Norman Ornstein

The focus of the CNBC Republican presidential debate was supposed to be economic policy: taxes, trade, immigration and how to generate economic growth. The two-part Oct. 28, debate, titled “Your Money, Your Vote,” focused on the broad categories of jobs, taxes and the deficit, the general health of the economy, and the financial freedom of Americans.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air ably announced that liberal reporters and analysts are breaking out the latest spin – that victory will be terrible for Republicans. I’d call it the Mary Tillotson special: after the GOP took the house in 1994, CNN’s Tillotson suggested this 52-seat landslide was bad news for 1996. Morrissey calls it “the media’s Sour Grapes Index, in which analysts posit that a big win…

Several Washington Post journalist/operatives are also teaching in the Karen Tumulty School of Unselfishly Un-electing The Tea Party. In Sunday’s paper, columnist David Ignatius (formerly a Post foreign editor and assistant managing editor for business news) penned a piece titled “Disarming the RINO Hunters.” “Many Republicans have been muttering over the past few weeks of political…

On Tuesday’s PBS NewsHour, anchor Judy Woodruff brought on former Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) to discuss the problem of gridlock in Washington. The conversation started off well, but Woodruff soon made it clear who she believes is more responsible for a lack of legislative progress in the nation’s capital. Snowe presented the problem as being caused by members of both parties. She cited the…

How could a liberal actually be upset with the liberal media for their coverage of the 2012 presidential election? Well, Daniel Froomkin of The Huffington Post (formerly of The Washington Post) is furious. His complaint carried the headline “How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign.” What would that story be? “Namely, the radical right-wing, off-the-rails…

Just like NPR, the PBS NewsHour on Thursday night invited on liberals Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein to pound away at the "extremism" of the Republican Party (Tea Party Edition). Propose defunding public broadcasting, and this is how the Empire strikes back. Thomas Mann unleashed on the GOP: "They are ideologically extreme, contemptuous of centuries worth of policy, economics and social;…

Alex Wagner made an eye-popping remark on her MSNBC program on Wednesday, as she hinted that she agreed with former Obama spokesman Bill Burton's assertion that Ronald Reagan would feel out of place in today's GOP. When Burton claimed that "Reagan wouldn't have a chance in this Republican primary right now," Wagner stunningly replied, "I think he'd be a Democrat probably" [audio available here…

NPR marked Christmas morning by whacking at the Tea Party. NPR anchor Audie Cornish handed over her Weekend Edition Sunday microphone to American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman Ornstein, who gave the Tea Party a B if the goal was to “try and keep government from functioning,” but in “actually trying to make things happen in a constructive fashion, we’re down in the D-minus level, and that’…

Norman Ornstein is a long-time congressional expert (and favorite TV talking head) who works for the American Enterprise Institute. We've established that NBC anchor Brian Williams was citing him after the president's last press conference in support of how historic and wonderful and "productive" this Democrat-dominated Congress has been. But the fact that AEI has long been a right-leaning…