Gop

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity.

SACRAMENTO - Democrats took another seat in the state Assembly this week, but a conservative Republican won a Central Valley state Senate district in an upset victory. The San Diego-area Assembly seat was a sure bet for Democrats - both candidates were from the majority party. Community organizer Lorena Gonzalez won a special election in that race with 72.3% of the vote, defeating small-business owner Steve Castaneda in the 80th Assembly District. To the north, in another special election, Republican farmer Andy Vidak of Hanford won a Senate seat, besting three Democrats and a candidate from the Peace and Freedom Party with about 52% of the vote.

Re "Key California Democrat likens GOP to Nazi propagandist," Sept. 4 So let me get this straight: It's acceptable to label President Obama a socialist, but the GOP can demand an apology from John Burton, chairman of the California Democratic Party, when he likens the GOP to a Nazi propagandist (without using the "N-word"). This, even though the GOP seems to have been adhering to Joseph Goebbels' instruction, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. " Larry Tamblyn Palmdale ALSO: Letters: Trees or a space shuttle?

WASHINGTON - Congressional Republicans have opened a new line of attack on President Obama's healthcare law, charging that the administration has improperly sought help from the healthcare industry and other outside groups to implement the landmark statute. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for months has been asking foundations, consumer and business groups, insurance companies and others to help enroll uninsured Americans in health insurance this fall, a key goal of the Affordable Care Act. Administration officials say those actions were entirely appropriate.

After listening to the nasty attacks of Gingrich, Dole, Wilson, Gramm et al., I finally figured out what GOP stands for: the Grouchy Old Party. JIM MALLON San Luis Obispo

Republican strategists worry that Tuesday's election results indicates the GOP has a “demographic problem.” No kidding. Latinos turned out at the polls and voted for President Obama at a historic rate. At least one election eve report by the Latino Decisions blog indicates that Obama won 75% of that voting bloc, while Republican challenger Mitt Romney captured a mere 23%. (Latinos account for 10% of the electorate). GOP leaders can't be surprised by those results. How could they be when they were repeatedly warned by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and others that taking a hard line on immigration was a dangerous tactic.

CODY, Wyo.--Alan Simpson has spent the better part of two years flying around the country ticking people off, though that's putting it more politely than the former Wyoming senator does. Simpson is the Republican half of the Simpson-Bowles duo (Erskine being the Democrat) that produced a 2010 deficit reduction plan that gored just about every sacred cow in Washington before succumbing to a scarcely lamented death. He continues to campaign around the country for the controversial recipe of tax hikes, spending cuts and entitlement reforms.

Re "No more boring white guys," Opinion, Aug. 7 Jonah Goldberg correctly points out that the "GOP needs to deal with America's changing demographics. " However, he ignores the fundamental reason minority groups tend not to support the Republican Party. When you see prominent Republicans and their proxies demonize and vilify people of different races and religions and label them as something "other" than American, any person belonging to a minority group can reach only one conclusion: The GOP's tent is not big enough to welcome the growing minority communities of the United States.

Re "House leader seeks to reframe GOP agenda," and "GOP eases stance on immigration," Feb. 6 If the average American family has access to good infrastructure and affordable medical care, education and housing, their lives will improve dramatically. If House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is serious about helping, he will stop his implacable opposition to Obamacare and infrastructure improvements and end Republicans' efforts to gut Medicare and Social Security to fund tax breaks.

  Join the Politics Now team at 5 p.m. PDT for live coverage of tonight's presidential debate in New Hampshire.        

The federal government is expected to hit its statutory credit limit later this month, setting the stage for yet another battle between the Obama administration and the House GOP over raising the debt ceiling. Republican leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee reportedly want something new in return for raising the limit: an agreement to simplify the tax code and reduce rates. Lawmakers should know by now that it's self-destructive to play games with the debt ceiling, and that the brinkmanship that characterizes contemporary Washington politics needs to stop.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. - Wearing a 2010 vintage Marco Rubio campaign T-shirt and matching button, Cheryl Griffin spewed frustration that the man she helped win a long-shot conservative bid for Senate is now leading an immigration overhaul. An evening downpour was falling on this coastal town, less a city than a hodgepodge of new and old subdivisions. But the weather did not deter Griffin, a small, skeptical woman, or her husband, Mark, a friendly man twice her size with rain dripping from his straw cowboy hat. The Griffins, who came down from neighboring Fort Pierce, were protesting Rubio's appearance at the annual Republican Party dinner.

WASHINGTON - President Obama nominated Democratic Rep. Mel Watt to be the top regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, moving to replace a career bureaucrat who has been sharply criticized by liberals for not doing more to help troubled homeowners. But confirmation of Watt, a 20-year congressman from North Carolina, to be director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is expected to be blocked by Senate Republicans. And the fight over the nomination could make it even more difficult for Republicans and Democrats to come together on legislation to overhaul the housing finance system and replace taxpayer-owned Fannie and Freddie.

Abel Maldonado, the Republican iconoclast most recently famous for his brief stint as California's appointed lieutenant governor and his unsuccessful run for Congress last year, is making noises about running for governor in 2014 against Jerry Brown. Will putting up a Latino face for the state's top office reverse more than two decades of rejection for the GOP by the fast-growing Latino community? Can even a Latino Republican win Latino votes in California? Both history and the data tell us not to bet on it. I know and like Maldonado, the son of a migrant farmworker, and consider him a smart, decent, charming fellow.

WASHINGTON - House Republicans announced the first in a series of immigration-related bills that would attempt to reshape the system one piece at a time, a contrast with the comprehensive approach the Senate is pursuing. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, was careful Thursday to say the two bills he would unveil this week - and "several" more after that - were simply starting points for debate. The effort does not preclude the broader overhauls being drafted by bipartisan groups in both chambers, he said.

WASHINGTON - As the new Congress began this year, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia sought to redefine the Republican Party as focused on "making life work" for ordinary Americans. Surveys showed that the public had tired of the party of "no" as House Republicans fought President Obama. The party lost its opportunity to win the White House or take control of the Senate last fall, and saw its House majority shrink. Cantor's approach echoed the "compassionate conservatism" of an earlier Republican era. In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, he said the House majority would "pursue an agenda based on a shared vision of creating the conditions for health, happiness and prosperity for more Americans and their families.

Re "Ugly numbers for the GOP," Column, March 4 George Skelton writes that the California Republican Party is "too white. " It doesn't make any difference what race Republicans are. The party should be judged on what it does and how it benefits society. The Republicans' challenge is that Democrats have inaccurately defined what the GOP is, and they've been aided by a complicit media. Consequently, a lot of non-Republicans have a misconception of who Republicans really are. Republicans have failed to give others a motivation to find out who Republicans are. Many non-Republicans, happy with the benefits they get from government, have no incentive to reduce the size of government.

Congress was extraordinarily busy this week. A bipartisan group of senators filed a sweeping bill Wednesday that aims to reform and reshape how the nation's immigration system works. Later that same day, the Senate defeated a bill that would have expanded background checks for gun buyers, despite widespread support among Americans for such legislation. What struck me as odd was Republicans' support for background checks in the immigration bill and yet their fierce opposition to such checks in the context of gun control legislation.

- Moments before a group of eight senators unveiled a sweeping bipartisan immigration overhaul Thursday, a smaller group launched the GOP opposition. Led by Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the Republican push-back emerged as a muted affair. With just one other senator joining the afternoon event, the opponents created something of a lonely gang of two. That is a stark contrast to the heated Republican rhetoric in 2007 that greeted the last attempt to reach a deal on comprehensive immigration reform, before the party's leaders made a strategic decision after the November election to embrace an issue that is a priority among the growing Latino electorate.