Outside the Beltway

If you’re looking for a reason why the GOP is likely to do very well tomorrow, voter response to the “right track/wrong track” question is a very good guide.

Pundits and partisans constantly overreact to the momentary mood expressed in a single election. The Republicans have already rebounded from 2008. The Democrats will recover from 2010.

Unnamed Republican leaders are lined up to ensure that anybody but the former VP nominee is the party’s 2012 standard bearer.

Another poll confirms that Sarah Palin continues to be viewed negatively by the majority of American voters, but that doesn’t seem to matter to supporters who seem have a degree of adulation usually reserved for celebrities than serious politicians.

Yes, I think that Palin is running in 2012.

Karl Rove unloaded what may be the beginning of the GOP Establishment’s effort to cut a Palin Presidential bid off at the knees.

Republicans are promising two years of gridlock and obstructionism if they take control of Congress, but is that really what the people who are likely to vote for them next week really want?

Mike Huckabee is the latest Republican to tack up the banner against the so-called “elites.”

Justice Alito said recently he won’t be attending the next State of the Union address. Sounds like a good idea to me.

A new law allows Presidential candidates to set up transition offices while they’re still running for election, perhaps providing an opportunity for shortening the 2 1/2 month interregnum between Election Day and Inauguration Day.

If Sarah Palin isn’t running for President, why is she comparing herself to Ronald Reagan ?

Thomas Friedman engages in some early speculation about a serious third party presidential run. As usual, such speculation ignores the basic structures of American politics.

A new Gallup poll shows President Obama beating Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical 2012 Democratic nomination fight. Nobody should be surprised by that.

The Obama White House is asserting that the President has the authority to issue assassination orders against American citizens, and that no Court has the authority to review his decision. If that doesn’t worry you, it should.

More than ever before in the past, Fox News Channel will be the exclusive medium through which many of the candidates for the 2012 Republican nomination communicate with the public. And that’s a problem.

President Obama’s approval is at its lowest point to date, matching President Clinton’s in 1994. It’s 14 points higher than his predecessor’s.

Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the iconic HOPE poster, is disappointed with President Obama.

According to a new book from Bob Woorward, American policy in Afghanistan is the result of a decision making process that can only be described as chaotic at best.

One Republican analyst thinks that President Obama could learn a few leadership lessons from Vito and Michael Corleone. In order to do that, though, the President would need to stop acting like the weakest of the Corleone brothers.

For the moment, the Tea Party movement is helping pull the GOP out of a slump that seemed like it would continue for a long time. Will it last, or will the movement end up doing for Republicans what the left has done for Democrats ?

This handshake on August 14, 1980 in Madison Square Garden put an end to the public contest between President Carter and Senator Kennedy, but now the former President has decided it’s time to reopen old wounds.

Robert Gates has been a reluctant Secretary of Defense but his impact at the Pentagon has been tremendous.

Democrats are sending some of their candidates to the Death Panels.

The Obama’s are vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard again this year so, of course, it’s time for people to say stupid things about Presidential leisure activities again.

America’s mission in Iraq is shifting from an active combat role to a smaller security presence. But the war that gripped our attention for years is now off the radar screen.

Sarah Palin’s decision to jump to the defense of “Doctor” Laura Schlessinger has many Republicans confused as to what her plans for the future are.

If the President looks worried, he has a pretty good reason.

As many American soldiers have died in Afghanistan under Obama as under Bush.

Barack Obama has significantly widened his predecessor’s global war on terrorism, even if he’s no longer calling it that.

Jon Stewart and “Senior Black Correspondent” Larry Wilmore eviscerate Maxine Waters’ claims that she and other corrupt members of the Congressional Black Caucus are being investigated for ethics charges because she’s black.

Colombia has sworn in a new president. And so begins the Santos era as the Uribe era heads for the history books.

U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker today declared California’s Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional, thus opening the latest front in the gay marriage wars.

The American military is on a mission in Afghanistan that the public is increasingly starting to question.

In the first entry in this series we looked at a basic question of democratic theory. In this one, we look at whether the EC ever worked as the Framers intended.

Democrats have not figured out how to use President Obama during the upcoming Mid-Term campaign, if at all.

The Electoral College is the worst way to elect a President, except for all the others.

Massachusetts will become the latest state to join the National Popular Vote movement, a compact wherein states throw their Electoral College votes to the nationwide winner once enough states agree to ensure that outcome.

Barack Obama was a big hit on college campuses in 2008. Two years later, those same young voters seem to be having second thoughts.

It would appear that the only people who have confidence in the United States Congress are the people who work there.

Among the other lessons it teaches us, the Shirley Sherrod incident shows that the Obama Administration is seemingly becoming weaker by the day.

Will a debate over foreign policy tear apart the GOP ? Probably not.

Reports of Barack Obama’s political death are greatly exaggerated and wildly premature.

Should outrageous people like Pamela Gellar be invited to spread their message on national television?

The President likely has some very bad poll numbers on his mind this morning.