The Washington Times

Twice in two weeks, George W. Bush has rapped the knuckles of the Republican congressional party. The first was a smack at a proposal to revise the Earned Income Tax Credit, spreading out the annual payment lower income workers now receive at tax time over 12 months instead. The Capitol Hill GOP proposed the change as a way to help meet budget targets this year. Mr. Bush denounced it as an effort “to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.” It’s dead.

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The Washington Times

Edmund Morris’ “Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan” is a spectacular failure. It’s a compelling example of brilliance gone hopelessly awry – a portrait of an artist-biographer, beset by who knows what demons of history and personality, who tries to escape disaster by setting forth with grim determination on a course that can only lead to ruin of another sort. What else can one say about a decision by the authorized biographer of the 40th president of the United States to produce, in effect, an historical novel in which the twin protagonists are that president and a fictionalized version of the biographer himself, recast now as a contemporary of Mr. Reagan’s?

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The Washington Times

A three-part series in The Washington Post last week, “The Commanders,” offered a fascinating behind-the-scenes portrait of NATO’s Kosovo campaign. It illustrates just how complicated, frustrating and tense things were among the generals themselves and between the generals and the political leadership of NATO’s 19 member countries. But it also offers some reassurance.

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The Washington Times

Bill Bradley has surged in polls coming out of New Hampshire, drawing even with Vice President Al Gore. Mr. Bradley’s standing in national polls has also been on the rise. How much trouble is the vice president in?

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The Washington Times

It is entirely rational for Republicans to be afraid of an independent Patrick J. Buchanan presidential bid as the Reform party candidate and for Democrats to find the prospect cheering. But what’s in it for Patrick J. Buchanan?

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The Washington Times

Writing in the current edition of the Weekly Standard, David Brooks posits that a new strain of conservative politics is emerging from the petri dish of the fight for the GOP nomination. In George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” and in John McCain’s robust call for Americans to recognize their country’s greatness, Mr. Brooks detects the birth of what he calls “one nation conservatism.” This GOP political program abandons the libertarian rhetoric of getting government off your back and instead supports a limited but activist government pursuing a conservative reform agenda that will benefit all Americans, especially the poor.

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The Washington Times

AN INSTANCE IS NOT A TENDENCY, let alone a trend, let alone the opening of a floodgate. But the case of the switch of Rep. Michael Forbes of New York from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party bears keeping an eye on. GOPAC, the political committee that came to fame under the tutelage of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, has kept careful track of party switchers nationwide, not only at the national level but state and local officeholders as well. In the past six years, more than 400 officials have switched from Democrat to Republican, including two U.S. senators and a handful of representatives. There were few more than a handful of switches in the other direction, none particularly high profile.

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The Washington Times

The time has come for a foray into the tangled thicket of Washington politics that forms the habitat of that most elusive of creatures, the “moderate Republican.” Neither fish nor fowl, or perhaps both, this species played an especially important role in last week’s House approval of a 10-year, $792 billion tax cut package.

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The Washington Times

The frustration of Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire, the former Republican now turned independent presidential aspirant, is certainly not hard to understand. With each day that passes, Texas Gov. George W. Bush seems to get about two days closer to the GOP presidential nomination. (Vice President Al Gore, on the other hand, is still losing ground in his bid to lock down the Democratic nomination.) On the GOP side, what most people as recently as a year ago thought would surely be a free-for-all began this year as a George W. bandwagon and is now a juggernaut.

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The Washington Times

There’s nothing quite like an extra trillion dollars in budget surpluses to lubricate our political system for a tax cut. Still, given the current balance of power and interest between the White House and Congress, it will be a wonder if this actually is enough.

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