Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

It was 10 years ago, give or take a few days, that President Bush delivered a State of the Union address with a passage alluding to an “axis of evil” and asserted that the world’s leading rogue regimes — Iran, Iraq and North Korea, by name — and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda threatened world peace. David Frum, who had a hand in crafting the speech, writes that it has withstood...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

In South Carolina, predictions of Mitt Romney being favored to win in part because women would go for him over Newt did not materialize. And to be clear, we’re not talking the gap between how men versus women vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. We’re talking about the gap between who women prefer between the two candidates. This time around, in Florida, people seem much more certain that this...

No GOP slugfests for the next three weeks—-how will we get through the month? Sunday Gingrich gave us some venom to go, in the parking lot of a Florida mega-church with a Starbucks in the lobby, tagging Mitt as a “pro-abortion, pro-gun-control, pro-tax-increase moderate from Massachusetts” with “money from Wall Street” to spread lies about him, “as big an outrage as I’ve...

MIAMI — When the empire strikes back, it hits hard. The Republican establishment is deploying every weapon and every soldier — even Bob Dole — in an increasingly desperate attempt to pulverize the Newt Gingrich rebellion. Eventually, the shock-and-awe campaign may work. But then what? In the establishment’s best-case scenario, the party is left with Mitt Romney, a candidate whose...

In Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer argues that Congress is a route to riches that is exempt from the same sort of laws that govern mere mortals. He shares an anecdote about George Washington Plunkitt and “honest graft” that reflects the largess of Tammany Hall, New York’s infamous political machine. He argues that modern Congressional graft is more insidious. Schweizer is a research fellow...

Vote for Newt. Annoy a liberal. ~ SARAH PALIN When the sun comes up tomorrow in the Sunshine State, it is probable that Mitt Romney will have bounced back from his drubbing in South Carolina and defeated Newt Gingrich in the latest installment of the see-saw race for the Republican presidential nomination despite fellow serial adulterer Herman Cain’s last-minute endorsement of the former House speaker....

Has American society given up one of its foundational principles – that anyone who hunkers down and works hard can make it? Columnist Reymer Kluever of Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung explains President Obama’s State of the Union change in political tact by pointing out that since the 1970s, the United States has become one of the least fair industrialized countries in terms of tax policy...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: “Vote for Newt. Annoy a liberal. Vote Newt. Keep this vetting process going, keep the debate going.” And so it comes down to this. The vote — that little thing that so many Americans died for more than two centuries to make sure all Americans had — should be used to “annoy” someone with whom you disagree....

After being fired from NPR I could understand why Juan Williams would take a big bucks gig from FOX.  He had not done any serious journalism for a few years and he was not getting any younger.  The money probably looked good.  I must admit I lost a lot of respect for him never the less.  But as Ed Kilgore points out Williams is not playing by the FOX rules. When Newt Gingrich turned Juan...

Cardow, The Ottawa CitizenSurprise, surprise: it now turns out that former First Lady Nancy Reagan has let it be known that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is not using the quote Ronald Reagan made about supposedly passing the “torch” to Gingrich properly: Calling himself “the legitimate heir to the Reagan movement,” Newt Gingrich recently cited a 1995 speech by Nancy Reagan in which the former...

One tie, one win, one loss… and now, on the eve of the Florida primary, Willard Mitt Romney appears to be coasting toward his party’s nomination. At least that’s what the professional soothsayers are telling us, and I won’t dispute their wisdom even though the actual nominating convention is still seven long months away. With Newt Gingrich fading fast, nobody in the current G.O.P. field...

I think this is the conclusion. But this isn’t easy stuff, and the preceding parts (see below for index) were meant to set you up for the finale. And fireworks, we got! Strap in, pilgrims … Ivan Petrovich Pavlov Selling the New Nixon, part i (2011/12/01) Selling the New Nixon – A Clockwork Luntz (2011/12/05) Selling the New Nixon – What Ailes Us (2011/12/07) Selling the New Nixon – Pavlov...

Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoon This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

It’s been a rough few days for the three-year-old daughter of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who remains in a hospital with pneumonia. The longshot candidate described Bella Santorum’s improvement on Sunday as “a miraculous turnaround” and it may indeed be a God job. But the top flight medical care she is getting at a Washington, D.C. area hospital may have something...

A Gail Collins admirer has to tell her she has been taken in by Republican plagiarism of Michelle Obama. In her column, she writes about Gingrich’s marital history and conservative voters: “When all else fails, they have even been known to argue that everybody does it. ‘I’m just saying, they all have stinky feet,’ former Congressman J. C. Watts, a Baptist preacher, said while he was campaigning for...

As Florida Republicans get ready to cast their ballots in a bitterly contested Republican presidentail primary, they will likely get some food for thought from the latest USA Today, Gallup swing states poll which shows that if the election were held today, President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would be tied but that if former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was the nominee the GOP would...

WASHINGTON — One of Barack Obama’s great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health care law. His administration mishandled this decision not once but...

Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Reboot the Mittbot by Jason Stanford These debates have turned the Republican presidential primary into a reality show. If the 2008 Democratic primary was The Amazing Race that followed compelling characters coast to coast, then the 2012 GOP primary is The Biggest Loser. Pity those poor Republicans. Mitt Romney will probably still be the nominee, but the longer the primary drags on, the less people like him. The...

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

An interesting post on the current state of politics and the 2012 campaign from Roger Kimball.

Obama, 2012 SOTU, White House PhotoIn 2007, Google and YouTube broke into presidential politics by holding a “debate” in conjunction with CNN. At the time, Google had owned YouTube for less than a year. Flash forward almost five years. On Monday at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, Google+ (which is also less than a year old), is the stage for a presidential response to last week’s State of the Union address....

Of course two people — even if they were once on the same ticket for president and vice president of the United States — can, three years later, change some of their views and root for and endorse different candidates in the GOP presidential primaries. It happens to the best of us, and in the best of families, including husband and wife — just look at James Carville and Mary Matalin … Thus...