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COLUMBIA, SC -- They won't say it publicly -- they didn't want to appear churlish or disrespectful on a night they took a serious beating -- but it's no exaggeration to say that even after losing the South Carolina primary to Newt Gingrich, members of Mitt Romney's circle find it absurd -- almost crazy -- that the former House speaker has even a ghost of a chance of becoming the Republican Party's presidential nominee. In their view, Gingrich has barely run a campaign. As they see it, Team Gingrich doesn't have the money, professionalism, brains, or organization of the Romney...

NASHUA, N.H. -- Is New Hampshire too white, too old and too godless to play a key role in selecting the next president? "The rap on Iowa: It doesn't represent the rest of the country -- too white, too evangelical, too rural," NBC's Andrea Mitchell famously said shortly before the Jan. 3 caucuses. Other critics called Iowa too old. If such concerns about Iowa are legitimate, then so are concerns about New Hampshire. For example, the first-in-the-nation primary state is actually whiter than Iowa. According to the 2010 census, New Hampshire is 93.9 percent white, 2.8 percent Hispanic and 1.1...

NASHUA, NH -- Just as in Iowa, Newt Gingrich's popularity has plunged here in New Hampshire. The former House speaker, who hit 24 percent in a Rasmussen survey in late November, is languishing at eight percent in the latest Rasmussen Granite State poll. In the next primary state, South Carolina, Gingrich hit 42 percent in an NBC News poll in early December. Now, he is at 18 percent in a new Rasmussen survey. The conventional wisdom holds that Gingrich fell as a result of highly effective attack ads aired in Iowa by rival Ron Paul and a super PAC working...

ORLANDO -- There's no scientific polling, but talks with dozens of delegates who will vote in today's Florida straw poll suggest that many are making last-minute decisions to vote for Herman Cain. What seems to be happening is this: A lot of delegates came to Orlando planning to vote for Rick Perry. But Perry's poor performance at Thursday night's Fox News-Google debate gave them pause and re-opened the question of whom they will support. And many of the conservatives who were attracted to Perry will, when asked for a second choice, naturally gravitate to Cain, who, it just happens, had...

Thursday's Republican presidential debate in Orlando will be a key moment for Rick Perry. The newness is off the Texas governor's candidacy, and his support has leveled off and even slipped a bit in some recent polls. Perry received mostly good reviews from his debate debut, at the Reagan Library on Sept. 7, but less positive notices after his second outing at the CNN debate in Tampa, Fla., on Sept. 12. How he performs in the rubber match in Orlando, put on by Fox News, Google and the Republican Party of Florida, will provide an important directional signal: Is Perry...

"Whatever the case, Bachmann's answer in Ames Thursday night was by far the most human moment of her appearance in the debate -- a far cry from her tough exchanges with former Minnesota Gov. (and now former candidate) Tim Pawlenty. At their best, debates tell us new things about candidates and allow us to learn more about aspects of their personalities we haven't seen before. Is there any doubt that moment in Ames on Thursday night did just that for Michele Bachmann?"

Who are these submissive women? By Linda Prussen-Razzano web posted August 15, 2011 During the recent Republican Presidential debates in Ames, Iowa, a question of faith arose that has frequently been misused, misrepresented, and continually misinterpreted by the main stream media: that of women who willingly submit to the authority of their husbands. Women who advocate a strong Christian faith are often portrayed as weak, timid, or somehow suffering under the heel of an oppressive husband while simultaneously being chained to hot stove with wailing children hanging off their hips. The general resentment over this perpetual gross mischaracterization of a...

When the Washington Examiner’s Byron York asked Michele Bachmann if she was submissive to her husband at the Fox News GOP debate Thursday night, the crowd gasped and booed. That’s because wifely submission -- also known as complementarian theology -- is central to the faith of many evangelicals. York’s question wasn’t about religion per se, but was an attempt to probe whether, if Bachmann became president, America would be getting Marcus' decisions and not hers. It’s common for Christian politicians questioned about their adherence to submission theology to dodge a scriptural explanation, as Bachmann did. After all, while dominionist-minded evangelicals...

In the last week Sarah Palin has commanded the attention of the national press corps simply by taking in a few tourist sites on the East Coast. Whenever she stops her "One Nation" bus, reporters lucky or canny enough to keep up with her have asked about her political intentions. Will she run for president? Is she thinking about running for president? If she ran for president, how would she campaign? One thing many viewers have probably missed in all the horse-race speculation is that Palin is perfectly willing to discuss her positions on key issues, if anyone wants to...

After retaining legal counsel in a case in which a lewd photo was sent from his Twitter account to a 21 year-old female college student, New York Rep. Anthony Weiner says he will no longer answer questions about the matter. The matter has become a "distraction," the outspoken Democrat told reporters Tuesday, and he intends to spend his time working on congressional matters and not answering questions about what has become known in furious Internet speculation as "Weinergate." In a performance that might please a defense attorney but would make a public relations consultant cringe, Weiner, who has said his...

"The bottom line is Sarah Palin is not going to run for president," says a Republican adviser close to front-runner Mitt Romney. "She's making money, she's moved on, she's kind of an entertainer rather than a politician. She still has some sway with the grass roots, but she is not going to run." "I don't think she's going to run," says a Republican close to Tim Pawlenty. "She has faded a lot in the last few months. I look at what she's doing now and say that she's found a way to get back in the story." Maybe these representatives...

But wouldn't liberals and Democrats still find a racially-based way to attack Cain? They certainly found a way to attack Clarence Thomas, the black, conservative Supreme Court justice. "They're going to come after me more viciously than they would a white candidate," Cain responded. "You're right. Clarence Thomas. And so, to use Clarence Thomas as an example, I'm ready for the same high-tech lynching that he went through -- for the good of this country." Cain smiled broadly. "I'm ready for the same high-tech lynching."

With President Obama making only brief remarks during his trip to Latin America, most of what we know about the beginning of the war in Libya comes from two briefings Saturday, from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in France and from Vice Admiral Bill Gortney at the Pentagon. And those two high-ranking officials sent strikingly different messages about the extent of United States involvement in the war. Clinton played down the U.S. role. "We did not lead this," she said flatly of the coalition currently attacking Libyan Moammar Gaddafi. "We did not engage in unilateral actions in any way,...

Nearly a year ago, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and his healthcare policy team came up with a simple way to save the state's Medicaid program a lot of money. Why not have Medicaid recipients and applicants handle their paperwork online? Using e-mail and a special website rather than paper, Herbert calculated, would save Utah about $6.3 million a year. "It seemed like a no-brainer to us," says the governor. The problem was, going paperless required a rules waiver from the Department of Health and Human Services. And that's where the idea ran into a brick wall. "We tried for eight...

"Washington, right now, is broken," said Vice President Biden in February. "I've never seen it this dysfunctional." Back then, Biden was just one of many who complained that partisan rancor and gamesmanship had brought the functioning of the federal government virtually to a halt, making it impossible for the president and lawmakers to get anything done. "Washington is broken" became the political world's conventional wisdom. Fast-forward to Dec. 22. Celebrating the passage of a new law allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military, President Obama said the event marked "the culmination of two of the most productive years in...

Top political scientist: U.S. voters are 'pretty damn stupid' Political reporters often rely on University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin for expertise. In just the past few months, his insights have appeared in articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Associated Press, Politico, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications. He's also a co-founder of the influential website Pollster.com, as well as co-director of the Big Ten Battleground Poll. So Franklin answered with considerable authority when he was asked, at a recent forum on the November 2 election results, why Republicans emerged victorious in...

LAS VEGAS — At polling places across Nevada Tuesday, researchers conducting exit polls asked voters one fundamental question about Harry Reid: Do you approve or disapprove of the way he has handled his job as senator? The results were terrible for the Senate Majority Leader. Fifty-five percent of voters disapproved of the job he has done, while 44 percent approved. Such numbers might seem a sure indicator of defeat, and yet by Tuesday night, Reid was leading his supporters in a victory celebration. The exit pollsters also asked whether Reid, running for a fifth term in the Senate, has been...

All around, there are Democrats telling us their prospects for November are looking up. Things aren't as bad as Republicans say! Health care is becoming more popular! The country wants financial reform! People still like Barack Obama! Isn't Joe Barton awful! They're fooling themselves. The basic indicators of voters' intentions -- their general mood and attitude toward the policies of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid -- are clear and solid. Unless those indicators change, and most experts believe that would take a huge, unforeseen event that fundamentally alters the political equation, Democrats are in for serious losses this November....

You know the basics. The unemployment rate is 9.9 percent. Jobs are still being lost. Worries about the global economy are causing breathtaking volatility on Wall Street. And millions of Americans who still have jobs are worrying more than ever about the safety of their retirement savings. What you may not know is that, during this moment of terrible economic anxiety, the Obama White House found the time -- and the money -- to turn itself, at least for a night, into a showcase of glitzy extravagance. On May 19, the White House held a state dinner for Mexican President...

Even as the Obama administration plans to challenge and undermine Arizona's new immigration law, the White House still wants state residents to know that it feels their pain. "It's really a cry of frustration from Arizona," Homeland Security Secretary -- and former Arizona governor -- Janet Napolitano said recently. "It's a frustration ultimately that will only be solved with comprehensive immigration reform." But for the majority of Arizonans, the source of frustration is not the absence of comprehensive reform. It is the federal government's halfhearted enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. And what is seldom discussed in the current controversy...

Deep inside a New York Times profile of the accused Times Square bomber — “From Suburban Father to a Terrorism Suspect” – there is this: George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply “checking everything out. In recent...

The chattering class is aghast at Arizona's new immigration law. "Harkens back to apartheid," says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker. "Shameful," says the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne. "Terrible…an invitation to abuse," says the New York Times' David Brooks. For his part, President Obama calls the law "misguided" and says it "threaten[s] to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans." Obama has ordered the Justice Department to "closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation." Has anyone actually read the law? Contrary to the talk, it is a reasonable, limited, carefully-crafted...

We know one thing for sure about the fight over Arizona's new immigration law. Civil-rights groups will file a lawsuit trying to kill the law and will ask a federal judge to issue an injunction to keep it from taking effect as scheduled this summer. What we don't know is how those proceedings will be affected by the Obama Justice Department, which is contemplating the highly unusual step of filing its own suit against the state of Arizona. Also unknown is the influence of President Obama himself, who has gone out of his way to raise questions -- some of...

Many, many times during the health care debate, President Obama promised the American people that if they have insurance and they are happy with it, then it would not change under the Democrats' national health care proposal. "Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year," Obama promised on his transition website before assuming office. Once in the White House, he repeated that promise over and over and over. You didn't really believe that, did you? Good. To confirm your suspicions, read the new...

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has summoned some of the nation's top executives to Capitol Hill to defend their assessment that the new national health care reform law will cost their companies hundreds of millions of dollars in health insurance expenses. Waxman is also demanding that the executives give lawmakers internal company documents related to health care finances -- a move one committee Republicans describes as "an attempt to intimidate and silence opponents of the Democrats' flawed health care reform legislation." On Thursday and Friday, the companies -- so far, they include AT&T,...

The people at Zoll Medical Corporation saw a ray of hope in January when Scott Brown was elected senator from Massachusetts. Located in Chelmsford, 30 miles outside Boston, Zoll is the nation's leading manufacturer of heart defibrillators, which save thousands of heart attack victims each year. Back in January, as the Senate race was raging, both House and Senate Democrats wanted to impose a crippling new tax on the makers of medical devices, Zoll included, to help pay for Obamacare. The total tax on the industry would be about $2 billion a year, or $20 billion over the next decade....

For some of the brightest, most politically aware people in the country, the yearlong debate over the Democrats' national healthcare plan has been an inspiring experience. It has inspired them to run for Congress as Republicans. Dr. Larry Bucshon is one of them. A heart surgeon in Evansville, Ind., Bucshon watched the first months of Barack Obama's presidency with growing alarm. "It became clear to me that what he said in the campaign -- big government, more spending, more federal-government control -- was what he was really going to do," says Bucshon. By last summer, as the president and congressional...

At the House Rules Committee meeting, Democrats desperate to pass their national health care plan are running into the barrier of basic civics. Here is the problem: The Senate has passed its HCR bill. If the House passes the same bill, it goes on to the president; once he signs it, the bill becomes law. But House Democrats, when they vote for the Senate bill using the "Deem & Pass" dodge, also want to simultaneously pass a package of amendments to the law. Except HCR will not, at that point, be law. It will only become law when the president...

There are two ways to count votes for the Democrats' national health care plan. The first is to tally the lawmakers who are definitely yes or leaning yes. The second is to count the ones who are definitely no and leaning no. From the Republican side, it's the second group that matters. Just like Democrats need 216 votes to pass the bill, Republicans and their Democratic allies need 216 to stop it. I just got off the phone with a well-placed House GOP source, and the Republicans' latest count is that there are 209 votes against the bill at this...

If you have any doubt that the Democratic leadership of the House views passing the current health care reform bill as the beginning, not the end, of the process of creating a national government health care system, just note what Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a group of bloggers on Monday. "My biggest fight has been between those who wanted to do something incremental and those who wanted to do something comprehensive," Pelosi said, according to an account by Washington Post reform advocate Ezra Klein. "We won that fight, and once we kick through this door, there'll be more legislation to...

Today's Washington Post Outlook section gives featured lefty blogger Ezra Klein another shot at the supposedly dysfunctional workings of the Senate. "As the minority becomes less responsible with the filibuster (and oh boy, have minority Republicans become less responsible with the filibuster), the majority needs to use reconciliation more often," Klein writes. The article begins: "Ask a kid who just took civics how a bill becomes a law and she'll explain that Congress takes a vote and, if a majority supports the bill, the bill goes to the president. That's what we teach in textbooks, but it's not what we...

With their backs to the wall, Democratic leaders are preparing a complicated plan to pass their national health care bill. Standing in the way are Democrats who oppose the bill, whether on principle or out of fear that voting for a wildly unpopular measure will spell defeat for them in November. If you think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to let them off easy, allowing them to kill the party's top policy priority in more than a generation -- well, that's not gonna happen. Democrats who are considering voting against the bill are about to experience arm-twisting, threats, and...

A number of lawyers who work on terrorist issues at the Justice Department represented terrorist detainees before joining the Obama administration. At a hearing three months ago, Sen. Charles Grassley raised the possibility of a conflict with Attorney General Eric Holder. Grassley, a senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, posed three simple questions: Who are they, who did they represent, and what are their duties at the Justice Department today? At the time, Grassley knew from press reports that two high-ranking department officials now working on detainee issues had previously worked for detainees: Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal...

Now that the White House and Democrats are making a last push to pass their so-far-unpassable national health care bills, the only thing that matters is whether they can get 217 votes for victory in the House and 50 votes (plus the vice-president's tie-breaker) for reconciliation in the Senate. Good policy doesn't matter. Bad policy doesn't matter. All that matters is votes. The White House and Democrats have lost sight of the essential insanity of the process -- desperately searching for corners to cut so they can pass an enormous re-ordering of the American economy that Americans don't want --...

Attorney General Eric Holder says nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department. But he does not reveal any names beyond the two officials whose work has already been publicly reported. And all the lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in. Holder's admission comes in the form of an answer to a question posed last November by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. Noting that one Obama appointee, Principal Deputy Solicitor General...

South Carolina Mulls 2012: Romney? Palin? Huck? By: BYRON YORK Chief Political Correspondent February 19, 2010 South Carolina is a lovely place, and its attractions bring thousands of tourists each year, but lately it's been getting a special class of visitor. Rick Santorum, the former Republican senator who harbors presidential ambitions, has been here in recent weeks. So has Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota Republican, whose name is sometimes whispered by the Great Mentioner. Mike Huckabee, former GOP presidential candidate and current talk show host, will be here soon. And so will Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor who many...

In a brief op-ed in USA Today, White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan charges that critics who question the Obama administration's decision to grant Miranda rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are "serv[ing] the goals of al Qaeda." "Too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points," Brennan writes. "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda."

Two weeks before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, the National Enquirer published a detailed story reporting that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had had an affair, and that the woman involved -- campaign videographer Rielle Hunter -- was pregnant, and that Edwards had arranged for an aide to falsely claim to be the father, and that Hunter and the aide and the aide's family were being taken care of financially by a wealthy Edwards supporter. It was, to say the least, explosive. At the time, Edwards was a serious contender in the Democratic presidential race, so when the story was published,...

Yes, those are the words of the president, last night at the Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington. After listing his administration's accomplishments and vowing that "our most urgent task is job creation," Obama pledged to keep fighting for a national health care system. "We knew this was hard," Obama said. And then he described a letter he received from a campaign worker who suffered from breast cancer and has since died: I got a letter -- I got a note today from one of my staff -- they forwarded it to me -- from a woman in St. Louis...

Who are the 300 terrorists held in U.S. prisons? By: Byron York Chief Political CorrespondentFebruary 5, 2010 "The Bush administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals on terrorism-related charges," writes Attorney General Eric Holder in a new letter to Republican critics in Congress. The letter is part of the Obama administration's aggressive defense of its decision to grant full American constitutional rights to al Qaeda soldier Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused Christmas Day bomber. That defense boils down to one sentence: Bush did it, too.Republicans on Capitol Hill object. They argue that one of the...

This is about the time Barack Obama becomes bored with his job. He's in his second year as president, and he's discovered that even with all the powers of office, he can't do everything he wants to do, like remake America. Doing stuff is hard. In the past, prosaic work has held little appeal for Obama, and it's prompted him to think about moving on. snip According to the book, the majority leader invited Obama to his office for a talk. "You're not going to go anyplace here," Reid told Obama. "I know that you don't like it, doing what...

The White House is not disputing a report that FBI agents questioned accused Northwest Airlines bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for just 50 minutes before deciding to grant him the right to remain silent and provide him with a court-appointed lawyer -- a decision that led Abdulmutallab to stop talking and provide no more information. The news came in an Associated Press reconstruction of Abdulmutallab's first hours in custody. The AP reported that Abdulmutallab "repeatedly made incriminating statements" to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents who originally took him into custody. Then Abdulmutallab made more statements to doctors who were treating...

All seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder seeking to learn who made the decision to treat Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused Christmas Day terrorist bomber, as a criminal suspect rather than an enemy combatant. On the same day he tried to detonate a bomb aboard a Northwest Airlines plane in Detroit, Abdulmutallab, who was trained by al Qaeda in Yemen, was informed of his Miranda right to remain silent and given a government-paid lawyer. He then refused to cooperate with U.S. authorities. The letter is signed by GOP Sens. Jeff...

Representatives of Massachusetts Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown say Democratic candidate Martha Coakley has until Tuesday to retract an incendiary campaign mailing or Brown will take legal action. At issue is a Coakley flier charging that Brown would have Massachusetts hospitals turn away all rape victims, a claim which a Brown spokeswoman called "a lie," "patently false," and "atrocious." "The campaign is calling on Martha Coakley and [Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman] John Walsh to retract the false statement," says Tarah Donoghue, a spokeswoman for the state Republican party who is speaking on behalf of the Brown campaign. "We're going to...

Here in Massachusetts, as well as in Washington, a growing sense of gloom is setting in among Democrats about the fortunes of Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley. "I have heard that in the last two days the bottom has fallen out of her poll numbers," says one well-connected Democratic strategist. In her own polling, Coakley is said to be around five points behind Republican Scott Brown. "If she's not six or eight ahead going into the election, all the intensity is on the other side in terms of turnout," the Democrat says. "So right now, she is destined to lose."

Here in Massachusetts, as well as in Washington, a growing sense of gloom is setting in among Democrats about the fortunes of Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley. "I have heard that in the last two days the bottom has fallen out of her poll numbers," says one well-connected Democratic strategist. In her own polling, Coakley is said to be around five points behind Republican Scott Brown. "If she's not six or eight ahead going into the election, all the intensity is on the other side in terms of turnout," the Democrat says. "So right now, she is destined to lose."...

Here in Massachusetts, as well as in Washington, a growing sense of gloom is setting in among Democrats about the fortunes of Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley. "I have heard that in the last two days the bottom has fallen out of her poll numbers," says one well-connected Democratic strategist. In her own polling, Coakley is said to be around five points behind Republican Scott Brown. "If she's not six or eight ahead going into the election, all the intensity is on the other side in terms of turnout," the Democrat says. "So right now, she is destined to lose."...

Here in Massachusetts, as well as in Washington, a growing sense of gloom is setting in among Democrats about the fortunes of Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley. "I have heard that in the last two days the bottom has fallen out of her poll numbers," says one well-connected Democratic strategist. In her own polling, Coakley is said to be around five points behind Republican Scott Brown. "If she's not six or eight ahead going into the election, all the intensity is on the other side in terms of turnout," the Democrat says. "So right now, she is destined to lose."...

By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent 01/15/10 7:10 AM EST Here in Massachusetts, as well as in Washington, a growing sense of gloom is setting in among Democrats about the fortunes of Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley. "I have heard that in the last two days the bottom has fallen out of her poll numbers," says one well-connected Democratic strategist. In her own polling, Coakley is said to be around five points behind Republican Scott Brown. "If she's not six or eight ahead going into the election, all the intensity is on the other side in terms of turnout," the...

For a while, it seemed the nomination and confirmation of Erroll Southers to head the Transportation Security Administration would be a routine affair. Southers' resume included time at the FBI, the California Office of Homeland Security, and the Los Angeles airport security force. Qualified nominee, quick confirmation -- right? Wrong. As the new year begins, the Southers nomination has become the latest Obama confirmation mess, raising questions not only about the nominee but the White House's selection process. And despite Democrats' daunting 60-vote majority, quick confirmation might not be in the cards. The reason: a growing feeling among Republican senators...