Outside the Beltway

Ron Paul is poised to win the CPAC Straw Poll. So what?

Four Senators who just happen to be up for re-election next year are silently looking for alternatives to the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.

Sarah Palin spoke about Ronald Reagan last night, but seems to have forgotten the optimism that is part of The Gipper’s legacy.

The home mortgage interest deduction benefits Democrat-voting states most! Is the fix in?

It’s straw poll season already. First up, New Hampshire where things turned out about how you’d expect them to considering Mitt Romney lives there now.

Didn’t we just talk about this?

After a fairly bad 2010, Barack Obama is starting off 2011 in a very good position.

Sarah Palin’s unfavorability ratings continue to climb. And there’s very little room for her recovery.

Mitt Romney has hired my wife’s boss as his pollster.

By this point in the last presidential cycle, there were already 14 major party candidates who had publicly announced. There are zero today.

Rumors are floating that Rudy Giuliani is thinking about running for President again. All of America asks, Why?

Was John McCain’s place of birth as big an issue to the fringe left as Obama’s has been (and continues to be) to the fringe right?

New polling shows that Mitt Romney is well behind the Fox News candidates for 2012.

What’s up with McCain and DADT?

WikiLeaker Bradley Manning has been held “under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture” for seven months and counting.

Despite the Defense Department releasing its study showing that the effects of allowing gays to serve openly would be minimal, Senator John McCain isn’t convinced.

The prospective Republican field for 2012 is dismal. Then again, it always is.

The Pentagon has spoken. Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would not cause any real harm to the military, they have said. Now, the ball is in the court of the United States Senate.

Israelis and Palestinians don’t agree on much these days, but they do agree that Barack Obama hasn’t helped the peace process at all since coming to office.

Democrats are now confident that they have the votes in the Senate to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but do they have enough time?

The incoming freshman of the 112th Congress say that they won’t repeat the mistakes that Republicans made when they gained power sixteen years ago, but some of the advice they’re getting virtually guarantees it will happen if they aren’t careful.

The odds that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will be repealed anytime in the near future are fairly close to zero thanks to the results of last Tuesday’s elections.

George W. Bush’s new memoir reveals that he briefly considered replaced Dick Cheney as Vice-President before the 2004 elections. His decision not to do so reveals much about the relationship between Presidents and Vice-Presidents in modern American politics.

Ezra Klein argues that Sarah Palin’s Twitter account isn’t very popular. But that misses the point.

Karl Rove unloaded what may be the beginning of the GOP Establishment’s effort to cut a Palin Presidential bid off at the knees.

Tom Brokaw notices something peculiar about the campaign debates: Nobody’s talking about Iraq or Afghanistan.

The coalition of voters that propelled Barack Obama to an historic victory in 2008 is seemingly falling apart, and the President is reacting by blaming the voters.

Sarah Palin is at the center of a divide within the GOP that could become larger even as the GOP comes closer to regaining control of Congress.

According to a new book from Bob Woorward, American policy in Afghanistan is the result of a decision making process that can only be described as chaotic at best.