WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Which Democrat really won Super Tuesday? Thanks to the Democratic Party's proportional representation, it is not easy to say a week later. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama ran a virtual dead heat for delegates that day in 22 states clearly stacked in Obama's favor. But the way Obama lost California raises the specter of the dreaded Bradley Effect.
Well, Super Tuesday is over, and now we have two major party presidential nominees. That's the lead sentence I thought five weeks ago I'd be writing for this column. But the 33-day round of caucuses and primaries that seemed likely to produce decisions after 23 states voted on Super Tuesday have failed to deliver.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sen. John McCain's managers, fearing an unfavorable reaction at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Thursday, wanted to precede his speech with a video of Ronald Reagan praising McCain.
Is Hillary Clinton bi-coastal? Can she win in America's heartland? These questions surface in the wake of her victories in New York-New Jersey-Massachusetts and in California-Arizona and her defeats everywhere else except in her former native state of Arkansas and its two next-door neighbors, Tennessee and Oklahoma.
Charlie Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, warned this week about the risks of inflation, overly aggressive interest-rate cuts and further damage being done to the Fed's credibility. I agree with Plosser.
Why so many Americans want their president to be a personal motivator and religious guide vexes me. You do want a leader with dignity and self-control, but attending to the economy, national defense, foreign affairs, the environment and other aspects of the public's well being should be a full-time occupation.
John McCain is one lucky guy. A funny thing happened to him on the way to the Republican nomination. He was forced to run as himself. He had no choice but to try to win without the support of the hard-core conservatives he initially set out to court. He was pushed back onto the Straight Talk Express, onto the coach section of the plane, into the endless town halls, where he had no choice but to be himself, say what he thinks, run on his record and leave it at that.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Mississippi's top two Republicans took sharply different views of Sen. John McCain as he moved toward their party's presidential nomination. Gov. Haley Barbour went on the Fox News Channel as primary returns came in Tuesday night to suggest the time was near to stop the contest and accept McCain as the winner. A few days earlier, Sen. Thad Cochran declared that his colleague from Arizona was not fit to be president.
A long time ago, which is to say at least a month or two ago, I consoled some friends who were despairing of the nastiness of the Democratic race by telling them that whoever won would be the better candidate for it, and that we might need a real race to produce a real winner.
"Quo vadis," conservatives? It's the ancient, apocryphal question the apostle Peter asked Jesus while fleeing persecution in Rome. Where are you going? Where do we go from here?
The revival of John McCain's presidential candidacy, now expected to carry him through to his party's nomination, can be interpreted as either proof of the judgment of Republican primary voters or evidence of the paucity of alternative choices.
The Republican Party has effectively chosen its nominee. That nominee is John McCain.
The troop-bashers in Berkeley are at it once more. But this time, the rest of America lashed back. Message to the Left Coast: It's not the 1960s anymore.
President Bush's new budget will top $3 trillion. It envisions massive deficits for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 -- nearly matching the record in 2004, when the federal budget went $412 billion into the hole.
As we approach Super Tuesday, Barack Obama has been surging all week - closing the enormous gap he once faced in most key states. But his momentum has yet to carry him over the top.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Terrence McAuliffe, the multimillionaire wheeler-dealer imposed by the Clintons on the Democratic National Committee as its chairman after the 2000 election, quickly paid back his benefactors. He designed a front-loaded primary system intended to confirm Sen. Hillary Clinton as presidential nominee by Feb. 5. Contrary to expectations, however, no choice will be made for months and perhaps not until the national convention at Denver in late August.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- While President George W. Bush has maintained neutrality among contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, he privately expresses to friends his exasperation with Mitt Romney's hard-line stance on immigration.
He was back again on Wednesday, never so eloquent as in withdrawing from the Democratic race for the presidential nomination.
Just shy of a month ago, after the first votes were cast in Iowa and New Hampshire, it seemed that the Republican Party faced a fluid and fractious nomination contest, while the Democrats faced a clear-cut choice between two not particularly adversarial candidates. What a difference a few weeks can make
Make no mistake about it: If Hillary Clinton is elected president, her husband will be her rogue co-president, causing constant chaos, crises and conflicts for her new administration.
