Outside the Beltway

A sign at a local Exxon station seemingly blames high gasoline prices on Barack Obama.

Not surprisingly, television and reality don’t really coincide.

The biggest surprise of the Presidential race to date is the fact that Mitt Romney has lost the edge he once had on economic issues.

Mitt Romney’s “47 Percent” remarks seem to be hurting him.

My latest for The New Republic, “America’s Scandalous Drone War Goes Unmentioned in the Campaign,” is out.

Mitt Romney is a deeply flawed candidate, but that doesn’t mean the President is any better.

The Administration’s decision to stick with the meme that the Benghazi attack was about a movie becomes more puzzling.

Whether Mitt Romney wins or loses, the GOP needs to evolve or be doomed to minority party status.

Conservatives are suposed to be cheerleaders these days.

The President’s poll lead has shrunk, but there are still signs of trouble for Mitt Romney.

With Mitt Romney and Barack Obama basically saying the same things about foreign policy, it’s time to take a look at an alternative.

The Romney campaign infighting is becoming public.

The Romney campaign’s critique of the President’s foreign policy record is weak, and based on bad history.

For the fourth day, American and other embassies became the focus of mass protests in many Muslim nations.

Ronald Reagan was leading Jimmy Carter long before the two men met in Cleveland on October 28th, 1980.

Three new state polls show that Mitt Romney’s path to victory continues to narrow.

Mitt Romney still has problems with Southern whites that could pose problems for him in states like Virginia and North Carolina.

The GOP still hasn’t dealt with the legacy of George W. Bush.

Based on its recently passed platform, the Democratic Party has given up any pretense of putting civil liberties ahead of “national security.”

If the first round of post-convention polling is correct, President Obama may be pulling away from Mitt Romney.

The 2012 campaign is revealing once again that many conservatives have a view of President Obama not shared by the public at large.

When it comes to issues like medical marijuana, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are reading from the same playbook.

Another bad jobs report threatens to undermine whatever good will the President had coming off the Democratic National Convention.

A POLITICO analysis finds that “Obama and his top campaign aides have engaged far more frequently in character attacks and personal insults than the Romney campaign.”

Depending on what time you watched any of last night’s proceedings in Charlotte, you got a very different experience.

Obama heads into his convention in a good position, but with several potential pitfalls in his path.

The front page of Sunday’s NYT profiled Valerie Jarrett, the power behind the throne at the Obama White House.

In a radio interview last week, Paul Ryan claimed to have run a sub-3 hour marathon. He did no such thing.

Mitt Romney left one crucial piece out of his speech last night.

After three days of buildup to a “mystery speaker,” the closing night of the Republican convention featured a rambling performance by Clint Eastwood and an empty chair.

The GOP claims to be a party that favors limited government, but its foreign policy positions reveal this to be little more than a lie.

A legal setback for the Texas Voter ID law, but not much of a political setback for Voter ID laws in general.

Seniors face a variety of economy-based difficulties–but let’s criticizes the media!

Left with a choice between their hawkish foreign policy and their supposed commitment to fiscal conservatives, Republicans will, without fail, spend the nation into debt.

The political convention we know is a 19th Century relic. It’s time to modernize it and make it a lot shorter.

The Republican Party has apparently solved all of the nation’s real problems and decided it can waste time on nonsense.

Jon Huntsman calls for an end to “unforced errors in immigration policy.”

Tropical Storm Isaac won’t be as much of a danger to Tampa as feared, but it’s still having an impact. That’s all because of bad scheduling ideas.

One of these men is going to his party’s convention, the other is not. The reason why is rather obvious.

Two groups of former special operations soldiers are opposing Obama. Their military bonafides are not their most interesting credentials.

At some point, however, using the bad actions of the past to justify worse actions in the present has to stop.

A group of former special operations and intelligence officers are criticizing President Obama for “Dishonorable Disclosures.”

Mitt Romney and other top Republicans are not taking part in the latest round of the culture war debate over same-sex marriage, for good reason.