NATIONAL
November 5, 2009 | Janet Hook
After months of criticizing Democratic healthcare proposals from the sidelines, House Republicans this week stepped up efforts to promote their own plan and challenge critics' efforts to portray the GOP as the "party of no." Unlike the Democrats' strategy of trying to provide near-universal coverage and force other major changes to the insurance system, the Republican approach is an incremental one that would do far less to reduce the ranks of the uninsured. It would instead give priority to controlling healthcare costs.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 16, 2009 | GEORGE SKELTON
The math seems pretty simple. But apparently it's too rigorous for many Republican politicians. To avoid raising taxes and still balance the books in Sacramento, you'd have to virtually shut down state government. Some politicians are in denial. Some are demagoguing. Some are just ducking. Scared. The scared are rather pathetic.
NATIONAL
September 6, 2008 | Seema Mehta, Times Staff Writer
Teen pregnancy and sex education were thrust into the spotlight this week when Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin revealed that her 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant. Palin's running mate, John McCain, and the GOP platform say children should be taught that abstinence until marriage is the only safe way to avoid pregnancy and disease. Palin's position is less clear.
NATIONAL
October 24, 2006 | Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer
A new Republican Party television ad featuring a scantily clad white woman winking and inviting a black candidate to "call me" is drawing charges of race-baiting, with critics saying it contradicts a landmark GOP statement last year that the party was wrong in past decades to use racial appeals to win support from white voters.
NATIONAL
January 30, 2009 | Peter Nicholas
President Obama's choice to head the Labor Department is trying to overcome resistance to her nomination from Republican senators, who contend she dodged important questions during her confirmation hearing. Rep. Hilda L. Solis, a Democrat from El Monte, is one of several prominent Cabinet nominees still awaiting confirmation more than a week after the president took office. Eric H. Holder Jr., tapped to be attorney general, is likely to be confirmed by the Senate on Monday.
NATIONAL
February 8, 2009 | Faye Fiore and Mark Z. Barabak
In 1994, Rush Limbaugh was a field marshal in the Republican revolution, rallying troops fervid in their passion, armed with a change agenda and determined to shake Washington upside down. Fifteen years later, Republicans are politically hobbled and Democrats are fervid in their passion, armed with a change agenda and determined, along with their new president, to shake Washington upside down. And again there is Limbaugh, master of the talk radio universe, unchanged and unbowed.
NATIONAL
October 29, 2007 | Scott Martelle, Times Staff Writer
Stephanie Burns and Ben Parkinson strolled down sun-drenched Fillmore Street with political thievery on their minds. Both are grass-roots volunteers for Republican presidential contender Ron Paul, a Texas congressman whose libertarian views might seem to make him a tough sell in this legendarily left-wing city.
NATIONAL
September 14, 2009 | Peter Wallsten
Amid a rebirth of conservative activism that could help Republicans win elections next year, some party insiders now fear that extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the angry reaches of the conservative base are undermining the GOP's broader credibility and casting it as the party of the paranoid. Such insiders point to theories running rampant on the Internet, such as the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be president, or that he is a communist, or that his allies want to set up Nazi-like detention camps for political opponents.
NATIONAL
October 27, 2009 | Janet Hook
Silvan Johnson adores Sarah Palin, belongs to a conservative discussion group and fumes at President Obama's spending policies. But when it comes to picking a new congressional representative for her upstate New York district, she is in no mood to help the Republican Party. In fact, Johnson and many other conservatives want to use a Nov. 3 special election to teach the GOP a lesson about sticking to conservative values -- even though that lesson could mean the party loses a House seat it has held for decades.
OPINION
November 30, 2008 | Neal Gabler, Neal Gabler is the author of many books, including, most recently, "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination."
Ever since the election, partisans within the Republican Party and observers outside it have been speculating wildly about what direction the GOP will take to revive itself from its disaster. Or, more specifically, which wing of the party will prevail in setting the new Republican course -- whether it will be what conservative writer Kathleen Parker has called the "evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy" branch or the more pragmatic, intellectual, centrist branch.