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Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska will be in Southwest Florida on Thursday for a fundraising event with Florida Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, who is running in the Republican primary to replace former U.S. Rep. Trey Radel, R-Fla., in Congress. “Excited to announce that Sarah Palin is coming to Southwest Florida this week to join me on the campaign trail,” Benacquisto announced on Monday. But tea party leaders in the district backing Curt Clawson in the primary are urging Palin to reconsider her endorsement. Jack Tymann of the Naples Tea Party, Kathy Jones of the Lee County...

With Chris Christie in deep trouble, Republican poobahs are reportedly looking to Jeb Bush to save their party in 2016. The former two-term governor of Florida speaks fluent Spanish, is a convert to Catholicism, and has high name recognition. Jeb could raise millions of dollars over night by just saying “yes” to running. Despite all this, there are strong reasons Republicans should say no to him. 1. His last name is poison. Let’s face it, if Jeb Bush had the last name of Something Else he would have already run for president in 2008 or 2012. According to a recent...

Jeb Bush is thinking about running for president in 2016. Like, really thinking about it. He's the headliner at an event hosted by mega donor Sheldon Adelson in Las Vegas on Thursday. He was actively involved in Rep. David Jolly's special election victory in Florida earlier this month. And he is breaking with his party's orthodoxy on Common Core. So, as Jeb mulls a bid whose advice does he seek? Who does he trust to give him an unvarnished view of what the race might look like? Well, everyone even close to Jeb insists that he largely keeps his own...

Editor's note: Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" and "Governing America." (CNN) -- ...The weaknesses of both men—Cruz in terms of his style and Paul in terms of his rhetoric—point out how desperate the GOP is to find someone who can build a broad coalition, something that is essential for a presidential victory, particularly when Republicans will likely be facing a formidable candidate. The problems of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have been a huge blow to the party, and there are not many alternatives at...

My good friend is running for the 4th Congressional District in the state of Florida. Ryman Shoaf is a Tea Party conservative who wants to restore our country, and North Florida in particular, to a Constitutional- following Republic. The incumbent is Ander Crenshaw, who has held the seat for many years and has over time lost his conservative creds and has become a RINO. His Heritage Foundation rating for following the Constitution is 45% (overall Republican average is 65% - pathetic, I know, and a topic for another day). Ryman has nearly 1000 petitions signed and needs another 3000 by...

Who’s likely to do well in New Hampshire’s 2016 first-in-the-nation presidential primary? It’s a preposterous question, here in 2014, but what the heck? We asked six experts to weigh in on some of the biggest political players. Our analysts are Wayne Lesperance, political science professor at New England College; Phil Boynton, president of the University of New Hampshire College Republicans; Peter Burling, Democratic national committeeman; Dante Scala, professor of political science at UNH; Jess Steever, vice president of the Plymouth State University Democrats; and Brandon Lemay, public relations officer for the PSU Democrats. Today, our panelists consider the Republicans. Tomorrow,...

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough continues to indicate that he is taking the prospect of running for president in 2016 seriously by giving speeches in more early primary states. Just last week, Scarborough made the trek from New York City to Greenville, South Carolina to speak at the South Carolina Automotive Council’s yearly summit. A schedule for the event indicates that Scarborough addressed attendees during a morning speech at the Hyatt Hotel in Greenville on Feb. 20. Scarborough’s visit to South Carolina, the location of the “First in the South” primary, follows The Daily Caller’s report earlier this month that it’s widely...

Abandoning Michigan in the heat of the election was seen by major observers as presidential candidate John McCain effectively throwing in the towel.It also marked a very severe break with the strategists of McCain team ("McCain's tactically understandable but strategically stupid decision to visibly abandon Michigan was made without Palin.") by his running mate Governor Sarah Palin who, very publicly, decried the move. "Sarah Palin questioned Republican presidential candidate John McCain's decision to abandon efforts to win Michigan, a campaign move she said she learned about Friday morning when she read it in the newspapers. In an interview with Fox...

George P. Bush has more than $2.8 million to spend on his campaign for Texas Land Commissioner. His two main challengers, a Republican and a Democrat, have a combined total of around $20,000. Democrat John Cook, former Mayor of El Paso, reports raising about $13,000 since June. Republican David Watts's campaign finance filing this week indicates fundraising in the second half of 2013 of about $7,000. Dr. Brian Smith is a professor of political science at St. Edward’s University in Austin. He says what the Bush campaign is doing is a tried and true intimidation tactic. “He’s over-raising money to...

The fourth-generation heir to the Bush political dynasty, groomed for office since his childhood, is coming of age and building a political network. His great-grandfather was a senator, his grandfather and uncle presidents, his father governor of Florida. Now a new George Bush is contemplating going into the family business. George Prescott Garnica Bush, known to friends as "P," is not just a chip off the old preppy block. The 36-year-old son of Jeb Bush and nephew of W. is Hispanic -- his mother, Columba, is from Mexico -- with brown skin, thick black hair, and a toothy, gleaming smile....

I was planning to write about this before Ed beat me to the punch so let me ask my two questions belatedly. One: Would this be a bona fide run to try to win the nomination or a niche candidacy a la John Bolton or Peter King? King and/or Bolton won’t run because they think they can win but because they want someone to answer Rand Paul on foreign policy and don’t trust any of the big-name candidates to do it effectively. Scarborough may feel the same way about Ted Cruz’s brand of tea-party conservatism. He won’t do any better...

Bill Kristol played the role of mischief maker on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday. Prompted by host Joe Scarborough, Kristol tallied off the nine Republicans he thinks will be finalists for the 2016 Republican nomination — and one of the nine was Scarborough himself. “Why would you put Joe on that list?” show co-host Mika Brzezinski asked. “He’s a former elected official. He’s got a real following out there. He’ll fill the Jon Huntsman lane,” Kristol said with a wry smile, eliciting cackles from Scarborough. After his failed 2016 presidential run, Huntsman has become a punchline for many conservatives. “OK, I’ll...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Jeb Bush is considering a run for the White House — no matter what his mother thinks. With two recent national polls showing Jeb among the top potential 2016 Republican presidential contenders, a local Florida reporter asked the former Sunshine State governor Wednesday about a potential run. “I’m considering — I’m going to think about it later,” he said. “So I don’t wake up each day saying, ‘oh, what am I going to do today to make this decision. I’m deferring the decision to the right time, which is later this year.” The son and brother of former presidents continued...

In early 2009, President Obama arrived in Florida to tout his stimulus plan. But it was a hug that stole the show.Then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist's embrace of the president became a kiss of death for his Senate bid. Nearly five years later, Crist is hugging Obama again — in a different way. Now a Democrat running for his old job, Crist has assembled a campaign roster chock full of former Obama hands. His apparent wager: 1) Some of Obama's success in the the perennial swing state (he won it twice) can be replicated this fall and 2) Advertising a team...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Former first lady Barbara Bush reiterates in a new interview that presidents don’t have to be members of political dynasties. "If we can't find more than two or three families to run for office, that's silly, because there are great governors and great eligible people to run," Bush says in an interview that will air Monday on C-SPAN. "And I think that the Kennedys, Clintons, Bushes — there are just more families than that. And I'm not arrogant enough to think that we alone are raising" presidential candidates. Her son Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, is considered a potential...

A new Quinnipiac poll of Florida finds a majority of voters in the state view President Obama as untrustworthy. Just 44% believe Obama is honest. This view is a major factor in the collapse of Obama's approval rating in the state, where just 40% of voters approve of the job he is doing. This poll drop isn't just confined to Obama, however. The poll found a significant trend towards Republicans and steep drops in approval ratings for Democrats up and down the ballot. Former Gov. Charlie Crist, who is seeking the Democrat nomination for Governor next year, saw his favorable...

Charlie Crist could be playing for high stakes beyond Tallahassee come 2014 as he could end up on Hillary Clinton’s short list in 2016. Back when he was a Republican, Crist looked to play at the national level. Long before he was governor, Crist was running for the U.S. Senate against Bob Graham. Instead of running for a second term as governor, which would have been a slam dunk, Crist once again looked to move to the Senate. Back in 2008, after helping deliver the Florida primary to John McCain, Crist looked to join the Republican ticket as his running...

With his new book The Right Path to promote, there was Joe Scarborough acting as guest co-host on The View Tuesday morning. And the MSNBC host had plenty to say about the current state of his Republican Party, including the belief that the GOP is “too obsessed” with “hating on” President Barack Obama. Scarborough began by laying out the premise of his book, in which he says the GOP needs a new Ronald Reagan-esque figure to lead the party into the future. He said the real problem is that “we’ve been conducting ideological witch hunts in our party. If...

Florida Senator Marco Rubio has endorsed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over his Tea Party primary challenger: Washington (CNN) - One-time tea party favorite Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said Sunday he supports Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s bid for re-election in 2014. McConnell is facing a primary challenge in his home state of Kentucky from businessman Matt Bevin, who was endorsed by the influential Senate Conservatives Fund on Friday. “Matt Bevin is a true conservative who will fight to stop the massive spending, bailouts, and debt that are destroying our country. He is not afraid to stand up to the...

The trouble started the night Jeff, one of the guys I drink and talk about God with, announced that he’d been summoned to court for the Zimmerman trial jury pool. We’d kept politics out of our Wednesday night meetings, which are held on my back porch, the six of us seated at an old dining room table propped next to my broken hot tub (Florida short-sale homes come standard with broken hot tubs). Instead of Bible Study, we call it our Tavern Ministry, and while we were often drunk halfway through, a churchlike decorum had always held sway. Once the...