Real Clear Politics

Pundit: Obama Has Avoided ‘Second-Term Curse’; GOP Has Helped Him By ‘Transparently Politicizing’ Their Investigations
By Tom Johnson | December 26, 2015 | 12:12 AM EST

Bill Scher runs a website called Liberal Oasis, which makes it unsurprising that his Monday RealClearPolitics column celebrated President Obama’s avoidance (so far) of the “second-term curse” that supposedly afflicted George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and some of their predecessors in the White House.

Scher exults that Obama “has not been knocked off course by scandal” and lauds him for “master[ing] the art of scandal management, while his Republican opponents lost credibility by transparently politicizing every investigation…Instead of following the facts before drawing conclusions, [Republicans] proclaim the worst—and then fail to prove their allegations. That’s why the pursuits of wrongdoing in Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the IRS audits and Benghazi have all fizzled.”

Networks Ignore Gallup Poll Showing Obama Approval Rating at an All-Time Low [Updated]
By Curtis Houck | September 5, 2014 | 12:37 AM EDT

The evening newscasts for the major broadcast networks came and went on Thursday night and ABC, CBS, and NBC refused to cover a new poll from Gallup that showed President Barack Obama’s approval rating at an all-time low of 38 percent. After the CBS Evening News made mention of a CBS News poll on Tuesday showing only 36 percent of Americans approving of how Obama was doing his job when it came to foreign policy, it reverted back to joining ABC and NBC in ignoring any and all polls concerning President Obama and his job performance.

Paul Waldman: GOP Base’s Anger, Perpetual Dissatisfaction Are ‘Incompatible With Governing’
By Tom Johnson | June 14, 2014 | 4:01 PM EDT

The term “permanent revolution” is usually associated with Marxism, but American Prospect blogger Paul Waldman believes that these days, it’s movement conservatives who are talkin’ about a permanent revolution, and that their ideal Republican pol is an “agent of chaos and destruction, or at least pretend[s] that's who he is.”

In a Thursday post, Waldman quoted RealClearPolitics analyst Sean Trende’s explanation, in the wake of Eric Cantor’s loss, for why, in Trende’s words, “the Republican base is furious with the Republican establishment, especially over the Bush years.” Waldman’s reaction: