Contender.

In my short tenure, my focus has been — and will remain — on two things: fighting for conservative principles in the Senate, and working to help elect strong conservatives to win a majority in the Senate in 2014. The Senate is the battlefield to defend liberty. I was elected because thousands of grassroots conservatives [...]

Read this post »

“If you don’t think this is real, then you’re not paying attention.”

I’m betting that you are. Politico teased this possibility two weeks ago in a piece about the budding Cruz/Rubio rivalry, quoting one Texas Republican in the know as saying, “The worst secret in D.C. is Cruz is going to run for president, and he’s going to lean in hard against immigration to separate himself from [...]

Read this post »

Appreciation.

It has become an awkward ritual of the modern presidency that the current occupant of the Oval Office is called upon to deliver a generous historical judgment of the previous one. With the opening of each new presidential library, the members of the world’s most exclusive fraternity put aside partisan differences to honor the shared [...]

Read this post »

Sabotage.

How often does a potentially election-affecting soundbite drop three years out from the next presidential race? Good lord. This is a Gillooly-level kneecapping. I’m sitting here trying to come up with some sly strategic angle she might be playing to help Jeb by saying this, but I’ve got nothing. His biggest problem in 2016 is [...]

View the video »

Soon.

Hillary Clinton left the State Department nearly two months ago, but she still needs a staff to keep up with the considerable business of being Hillary Clinton. A half-dozen people now work for the former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate in a tiny corporate space on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, in what is [...]

Read this post »

rEVOLution?

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul will headline an annual Republican event in Iowa next month, further signaling his interest in a 2016 presidential bid. The announcement caps several high-profile weeks for Paul. On Saturday, he narrowly won the Conservative Political Action Committee straw poll, just after he delivered a rousing speech to the annual confab. Earlier [...]

Read this post »

2016.

Alternate headline: “Wait, Hillary wasn’t already on record in favor of gay marriage?” Evidently not. Five years ago, top-tier Democratic candidates concluded that they couldn’t safely support SSM publicly; five years and a double-digit swing in public opinion later, they’ve concluded that they can’t safely oppose it. The GOP will wrestle with this issue for [...]

View the video »

Shermanesque.

Supposedly he wants out because he’s uncomfortable with all the 2016 talk lately, but c’mon. He appeared on six Sunday shows last week to hawk his book, knowing full well that 95 percent of the interest in it is because he might be the GOP’s next nominee. BuzzFeed’s sources told them just a few days [...]

Read this post »

"If Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously, he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids."

Erika already touched on this but watch the vid too to see one of the more memorably tone-deaf performances in modern political history. Whatever your feelings about Paul’s position on drones, there’s no denying the truth of what Philip Klein says here: A lot of the outpouring of conservative support for Paul’s filibuster on Obama’s [...]

View the video »

What if?

Obama’s decision Friday to remove the threat of a government shutdown in late March as a leverage point in the standoff means that the sequester will remain in place for weeks — if not months, or longer. He set into a motion a risky strategy that rests entirely on the slim chance that Republicans do [...]

Read this post »

Comeback?

Everyone will applaud politely, of course, but there’s no way to avoid the ineffable awkwardness that will surround this speech. Then again, if there’s one thing Romney does well, it’s ineffable awkwardness. (“Severely conservative”?) Maybe it’ll just feel like old times. Alternate headline: “Man to appear at event devoted to repudiating him.” Former Republican presidential [...]

Read this post »

The one?

Sens. Marco Rubio’s and Rand Paul’s delivery of back-to-back rebuttals of President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress — Rubio as the Republican response, Paul as the tea party rejoinder — raises some tantalizing questions: With Rubio being stamped as the early favorite in the 2016 Republican White House race, is Paul emerging as a leading [...]

Read this post »

Savior?

Former Vice President Dick Cheney pronounced himself a “big fan” of Sen. Marco Rubio in a radio interview Wednesday, calling the Florida senator a “first-rate asset.” “Marco’s great,” Cheney said on Sean Hannity’s radio show. “I’m a big fan of his.”… “He’s a first-rate asset,” the former vice president said. “We’ll be hearing a lot [...]

Read this post »

“I don’t think he realized who he was talking to. I think I'm qualified to make a comment.”

To cleanse the palate, why is a guy who’s used his weight to brilliant effect politically suddenly throwing tantrums over a doctor noting that extreme obesity can be life-threatening? If I smoke six packs a day, does a doctor need to see my blood work in order to formally conclude that that might pose a [...]

View the video »

It's never too early.

This poll won’t matter three years from now when we find ourselves caught up in an epic Stan McChyrstal vs. Mike Huckabee battle for the soul of America, but for now it’s a fun time-waster on a painfully slow news day. Two overrated media darlings enter, one overrated media darling leaves: 57% of Democrats would [...]

Read this post »

Big shot.

Christie, who already had one of the most prominent public profiles in the country, has stepped squarely into the spotlight in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the Congressional debate over passing a relief package for residents of the affected states. “One thing I hope everyone in America now clearly understands — New Jersey, both [...]

Read this post »

Terrific.

On the one hand, he’s nuts. On the other hand, using a tortured pop-culture metaphor for geopolitics suggests he’d make a fine blogger. Is “The Walking Dead” actually an elaborate metaphor for America’s looming fiscal collapse? Your answer to that question will tell you if you’re prepared for the logic bomb that’s about to be [...]

Read this post »

Data.

I know you’re polled out, but with all the navel-gazing today about demographics and the future of the GOP, I figured people might want a link to the numbers behind last night’s disaster. Here’s CNN’s version, Fox News’s version, and WaPo’s version, which breaks the trend lines down by arrows. (Mouse over for the numbers.) [...]

Read this post »

Results.

There’s only so much order you can impose on the chaos created by a magnitude 10.0 newsquake but between the four of us we’re going to try. Here’s a quick and dirty guide to our plan so that you know what to expect tonight. The easiest way to do this, we think, is to split [...]

Read this post »

Moment of truth.

Romney’s crowds are building—28,000 in Morrisville, Pa., last night; 30,000 in West Chester, Ohio, Friday It isn’t only a triumph of advance planning: People came, they got through security and waited for hours in the cold. His rallies look like rallies now, not enactments. In some new way he’s caught his stride. He looks happy [...]

Read this post »

No there there.

The short answer is: because he’s got nothing.  There is no record to run on, no argument to make for four more years.  The ideology that drives him is outdated and bankrupt.  He has, in fact, implemented his policies – Republicans have had little means of stopping him – and those policies are the problem. [...]

Read this post »

"For better or for worse, we have a black Muslim in the White House. Now that’s some amazing sh*t."

Via Mediaite, don’t be too hard on her. Old people sometimes get confused and say things that are off-color. Could be that she’s being sarcastic, but I honestly can’t tell; I don’t want to make the same mistake as the left made yesterday with Romney, but a lot of media outlets apparently think she’s on [...]

View the video »

Change?

Oh, come on. The conservative base would never allow the GOP to nominate someone so famously moderate. Except this year, I mean. And in 2008. And 1996, 1992, 1988. And come to think of it, Dubya wasn’t exactly a tea partier either. Three words, my friends: Scarborough/Huntsman 2016? First, Joe flirted with the idea of [...]

Read this post »

Second term?

President Barack Obama says his Republican challenger has the “wrong vision” for the country. So what’s his? Some of his agenda for a second term is a continuation of the first. He’d raise taxes on annual family incomes above $250,000. He’d continue to spend on education and green energy. He’d implement the health care law [...]

Read this post »

'Cause Obama's record just rocks!

Once again, the differences between President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaign themes are striking. In this case, “Hope & Change” is taking second fiddle to the “rich guy is out of touch” meme. In his interview with Charlie Rose (check out the video at Real Clear Politics), Obama once again portrayed himself as the poor [...]

Read this post »