Columns, pieces and posts
There’s something Haley Barbour reminded me of called the Gate Rule. The former Mississippi governor said it’s the first thing you should think of when you think about immigration. People are either lined up at the gate trying to get out of a country, or lined up trying to get in. It says something about […]
It is a big victory for the White House. ObamaCare, including the insurance mandate, was upheld. What would have been a political disaster for President Obama has been averted. He has not been humiliated, and the centerpiece of his efforts the past 3½ years has not been rebuked by the Supreme Court. The ruling strikes […]
You know what Republicans on the ground think when they look at Mitt Romney? “Please don’t blow it.” They think President Obama can’t win but Mr. Romney can still lose. So they’re feeling burly but anxious, hopeful yet spooked. They see Mr. Obama as surrounded by bad indicators—bad polls, bad economic numbers, scandals. They see […]
What is happening with all these breaches of our national security? Why are intelligence professionals talking so much—divulging secret and sensitive information for all the world to see, and for our adversaries to contemplate? In the past few months we have read that the U.S. penetrated Al Qaeda in Yemen and foiled a terror plot; […]
What happened in Wisconsin signals a shift in political mood and assumption. Public employee unions were beaten back and defeated in a state with a long progressive tradition. The unions and their allies put everything they had into “one of their most aggressive grass-roots campaigns ever,” as the Washington Post’s Paul Whoriskey and Dan Balz […]
And so it begins. We have a Republican nominee in Mitt Romney and a Democratic nominee in Barack Obama. It is a marathon, not a sprint, but the pace is quickening. In five months we will have chosen a new president or doubled down on the current one. Superficially both men have some things in […]
It’s been a good week for Mitt Romney. The polls are up, he’s just off a two-day swing through Connecticut and New York, where he hauled in big donors and hard money, and he swept the GOP primaries in Kentucky and Arkansas. On Tuesday Texas will put him over the top and make him, formally […]
Let’s wade into an argument, and on what may well be the losing side. The most recent polls suggest Dick Lugar, the senior U.S. senator from Indiana, first elected in 1976, is on track to lose his primary on Tuesday. I hope he doesn’t for a number of reasons but one big one: the Senate […]
There is every reason to be deeply skeptical of President Obama’s prospects in November. Republicans feel an understandable anxiety about Mr. Obama’s coming campaign: It will be all slice and dice, divide and conquer, break the country into little pieces and pick up as many as you can. He’ll try to pick up college students […]
People in politics talk about the right track/wrong track numbers as an indicator of public mood. This week Gallup had a poll showing only 24% of Americans feel we’re on the right track as a nation. That’s a historic low. Political professionals tend, understandably, to think it’s all about the economy—unemployment, foreclosures, we’re going in […]