The common narrative of the Republican presidential primary has two groups of candidates jockeying for position in establishment and anti-establishment lanes.
Under these parameters, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz would stand to be the primary, if not sole, beneficiary from Donald Trump’s departure, whether it be from losses or boredom.…
Is Marco Rubio a conservative who wants to overthrow the GOP establishment or a potential standard-bearer for party pragmatists? He’s trying to be both, of course.
That strategy has been tried before – by Mitt Romney. And it worked, sort of. The question now, after Rubio’s debate performance on…
It must be more than a decade ago when I got a glimpse of the man often referred to as “George W. Bush’s smarter, younger brother.”
Charlie Cook and I were scheduled to speak to a group of Florida business leaders during lunch, but before we began our shtick,…
Carly Fiorina didn’t make Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire because she didn’t meet ABC’s polling threshold. But the network appeared to add insult to injury by not allowing her campaign to air television ads during the debate either. At least that’s what her campaign wanted you…
The presidential race has moved from hypothetical to reality as voters begin to caucus and cast their ballots in the early states. But while the primaries are starting to take shape, the outlook on the general election is still far from clear.
I got a call a couple weeks…
While the decision makers at news organizations from the Public Broadcasting System to CNN and the three major networks scramble to appeal to younger viewers, often by skewing younger with their hosts and commentators, Republican and Democratic voters in Iowa and nationally have embraced a remarkably “mature” handful of…
Have we entered a new period in American politics, when establishment candidates on the GOP side don’t win their party’s nomination? That is the question I posed in a June 4, 2015 column. It is still a relevant question.
While I answered that it is a mistake to assume…
Feel free to believe that there is a glimmer of hope for Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination. If that gives you comfort or plays to your own preferences, be my guest. I certainly wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.
But even if you believe…
In a previous election cycle, or maybe a previous decade, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush might, at this point, be coasting to their parties’ nominations. This cycle, however, both resemble tragic heroes — politicians who have worked hard to prepare themselves for the presidency yet face possible rejection by voters.
…The strangest election in our lifetime continues to get stranger.
Very rarely, one party decides to make a suicidal statement about its views and values. It happened in 1964 and again in 1972, for example. But this time, both parties are at least flirting with the idea of nominating…
