The presidential contest executed a rare turn into foreign policy this week, with a flurry of controversy around the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Having already made it clear that he would not be shy to claim this event as a personal and administration success story, the president and his team upped the ante with a web video (narrated by Bill Clinton, no less) that noted a 2007 remark by Mitt Romney dismissing any focus on the pursuit of bin Laden as a waste of time and money (Romney was at the time supporting the Bush administration’s “wider war on terror” policy and also responding to criticism from Democrats—including Obama—that the administration had diverted vital resources from Afghanistan in order to prosecute a failed war in Iraq). Romney and other Republicans reacted angrily to the ad, suggesting that Obama was “politicizing” the operation that killed Osama, and arguing that “even Jimmy Carter” would have given the order to proceed with it. After some shots back and forth, the president’s surprise trip to Afghanistan, and televised address on a new security pact with the Afghans, seem to have convinced Republicans they were simply drawing fresh attention to Obama’s top national security accomplishment, and so sought to change the subject.

Continue reading “Election Watch: The Political Cycle Heats Up” →

It appeared that the 2012 Republican presidential nominating process would come to a formal close this week (given Ron Paul’s lack of interest in officially withdrawing until the Convention), and after Newt Gingrich broadly hinted he needed an upset win in Delaware to stay in the race. He subsequently lost by 29 points, and indicated he intended to withdraw quite soon. Instead, he decamped to North Carolina, and for all the world looked like he was continuing the campaign, albeit in a desultory manner. But now comes word that his Secret Service Protection has been withdrawn, making his continued campaigning look even more absurd, so he’ll probably pull the plug before running up even more debts.

Speaking of North Carolina, the president was in Chapel Hill this week in an appearance (subsequently attacked by Republican groups, in what was probably just a shot across the bow, that he was misusing official resources for a de facto campaign appearance) that illustrated the interaction of various issues in potentially close states this year. He spoke to a receptive campus crowd about his proposal to retain a freeze on student loan interest rates, currently the subject of complex partisan maneuvering in Congress. But he did not speak of an issue on the minds of many college students in the state: Amendment One, the draconian constitutional amendment banning not only same-sex marriage but legal recognition of all same-sex relationships, which will appear on the North Carolina primary ballot on May 8.

Continue reading “Election Watch: Upcoming Political Obstacles” →

In just the latest sign of how gridlocked Washington has become, Congress is currently failing to pass even the most reliable of legislative standbys: naming post offices and federal buildings.

For each of the last several Congresses, naming post-offices has been a staple of Congress’s work. In the 109th Congress, for example, 98 of the 482 laws passed by Congress—or 1 in 5—were post-office naming bills.

But so far, the current Congress has managed to name just 17 post offices and federal buildings, plus one national refuge (the “Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge”).

Why the naming deficit?

Continue reading “How Unproductive Is Congress? It’s Not Even Naming Post Offices” →

So it’s finally, incontrovertibly over.

Rick Santorum’s withdrawal from the presidential race on Tuesday saved Mitt Romney and his friends many millions of dollars and additional heartburn from charges that he’s not a “true conservative,” and gave his campaign much more time to plan the convention and the general election. Even though Romney had the nomination all but locked, and might have knocked Santorum out of the race on April 24 with a big win in Pennsylvania, Santorum had a lot of incentive to stay in the race until May, when a bunch of primaries in states with large evangelical populations were to vote. One theory holds that the cold water the RNC poured on an effort by Rick’s allies in Texas to change that state’s delegate allocation from a proportional to a winner-take-all system was the clincher, since that was the only scenario under which Santorum might have denied Romney a majority of delegates.

Continue reading “Election Watch: The End of the Beginning” →

Tuesday’s primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and D.C. were a clean sweep for Mitt Romney, who also won 86 of the 95 pledged delegates at stake in the three states.

According to everybody’s estimates (other than those of the Santorum campaign), Romney is now well over half-way to the goal of the 1144 delegates needed to win the GOP nomination.  An especially credible estimate made by Ryan Lizza, Josh Putnam and Andrew Prokop for The New Yorker even before Tuesday’s votes were counted showed Romney as certain to get very close to the magic number at the end of the contested primaries, needing only a tiny sliver of the unpledged delegates to get over the top. At worst, Mitt’s in the situation Barack Obama faced late in the 2008 Democratic contest, when the only scenario that could have prevented his nomination was an unlikely and almost unanimous revolt among unpledged super-delegates. But any such comparison suggests that Rick Santorum could have Hillary Clinton’s staying power and ability to win heavily in late primaries, and that’s more than a stretch.

From a more practical perspective, the question going into the April 2 primaries was whether Santorum could somehow survive until May, when a string of southern and midwestern primaries could provide him with the sort of demographic landscape in which he has done well so far. But even if that happens, the June calendar represents a Romney firewall of delegate-rich primaries in New Jersey, California and Utah that now look likely to officially put the front-runner over the top–that is, even if Santorum fights on to the bitter end.

Continue reading “Election Watch: A Conservative Romney Emerges” →

On one level, Rick Santorum’s campaign got a desperately needed boost from his win in Louisiana’s primary last Saturday. But all the other signs about the campaign indicate a party ready to end the primary season.

Santorum got his ideal electorate in Louisiana, a low-turnout affair in which half the voters were self-identified “very conservative” voters, and half called themselves “strong supporters” of the Tea Party movement.  Two-thirds say they attend worship services weekly or more.

Just as importantly, Newt Gingrich, who was running very well in Louisiana polls not that long ago, saw his support-levels shrink along with his campaign budget.

Continue reading “Election Watch: The Beginning of the End?” →

Mitt Romney’s solid win in Illinois on Tuesday placed him in an arguably unstoppable position for the GOP presidential nomination. He could claim formal victory perhaps as early as next month, and certainly, barring major mistakes, by June.

Along with his sweep of delegates in Puerto Rico, and the majority of delegates he claimed the previous Tuesday even as Rick Santorum got the headlines, Romney’s prize of 43 (out of 54) delegates in Illinois gives him a grand total (according to CNN’s estimates) of 562 out of 1019 delegates awarded so far; Santorum is more than 300 delegates behind. The “magic number” to clinch the nomination formally is 1144. Louisiana holds its primary this Saturday, and Santorum is a slight favorite; a loss could boost Romney’s sense of “inevitability” considerably. But in any event Romney seems certain to enjoy a big April, with very likely wins in DC, Maryland, Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut, and at least even odds in Wisconsin. Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania is also on the April calendar, but he’s hardly a cinch there, and the proportional allocation rules will limit his gains.

Continue reading “Election Watch: A Turning Point for Romney?” →