I mostly agree with Jon Walker’s take on the Iowa caucus results, and the eight-vote victory for Mitt Romney. It’s not clear Rick Santorum, to this point completely un-vetted by conservative or traditional media, will have the staying power or the resources to hang with Romney. I thought of half a dozen things off the [...]

Republicans, who never met a war they didn’t like, are responding to the announcement that the President would bring all military troops home from Iraq with a mixture of petulance and rage. Here’s a representative sample from the sine qua non of petulance, Lindsey Graham: “I respectfully disagree with President Obama. I feel all we [...]

I’ve actually been pleased to see the pushback against Michele Bachmann for intimating that the Gardasil vaccine for human papilloma virus causes mental retardation. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a strong statement condemning Bachmann’s claim as “false.” A professor in Minnesota offered $1,000 for information leading to the whereabouts of the supposed victim of [...]

Tim Pawlenty, the former two-term governor of Minnesota, has ended his campaign for President after a disappointing third-place finish at the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. Pawlenty wound up a distant third behind the winner, Michele Bachmann, and Ron Paul. Pawlenty’s candidacy was very much predicated on winning Iowa, a neighboring state to Minnesota. He [...]

Texas Governor and future Josh Brolin biography subject Rick Perry plans to run for President, and he will make the announcement on Saturday with a speech in South Carolina. He will announce the same day as the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, clearly intending to overshadow that annual event with his own. And oh by [...]

John Boehner’s plan for raising the debt limit, which would lead to “the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history” according to one budget analyst, cannot pass the House of Representatives because it’s not conservative enough, according to the chair of the Republican Study Committee, Jim Jordan (R-OH). [...]

I think it’s pretty clear that someone played a dirty trick on Michele Bachmann (probably Tim Pawlenty’s campaign) by planting a story in The Daily Caller about her frequent migraine headaches. The DC article hinted at salacious allegations of pill popping and headaches that leave Bachmann incapacitated for days. ABC News piled on with similar [...]

Brian Beutler’s advance of the debt limit talks shows how hollow the reading in the national media truly is. As I wrote earlier, there’s nothing in any of those stories to indicate that Republicans would agree to $1 trillion in revenue increases. Beutler doesn’t see it either. A GOP aide with knowledge of the discussions [...]

Markos Moulitsas predicted that Michele Bachmann would be the Republican nominee, and it’s hard to argue with his logic. The Presidential nomination is a different animal than state and local elections for Congress, but based on the track record of 2010, the Tea Party is the greatest force in Republican primaries, and they prefer someone [...]

Tonight at 8pm ET, seven Republican Presidential aspirants will debate at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, New Hampshire. CNN will carry the debate live. The seven participants include everyone who is currently announced as a candidate for President, as well as a couple others who have not formally announced. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, [...]

Some excerpts of House Speaker John Boehner’s address before the Economic Club of New York tonight in Manhattan reveal a policy idea that only makes sense if you don’t think about it for more than a second. It’s true that allowing America to default would be irresponsible. But it would be more irresponsible to raise [...]