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Wisconsin – What’s it like to be abandoned by the Republican party and the Washington establishment? Ask Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin senator whose reelection race was written off early on by political poohbahs as a lost cause. His opponent is the former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold, who was one of the most surprising Democratic casualties of the 2010 tea-party wave, and one of the earliest to… → Read More
Donald Trump’s statement that he could soften his position on deportation of illegal immigrants has lost him little support among immigration hawks. → Read More
Here's the inside story of how David French almost became the #NeverTrump movement's 2016 presidential candidate. → Read More
Senator Ted Cruz picked Carly Fiorina as his running mate ahead of the Indiana and California primaries. → Read More
Meet Curly Haugland, former chairman of the North Dakota Republican party and current Republican national committeeman. Haugland is one of just 112 delegates who will arrive unbound to this summer’s Republican convention in Cleveland, free to cast a vote for any candidate he chooses on a first ballot because North Dakota does not hold a primary or caucus. That makes him a particularly valuable… → Read More
Des Moines, Iowa — Eleven months before Ted Cruz took the stage here at the state fairgrounds Monday night to celebrate an historic and hard-fought victory in Iowa’s caucuses, members of his senior staff dialed in to a conference call to discuss the question that had long confounded them: Where should Cruz launch his White House campaign? It was the first week of March 2015, and Cruz’s… → Read More
Des Moines, Iowa – As Rich noted, nobody here in Iowa is certain of anything. But there are murmurs among the campaigns and political analysts about which way the candidates are trending, which seems to be this: Cruz down, Rubio up. One Iowa Republican official even suggested to me it may be enough for Rubio to catch Cruz: “You gotta watch Field of Dreams when you cover Iowa,” he told me. But… → Read More
Des Moines, Iowa — Fox News’s Megyn Kelly called him “the elephant not in the room.” And yet, improbably, Donald Trump seemed somehow to emerge victorious from the last GOP presidential debate before Monday’s Iowa caucuses. The Republican front-runner, who, citing Kelly’s alleged bias as a moderator, announced at the last minute that he would skip the debate to hold a dueling event nearby, left… → Read More
Ted Cruz has a ready answer for the many Republicans who see him as a rigid ideologue likely to be demolished should he make it to the general election: Such an ideologue is the party’s only hope of winning in 2016. Since his election to the Senate in 2012, Cruz has argued that center-right candidates such as John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 demoralized conservatives and kept them… → Read More
North Charleston, S.C. — The seven candidates on the main stage here Thursday evening attacked harder, pushed back more forcefully, and battled more fiercely than ever. 18 days from the Iowa caucuses, the aperture is narrowing, and the Republican primary is increasingly focused on four men: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie. The debate was shaped by the clashes between… → Read More
Marco Rubio is widely considered one of the most talented communicators in the Republican party, but he hasn’t won the hearts of the Evangelical voters who dominate the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary. Ironically, many say it’s in part his relative restraint when it comes to talking about matters of faith — a contrast with the loud, proud declarations more typical of the country’s… → Read More
Paul Ryan is worried about the upcoming presidential election. In 2012, Mitt Romney emerged from a protracted Republican primary contest wounded, and despite the party’s efforts to reform the process — compressing the calendar, reducing the number of debates, and moving up the nominating convention — Ryan has a sinking sense of déjà vu. “Mitt didn’t get his general-election campaign up and… → Read More
Milwaukee — Armed with well-rehearsed opposition research on his fellow Republicans, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spent Tuesday night on the attack. But it was Chris Christie, whose fiscal record Jindal skewered, who emerged as the winner of the undercard debate. Despite repeated jabs from Jindal, Christie refused to take the bait, promising to keep his “eye on the ball” and focus his fire on… → Read More
Milwaukee, Wis. – “I’m not good at playing like I’m something I’m not,” Jeb Bush told a crowd gathered at the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. “I am his friend, and he is mine. I am never going to disparage him.” That was in mid April, just six months ago, and he, of course, is Florida senator and Bush protégé Marco Rubio, who in recent weeks has bested Bush in presidential debates and surpassed him in… → Read More
Let’s assume — and it’s a big assumption — that the two-years’ worth of Marco Rubio’s credit-card statements contain more of the same: that is, that they show Rubio, during his time as a junior state representative, charged small (hundreds of dollars) to medium (thousands of dollars) expenses to the Florida Republican party, which he claims to have repaid retroactively. Will the new information… → Read More
Marco Rubio seems to have scored one of the major undecided donors in the Republican primary: hedgefund billionaire Paul Singer. Singer, who was a generous contributor to President George W. Bush and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has until now remained on the sidelines of the 2016 race, but a source close to the Rubio campaign says he plans to raise money for Rubio, and that an announcement… → Read More
Moments ago, Paul Ryan told his colleagues that he’s plowing ahead with a bid for House speaker. In a meeting with them on Tuesday, he indicated he’d move forward only if he had the support of all three principal caucuses within the Republican conference. Though he doesn’t quite have that — a supermajority of the House Freedom Caucus is backing him, rather than the 80 percent required for the entire caucus to back him — he’s running nonetheless. → Read More
by Eliana Johnson October 19, 2015 4:00 AM It began as whispers in hushed corners: Could it ever happen? And now, just three months from the Iowa caucuses, members of the Republican establishment are starting to give voice to an increasingly common belief that Donald Trump, once dismissed as joke, a carnival barker, and a circus freak, might very well win the nomination. “Trump is a serious… → Read More
by Eliana Johnson October 19, 2015 4:00 AM It began as whispers in hushed corners: Could it ever happen? And now, just three months from the Iowa caucuses, members of the Republican establishment are starting to give voice to an increasingly common belief that Donald Trump, once dismissed as joke, a carnival barker, and a circus freak, might very well win the nomination. “Trump is a serious… → Read More
The Texas senator may look like an also-ran, but he’s a legit contender. → Read More