Outside the Beltway

Previewing the fifth Republican debate, and the last Republican debate of 2015.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul got a break today when CNN included him in the prime time debate on Tuesday even though he fell short of meeting the criteria.

Ted Cruz surges to a lead in the latest Iowa poll, setting up a seemingly inevitable showdown between the Texas Senator and Donald Trump.

Rand Paul is likely to miss the main stage for next Tuesday’s debate, so his campaign is already calling on CNN to change the rules.

Donald Trump continues to have a commanding lead in the Granite State, but it’s unclear whether he can translate poll support into votes when the primary rolls around.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have mostly avoided attacking each other, but if the polls are any indication that detente may be about to come to an end in the Hawkeye State.

Donald Trump’s plan to bar all Muslim immigration to the United States is being widely condemned by his fellow Republicans and others, but the proposal probably won’t hurt him politically in a Republican Party that is deeply bigoted against Muslims in general.

Yesterday, cable news networks, and most especially MSNBC, showed their profession at its most pathetic.

Donald Trump just keeps leading in the polls, and Republicans keep arguing that it can’t last.

The probability that the shootings in San Bernardino were at least inspired by ISIS and/or other Jihadist terror networks is increasing.

Donald Trump’s speech yesterday at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition was as bizarre as anything else we’ve seen from him.

Multiple victims, and possibly multiple shooters, reported in San Bernardino, California.

The latest national poll of the Republican race shows Trump continuing to lead, Ben Carson fading, and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio rising while the rest of the field is stagnant or sinking.

We still don’t know very much about Robert Dear, the man who shot and killed three people at the site of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, but that hasn’t stopped the usual suspects from politicizing the case.

A gunman is holed up in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs after shooting multiple people, but it’s unclear what if any motive may be involved in the shooting.

France’s President has spent the week trying to forge and agreement on an anti-ISIS policy, but the two nations that matter the most also disagree the most.

Tensions between Russia and Turkey remain high in the wake of yesterday’s incident, but there are some signs that things are starting to cool down.

A former staffer for the House Select Committee investigation the attack in Benghazi is suing the Committee for improper employment practices, and Chairman Trey Gowdy for defamation.

Disturbing reports over the weekend that American leaders may not be getting the kind of unbiased intelligence analysis about ISIS that they need to make decisions.

Even as the focus of the Presidential race shifts to national security, Donald Trump continues to lead the race.

Another European capital is on edge over fears of a terror attack.

Different criteria than in the past, but there may not be much of a change in the participants.

An apparent ongoing terrorist attack in Central Africa.

Republicans insist that uttering the words “Radical Islamic Terrorism” is somehow important in the fight against ISIS and other terror networks, but it is entirely unclear what doing so would accomplish.

In the wake of the attacks in Paris, there’s a strong impulse to do “something,” but that doesn’t mean we should do something utterly foolish. And a no-fly zone would be utterly foolish.

Hillary Clinton’s attempt to explain her relationship with Wall Street and banking interests makes it sound like she’s channeling Rudy Giuliani.

The news that at least some of the men who were involved in the terrorist attacks in Paris were among the refugees who have arrived in Europe since the summer is likely to complicate an already complicated situation.

This was not only predictable but predicted.

A Saturday night debate wasn’t likely to get much attention to begin with. A Saturday night debate in the wake of a major terrorist attack, and a major football game for Iowa’s premier college football team, likely got even less attention. That’s probably good news for Hillary Clinton, and bad news for her two remaining rivals.

France’s President blames ISIS, vows response, as death toll from Paris terror attacks stands at at least 127.

Reports of at least up to sixty dead, a hostage situation, and attacks at multiple locations in Paris.

Ratings slipped for last night’s debate, but the numbers were still very respectable.

Last night’s debate in Wisconsin was arguably the most substantive we’ve seen so far between the Republican candidates, and one that displayed quite starkly the policy differences between them.

Hillary’s leading potential Republican candidates, but so is Bernie! Rand Paul does better against Hillary than other Republicans! Those are the headlines you get from head-to-head match-up polls, but it’s all largely meaningless.

Ben Carson and his supporters would have you believe that he is being subjected to unprecedented and unfair scrutiny. That assertion is completely false.

America’s much touted international coalition against ISIS is, essentially a Coalition In Name Only.

Ben Carson’s campaign now admits that he fabricated a key portion of his biography.

American intelligence officials are saying that a Russian passenger jet that went down over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula was most likely brought down by a bomb.

The effort to forge some kind of consensus independent of the RNC among the Republican candidates for President regarding debates appears to have failed. To the surprise of nobody who has been paying attention.

Paul Ryan’s admission that immigration reform will not happen as long as Barack Obama is President simply reflects the reality of immigration politics in Congress.

Several Republican candidates for President want to “fix” the debates, but they wouldn’t like the one thing that would definitely fix them.

While it did draw 14 million viewers, last night’s CNBC debate had the smallest audience of any Presidential debate so far. That was probably a good thing for CNBC considering how bad the debate was.

Marco Rubio is taking heat for missing a lot of Senate votes since he started running for President, but he’s not really any worse than other legislators who have run for President.

So close, and yet so very, very, far.

After an eleven hour day on Capitol Hill, it was Hillary Clinton 1 House Benghazi Committee 0.

As the House Select Benghazi Committee continues to question Hillary Clinton, a new poll finds that the vast majority of Americans view its work as political rather than part of an objective investigation.

Two new polls show that political efforts to enact more stringent gun control at the national level are not likely to succeed.