Outside the Beltway

Wall Street says raise the debt ceiling. The Tea Party says no. What will the GOP do?

Newt Gingrich says the coming presidential election will be the most important since the Civil War.

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

For the first time, a majority of Republicans support creation of a third political party. Does it really mean anything?

In a column about American Exceptionalism, a newspaper columnist makes a bizarre historical analogy.

Last night’s Presidential Debate in South Carolina was interesting, but, in the end, not very important.

The Pew Center is out with a new political typology.

A study shows that most national columnists and talking heads are about as accurate as a coin flip.

Will the successful action against Osama bin Laden cause people on the right to stop believing crazy things about the President? Don’t count on it.

An aide’s compliment about the president “leading from behind” has generated controversy.

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

If you look at the Tea Party’s impact on state politics, you see it really isn’t much different from the Religious Right.

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

We’re approaching the point where those job approval numbers start to matter, and President Obama’s are heading down again.

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

Whenever I despair at the current state of the Republican Party, I remind myself that things aren’t much better across the aisle.

A government shutdown is not just a hypothetical in a debating contest. It will affect real people.

Can a candidate appealing enough to the base to win the Republican nomination beat Obama?

Rather than fighting over the remnants of the FY 2011 budget, the GOP should make a deal and get ready for the bigger, and more important, battle ahead.

The next week promises to be a battle between John Boehner and the Tea Party over whether or not compromise is a good idea.

Is asking to see a professor’s e-mails a legitimate open records request or is it an attempt at silencing a critic?

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.

Republicans are starting to sour on Sarah Palin, meaning that they’re finally starting to catch up to the rest of the country.

Glenn Beck’s own website discovers some interesting, and ethically disturbing, editing in the latest round of video’s from “ACORN Pimp”James O’Keefe.

It’s institutions of government – not its size – that matter when it comes to how good a job the government does.

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.

Opposition to marriage equality is no longer the wedge issue it used to be.

The drive to cut taxes is at the heart of the budget mess.