By Mark Mix
Home day care providers would be forced into unions
It has only just begun, but CPAC 2013 already has endured some harsh criticism.
To many, Donald Trump still cuts a striking presidential figure across the political landscape. No matter how much his critics squawk, Mr. Trump's fans remain convinced that the billionaire would still make a swell president.
OK, Washington joke: Grover Norquist walks into his downtown office. There's a bronze bust of Ronald Reagan, a towering stack of books, and on the windowsill of the nation's most powerful anti-tax activist rests an oversized front page from the Onion, a satirical newspaper.
Who's buying into White House scare tactics? Not Republicans, and not tea partyers either, says a new Pew Research Center poll gauging public reaction to President Obama's predictions that certain doom looms if the debt ceiling isn't raised by Aug. 2. Oh, the drama.
Deepening a rift ahead of the largest annual gathering of conservative activists in Washington this week, some of the movement's top leaders have circulated a private memo urging that conservatism's founding principles be recast to exclude gay rights groups from the Reagan coalition of economic, defense and social conservatives.
"President Barack Obama's job approval ratings were even more polarized during his second year in office than during his first, when he registered the most polarized ratings for a first-year president."
Social and economic conservatives have worked together under the mantle of the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan made them the core of his 1980 coalition, but the alliance now may be fraying.
Some of the biggest names in social conservatism are opting out of the upcoming high-profile Conservative Political Action Conference in response to what they see as the growing marginalization of social issues, culminating in the participation of GOProud, a gay-rights Republican group.
Yes, the contentious, national discourse on race and religion continues. But the contentious national discourse on gay conservatism is also under way with a flourish, and much political theater.
As a longtime conservative, I believe in building coalitions. We can't agree on everything, and it doesn't help the cause to concentrate on areas of disagreement.
