I didn’t watch the State of the Union Show, on account I don’t believe in subjecting myself to enemy propaganda.  more

FF Exclusive: In September of last year, it seemed unlikely Scott Brown would win the Republican nomination if former Transportation Secretary Andy Card decided to take him on in a primary.  more

FF Exclusive: Michael Steele has nothing to worry about. Even his supposed ‘enemies’ are praising his work at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Hawaii this week.  more

UPDATED: Right now, things don’t look too good for President Obama. So – he’s fiddling with his message. He’s sprinkled it with a lot of zingers to excite his base – and a few rhetorical concessions to appease his critics. Along the way, he deviated more than once from strict truth.  more

FF Exclusive: At the RNC summit in Hawaii, FrumForum spoke with all three of Florida’s RNC members and found a dearth of support for Marco Rubio’s senatorial campaign. On the other hand, two of the Florida members came out strongly in favor Governor Charlie Crist.  more

The president came across as battle-weary, on the whole, but he still managed to slip in a few particularly egregious remarks.  more

In an interview on Fox News last night, Pawlenty rightly ridiculed Obama’s planned spending freeze, but also kept pushing for a balanced-budget amendment — an idea that will not pay him any political dividends.  more

Senators Hatch and Schumer have proposed an especially elegant version of the payroll tax cut. And the plan is all the more important now that CBO chief Doug Elmsdorf is projecting that unemployment will hover near 10% for all of 2010, and that it will take four years for unemployment to subside to 2007 levels.  more

This election cycle is proving such a target-rich environment for Republicans that they are now at risk of missing the long-term requirements for creating a lasting Senate majority. A win is a win – but some wins are better than others.  more

Here are a list of words and phrases that are likely to appear in tonight’s speech. Arrange them 5×5 in a standard bingo format and play along at home to make the speech go faster. Usually, everyone’s a winner.  more

On the other hand, they should throw the book at this guy.  more

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict: the James O’Keefe/Landrieu phone interference case will be resolved with a very stern talking to by a judge, no criminal record, and 100 hours of community service each for the four arrested young people.  more

Two classified cables authored by U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry and leaked to The New York Times provide startling details of just how little trust America’s top diplomatic official in Afghanistan has in the Karzai government.  more

In today’s online edition of Newsweek I argue that Obama has cut himself off from the centrist Republicans who gave him his margin of victory in 2008.  more

Thirteen years ago, I followed Phil Gramm for The Atlantic. Along the way, he had an encounter with a local football star now running for Congress: JD Hayworth.  more

Another self-starter arrested in NJ: Lloyd Woodson apprehended after a convenience store clerk thought something was wrong with him (noticed bulges under coat) and called police.  more

Why is Haiti the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the recipient – even before the catastrophic earthquake – of the greatest amount of foreign aid?  more

With his planned spending freeze, many are now viewing President Obama as the second coming of Herbert Hoover. Liberals see a well-meaning technocrat who can’t put together a political coalition while conservatives see a president who made a stock market crash worse through a series of ill-timed government interventions.  more

Despite all of their concerns about the president’s outrageous spending habits and the unsustainable deficit run up by the Bush administration, Senators from both parties joined to kill a planned bipartisan commission to address the nation’s colossal budget deficit.   more

A 2010 Hayworth-McCain battle would, in many respects, fit into a larger political trend in which a conservative GOP candidate like challenges an established, more moderate candidate.  more

Matt Yglesias reports that a senior Obama official informed a conference call of bloggers yesterday that the proposed budget freeze would not be an “across-the-board” freeze. If so, Obama will have to face the harsh paradox of government budgeting: You don’t cut good programs because they are good. And you can’t cut bad programs because they have powerful backers.  more

As the reaction to Obama’s spending freeze announcement highlights, the President cannot please both his supporters and the electorate as a whole. The Democrats cannot be saved this year, but will the President make the right choices to save himself?  more

Obamacare was lost the moment that the Democrats managed to lose even Massachusetts. Democrats are still in a state of shock. They shouldn’t be. They spent 2009 crafting bad legislation.  more

In an essay here at FrumForum, John Guardiano calls me a whining, conformist young “hipster con” who misunderstands the conservative movement and lacks the courage of my convictions, linking to material that backs up none of his characterizations.  more

A popular Venezuelan television station declined to broadcast a recent Hugo Chavez speech in full. For this offense, Venezuelan broadcast authorities ordered them banned from cable systems and authorized satellite networks. But in a sign of the democracy movement’s gathering strength, that action only prompted more protests Monday.  more

FF Exclusive: The guru behind Scott Brown’s impressive victory was media strategist Rob Willington. Willington spoke with FrumForum and shared the secrets behind his aggressive and innovative social media campaign.  more

Are young 20- and 30-something conservatives whiners and conformists? It’s hard not to draw that conclusion when reading some of the supposedly “cutting-edge” writing by young hipster cons.  more

It isn’t hard to understand why Democrats are not thrilled with the court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, however it is difficult not to be taken aback by how little respect the Democrats have publicly shown for the Court’s decision, or, for that matter, the First Amendment.  more