A reporter once asked Thomas Edison how it felt to fail thousands of times while attempting to create a working incandescent light bulb. Edison replied that he hadn't failed - he'd simply found thousands of ways that didn't work.
After ballot-box blowouts in 2006 and 2008, many Republicans feared they were becoming a permanent minority party. Adding to their worries were racial minorities, whose long-term population projections and his toric allegiance to the Democrats presaged a major demographic challenge. Then along came November 2010, when the Republicans delivered a "shellacking" in the midterm elections and increased their national share of the Hispanic vote from 31 percent in 2008 to 38 percent. In the process, Republicans gained two Hispanic governors, one Hispanic senator and five Hispanic congressmen.
Want a surefire way to help the poor? Don't increase taxes on the rich.
Will a rising China supplant the United States as the world's leading economic light? Joshua Ramo, a former Time magazine editor, maintains that Beijing's system of authoritarian "market socialism" — or "Beijing Consensus" — is a better model for developing countries.
Ask any 10 voters what motivated them to go to the polls on Election Day, and you'll probably get 10 different answers. Taxes, unemployment, government
The Tea Party's influence on the direction of Senate Republicans in the 112th Congress is about to be put to the test. Grass-roots activism helped swell the ranks of the chamber's fiscal hawks with several newly elected members who are fired up about banning earmarks. When the Republican conference meets next week to consider South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint's resolution that would end the practice for its members, the outcome will demonstrate whether Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky or Mr. DeMint and the Tea Party have captured the heart and soul of the Senate GOP.
Nobody enjoys paying taxes. Not the ones the government deducts from every paycheck. Not sales taxes. And certainly not the check millions of us write to the Internal Revenue Service every year.
In the first of what could be a nationwide spate of austerity-prompted spending cuts, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday canceled an over-budget $9-billion-plus commuter train tunnel between his state and Manhattan — shrugging off the Obama administration's efforts to save it.
Last April 15, Tea Party groups across the nation held tax day rallies protesting Washington's profligate spending and the wild unchecked growth of government. President Obama, speaking at a Miami fundraiser that same day said, "I've been a little amused over the last couple of days, where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying 'thank you.' "
