Greenville, S.C. – Bolstered by his rising poll numbers and looking ahead to that night’s foreign policy debate, Newt Gingrich opened his first South Carolina campaign office with wife, Callista, at his side on Saturday. As he rises to compete in the top tier of GOP hopefuls, voters are taking a closer look, and conservatives [...]

CNBC commentator Rachel Maddow believes Herman Cain is a “performance artist” and his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination is “performance art.” Could be. It could be also that Cain is a satirist and his campaign a satire on presidential politics. Satire: the use of “irony, sarcasm and ridicule to attack the follies of humankind.” [...]

With two months to go before the Iowa Republican Party caucuses on Jan. 3, 2012, here is a one-question multiple choice quiz for you. Q: Which of the following characterizes the Iowa GOP caucuses? A. What a mess! B. Our long national nightmare is almost over! C. Hey! Let’s do this again in 2016! D. [...]

“I think it’s time,” declaimed Rick Perry out of the blue during the Oct. 18 GOP candidates debate in Las Vegas, “for us to have a serious discussion about defunding the United Nations.” No one seconded the notion. Was this the opening round of a Perry effort to boost his flagging campaign by playing an [...]

Texas Gov. Rick Perry put his foot, cowboy boot and all, in his mouth when he declared Social Security to be an unconstitutional Ponzi scheme. Unconstitutional? Social Security has been the law of the land since 1937. It was validated by several of the country’s finest legal minds. If there is ever a high court [...]

If you are a progressive, perhaps you got a “First, fill in your name” email requesting money from Barack Obama back during the ’08 campaign? That artful first person oh-so-friendly email, adroitly and effectively designed to make you feel that, hey, you could walk right into campaign headquarters and get a big fat hug from [...]

Inquiring minds may want to know how Iowans feel now that Rep. Michele Bachmann has dropped sharply in the GOP presidential derby. After all, the Hawkeye state often fashions itself as a presidential kingmaker, and it was Iowans — well, right-wing, evangelistic Iowans — who had crowned Bachmann as a frontrunner for the Republican Party’s [...]

Where is Buddy Roemer, Republican candidate for president? In the polls, the former U.S. Congressman and Louisiana governor is so low he hasn’t been included in any debates so far, and that includes Thursday night’s. This week, though, I knew exactly where I could find him – in Charlotte, N.C., around the corner from my [...]

DES MOINES—If we were to take the advice of Scottish poet Robert Burns, the Iowa GOP Straw Poll would be toast — finally put out of its news media-induced merriment and ending the misery of those who take democracy seriously. You know, as though self-governance were something to nourish and value, not something to debase [...]

On Saturday August 13th, I cleared the deck of distractions and sat glued to C-span’s coverage of the Iowa GOP’s fundraiser in Ames, the extravaganza better known as the Iowa Straw Poll. I didn’t want to miss a word. The word I especially didn’t want to miss was “Bush.” How, I wondered, would this highly [...]