GOP

Flush off of the upset Democratic victory in NY-23, which he had a big hand in, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish, is demanding that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) apologize for sponsoring Thursday’s anti-health care reform rally, which brought to the hill signs comparing health reform to the Holocaust.

In Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s statement on  the new unemployment rate of 10.2 percent, he argues that “it is time the Obama administration stop spreading their phony ‘saved or created’ talking points and start creating the dependable jobs America needs”:
President Obama promised jobs during his campaign for president, and the elections in Virginia [...]

More bad economic news from The New York Times:
The United States economy shed 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent in September, the Department of Labor said Friday in its monthly economic appraisal.

There are a few telling details about yesterday’s rally against the House’s health care reform bill that got lost in the coverage. The rally was not planned by the GOP leadership, which was focusing on a 12-hour online health care “town hall.” Rather, the rally was initiated by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the loose-tongued rising [...]

It was widely reported that the corporate-funded, small-government, anti-health care reform group Americans for Prosperity was helping to organize Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) Tea Party at the Capitol today. ThinkProgress has video of AfP workers handing out signs and talking points to the Tea Partiers the group shuttled in from other areas. According to one [...]

This is kind of remarkable. In an interview with ABC’s “Top Line,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele pretty overtly sought to align the GOP with the burgeoning conservative Tea Party movement, threatening to “come after” moderate Republicans who side with Democrats on hot-button issues.
“So candidates who live in moderate to slightly liberal districts have [...]

We weren’t the only folks curious about the morning’s claim from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) that the GOP’s health reform bill covers more uninsured Americans than the Democrats’ proposal. The fact checkers at Media Matters were also left scratching their heads, and here’s what they found.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) just took to the House floor to decry the Democrats’ health reform bill because, she said, it would leave too many folks uninsured. She must not have read the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the GOP’s legislative alternative, which, CBO found, would leave 52 million nonelderly Americans uninsured in 2019 — [...]

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is keeping her focus on the important issues: an amendment that would increase congressional control of “czars.”
Her amendment, which she first tried to attach to an appropriations bill without success, would also require their offices to submit periodic reports about their activities to congressional oversight committees. If they failed to comply, [...]

Here’s another nugget from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s appearance today in Washington. Huckabee caught some heat from the right, particularly from RedState’s Erick Erickson, for withholding his endorsement for NY-23 Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman until Republican Dede Scozzafava had dropped out of the race.
In the video clip after the jump, Huckabee continues his [...]