Political Wire

  • Front Page
  • Members
    • Subscribe
    • Sign In
  • Trending
  • Resources
    • Politics Extra
    • Political Job Hunt
    • Political Dictionary
    • Electoral Vote Map
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / Archives for Political History

How the GOP Sabotaged Jimmy Carter’s Re-Election

March 18, 2023 at 10:24 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, compelled by the news of President Jimmy Carter entering hospice care, has told the New York Times that there was, in fact, a secret GOP effort in 1980 to prevent Iran from releasing 53 American hostages until after that year’s presidential election.

Barnes said that in the summer of 1980, he accompanied former Texas governor John Connally, on a trip to the Middle East during which Connally asked Arab leaders to communicate to Iranian officials that they should not release the hostages before Election Day because if they waited, Ronald Reagan would offer them a better deal.

Filed Under: Political History

Trump Says He Would Have Fought Watergate

March 10, 2023 at 9:00 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Donald Trump revealed that Richard Nixon’s “biggest regret” was giving in to GOP pressure to resign during the Watergate impeachment crisis, a move the 45th president said he wouldn’t have made, the Washington Examiner reports.

Said Trump: “His daughter actually told me that his biggest regret was that he didn’t fight, he should have fought.”

Filed Under: Political History, Trump Legacy

It’s the Culture, Stupid

February 21, 2023 at 11:15 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Joe Klein: “Deep in the Democratic Party’s DNA is the notion that the economy matters more to voters than cultural issues. Sometimes it does. It certainly did after the crash of 2008. Inflation helped defeat Jimmy Carter in 1980. And then there was 1992, when James Carville wrote his immortal words on the blackboard in Bill Clinton’s Little Rock headquarters: It’s the economy, stupid!”

“It wasn’t, really. We were emerging from a minor recession, but Clinton’s economic policies weren’t what won the election—indeed, he changed them almost immediately after winning office, from stimulus to budget-balancing, palliating the bond market and lowering interest rates (a brilliant choice as it happened).”

“Clinton won the presidency because he convinced voters that, unlike the past 20 years of Democrats, he was tough on crime (including a rather disgusting execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a black man of limited intelligence) and that he wanted to reform welfare (which badly needed it).”

Filed Under: Political History

A Somber Presidents Day In Jimmy Carter’s Hometown

February 21, 2023 at 8:35 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Jimmy Carter was ensconced Monday at his home as family and friends journeyed to pay what could be their last respects. Down the road, the town he grew up in marked a somber Presidents Day reflecting on their native son’s legacy,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

“Tourists visited the rustic boyhood farm where the former president grew up, wandering through his boyhood bedroom and a general store as chickens clucked and mules brayed from nearby pens.”

“The shops of Plains flung their doors open for visitors who wished to celebrate the former president in his final days, even as longtime residents wondered what will become of a town whose best-known export is a former president.”

Washington Post: Jimmy Carter, the president who tried to save the planet.

Filed Under: Political History

Jimmy Carter In Hospice Care

February 18, 2023 at 3:37 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Former President Jimmy Carter has entered hospice care at his home in Georgia.

Filed Under: Political History

Democrats Have Won the Senate Popular Vote for Decades

February 15, 2023 at 12:24 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Stephen Wolf: “Even though Democrats retained the Senate—and expanded their majority—in 2022, the results nonetheless marked the continuation of an unwelcome trend: Our new data shows that Senate Republicans last won more votes or represented more Americans than Democrats in 1998, but the GOP has controlled the upper chamber fully half the time since then nonetheless.”

Filed Under: Political History, Senate

The GOP’s Long War Against Social Security

February 13, 2023 at 7:57 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Paul Krugman: “First of all, if Republicans had absolutely no desire to make major cuts to America’s main social insurance programs, why would they sunset them — and thus create the risk that they wouldn’t be renewed? As Biden might say, c’mon, man.”

“And then there’s that historical record. Two things have been true ever since 1980. First, Republicans have tried to make deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare every time they thought there might be a political window of opportunity. Second, on each occasion they’ve done exactly what they’re doing now: claiming that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe G.O.P. plans using exactly the same words Republicans themselves used.”

Phillip Elliot: Why the GOP squabble over Social Security and Medicare is about power more than policy.

Filed Under: Political History

Archives May Ask All Ex-Presidents About Documents

January 25, 2023 at 4:22 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The National Archives is weighing whether to ask living former presidents and vice presidents to review their personal records to verify that no classified materials are inadvertently outstanding,“ the Washington Post reports.

“The deliberation comes after the discovery and return of a limited number of records bearing classified markings in recent weeks at President Biden’s home and a think tank bearing his name, as well as at the home of former vice president Mike Pence.”

Filed Under: Political History

A Different Kind of ‘McCarthy Era’

January 13, 2023 at 6:45 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “Democrats and historians see darker historical parallels. They liken the Republican zeal to pursue nebulous allegations of deep-state conspiracies to the ‘red scare’ days of a McCarthy from an earlier era.”

“Republicans reject such criticism and try to justify the panel by pointing to conservative causes célèbres… They say conservatives have been subjected to a double standard of justice, from former President Donald J. Trump on down, and they intend to prove it.”

Filed Under: House of Representatives, Political History

Trump’s Missing Call Logs Are His Nixon Tapes

January 6, 2023 at 8:47 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“During the nearly nine hours that Congress was under attack on Jan. 6, 2021, the official White House call logs show former President Donald Trump not placing a single phone call,” the Daily Beast reports.

“And while historians may consider the missing call logs a crime of inaccurately memorializing history, it may also actually bolster the expected criminal case against Trump.”

Said professor Chris Edelson: “The first thing one thinks of is the Nixon tapes, the missing 18 minutes. It’s never been resolved.”

Filed Under: Political History

When the House Needed Two Months to Elect a Speaker

December 31, 2022 at 10:39 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“For the first time in exactly 100 years, the U.S. House of Representatives may need more than one round of voting to elect a speaker when the new Congress convenes on Tuesday,” the Washington Post reports.

“But a few extra rounds of balloting would be a far cry from the nearly two months and 133 votes the House took to choose its leader in 1856 — the longest and most contentious speaker election in its history.”

Filed Under: House of Representatives, Political History

Nazi Camp Secretary Found Guilty

December 20, 2022 at 12:43 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“A German court convicted a former Nazi camp secretary of complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people during the Holocaust, in what is likely to be the last process connected to Nazi crimes against humanity in Germany,” Politico reports.

Filed Under: Political History

Flashback Quote of the Day

December 19, 2022 at 1:20 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

— Donald Trump, on Twitter two years ago today.

Filed Under: Political History

New JFK Files Released

December 15, 2022 at 4:00 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

The U.S. National Archives released a new trove of files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

President Biden authorized more than 70% of the roughly 16,000 remaining files on JFK’s death to “now be released in full.”

Filed Under: Political History

Trump Is the New McCarthy

December 14, 2022 at 11:05 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

John White: “In many ways, the Republican Party’s history with Donald Trump harkens back to its experience with another demagogue, Joseph McCarthy.”

“For years, Republicans refrained from criticizing McCarthy for fear of alienating their most loyal supporters.”

For more, see McCarthyism in the political dictionary.

Filed Under: Political History

Richmond’s Last Confederate Statue Is Removed

December 12, 2022 at 4:49 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The last Confederate statue in Richmond was removed on Monday, and the remains beneath it of Ambrose P. Hill, the Confederate lieutenant general who was memorialized, were set to be transferred to a cemetery,” the New York Times reports.

Filed Under: Political History

More Than 70% Want Biden to Release JFK Documents

December 6, 2022 at 11:49 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“More than 7 in 10 voters want President Joe Biden to honor a commitment he made last year and release the final trove of JFK assassination records on Dec. 15, according to a poll released Tuesday in coordination with a research group that sued the administration to force more document disclosure,” NBC News reports.

“About 16,000 of the most closely guarded government secrets into the assassination nearly 60 years ago still remain hidden — including 44 records that would shed light on a covert Cuba-related CIA program that involved Lee Harvey Oswald less than four months before he shot President John F. Kennedy.”

Filed Under: Political History

Nancy Pelosi Is the Greatest Speaker in History

November 18, 2022 at 8:36 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Jonathan Bernstein: “Nancy Pelosi has been simply the best speaker of the House of the modern era. She is probably the best speaker in US history. It was time for her to step down from her leadership role, but it likely will be a long time before we see someone of either party master the job as well as she did.”

“Her four terms as speaker, two during unified Democratic government and two under Republican presidents and divided government, were unusually productive. During President Barack Obama’s first term, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, she steered the Affordable Care Act into law. When her party operated with a fragile majority over the last two years, she somehow again found ways to pass liberal priorities, sometimes on party-line votes and sometimes with bipartisan support.”

“None of this was assured. Unified government wasn’t nearly as productive during the tenure of Democratic Speaker Tom Foley in the 1990s or under Republicans Dennis Hastert in the 2000s or Paul Ryan in the 2010s. Presidents matter too, as does the Senate, and the speaker is only the leader of the majority party. But Pelosi proved to be a genius of process and people.”

Filed Under: House of Representatives, Political History

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 46
  • Next Page »


Classified Ads

☑️ Sick of biased news? Check out a newsletter loved by millions, called 1440. You'll save time and start your day smarter. And it's free.

Mar 20

☑️ Subscribe to Political Wire's new companion newsletter Politics Extra. It's free.

Feb 28

Place your ad here.



Members get exclusive analysis, a trending news page, bonus newsletters and no advertising. Learn more.

Subscribe

Your Account

Sign in

About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Follow me on Twitter, Mastodon and Post.News.

Praise for Political Wire

“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”

— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”

“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”

— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report

“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”

— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report

“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”

— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia

“Political Wire is a great, great site.”

— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”

“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”

— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post

“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”

— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit

“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”

— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.

Copyright © 2023 · Goddard Media LLC | Privacy Policy

Political Wire ® is a registered trademark of Goddard Media LLC