Outside the Beltway

The GOP field is now down to five.

American forces will be deployed to a combat area in southern Afghanistan, reversing current policy and calling the President’s promised withdrawal date into even further doubt.

Unless the polls are very wrong, it looks to be a good night for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Beyond that, there’s a lot that’s still up in the air.

With Bernie Sanders likely to win New Hampshire tonight, Hillary Clinton is reportedly looking to reorganize her campaign.

The real question about the GOP primary in New Hampshire will likely be about who comes in second and third place. But what if there are no clear winners for these positions?

Observations, questions, and some toastosity.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign and its supporters seem to be getting frustrated by the fact that younger women are seemingly more interested in her opponent than in her.

Marco Rubio was the man in the cross hairs in last night’s Republican debate.

It’s been suggested that subjecting women to a possible draft would make leaders less likely to go to war. Unfortunately, there’s no reason to believe this is true.

The Army Chief of Staff and Commandant of the Marine Corps told Congress that women should be required to register for the draft just like men are.

With the Vermont Senator holding a seemingly insurmountable lead in New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders and HIllary Clinton clashed last night in their most contentious debate yet.

Donald Trump continues to lead, while Marco Rubio surges, in the first polls out of New Hampshire since the Iowa Caucuses.

Ben Carson cut his campaign staff drastically just a month after raising more than $22 million. Another sign of a dead campaign.

Get ready for an expansion of the war against ISIS into Libya, because it’s probably not far away.

Reports of discrepancies in the counting of ballots in the Democratic Caucus in Iowa reveal yet again why the caucus process is outdated and ought to be abandoned.

Clinton is a virtual lock for the Democratic nomination. Rubio is the most plausible Republican winner in a messy field.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination.

Despite media narratives to the contrary, I do not see this as a truly competitive contest.

Six months ago, there were seventeen candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination. Now, the race is effectively down to three candidates.

Hillary Clinton eked out the narrowest of wins in Iowa, but now she’s headed to New Hampshire where Bernie Sanders holds a seemingly insurmountable lead in the polls.

Ted Cruz won, Marco Rubio surged into a stronger than expected third place, and Donald Trump was humbled just a little bit, but he was hardly a “loser.” The race for the GOP nomination has begun for real.

The final polls of the Iowa Caucus show that the outcome of tonight’s caucuses depend almost entirely on turnout at this point. Plus, a projection of who will win and the order of finish.

With just over a week to go, the New Hampshire primary is being dominated by a bombastic New York celebrity and a septuagenarian Vermont socialist.

Fundraising in the final three months of 2015 largely reflected the state of the race itself, but some candidates are better positioned going forward than others.

Some thoughts and questions as we finally hit the start of the process. (And the return of the Toast-o-Meter)

The final Des Moines Register poll before Caucus Night shows Donald Trump leading the GOP field, and Hillary Clinton with a narrow lead over Bernie Sanders, but much of the final outcome will depend on who shows up for the respective party caucuses.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, but come on.

More email headaches for the Clinton campaign, but it remains unclear if any wrongdoing occurred.

Thursday’s debate without Donald Trump drew fewer viewers than might have been expected, but it’s unclear if that’s because Donald Trump wasn’t there.

An anemic end to 2015 raises concerns about the health of the economy going forward.

Without Trump, the seventh Republican debate largely focused on Ted Cruz, who doesn’t seem to have done himself any favors. Donald Trump, meanwhile, will likely not pay any price at all for skipping the last pre-Iowa debate.

Last night’s Republican debate had a different feel with the absence of a certain bloviating narcissist.

Many analysts are making the argument that Marco Rubio is the GOP’s best hope to win the General Election in 2016. That may be true, but before he can get there he needs to find a way to win the GOP nomination.

The first debate after the Iowa Caucuses will have fewer participants than past debates, and there will be no undercard debate.

With mere days until voting starts, the possibility of Donald Trump running the table in the February primaries and caucuses, or nearly doing so, is more and more likely.