We Republicans cherish the free market. So now might be the right time to start listening to it. Our party has lost the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections. That is 20 years of “no, thanks” from the American people. Only basketball’s Washington Generals, who are paid to lose to the
The Republican convention is Mitt Romney's first big opportunity since the primaries to speak directly to general-election voters. Will he focus on rallying the Republican base, or will he try to connect with the swing voters who hold the key to the White House? To date, the answer has not been clear. Too often,
Remind me: Why are we doing this? That was the question bouncing around in my head after I spent my first 24 hours in Tampa on increasingly soggy ground. The twin horrors of Tropical Storm Isaac and the Nielsen ratings have already combined to wipe out Monday night’s planned activities, and you know what? Nobody cares.
Biography no longer seems to matter much in American politics. There was a time when a candidate's story was everything and legions of hickory-tough old generals, backwoods rail splitters and celebrated Rough Riders soared into the White House on the wings of their modest roots and past accomplishments. But in the frenetic buzzing of
Mitt Romney is in trouble again. Despite having won the must-win states of New Hampshire and Florida, he faces yet another formerly lagging opponent's surge to the top of the polls. While Romney's super PAC is certainly unwrapping its beloved ugly stick to give Rick Santorum the kind of thumping on the airwaves that
As the Republican Presidential contest enters its final stage, Mitt Romney faces an interesting choice: Does he chug along to the party's nomination, sticking with the same basic stump speech that has made him the presumptive nominee? Or does he use the next two months to better position himself for what will likely be
Conventional wisdom holds that Rick Perry, last week's inevitable GOP presidential nominee, is now toast. Is that correct? Or will the race offer more surprises in the weeks to come? I'm betting the latter. No doubt Perry has problems. Many of the GOP's fundraising barons fear that a twangy Sun Belt candidate singing the
Democrats are in a grumpy mood, and with good reason. A big special-election victory in upstate New York quickly sagged into a disastrous media frenzy over Democratic Congressman–Internet lothario Anthony Weiner's spectacular success in becoming the Twittersphere's most obvious twit. To make matters worse, a brand-new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows President Obama actually losing
Iowa's presidential-caucus season is off to a slow start, so Governor Terry Branstad let slip a blazing 100-decibel hog call when he announced that many Republican voters in his state were still up for grabs. "It's a wide-open race," he said. His real message to the GOP hopefuls, however, could not be clearer: Iowa
If you don't look too closely, the battle lines between Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker, and his state's public employees' unions seem to be clearly drawn. Walker wants public employees to pay more toward their health care and retirement benefits, while teachers and public workers howl that Walker's plan to curb most collective bargaining