, except revive the sick economy.  This SOTU is being advertised as a “bookend” to the inaugural — bookends without books, I suppose.  Mainly, as with after-the-fact edits to the Congressional Record, [...]
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SOTU Address To Double Down on Climate Change. Why? Why now? | HugHewitt.com | 2.11.13

In case anyone doubted, the White House has indicated that in tomorrow night’s State of the Union address, President Obama will follow through on his inaugural address calling out of climate change as a major policy focus in his second term. Whether you come from a perspective of science, economics or politics, you’ve got to [...]
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Next Tuesday’s State of the Union Address: What Will the President Say and Why? | HughHewitt.com | 2.7.13

The leaking and speculation have already begun as Washington looks to next week’s State of the Union address.  But is there any real doubt about what the president will actually say when he steps into the well of the House of Representatives next Tuesday night? After all, didn’t his second inaugural address point the way? [...]
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The Surprises No One Sees Coming | 1.28.13 | USNews.com

Whenever a new presidential term begins, everyone asks what surprises might the next four years bring. Think of the Bush 41 presidency. On inauguration day 1989, how many American experts expected the Soviet Union to collapse before the next election? How many anticipated Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and our troops going to war in the [...]
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Inaugural Address: Right for the President; Wrong for the Country | HughHewitt.com | 1.22.13

It is 1937 all over again. In his second inaugural address yesterday, Barack Obama channeled the style, structure and substance of Franklin Roosevelt’s second inaugural with all but unprecedented fidelity. Each president employed a comparable rhetorical device to identify himself with his audience and with the programs of his first term.  For FDR it was [...]
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Leader of a Country or a Faction? | HughHewitt.com | 1.15.13

In his press conference yesterday, the last before the inauguration, President Obama spoke in a tone remarkable – actually unprecedented — in the post World War II era, perhaps in the history of the nation.  He presented himself as the leader, not of the country, but of a faction. Again and again, the president wasn’t [...]
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Who’s Right, Gallup or Rasmussen? Today may tell. | Ricochet.com | 10.19.12

By now it is clear that, in terms of public perceptions (maybe on points, too), all three debates have been winners for Romney-Ryan. But have they been big enough winners to push the GOP ticket over the top? In Washington, the question is being framed this way: Is Romney up 49-47 points, as pollster Scott [...]
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Biden’s debate night bluster looks even worse 48 hours later | Ricochet.com | 10.13.12

Rick Wilson persuasively argues below that Vice President Joe Biden’s principal objective going into Thursday night’s debate was to reenergize the dispirited Democratic base.  If so and if the vice president’s clownish performance fitted the script, it only confirms the cluelessness of the supposedly brilliant Chicago-based managers of the Democratic campaign. Everything I learned about [...]
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“Lesson for POTUS Debate #2: It isn’t over ‘til it’s over” | HughHewitt.com | 10.15.12

Can things get any worse for the Obama-Biden ticket? Two weeks ago the president debates the first capable opponent of his career and comes off as an empty suit.  One week ago the vice president puts on a clownish performance in his matchup with Congressman Paul Ryan. Then the polls tanked.  On Saturday this week, [...]
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Hidden factor in the election: Obama advertising advantage | Ricochet.com | 10.09.12

While, as Mollie notes below, the just released Pew poll showed a big move of voters producing a convincing Romney advantage, the Rasmussen poll today rates the race tied.  This was after a post-debate shift that that took Romney from two points down in Rasmussen’s tracking to as many up.  The two-point move between yesterday [...]
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“Why the Obama Campaign and Such Friends as Paul Krugman Shout “Romney Lies” Even Though Romney Speaks the Truth” | HughHewitt.com | 10.08.12

Yesterday, the Sunday morning talk shows were filled with Democrats touting their new excuse (they always have excuses) for President Obama’s inability to engage during last week’s debate: Mitt Romney lied.  Governor Romney’s brazen misstatements, they said, left the president so overwhelmed with disbelief that he found himself all but speechless. If you are like [...]
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Five Debate Night Ideas for Romney and His Team | Ricochet.com | 10.02.12

Last week Peter emailed me an invitation to join the Ricochet gang. I immediately said yes. As he explained in his generous introduction below, Peter and I met in Ronald Reagan’s White House, where we both served as speechwriters, first to Vice President George H.W. Bush, then to President Reagan.  Peter was one of the [...]
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Reality Check: Mitt Romney’s Campaign Is Not Over | USNews.com | 09.29.12

To read Politico, The Washington Post, and just about every publication in the MSMosphere, the Romney campaign is over. Done. Running 4.1 percentage points behind the president, as of Friday morning in the RCP average he is deader than a doornail. I don’t believe it. Yes. Yes. I’ve seen all those polls in the average: Rasmussen, Fox, Gallup, Bloomberg, [...]
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Advice to Romney: Go Big, All In | HughHewitt.com | 10.01.12

In GOP circles, the call continues to build for Governor Romney to deliver major addresses on the economy and foreign policy. In last week’s column, I noted that, in addition to my column the week before, this sentiment was being expressed among Republicans and conservatives around the nation.  I mentioned hearing it from another former [...]
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Two Speeches Governor Romney Should Deliver on National Television | 09.17.12 | HughHewitt.com

If you are wondering why President Obama came out of Charlotte with a week-long bounce, consider this: In the fortnight covering the Republican and Democratic conventions, the Obama campaign and allied independent expenditure committees ran roughly 41,000 ads, twice as many as their pro-Romney counterparts (http://tinyurl.com/8r2rhqq). Apparently the Obama people did not trust their man’s [...]
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Real Story of the Campaign: President’s Crony Capitalism Prolonged the Downturn | 09.11.12 | HughHewitt.com

Last week, the Democrats in Charlotte partied as if there were no tomorrow… and no yesterday.  Friday morning, following the president’s peculiarly disconnected speech of Thursday night, reality returned. Last week’s jobs numbers – few new ones, an entire city of Americans dropping out of the workforce in the month before – were enough to [...]
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Picking Ryan – Romney Shows He’s Got Serious Policies and Great Political Instincts | HughHewitt.com | 08.13.12

On Saturday Mitt Romney proved he is a serious man and will be a serious president.  He also demonstrated that he is a shrewd political strategist. In picking Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan to be his running mate, Romney bet both his election and his administration on a central task, reducing the national deficit and debt [...]
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Lesson of the Week: For this administration, only faux compromise welcome | HughHewitt.com | 02.14.12

One fact has become sharply clear this past seven days: it is no ordinary administration that occupies Washington just now. In the face of a fiscal crisis of unprecedented magnitude, yesterday the president submitted a budget of fake spending cuts (“a mirage” the Wall Street Journal called them this morning) and gigantic tax increases guaranteed, [...]
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SOTU: Did I hear that right? | HughHewitt.com | 01.25.12

It sounded like such a soft, even conservative speech. But let me get this straight: 1) banks will be punished (do I understand this right, by a committee headed by Eric Holder?) if their lending is too risky, 2) and they will be required (by the same committee) to give more home loans (meaning, it [...]
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