Author: Scott Rasmussen

With a simple Facebook post, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush became the first person to express interest in the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He’ll have plenty of company in the near future, as nearly two dozen others have unofficially expressed similar interests. To say the race is wide open is an understatement. There are many […]

President Obama recently spoke of the “simmering distrust” between many police departments and minority communities. The president is correct in his assessment, but dramatically understates the problem. Rather than being just a feature of the minority communities in our nation, distrust of law enforcement is widespread. Whether it’s the IRS targeting Tea Party groups, regulators […]

I love the Thanksgiving holiday weekend as much as anyone. It’s great to have family visit and take some time to talk and visit and just be together. There’s the added bonus that comes from a warm glow of nostalgia lingering from long-ago Thanksgiving dinners at Nana and Grampa’s. Hopefully, Laura and I are creating […]

In the wake of the midterm elections, many are now speculating about what will happen to President Obama’s health care law with a Republican Senate. However, all the partisan talk misses the point. In America, change does not come from politicians. It comes from the American people and the popular culture. Contrary to the self-serving […]

Little noticed by the Washington press corps is the extent of the Republican State legislative gains in Election 2014. A quick trip to the enormously informative Ballotpedia.org website provides the numbers that the DC reporters overlooked. And those numbers reflect a GOP victory with stunning depth and breadth. It was far more than a favorable […]

To understand the lack of enthusiasm most Americans feel about the midterm elections, it’s important to recognize a vital distinction between government and community. Community evokes positive feelings for most of us, whereas politics and government are nastier and generate a desire to stay away. We choose to be involved in community while we have […]

President Obama’s health care law is the gift that keeps on giving to the GOP. In 2010, of course, passage of the law powered the Republican gains of 62 seats in the House of Representatives and pickups of more than 700 state legislative seats across the nation. The law didn’t go into effect in time […]

The lovable legend of Robin Hood with his band of Merry Men making life difficult for the Sheriff of Nottingham offers a great way to understand the politics of 21st-century America. As with any such story, casting is key. The modern version would place tech entrepreneurs in the role of Robin Hood and his gang. […]

A recent column on Vox.com may have inadvertently highlighted the gap between the nation’s political elites and the rest of the nation. Vox is an “explanatory journalism” site founded by former Washington Post columnist and blogger Ezra Klein. When Fox News’ parent company briefly flirted with buying Time Warner and CNN, Vox appropriately deemed it […]

From the moment the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, burst upon the national consciousness, people all across the nation have tried to fit the storyline into their own preconceived notions. Broadly speaking, most black Americans see a story of racism and overly aggressive policing. “The Whole Damn System is Guilty,” read a sign carried by a […]

The news from Ferguson, Missouri, has brought back unpleasant memories from the long-ago riots in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It was the summer of 1970, and I was a young teenager close enough to the action to be appropriately frightened. The riots I remember were also fueled by racial grievances, and there were similar issues […]

The tech industry will have a more lasting impact on America’s future than Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama combined. That’s not the sense you get from reading the news these days, but journalists and historians always overstate the impact of politicians while underestimating the impact of entrepreneurs. That was true at the founding […]

In Florida recently, police pulled up to a young boy playing in the park and asked where his mother lived. According to a report on WPTV, the mom was then arrested for “allowing her son to go to the park alone.” Her son had a cellphone, and she would check in with him along the […]

Following the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision, one of the key talking points that emerged from enraged opponents of the ruling was: “My boss shouldn’t be involved in my health care decisions.” California State Senate candidate Sandra Fluke says on her official website that such a perspective is “common sense.” An Ohio Democrat is introducing […]

The economic data that drives so much political debate is becoming increasingly less reliable in the digital era. That’s because new technology makes it hard to compare the 21st-century economy to anything that came before it. How, for example, do you compare the living standards of a middle-income American in the 1970s with a middle-income […]

In his weekly column for CNN.com, Julian Zelizer makes a reasonable case that “Distrustful Americans still live in age of Watergate.” In his eyes, this helps explain why the president’s health care law and other initiatives have encountered so much resistance. The Princeton Professor concludes, “The worst effect of Watergate is that it created a […]

Happy Fourth of July! America’s 238th birthday party is being celebrated in the usual way with fireworks, cookouts, parades and patriotic songs. Words from the Declaration of Independence are recited at some events to remind us of the founding ideals of our nation. While the world has changed dramatically since 1776, those ideals remain as […]

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling against the president’s right to get around Congress by making recess appointments. This is frustrating to President Barack Obama at the moment and will undoubtedly aggravate some future Republican president. The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin wrote that this ruling will “make the government function less […]

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Uber was upsetting government regulators. The ride-sharing company is providing such great service to consumers that existing taxi companies called upon the government to help. Shortly after I wrote that column, the attorney general of Virginia issued a cease-and-desist order to the company. There was no allegation […]

Silicon Valley and the tech industry exude so much optimism it’s contagious. There is a desire to solve the planet’s most difficult problems and a belief they can do it. On the other coast, official Washington and the political industry are mired in pessimism. Rather than a sense that problems can be solved, the political […]

A recent study estimated that getting a college degree is worth about a half-million dollars over the course of a graduate’s lifetime. On the surface, that presents an open-and-shut case that college is worth the time and money involved. That’s the conclusion reached in a New York Times column by Dave Leonhardt, who wrote, “Yes, […]

For people who’ve ever struggled to find a taxi, Uber is great news. If you’re in a decent-sized city, download its app, register, and you’ll never wait for a taxi again. When you need a ride, all you have to do is pull out your phone, enter your request, and a car will be waiting. […]

Heading into the 2014 elections, some Democrats think they have found a way to minimize the political fallout from the president’s health care law. They have convinced themselves that voters are more interested in fixing the law rather than repealing it. A few even believe that Obamacare may someday be popular with voters. Rhetorically, they […]

When we go to the doctor, most of us expect to receive the best possible advice on whatever ails us. Unfortunately, some medical groups see that as a quaintly archaic notion. Associations are recommending that the doctors should consider more than the patient they are treating. According to The New York Times, these groups want […]

Pop culture is a better indicator of the public mood than political talking points, so it’s interesting to see how two top-rated and long-running CBS television dramas have recently dealt with the issue of inequality. They suggest it’s a real issue, but not in the way politicians talk about it. “Bones” features a brilliant but […]

A book by a French economist on income inequality has become a pop sensation among Democratic liberal elites. Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” initially released in France, has an English translation, which has received rave reviews from pundits like Paul Krugman of The New York Times. It is also the latest reason to […]

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ended legal segregation in public schools with a unanimous 9-0 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. While the ruling paved the way for future integration of American society, the court itself was far from integrated. The decision was reached by nine white men. It wasn’t until Thurgood Marshall […]

President Barack Obama announced triumphantly that 8 million people selected a private insurance plan through the health care exchanges created by legislation known as Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. He added his own interpretation of the numbers: “This thing is working.” At the same time, however, Democratic candidates across the country still see the […]

Conservatives and liberals had entirely different reactions to the recent confrontation between Attorney General Eric Holder and Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert. After the event, Holder expressed his view that no previous attorney general or president had ever had to deal with such treatment and that the reason had to do with race. Gohmert, on the […]