Outside the Beltway

A pair of new national polls shows a new trend in the GOP race heading into the final debate of 2015.

It’s now the most hated man in the Senate’s turn in the sun. Can it last?

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.

The quadrennial fantasy of a brokered convention, which American politics has not seen since 1952, is rearing its head again, and it’s no more likely now than it was when we talked about this four years ago.

Notwithstanding the hopes of many Republicans, Donald Trump continues to be the person to beat in the race for the party’s 2016 Presidential nomination.

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.

Donald J. Trump continues to turn the dial higher and higher on his fascist demagoguery.

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

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

A leaked memo from a top Republican adviser tries to tell vulnerable Senate candidates how to deal with the possibility that they’ll be stuck with Trump on the top of the ticket.

For good reason, many Republicans are worried about the prospect that Donald Trump could end up winning the Republican nominee, but they don’t seem to have a plan to stop him.

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.

Marco Rubio is telling conservative Christians in Iowa and elsewhere what they want to hear on same-sex marriage. It just happens to be complete and utter nonsense.

Given his rhetoric, it’s fairly clear that Donald Trump is drawing from a poisonous political well. So there’s no point in failing to acknowledge reality.

Chris Christie has gotten the endorsement of the biggest newspaper in New Hampshire, but it’s not clear that this will have any impact on the race.

Polls are quite useful in the right circumstances, but knowledge, complexity, and timing all have to be taken into account in determining what they are telling us.

The GOP “establishment” isn’t planning to take on Donald Trump directly and instead relying on Republican primary voters to come to their senses. They may be waiting for something that will never happen.

Another poll shows Ted Cruz rising and Ben Carson falls in the Hawkeye State. The only question is who attacks who first, Donald Trump or Ted Cruz?

Nate Silver reminds us all that, even when it comes to Iowa and New Hampshire, it’s much earlier than we think, and that voters are still likely to change their minds.

Two months after seemingly promising to remain loyal to the Republican Party, Donald Trump is again refusing to rule out an independent run for the White House next year.

In the news from the campaign trail and in the polls, there are clear signs that Ben Carson’s days as a top contender in the GOP Presidential race are coming to an end.

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

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

Barring some event that would essentially be historically unprecedented, Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for President in 2016.

Seemingly disproving yet another round of predictions of his imminent demise, Donald Trump continues to dominate the race for the Republican nomination.

Syrian refugees have quickly become political footballs in the United States in the wake of the Paris attacks, and it’s become an exceedingly shameful display of pandering and fearmongering by a group of largely Republican politicians.

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.

Donald Trump’s latest tirade has led to another round of speculation as to whether or not he’s ‘gone too far’ and reached the beginning of the end of his campaign. Don’t count on it.

A new poll provides further evidence that Hillary Clinton’s path to the Democratic nomination looks to be clear.

Increasingly concerned by the rise of Donald Trump and Ben Carson and the failure of any establishment candidates to click with voters, some top Republicans are reportedly turning their lonely eyes to Mitt.

A new poll shows that a near majority of Republicans agree with even some of Donald Trump’s most controversial statements on immigration.

Donald Trump likes to tell people that he’ll never be beholden to special interests because he’s self-funding his campaign. So far, though, that doesn’t really seem to be true.

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

The Supreme Court is now considering a case that deals with the problem of overly broad civil asset forfeiture laws and a Defendant’s right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment.

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.

Meet Ted Cruz: Religious Bigot

Candidates who have been excluded from tomorrow’s Fox Business Network are complaining, but their complaints ignore the fact that polling is the best objective criteria we have to determine debate eligibility.

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

As Ben Carson rises in the polls, it’s worth noting his many examples of having what can only be called a very odd relationship with truth and the basic facts of history.

Fluctuations continue, but the Republican Presidential field appears to be sorting itself out as we near the beginning of a new phase of the campaign.

Republicans have apparently gone insane.