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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who made headlines last week after Democrats jumped on a comment he made about their treatment of women, is the new 2016 favorite of Republican primary voters, according to a new poll out Wednesday. Huckabee leads the primary field with 16 percent of the vote in Public Policy Polling’s new national poll, up three points from PPP’s poll last month. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is also on the rise: he jumped to second place with 14 percent, up from 10 percent last month. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was the frontrunner in December...

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday night that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would be a great president if he ran in 2016. However, the Speaker made clear he is not endorsing anyone more than two years before the election. “Well listen I’m not endorsing anybody, but Jeb Bush is my friend, and I frankly think he would be a great president, I really do,” he said on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Bush was the only potential GOP candidate Boehner mentioned when asked who he liked for president. In the wide-ranging interview, Boehner also touched on last October’s...

January 15-19, 2014 833 Republicans +/-3.4% Rand Paul: 13% Paul Ryan: 13% Chris Christie: 12% Jeb Bush: 11% Ted Cruz: 9% Marco Rubio: 8% Scott Walker: 6% Bobby Jindal: 3% John Kasich: 2%

The Republican Party put all of their 2016 eggs in the Christie basket. Now the basket has George Washington Bridge size hole, Hillary Clinton has opened up an 8 point lead and Republicans are panicking. The first whiff of GOP panic came from a recent New York Times story, Of all the new realities that Mr. Christie must confront, perhaps the most humbling is a sense of losing the momentum that surrounded him just a few months ago. Last year, the governor’s staff had begun building up his foreign policy bona fides, quietly reaching out to Brian H. Hook, a...

With Chris Christie ostensibly knocked off his perch as the early frontrunner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, the search is on to find an alternative that is acceptable to both conservative and moderate GOP primary voters. At least, that’s what the political press would have you to believe. Appearing on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, USA Today political reporter Susan Page was asked for her take on one possible substitute for Christie that “will bridge the divide” that exists between conservative tea party voters and the GOP’s moderates. The most likely contender at this early stage of the...

Scandals? What scandals? Despite facing a pair of controversies worthy of having the word "gate" attached to them, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie remains one of the odds-on favorites to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. According to Oddschecker.com, a British website that tracks online bookmakers, Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio are both 5-to-1 favorites to win the GOP nomination, according to one bookmaker. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (9 to 1) and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan (12 to 1) are less favored, while Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (33 to 1) is a popular long shot.

As the political winds are turning to presidential politics in 2016, now is the time for Republicans to start thinking about their ticket. I know it's early, but the top of the Democratic ticket has already been pretty much decided by the mainstream media. It's Hillary and whoever she wants as her veep. For the Republicans, they will need someone at the top of the ticket who is principled. He'll keep his campaign promises. He must have an economic issue that will resonate with women because men already support the GOP. Women — especially independent women — are the holy...

The next 24 hours will be crucial for Chris Christie, top Republicans say. The New Jersey governor, who was on top of the political world two months ago as he cruised to reelection over his Democratic challenger now finds his status as the potential front-runner of the 2016 GOP presidential field imperiled. The test comes with the release of e-mails and text messages that tie top members of his administration to the closure of two lanes leading to a crucial bridge in what appears to be political retaliation against a Democratic mayor who refused to endorse Christie’s reelection. Republican communications...

NOTE: I started writing this in May. Dan wrote something along these lines in August. Read it. He put it down much better than I ever could.Things to keep in mind when running for President as a Republican. Somewhere between 93% to 98% of the people who would be covering the race on behalf of the nation’s largest national and regional news media outlets will be supporting your Democrat opponent – whoever she (or he) may be. This lopsided level of support for Democrats in the news media, especially within the Beltway has been consistent for nearly half a century....

Top Republican leader and current Governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal is planning to run for president in 2016, a top US Senator from his home State has said.

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan is the most popular of the would-be 2016 Republican contenders among Iowa Republicans, handily outstripping his potential competition in the state that holds the first nominating contest every four years, according to a new poll. ... Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, sits at the bottom of the pack. Just 46 percent of Iowa Republicans say they have a favorable view of him, compared to 17 percent who hold an unfavorably view. Despite frequent trips to the state in recent months, he is still not well known to many Republicans: 37 percent still say...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a 2008 GOP presidential candidate turned media personality, is looking at another bid for the presidency, this time backed by ministers eager to put an evangelical into the White House. Huckabee will test the waters when he returns home to Little Rock, Ark., December 12-13 to address the Arkansas Renewal Project, part of evangelical organizer David Lane's American Renewal Project. Huckabee had the support of pastors in his 2008 fight against eventual winner Sen. John McCain. Among the potential candidates looking at a GOP bid, Huckabee is closest to the pastors. He is a social...

Mitch McConnell for Pres. 2016 and General of Counter-Terrorism for VP. I thought you would be interested in this story I found on news.msn.com: US ambassador summoned by Germany over NSA spying ( http://news.msn.com/world/us-ambassador-summoned-by-germany-over-nsa-spying#tscptme, ) Wait a second? Didn’t Snowden first go to China? Where China and their reverse-technology, was granted the rights to reproduce the Grundig SW radio? I hear people in American jails, know how to increase the band-with of small transistor radio’s. What could China do with a Grundig or cell phone, like the Samsung knock-off. Now didn’t Germany discredit our secrets, as found in the German...

Hewitt imposed a lighting round format on Krauthammer during the interview and asked for one word descriptions of the current likely field of presidential candidates heading into 2016. Krauthammer called New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie a “frontrunner,” Ohio Gov. John Kasich “interesting” and “possible,” and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker “young, ambitious,” and “brash.” The conservative columnist added, “I like him.” Of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Krauthammer said he was “very strong” and “could be a contender.” “A lot of energy” and “a great orator,” Krauthammer said of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). He was cautious about Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) political...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush predicted Monday night Congress would pass a series of immigration bills next year and touted his conservative credentials as he talked about his thought process on a potential 2016 presidential bid. In a wide-ranging, onstage interview at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Bush said he didn't necessarily agree with his mother, who joked there have been "enough Bushes" in the White House. The Spanish-speaking former governor also took a slight dig at another potential 2016 contender, Sen. Ted Cruz, for his Spanish language skills. 'I'm a conservative' At one point in the...

Alternate headline: “Second look at Chris Christie?” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie gets all the love as the current GOP front-runner for 2016 (to the extent there can even be a front runner three years out.) But there is growing chatter in elite New York financial circles that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is giving more serious consideration to getting in the race, especially if it appears at any point that Christie is not drawing big national appeal beyond the northeast. Several plugged in GOP sources said Bush has moved from almost certainly staying out to a 30 percent chance...

WASHINGTON -- They are at it again. They are again telling Republicans and conservatives how dreadful their political condition really is. I am speaking, of course, of the voices of the Kultursmog, and to hear them tell it we are in a hell of a heap. We lost the governorship of Virginia. Even worse, we won the governorship of New Jersey. What dreadful news. Of course, in Virginia the Republicans lost to a congenital liar, backed by the most famous congenital liars in American politics, the Clintons. It is only a matter of time before he is in deep do-do....

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, brother and son of the former presidents Bush, is considering a run for president, but only if Gov. Chris Christie fails to gain nationwide traction, Politico reports this morning.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is accelerating efforts to explore another bid for the presidency. But few Republicans, including some past supporters, are excited at the prospect of him launching a second White House campaign. Perry is making all the moves of a traditional candidate, with multiple visits to Iowa, an upcoming trip to South Carolina and a flurry of recent appearances on cable news networks. But following his disappointing 2012 campaign, and heading into an election where the GOP field appears to be much stronger, few strategists think he would stand a real chance of winning the 2016 nomination....

Those sophisticates at Time magazine made a funny. They put Chris Christie on their cover with the headline, "The Elephant in the Room." Get it? Elephant. Christie. Time magazine did a junior high fat joke right there on its cover. Time's executive editor Michael Duffy explained the cheap shot this way: "Well, he's obviously a big guy. He's obviously a big Republican. But he's also done a really huge thing here this week." The "huge thing" wasn't only winning re-election as New Jersey's governor, but doing it by appealing to a broad range of voters in a very blue state...