Republican Leadership Council

Editorial: Settling for crumbs

TheRLC — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:33:47 -0700

The pathetic state of the Republican Party in Philadelphia is exceeded only by the drive of its leaders to hold on to its dwindling crumbs.

As a result, the GOP in the city is practically extinct.

Democratic registered voters outnumber their Republican counterparts by better than 6-1.

The city GOP hasn't won a citywide election since Ron Castille was reelected district attorney 21 years ago.

In the 2007 mayoral race, Republican candidate what's-his-name won 13 percent of the vote.

Obama’s Health Care Pain Avoidable

Governor Whitman — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:32:00 -0700

Some of the pain that President Obama has been experiencing on the health care proposal could have been alleviated if he had put his plan forward first. Instead, he relied on Congress to drive the legislations, and that has left him with far less control than he wanted, or would have been prudent for an undertaking of this magnitude.

Although he put a document on the White House website outlining his plan the weekend after the bipartisan health care summit, it is too little, too late at this point. Had he started with that type of outline, this legislation may have already passed and he could be on to other matters of pressing importance. Instead, he is still bogged down in the details of negotiating between the House and Senate, a year after starting work on his top domestic priority.

Possibility of a Republican Senate Grows

TheRLC — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:37:10 -0700

Evan Bayh's surprise announcement that he would not seek a third term has sent shockwaves through the pundit class on an otherwise quiet President’s Day. It also upset a year’s worth of comfortable predictions that Republicans would never take back the Senate in 2010. This, combined with other recent political developments, places a 50-50 Senate within reach for the Republican caucus.

National Health Care (An Affordable Alternative)

Tom Garito — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:24:17 -0700

Proposed here is a relatively simple plan that conservative and moderate Republicans, main stream Democrats as well as Independents could all rally around. It is a plan that would tackle the health care crisis in America in a responsible and affordable manner. This plan gives coverage to all citizens, reduces overall national medical expenditures from current levels, and keeps our free market health care system intact.

Fareed Zakaria: Defusing the Debt Bomb - It can be done. Here's how.

TheRLC — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:42:24 -0700

Everyone seems to be pessimistic about America these days. In poll after poll, Americans worry about their future. Pundits, myself included, write despairingly about the monumental challenges we face. Academics plan seminars on America's decline.

How the GOP can win back the Senate

TheRLC — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:08:58 -0700

Last December, facing an 11-seat climb back to power, the GOP's most optimistic outlook in the Senate was to win back 4 or 5 seats, enough to break the filibuster-proof Democratic majority and diminish the majority's stranglehold on the Senate's legislative agenda. Then came Massachusetts. Scott Brown's stunning victory there assured Republicans 41 seats heading into November's elections and provided ample speculation about what could happen. Could the GOP win the House? I've been optimistic on that point, stating the odds to be pretty close to even money.

Pa. seat is latest Democratic worry

TheRLC — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:54:55 -0700

Rep. John Murtha’s (D-Pa.) untimely death Monday makes the political map even more daunting for House Democrats, who will have to defend another highly competitive seat in what is shaping up to be a hostile election year.

A special election will be held in the spring to fill the remainder of his term. Once the vacancy is declared, Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) has 10 days to set the special election date, which can be held 60 days or less from the declaration.

GOP sees 2015 as year of big move: Look to revitalize party to run strong mayor, council candidates

TheRLC — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:53:18 -0700

Rob Gleason, chairman of the state Republican Party, has his eyes set on 2015 in Philadelphia.

Gleason sees an opportunity for the GOP here to run strong for the mayor's office, which would open up that year if Mayor Nutter wins a second term next year. Gleason would also like to have a strong slate of candidates to challenge for seats on City Council.

All he needs now is an active and energized local party.

So he has a lot of work to do.

Keystone for midterms

TheRLC — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:51:27 -0700

At least the White House is consistent -- in sending the absolutely wrong message to voters pondering whether to keep Democrats in control of Congress in midterm elections.

Even the body language is all wrong.

Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, on Tuesday mocked the crib notes Sarah Plain wrote on her palm. The next day, President Obama told BusinessWeek he didn't begrudge gazillion-dollar bonuses for executives of banks rescued by taxpayers.

Raising the hiss-to-pluck ratio

TheRLC — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:49:41 -0700

"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing," supposedly said 17th-century French statesman J.B. Colbert.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell certainly shares the same affinity for regressive taxation to which the chief financial minister of King Louis XIV subscribed and for which he was roundly vilified. But Mr. Rendell is not as artful in his hiss-to-pluck ratio.

Progressives and the Growing Dependency Agenda

TheRLC — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:48:11 -0700

WASHINGTON -- Only two things are infinite -- the expanding universe and Democrats' hostility to the District of Columbia's school choice program. Killing this small program, which currently benefits 1,300 mostly poor and minority children, is odious and indicative. It is a small piece of something large -- the Democrats' dependency agenda, which aims to multiply the ways Americans are dependent on government.

Poll indicates signs of a GOP resurgence in some N.E. districts

TheRLC — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:45:23 -0700

Shake-ups raise risk for Democrats...

It was another week, another telltale of the turbulence besetting New England Democrats.

One of the party’s biggest names, US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island, announced he will not seek reelection, 37 days after Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut did the same. In between, a little-known Republican, Scott Brown, knocked Washington off-kilter by winning the Massachusetts Senate seat of Kennedy’s late father, Edward M. Kennedy.

Back Channels: The fiscal train wreck in our back yard

TheRLC — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:04:41 -0700

The federal budget isn't the only nightmare. There's a coming pension crisis in Pennsylvania.

I hadn't intended to do a sequel to last week's column on former U.S. Comptroller David Walker and his book Comeback America, on the fiscal train wreck that is the federal budget.

But the same week I read Walker's book, I stopped by the Lower Makefield/Yardley Republican Committee meeting. There, State Rep. Sam Rohrer, the underdog candidate for governor, spoke about a number of things, including Fiscal Train Wreck II: The Commonwealth.

Ridge to help party -- with bipartisanship

TheRLC — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:00:13 -0700

Former homeland security secretary calls for cooperation in Washington, GOP to be open to differences in opinion.
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There are a lot of things on former Gov. Tom Ridge's mind these days.

Ridge, who co-wrote last year's "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege and How We Can Be Safe Again" with Lary Bloom, touched on some of them Thursday night at the Jewish Community Center of Allentown.

Charting Our Way to Solvency

TheRLC — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:56:48 -0700

WASHINGTON -- In 2013, when President Mitch Daniels, former Indiana governor, is counting his blessings, at the top of his list will be the name of his vice president: Paul Ryan. The former congressman from Wisconsin will have come to office with ideas for steering the federal government to solvency.

Big Government's Big Shortfall

TheRLC — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:49:02 -0700

WASHINGTON -- In all the recent reports, speeches and news conferences concerning the federal budget outlook -- including the administration's proposed budget for 2011 -- hardly anyone has posed these crucial questions: what should the federal government do and why; and who should pay? We ought to go back to first principles of defining a desirable role for government and abandon the expedient of assuming that anyone receiving a federal benefit is morally entitled to it simply because it's been received before.

Deficit Balloons Into National-Security Threat

TheRLC — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:06:00 -0700

The federal budget deficit has long since graduated from nuisance to headache to pressing national concern. Now, however, it has become so large and persistent that it is time to start thinking of it as something else entirely: a national-security threat.

Why We're Failing Our Schools

TheRLC — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:01:35 -0700

A remarkable thing happened in New York recently: the state legislature, in effect, turned down the chance to win $700 million in federal money. No one does that, except extremely conservative Southern governors (who inevitably relent and take the money) — oh, and occasionally teachers' unions. A few years ago, I wrote here about the Detroit union that forced the local government to reject a $200 million philanthropic gift to build 15 charter schools using a model that was already succeeding in the city.

Rising revolt in Pennsylvania

TheRLC — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:57:10 -0700

'I'm running like I'm 20 points behind and I'll continue to run like I'm 20 points be hind," says Pat Toomey, the presumptive GOP nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania -- who in fact now leads Sen. Arlen Specter 45 percent to 31 percent among likely voters in the latest Franklin & Marshall College poll.

Republican Surprise: 10 More Scott Browns

TheRLC — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:53:52 -0700

Scott Brown's surprise victory in the Massachusetts Senate race has given Republicans new confidence in challenging Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. Here's a look at 10 GOP congressional contenders who could follow in Brown's wake

Republicans flocking to midterms

TheRLC — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:45:00 -0700

A burst of Republican enthusiasm that has been the talk of political pundits in this midterm election year seems to have spread into Western Pennsylvania.

At least 18 Republicans are in the hunt to unseat three Western Pennsylvania Democrats -- Kathy Dahlkemper, Jason Altmire and Mike Doyle -- in November. Statewide, it appears there are more GOP candidates running since 1994, the landmark "Republican revolution" takeover year in Congress.

GOP looks to regain control of House in the fall

TheRLC — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:38:16 -0700

Area lawmaker leads charge while Dems fight to keep seats

G.O.P. Envisions Northeast Comeback

TheRLC — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:34:15 -0700

WASHINGTON — The Northeastern Republican was nearly driven to extinction by political climate change, but the species appears poised to make a comeback.

The successful run of Scott Brown in the Senate race in Massachusetts, coupled with the front-runner status of Representative Michael N. Castle in Delaware in his bid for the Senate and other strong candidacies, could bode well for Republicans in a region that has been shedding them because of a sense that the party had grown too conservative and focused on the South.

Can Dems hold Obama's old Senate seat?

TheRLC — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:32:41 -0700

In Illinois, a former federal prosecutor and a banker battle over who's the best face of 2010 reform.

Republicans reject 'purity test'

TheRLC — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:28:51 -0700

HONOLULU — Republicans averted an ideological showdown here Friday, passing a tepid party resolution in place of a candidate “purity test.”

Rejecting a plan that would have required GOP candidates to meet at least eight of 10 policy questions to receive national support and funding, the Republican National Committee unanimously approved a rule that only “urges” party leaders to support nominees who back the party’s platform.

Philly GOP shaking up party rules

TheRLC — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:26:28 -0700

Facing criticism and potential leadership challenges from the state Republican Party, the GOP organization in Philadelphia is changing party rules to give more clout to ward leaders in Northeast Philadelphia, where most of the city's registered Republicans live.

The local party chairman, Vito F. Canuso Jr., has scheduled a Feb. 16 meeting of the GOP's 67 ward leaders to change the rules for filling his own position and those of 10 others in the city Republican leadership.

Sen. Anthony Williams’ Racist Remarks Are Disgraceful

TheRLC — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:24:08 -0700

By CHRIS FREIND

If you’re wondering why race relations in America haven’t improved at all, look no farther than the recent comments of state Senator Anthony Williams’ concerning the current field of Democratic gubernatorial candidates.

Fueling speculation that Williams, who is black, might throw his hat into the race, the senator ranted that none of the four Democrats was giving any attention to the black community and the issues faced by that constituency.

Pension bomb is coming

TheRLC — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:17:50 -0700

The executive director of PSERS said the bill, in the form of higher taxes, is coming due.

The head of the state's Public School Employees' Retirement System told a group of seniors Thursday that time is running out to avoid a projected spike in pension costs for the 2012-13 school year.

Jeff Clay, executive director of PSERS, said that a combination of the two "greatest declines in the market since the Great Depression" in the last decade combined with "artificially suppressed" taxpayer contributions have caused the problem.

Quiner: 'Federal Spending for Dummies'

TheRLC — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:57:42 -0700

"I am confident we can get government off our backs and out of our pockets..."
- Ronald Reagan, Nov. 3, 1980

"Read my lips, no new taxes."
- George H. W. Bush, Aug. 18, 1988

"The era of big government is over."
- William Jefferson Clinton, Jan. 27, 1996

"We must balance the federal budget."
- George W. Bush, Jan. 23, 2007

"That's why today I'm pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office."

A Debt-Limit Test

TheRLC — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:55:56 -0700

JANUARY 25, 2010
How about spending cuts instead?

One message Massachusetts voters sent last week is concern over runaway federal spending. Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is offering Democrats a chance to show they heard that message.