Outside the Beltway

A big setback for Mississippi’s erstwhile Tea Party candidate for Senate.

Congressional elections have become “nationalized” to a far greater extent than they have ever been.

Republicans are starting to talk about immigration reform, but do they really mean it?

Republicans already seem to be blaming Hurricane Sandy in the event Mitt Romney loses.

Mitt Romney’s intransigence over releasing more tax returns is politically stupid.

A Mississippi judge has stayed a slew of pardons issued by Haley Barbour on his way out the door.

Is George Bush to blame for a weak Republican field almost four years after he left office? Not entirely.

Barring a disaster, Mitt Romney is going to win the New Hampshire Primary, but who comes in second is still up in the air.

Mississippi voters easily defeated an amendment to the state constitution that declared life begins at conception.

Are America’s political parties become irrelevant?

The story of Perry’s hunting lodge probably doesn’t tell us that much about Perry, but it is still telling.

Some pundits on the right can’t seem to quit Chris Christie.

He’s not in the race (yet), but Rick Perry is already a top-tier 2012 candidate.

Wives have played key roles in several GOP nomination trajectories this year. Newt Gingrich appears to be the latest example.

With the 2012 GOP field looking very underwhelming, GOP insiders are looking toward Indianapolis for a savior.

Can one effectively run for the presidency if one’s spouse doesn’t want to be in the spotlight?

Why are many of the top Republicans are sitting out the race despite a seemingly vulnerable incumbent?

Charles Krauthammer called Donald Trump the “Al Sharpton” of the GOP presidential primary contest

For the first time, Donald Trump is leading a poll for the GOP 2012 nomination. That’s bad news for the GOP.

The race for the 2012 Republican nomination is missing the one thing that GOP nomination battles have almost always had, a frontrunner.

With minor exceptions, all of the potential candidates for the GOP nomination in 2012 seem to have accepted the idea that defense spending, and the Bush-era interventionist foreign policy, are off the table when it comes time to talk spending cuts.

All of the plausible Republican contenders for 2012 have significant downsides.

Mitt Romney starts his 2012 run as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. But, in reinventing himself yet again, the “authenticity” issue that troubled many of us in 2008 looms again.

Scott Walker’s attempt to crush the Wisconsin public employee unions may be the first wave in a fight to elect Republican governors in 2012.

Haley Barbour is making all the moves toward a 2012 Presidential run, but his stand on immigration issues could pose a problem in the Republican primaries.

Polls matching President Obama against potential Republican contenders are entertaining but not informative.

Ron Paul has won the CPAC straw poll for a second straight year. But YAF has voted him off its board over his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It’s straw poll season already. First up, New Hampshire where things turned out about how you’d expect them to considering Mitt Romney lives there now.

Those who argue that tariff increases, and not slavery, were the key reason for secession have some basic problems with the historical sequence.

What the Haley Barbour situation illustrates is that we, as a country, have not fully accepted or dealt with our own past.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who may end up running for President in 2012, has reopened wounds that finally seemed like they were closed.

Are Marco Rubio, Haley Barbour, and Mike Huckabee the favorites to win the White House?