Outside the Beltway

A crack in the wall.

After stumbling in Michigan last week, Hillary Clinton picked up a string of solid victories last night that put her one step closer to winning the nomination.

The coming political battle over President Obama’s effort to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia will likely be unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Hilary Clinton crushed Bernie Sanders in Mississippi, but was surprised by Bernie Sanders in Michigan. Nonetheless she still remains in control of the race.

The Supreme Court seems as closely divided as ever on an issue that has divided the nation for forty years, but the implications of Justice Scalia’s death were quite apparent during oral argument in the Texas Abortion Law case.

A renewed internal GOP fight to stop Donald Trump seems to be doomed to fail.

As expected, Hillary Clinton won big last night while Bernie Sanders largely floundered, thus going further toward making Clinton’s victory inevitable.

It’s Super Tuesday, and both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are likely to go a long way toward securing the nominations of their respective parties.

The American people do not seem to support the Republican position on whether President Obama’s expected Supreme Court nominee should get proper consideration by the Senate.

Conservatives are sending a message to Senate Republicans about the vacancy on the Supreme Court, and it may require them to initiate a suicidal game plan.

The unity of the Republican Senate on the idea of no hearings or votes, if it ever really existed, appears to be cracking.

Republicans are putting much on the line in their refusal to consider any Supreme Court nomination from President Obama.

If last night’s debate is any indication, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is about to get much more aggressive in its critique of Bernie Sanders.

With almost no sign that he’ll be able to turn his campaign around, many of Jeb Bush’s top campaign donors are looking to jump ship to other candidates.

St. Louis will lose its second NFL team in 28 years as the Rams go home to LA.

In a new Gallup poll, Republicans say they want a “conservative” as their Presidential nominee, but they may regret what happens if they get the kind of hard-right conservative they seem to be thinking of.

The final spending bill for the 2016 Fiscal Year sailed through Congress today, marking the end of a very successful first two months in office for Speaker Paul Ryan

Marco Rubio has been getting a lot of love lately from both conservatives and so-called ‘establishment’ Republicans, but his seemingly meager ground game in early states is raising doubts about his campaign.

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.

The no-fly list is a flawed, arbitrary mess that has kept innocent people from flying for years. Using it to deny people rights recognized by the Constitution is, quite honestly, insane.

No, there really haven’t been 355 ‘mass shootings’ since January 1st. Not unless you’re relying on completely unreliable data.

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.

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.

To a large degree, the narrative you believe will govern the 2016 elections depend on which party you want to see win. But what’s the most likely outcome?

Even the people hired to advice Ben Carson on foreign policy seem to recognize that he is clueless on the subject, and has no apparent desire to educate himself.

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.

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.

A new poll shows that Democratic voters are less engaged in the 2016 campaign right now than Republicans are, but that probably doesn’t mean that much for next year.

Why Republicans nominate moderates for president and not other offices.

Paul Ryan’s admission that immigration reform will not happen as long as Barack Obama is President simply reflects the reality of immigration politics in Congress.

As expected, the Senate easily passed the two-year budget deal early this morning.

With only a handful of opposition, Paul Ryan was easily elected the 62nd Speaker of the House.

Yesterday, Paul Ryan spoke out against the procedure under which the new budget deal was negotiated. Today, he announced that he’ll vote for it anyway.

Paul Ryan is blasting the process that led to the new budget deal between the GOP and the White House, but one suspects he’s secretly quite pleased with the fact that it makes his job-to-be a lot easier.

One unqualified outsider with a history of saying outrageous things replaces another unqualified outsider with a history of saying outrageous things, at least according to yet another new poll.

Congress and the White House have reached a tentative deal on the budget and debt ceiling that promises to make Paul Ryan’s initial months as Speaker a lot easier.

Once the Republican frontrunner, Jeb Bush is now floundering and dealing with donors worried that they may be backing the wrong horse.

With the voting now seemingly a mere formality, the question becomes what kind of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will become.

After an eleven hour day on Capitol Hill, it was Hillary Clinton 1 House Benghazi Committee 0.

With the top conservative caucus in Congress acquiescing to his candidacy, Paul Ryan is largely certain to become the next Speaker of the House.

What will likely be the apex of the House Select Committee’s investigation of the Benghazi attack begins and ends today with the testimony of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Paul Ryan has never really wanted to be Speaker Of The House, but he’s take the job if House Republicans meet the conditions he’s set out.

With Congress set to come back from its recess, attention is once again turning to the race for Speaker and one Paul Ryan, Congressman from Wisconsin.

Paul Ryan has yet to say if he will run for Speaker of the House, but that hasn’t stopped the opposition on the hard right from forming already.

Paul Ryan is getting pressure from all sides to get into the race for Speaker Of The House.

Another political earthquake in Washington as Kevin McCarthy drops out of the race for Speaker, and the House GOP doesn’t seem to know which way to go.

Quietly, Florida Senator Marco Rubio has been moving close to the front f the race for the Republican Presidential nomination.