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 [...]

The Presidential debate yesterday was missing fully half of the competitors who will actually challenge for President, according to Thomas Beaumont’s analysis. The entry of Rick Perry into the race on Saturday will probably lead to a showdown between Perry and Romney. Perhaps Michele Bachmann can keep pace with those two, but it’s hard to [...]

The dirty tricksters are out in Wisconsin. Next Tuesday, Wisconsinites will go to the polls in the beginning stages of the recall elections for the state Senate. These will be primary elections in six districts. The incumbent Republicans are running unopposed. But the Democratic challengers received a primary challenge of their own from fake candidates, [...]

We know that Republicans are, to this point, looking a gift horse in the mouth by not yet taking an extremely favorable deal on the debt limit that would transform government and usher in radical austerity in exchange for a few measly closures of tax loopholes. It could be that they’re simply being tough negotiators [...]

The Lacrosse Tribune found some unreleased audio from county Republicans showing that they discussed running “spoiler candidates” in the upcoming recall elections. La Crosse County Republicans discussed running a spoiler candidate against Democrat Jennifer Shilling in an effort to delay the recall election of Sen. Dan Kapanke, according to a secret recording of the party’s [...]

Last year, despite a lot of fanfare about Democrats who dissented from the health care vote facing a primary challenge, very few actually received such a challenge, and nobody was defeated. Many Blue Dogs who voted against the health care law ended up losing in November to Republicans, which showed how useless it was to [...]

Dale Schultz, the Republican State Senator who has been on the fence on the budget repair bill that will strip away public employee collective bargaining rights, will vote against the bill, according to protest organizer leadership. According to the Capitol City Leadership Committee, Schultz told State Sen. Lena Taylor (D) that he’s a no on [...]

One of the great losses in the US Senate, to me the greatest loss, is of Sen. Russ Feingold. He was a lonely voice on civil liberties, on a foreign policy not based solely on adventuresome wars, on the Constitution, on a whole host of important issues. Basically, that voice no longer exists in the [...]

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka took issue with the suggestion that the labor movement failed in punishing Democrats who voted against the health care law through primary challenges in 2010. Speaking about the One Nation Coming Together rally scheduled for Washington DC and 300 satellite sites around the country on October 2, Trumka disputed the notion [...]

I hate to disrupt the “GOP goes extreme” narrative the media has latched onto (hampered somewhat by the fact that Christine O’Donnell was the nominee for US Senate for Delaware, um, two years ago), but that wasn’t the only story coming out of last night’s end to the primary schedule. In fact, we saw a [...]

There’s been precious little polling of the Republican primary in Delaware, because longtime Rep. Mike Castle was thought to have no problem in his race against perennial candidate Christine O’Donnell. Castle has represented Delaware as Governor and Congressman for 30 years, and given that he represents the best (maybe only) chance for Delaware to pick [...]