Author: Dick Morris

The Republican base must not require its representatives in Congress to run off a cliff and commit suicide as the price of avoiding a primary challenge in 2014. The tea party must not eat its young. The polling shows that there are nowhere near the preconditions that would have to be in place for a […]

I know something about government shutdowns. President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Leon Panetta, George Stephanopoulos and I defended the last attempt to shut it down. If the Republicans try to shutdown the government to press for defunding of Obamacare, they will lose. The public will turn against the Republicans, and they will have to cave […]

The Republican Party has it backwards: Don’t threaten to close the government down over Obamacare. But do threaten not to raise the debt limit unless welfare entitlements are ratcheted back. The debt limit fight is the right place to make a stand. The public does not like debt or borrowing and realizes that excessive debt […]

Congressional Democrats have defected from President Obama on three key issues in recent weeks, a sure sign of his looming lame duck status. First, 111 House Democrats refused to fund the NSA surveillance program despite heavy pressure from the administration and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. It became evident then that Obama would suffer […]

Opposition to American involvement in the war in Syria is uniting the far left and the far right in a new coalition for peace and the Constitution. The coalition made its debut when it lost by seven votes in its attempt to get the House to put limits on NSA surveillance. It is not just […]

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin would never have proposed a compromise plan to put Syrian chemical weapons under U.N. control unless he had cleared it with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Inevitably, now, Syria will accept some variation of this offer. It’s an offer they can’t refuse. You can’t turn down an offer from your only friend […]

Congress should reject President Barack Obama’s appeal for authorization to attack Syria in retaliation for its alleged use of chemical weapons. Just as then-State Senator Barack Obama opposed the use of force resolution against Saddam Hussein, despite his use of poison gas against the Kurds, so Congress should turn aside his recent appeal to attack […]

Democracy has not worked in the Middle East or in North Africa. It has just led to the installation of Islamist regimes who use the power they acquired in free elections to abolish civil and human rights, enslave women, kill Christians and Jews, end democracy and make war on Israel. President George W. Bush and […]

Serious Republican conservatives are finally understanding that we must rein in the NSA and correct the abuses which have been exposed by Edward Snowden and by news reporting ever since. These hawks — men like Senators Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., and Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. — know that we need the NSA to continue to be effective […]

On July 19, 2009, at a news conference in New Delhi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proudly announced that “Vital Voices Global Partnership,” an NGO that she said she had “founded,” had partnered with Standard Chartered Bank to promote women’s causes throughout Asia. Unfortunately, Standard Chartered Bank, which also donated generously to the Clinton Foundation […]

The U.S. District Court decision striking down New York City’s stop and frisk law may condemn the nation’s largest city to a return to the days of crime and mayhem which preceded the administration of Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Since 1992, the number of homicides in the Big Apple has dropped from almost 2,000 a year […]

Attorney General Eric Holder is planning to use his broad executive powers to free tens of thousands of criminals from federal prisons and to encourage states to do likewise. Under the guise of releasing “nonviolent” and “low-level” criminals, the attorney general is going to let drug dealers back out on the street, having completed their […]

After the Vietnam War, the Pentagon reflected on its wartime policies and military tactics and came to understand that they fanned public distrust in the military, which in turn limited public support of their actions. Our defense leaders grasped that they needed to modify their tactics and policies in order to rebuild public confidence and […]

House Republicans would like to vote for an immigration reform approach that hues to the amendment introduced by Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas. This would require that the border be sealed, with illegal immigration cut by 90 percent before any legalization or amnesty could begin for illegal immigrants already here. Border security legislation emerging from the […]

How can Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke justify his decision to approve another round of quantitative easing by citing the lack of an assured recovery in the U.S. economy? How can he pretend that his decisions to continue or discontinue the wholesale printing of money and to maintain or end zero-interest rates have anything to […]

If the IRS Tea Party scandal is at all reminiscent of the Watergate debacle that brought down a president in 1974, we may have just discovered the latter-day G. Gordon Liddy, the man who oversaw the chain of events that led to Nixon’s resignation. Who would that be? Well, a good guess would be William […]

If House Republicans insist on sealing the border and blocking Obamacare and other entitlements to currently illegal immigrants before any legalization can begin, how will U.S. Latino voters react? Will it trigger a backlash against Republicans or will Latinos accept the conditions willingly. A new survey just released by John McLaughlin and Associates and organized […]

House Speaker John Boehner is very likely to pass an immigration reform bill. Its content is what is unknown. The Speaker’s desire to act on reform is based on a vocal consensus of the national Republican Party leadership that correctly advises him that the GOP cannot be the impediment that blocks reform. Stung by the […]

The only way to grasp the impact of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program is to see it as a wholesale repeal of the Fourth Amendment. The detailed rules NSA analysts follow show the breathtaking reach of its potential for eavesdropping without any of the protections of our Constitution. According to FISA court rulings released […]

President Obama is as thoroughly fenced him by his scandals as President Nixon ever was. The scandals that are engulfing him hurt him badly with both the younger voters who have been his political base and the older voters he has sought to woo. And, the media scandals are destroying his image with his political […]

The posturing in the Senate and the House has supporters of immigration reform disheartened and discouraged. Latinos, in particular, feel that the moment has come and gone. The blame game has started. But not so fast. Don’t confuse political maneuver on this highly complex issue with ultimate outcomes. Here’s how I see the state of […]

Why does President Obama boast an average approval rating of 48 percent when he scores terribly on each issue he is now handling? Here’s the rundown in the latest Bloomberg News poll: Do you approve or disapprove of Obama’s handling of this: Economy: –approve: 42 percent disapprove: 53 percent Health Care: –approve: 40 percent disapprove: […]

Did the IRS scandal begin when the Obama administration aggressively tried to deny tax-exempt status to pro-Israeli groups that funded settlements on the West Bank in defiance of its wishes? The IRS seems to have used tax audits to try to cripple these Jewish groups. When the Citizens United decision came down, did President Obama […]

The revelation that acting IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the period in which conservative groups were being targeted with tax audits gives us the first real indication of the extent to which this scandal reaches into the White House. The incredible frequency of the visits — essentially […]

From prominent election lawyer Cleta Mitchell comes the disgusting detail with which the IRS hounded conservative groups, demanding so much information as to constitute a deliberately crippling workload. Mitchell notes that prior to 2010, the scrutiny of 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) applications was brief and non-intrusive. She reprints a typical questionnaire to one of her clients […]

“A statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his vision and his nation’s experience. If his vision gets too far out ahead of its experience, he will lose his mandate. But if it hues too close to the conventional, he will lose control over events.” — Henry Kissinger in “Years of Upheaval” President Barack […]

Why didn’t President Obama order troops to Benghazi to protect what remained of our diplomatic delegation and their security staff? The only known communication between the president and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta during the attack took place about one and one half hours after the assault began. Why didn’t Obama call for reinforcements? More to […]

Now that we know that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew that Benghazi was a terrorist attack three hours after it started and that somebody in Washington barred sending reinforcements to the beleaguered consulate, it’s time to ask why. The best way to do that — the only way to do that — is through […]

Americans can stand pretty much anything but not being lied to by their president. When Bill Clinton lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, his personal favorability ratings dropped twenty points and never recovered for the duration of his presidency. As the Benghazi hearings unfold, it will become more and more clear that President Obama […]