Outside the Beltway

Evidence continues to mount that the Russia investigation was the real motivation for President Trump’s decision to fire James Comey.

Instead of attending the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, Donald Trump spent his Saturday attacking the press and the First Amendment.

Once again, the GOP punts on ‘repeal and replace’ because they don’t have the votes.

With a government shutdown looming at the end of the week, the Administration has appeared to back away from a demand that a government funding bill include money allocated for the President’s promised border wall.

Inconceivably, Steve Bannon thought that clashing with President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law was a good idea. He’s likely learned his lesson now.

It’s not at all clear that there is a useful strategy at work here.

A major legislative defeat for Paul Ryan, the House GOP, and President Trump.

Trump appears to undervaluing existing bureaucracies listening more to hacks and ideologues.

For seventy-seven minutes yesterday, President Trump held forth in a press conference that confirmed the most dire predictions about what he’d be like as President.

Could National Security Adviser Michael Flynn be the first to go under Trump?

At Congressional town halls across the country, there are signs of what could turn into a movement that would cause real headaches for the GOP in future elections.

The Acting Attorney General was fired last night after announcing that she would refuse to defend President Trump’s Executive Order on immigration. As a result she was fired. Contrary to some arguments, this was not improper.

With repeal of the Affordable Care Act now likely sooner rather than later, key Republicans are urging the party to have a replacement in place before repeal is voted on.

With just over three weeks before Election Day, efforts by top Republicans to disavow their party’s nominee are quite clearly too little, too late.

Paul Ryan is abandoning the Trump campaign.

Republicans are abandoning Donald Trump in droves after last night’s revelation of lewd remarks he made in 2005.

The GOP civil war continues…..

America’s largest voting bloc is heavily turned off by Donald Trump, and that is posing long-term problems for Republicans in general.

Another day, another round of irresponsible demagoguery from Donald Trump.

With Donald Trump floundering, there are a whole lot of nervous Republican Senators up for re-election.

The nature of US parties means that Trump more or less is the GOP at the moment, and hence the GOP will do nothing about Trump.

The Veepstakes continues.

Republican leaders and politicians continue to distance themselves from their party’s presumptive nominee.

Top Republican donors are becoming increasingly concerned that Donald Trump isn’t paying enough attention to raising money for the General Election campaign.

With top Republicans recoiling from the realization that the GOP is stuck with Trump in 2016, the ground seems to be being prepared for a conflict that could tear the GOP apart regardless of who wins in November.

The relatively unknown candidate that Bill Kristol floated as the “Never Trump” alternative has announced he’s not running for President.

Even before the 2016 convention, Republicans are talking about possible rules changes to stop another Trump-like candidate in 2020 or beyond.

Paul Ryan is declining to back Donald Trump for the time being, but other Republicans are making their own choices.

In a rational universe somewhere, John Kasich is preparing to become the de facto Republican nominee for President. In ours, he’s dropping out in favor of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump’s win last night made him the presumptive Republican nominee, whether Republicans will unify around him is another question.

For most Americans, the debate over same-sex marriage is over and marriage equality has won. This would not, however, include the social conservatives who continue to have a much too vocal role in the Republican Party.

Despite having previously pledged to do so, none of the three candidate for the GOP nomination are willing to say they’d support the eventual nominee anymore.

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.

It seems increasingly apparent that the only way to stop Donald Trump now is by trying to force a contested convention. It also seems clear that such a plan probably wouldn’t succeed.

CNN is taking over a late February Republican debate from NBC News, meaning it will host more Republican debates this election cycle than any other single network.

The attacks on Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be President have no legal merit, but they appear to be having an impact with at least some Iowa voters.

President Obama’s final State Of The Union Address was largely a recognition of the fact that his time on the world stage is quickly coming to an end.

There are signs that Ted Cruz’s rise in the Hawkeye State will be short-lived.

Ben Carson threatens to leave the GOP over recent reports about plans for a brokered convention, but with his poll numbers collapsing one wonders why anyone would care if he did.

The quadrennial fantasy of a brokered convention, which American politics has not seen since 1952, is rearing its head again, and it’s no more likely now than it was when we talked about this four years ago.

Hillary Clinton’s attempt to explain her relationship with Wall Street and banking interests makes it sound like she’s channeling Rudy Giuliani.

The effort to forge some kind of consensus independent of the RNC among the Republican candidates for President regarding debates appears to have failed. To the surprise of nobody who has been paying attention.

Representatives from most of the Republican Presidential campaigns met to discuss reforms to the debate process, but none of their ideas will actually improve the quality of debates.

In the wake of Wednesday’s debate, the Republican National Committee has suspended its partnership in a planned February debate with NBC News and Spanish language network Telemundo.

While it did draw 14 million viewers, last night’s CNBC debate had the smallest audience of any Presidential debate so far. That was probably a good thing for CNBC considering how bad the debate was.