Word: gop
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Ronald Reagan's political director. "In our business, you need 50% plus one." It's probably true that since 200,000 Pennsylvania Republicans have switched parties, Specter followed them to save his own political skin, but it's hard to see how the mass exodus bodes well for the GOP. You can't have a center-right coalition when you've said good riddance to the center...
...almighty dollar with some new, one-world currency the black-helicopter crowd keeps warning about. But it's not clear that the Republicans in their current incarnation would be a credible alternative if he falters. "We've got to be at least plausible, and I worry about that," says GOP lobbyist Ed Rogers. Republicans never really left the idea business, but Americans haven't been buying what they're selling, and their product line hasn't changed. They're starting to look like the Federalists of the early 19th century: an embittered, over-the-top, out-of-touch regional party...
...popular today, but Democrats in general are not, and they will all face a backlash if they can't reverse this economic tailspin now that they own all the Washington machinery. Tom Cole, a longtime Republican operative turned Oklahoma Congressman, recalls that shortly before the Reagan Revolution, the GOP was in such dire straits, it ran ads declaring that Republicans are people too. "We've lost our way, but we'll find our way back," Cole says. "We'll get back into the idea business, and the Democrats will overreach...
...disaster began when GOP leaders, after calling a news conference to blast Obama's numbers, released a budget outline with no numbers - just magic assumptions about "reform." The mockery was instantaneous. Then Republicans began blaming one another for the stunt, which generated only more mockery about circular firing squads. And when they finally released the missing details on April 1, the notion of an April Fools' budget produced even more mockery; the substance was ignored. "The President's dog got more attention," recalls Paul Ryan, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee...
...attention, the GOP alternative is not just a p.r. disaster. It's a radical document, making Bush's tax cuts permanent while adding about $3 trillion in new tax cuts skewed toward the rich. It would replace almost all the stimulus - including tax cuts for workers as well as spending on schools, infrastructure and clean energy - with a capital gains-tax holiday for investors. Oh, and it would shrink the budget by replacing Medicare with vouchers, turning Medicaid into block grants, means-testing Social Security and freezing everything else except defense and veterans' spending for five years, putting programs...