In his opening paragraphs to the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx noted that people "make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing alread

Here is a truism about the psychology of politicians: there is almost nothing so soul-definingly traumatic for them as losing an election. You believe yourself a great man, a figure of destiny. You love your job, or covet an even more important one—and t

It isn't easy getting a bead on what motivates Mitt Romney. He's always polished and prepped, his square jaw firmly in place and every word carefully planned and delivered as though it were part of a 57-slide PowerPoint presentation. He married his high

At Rolling Stone, the distinguished political historian Rick Perlstein provides some history about the regular trumping of theology by politics in the process of making his case that fear or hostility towards the LDS faith won’t keep conservative evangel

Room to regroup by digby Rick Perlstein has a fantastic piece up today about Newtie, Perot and the Contract With America. It's really helpful to have a historian of the modern conservative movement weigh in on recent history. The press is simply dismal i

"Yeah. It's just tragic, isn't it? Just tragic, just tragic," Romney said. "We're just so overleveraged, so much debt in our society, and some of the institutions that hold it aren't willing to write it off and say they made a mistake, they loaned too mu

Happy Saturday night, folks! It's Blue Gal from The Professional Left Podcast , bringing you this week's podcast round up. Be aware that these podcasts are also available on i-Tunes, and may not be safe for work. Virtually Speaking A to Z : the present a

Rick Perlstein looks to Romney's father and the pillorying he endured for being too honest about the Vietnam war: [Michigan Governor George Romney] supported it after returning from a trip there in 1965. Then, courageously, after a second trip in 1967, h

Breaking News from the Republican Primary: Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee. You heard it here first. Or somewhere else. Speaking of Willard, here is an interesting piece by Rick Perlstein. (Who, by the way, in addition to being an excellent writer

Gin and Tacos : All the news that’s fit to print, except the truth. BradBlog : Vote fraud, Republican-style. Somervell County Salon : Rick Perry insults America’s ally Turkey, yet draws praise from Politico for debate performance. Rick Perlstein : The st

WASHINGTON -- The White House is suggesting GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney should release his tax returns, saying it's "established tradition" for presidential candidates to do so. Responding to a question about Romney's failure so far to release h

Al Sharpton discusses the conservative movement’s response to the civil rights effort in MLK’s time with historian Rick Perlstein. Perlstein talks about how the Watts riot in Los Angeles sparked conservative backlash. Sharpton brings up the fact that Kin

Saddleback College’s library is named after Congressman James B. Utt , who died in 1970. I’ve been posting about the fellow and his views and pronouncements. This morning, I scraped up a few new factoids: There are several references to James B. Utt in t

Of course, many liberals are confused as well. (I won't even talk about the libertarians.) Seems to be the zeitgeist. Perhaps tough times and elite failure always have thi

Oh dear God: Perlstein writes: Rick Santorum got high marks for his near-victory speech in Iowa. In the Washington Post, E.J. Dionn

It all started with Richard Nixon, history's yard waste. As Rick Perlstein has pointed out, at length, this is where the Republicans learned to nurse every grudge, no matter how small. This is where they learned their incredible capacity for neverending

I spent the afternoon debating, among others, Rick Perlstein, on the economy. The debate was being taped for Aljazeera TV (set to air tonight some time in the 7 pm hour EST). Rick claimed that since both government and the economy were getting bigger b