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"The influx of Democratic-friendly Hispanics and broader Democratic gains among Hispanics combined to flip Florida’s Hispanic vote."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republican National Committee wants to take more control over how the party picks a White House nominee. The RNC was to meet Wednesday in Memphis, Tennessee, to choose members who will effectively set the calendar for 2016's long list of potential presidential contenders. If the party's chairman, Reince Priebus gets his way, the GOP will pick its nominee more quickly than during past contests and have fewer debates in which candidates could criticize each other. The RNC also was expected to put penalties in place for candidates who don't follow the committee's plans.

Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (D) said Tuesday that a “big reason” why he left the Republican Party was because many in the GOP were hostile to President Obama due to his race. Crist, who is running for his old office against Gov. Rick Scott (R), said in an interview with Fusion’s Jorge Ramos that he felt uncomfortable with his previous party affiliation. Republicans are perceived as “anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-minority, [and] anti-gay,” he said, and they refuse to compromise with Obama. The ex-governor said he feels, “liberated as a Democrat.” “I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs,...

What happens to the House Republican caucus if Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) forces a vote on immigration reform? Here are three predictions: 1. The bill passes. An overwhelming majority of Republicans vote for it. With Republican primaries finished by June, incumbents will be free from any far-right, anti-immigration threat to their seats. The GOP vote will be so large it will isolate right-wing talk radio hosts and the Tea Party opposition. 2. Boehner strengthens his position as the party’s leader in the House. He gains added financial backing from a business community that wants immigration reform. And he rises as...

Billionaires buy whatever they want. And not just mansions and Teslas but elections and legislation. The recent Supreme Court decision lifting caps on campaign contributions gives them even more power. The libertarian Koch brothers have already pumped millions into this year’s elections. But Michael Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch and George Soros are no less guilty of buying our political system, and all of them, from libertarian Koch brothers to liberal Soros, are united in one cause: Bring in more foreign workers, increase job competition, and allow “market forces” to drive down wages. Since 2007, political lobbies spent a whopping...

How vividly I remember the photos of Obama in Berlin during his campaign in 2008: streets literally flooded with people keen to get a glimpse of a promising young politician, expressing for us all how exhausted the world was with the most ignorant and contemptible man ever to have been a president. Reporters said a quarter of million turned out to see a man who was a junior senator and had no claim yet to being a world figure. It was intoxicating to think this bright, attractive figure might replace the murderous buffoon, George Bush, and his éminence grise, Dick...

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Wednesday he believes former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush can win the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, dismissing the notion that conservatives wouldn’t elect an “establishment” candidate by pointing to the party’s standard bearer the past two presidential cycles. “See John McCain; see Mitt Romney,” Mr. Pawlenty, who ended his 2012 presidential campaign in the summer of 2011, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “In McCain’s case, a very compelling personal story and a gritty performance; in Mitt Romney’s case, obviously a man of great talent but also someone with a tremendous amount of campaign resources...

During his campaign for president in 1988, George H.W. Bush made what's arguably one of the most memorable campaign promises: "Read my lips," he said. "No new taxes." But as 1990 came around, with the economy still sluggish, he agreed to a bipartisan budget deal that reneged on that promise by raising taxes. For that politically costly decision, Bush was honored on Sunday with the John F. Kennedy Profile In Courage Award. The Boston Globe reports: " 'George Bush did the right thing for the country, and it's nice to see people are beginning to appreciate it,' John H. Sununu,...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush may be laying the groundwork for a 2016 presidential run as he met this week with a top evangelical leader who could help him win votes from the religious right, according to reports. Bush, a Roman Catholic, sat down with Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's policy branch known as the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, at his Miami office on Friday, CNN reported. The Washington Post reported last month that the two were planning on meeting. "We'll talk about the concerns of evangelicals," Moore told The Post at the time. "He is...

Can we really call it “news” if it’s something that everyone already knows? Imagine if all the tea-party energy of the past five years ends up in another Bush coronation in 2016. I don’t know if the party would fracture. But it should. In private conversations that are now seeping into public view, some of them are signaling to Mr. Christie’s camp that, should Mr. Bush enter the race, their first loyalty would be to him, not to Mr. Christie, according to interviews with more than two dozen of them… The family name, [Barry Wynn] said, remains a powerful draw....

President George W. Bush said his younger brother Jeb Bush would make a “great president,” as speculation builds that the Republican former governor of Florida might mount a run for the White House in 2016. Jeb Bush, a favorite of the Republican establishment, has maintained a high public profile in recent weeks, appearing at GOP fundraising events and weighing in on debates over immigration and education policy. He has publicly backed at least two GOP candidates in 2014 races, including his recent endorsement of California gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari. “I hope Jeb runs,” the former president said during an interview...

Today in the Morning Line: •How might tea party vs. establishment storyline play out? •May brings 13 primaries •Laying out the calendar •Your guide to this month’s races Let the elections begin! The midterm election primary season kicks off in earnest Tuesday with elections in North Carolina, Ohio and Indiana. Get this: There are 13 states with primaries in May. It’s always nice when instead of just talking about races, you get results. The overarching question for May: does the tea party still have the juice? In races this month in places like Kentucky and Georgia, “establishment” candidates appear poised...

For Jeb Bush, who I believe really wants to be president, the theory of the case has always been this: At some point, his party, the Republicans, will break from the tea party. The angry fever that overtook the party when Barack Obama’s election produced its intended result: a universal healthcare bill, would break. And the movement, born on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to slag underwater homeowners, and harnessed by the GOP to break the spell of bipartisanship Obama rode into town on, would have so consumed the party base, that cooler heads within the party would...

Republicans like former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee the most and consider him the best qualified potential GOP presidential candidate among the major contenders. But, as with the rest, they aren't psyched for him to run, according to a new Economist/YouGov.com survey. Some 72 percent of Republicans like Huckabee, a Fox host and conservative populist. That beats Sen. Rand Paul, at 66 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 62 percent, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 60 percent. And 51 percent of Republicans also view him as qualified to be president, more than the rest again. But as previous...

In 2010, Sarah Palin endorsed Rand Paul for U.S. Senate in Kentucky. Most other reliable Republican hawks — Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani, Rick Santorum — endorsed his primary opponent. Three years later, when Chris Christie criticized Paul’s stand on warrantless surveillance, Palin endorsed him again. “I’m on Team Rand,” she said. “Rand Paul understands, he gets the whole notion of ‘Don’t tread on me, government,’ whereas Chris Christie is for big government and, you know, trying to go along to get along in so many respects.” In a North Carolina congressional primary, however, Sarah Palin is on the side of...

Anyone who loves politics and horse racing is out to try and handicap anything this week. My favorite Saturday, outside any Saturday that Louisiana State University plays football, is the Kentucky Derby. It might not be very fashionable these days to be a horse degenerate, but that’s what I am. Thinking about the up and coming presidential election, I will use some horse racing analogies to talk about 2016. On the Democratic side, there has never been a more non-incumbent prohibitive favorite than Hillary Clinton. Seems to me the best horse analogy would be Secretariat running in the Belmont Stakes...

The permanent political class and their donors think a Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton battle in 2016 would be a win-win scenario, and many Republican Wall Street donors would rather have Clinton in the White House than Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). According to a Politico report, "the darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton." “If it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would...

Caught on a flight from Washington to Texas Sunday, Karl Rove, the guru of the GOP political establishment, was not pleased with a statement by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, a member of the House Republican leadership team, which sounded like a surrender in the fight to overturn Obamacare. Asked if the comment by Republican leadership acquiescing to the continuation of the Affordable Care Act was helpful to GOP chances in November, Rove said, “It doesn’t. It absolutely doesn’t.” Rove had not had a chance to read the article in the Spokane Spokesman-Review that quoted McMorris Rodgers as saying...

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may take another run at the White House, "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer said. "I have a source that told me that if Jeb Bush decides not to run, that Mitt Romney may actually try it again," Schieffer said during a panel discussion on the CBS Sunday morning news show.

For the Democratic Party, history began and ended with the election of George W. Bush. Nothing had happened before him. Every world crisis began with him and would only come to an end when the Democratic Party finally squeezed one of its own into the White House. If there was a problem, Bush had caused it. If another country hated America, it was Bush’s fault. Bush alienated Europe, Russia, Asia, the Middle East and even parts of Antarctica. It was all his fault, the media, academia and angry Trotskyite grandmothers marching for peace and tyranny in San Francisco agreed. Books...