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Watching the fight unfold between President Barack Obama and Senate Republicans over who should choose the next Supreme Court justice, Michael A. Bowden got angry at what he saw at the latest affront to the first black president. And then his thoughts turned from Washington to his own state. Obama won't be on the ballot this fall, but Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey will - and Bowden has made defeating him in November a priority. [...] Democrats are pressuring senators in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Illinois and Wisconsin to back down from their refusal to confirm or even consider Obama's...

So here’s Rubio ditching Cruz’s approach and trying a new one-two punch: Trump is a con artist who exploits the little guy, whatever he may say on the stump, and also he’s a giant douche. Anti-Trumpers are in raptures on Twitter over this clip, watching Rubio take it to the bully with pure gleeful scorn, and I’m not immune to it. It’s pure catharsis after a month of setbacks, a surprise rout by an army that’s been in what feels like perpetual retreat. (It’s surprisingly funny in parts too. “How do you bankrupt a casino?” made me laugh.) And Rubio’s...

Chris Christie has crashed, John Kasich is ghettoized, Scott Walker self-destructed and nobody bought the idea of Jeb Bush, and now all the king's horses and all the king's men - and Fox News - are trying to shove Marco Rubio down the throats of the Republican electorate. But they’ll never make the sale.

7 reasons Mike Pence will be the GOP nominee in 2016 Updated by Matthew Yglesias on September 30, 2014, 8:30 a.m. ET @mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com Tweet Share on Twitter (191) Share Share on Facebook (1,129) +1 LinkedIn Share on LinkedIn (15) Email Email MikePence.com Don't miss stories. Follow Vox! Early polling tells you almost nothing about presidential nomination battles, since it ends up almost exclusively telling you about name recognition. Early media buzz is similar. People like to read stories about figures they've already heard of, and it's easier to write stories about politicians you've already covered.But you don't need to be a...

In his most extensive remarks yet on the 2016 presidential race, Mitt Romney on Tuesday said he shared the feeling of many Americans that Washington has failed them and urged national leaders to take on big problems, including issues that the GOP has rarely put at the fore during the past year, such as climate change, poverty, education and income inequality.

At first things didn't look so great for Marco - Donald Trump did beat him by 22 points in the state's caucus. But on Fox News Wednesday morning, Rubio revealed that drawing roughly half of Trump's support in Nevada was actually a come-from-behind win in the expectations game. "Last time, Mitt Romney got over 50 percent, so Donald Trump actually underperformed [what] Mitt Romney did, not once but twice in this state," Rubio explained to Fox & Friends, referring to the 2008 and 2012 primary races.

Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” conservative commentator Monica Crowley said the Republican Party establishment is rooting against both Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Donald Trump to win the nomination because if either wins the presidency, she said, “the establishment is done, it’s over.”

While Donald Trump won a sweeping victory in Nevada on Tuesday night - his third victory in a row - the biggest story out of the Silver State may actually be the record-breaking turnout Republicans saw at the evening's caucus gatherings. The Nevada Republican Party reported Wednesday morning that more than 75,000 voters participated in the contest. While that might not seem like a stunning number in a state with a population of somewhere around three million, that turnout absolutely demolished the participation record from 2012, when only about 33,000 Republican voters showed up to caucus. In fact, Donald Trump...

Marco Rubio emerged from a razor-thin second-place finish in South Carolina's presidential primary on Sunday with the Republican field narrowed and his target clear: Donald Trump. -snip-Trump is long on rhetoric but short on specifics, Rubio said on CBS's "Face the Nation," challenging the front-runner, who finished 10 points ahead in South Carolina, to provide them."If you're running to be president of the United States, you can't just tell people you're going to make America great again - I think you need to begin to explain exactly how you're going to do it, policy-wise," Rubio said, referring to the Trump...

Donald Trump is walking away with one more delegate in New Hampshire than media estimates predicted, at the expense of Marco Rubio. The New Hampshire secretary of State's office released the certified GOP delegate count Monday, showing Trump with 11 delegates to the national convention. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the second-place winner, received four delegates. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz won three, while Rubio, a Florida senator, won two. That's a slight difference from The Associated Press' estimation from primary night, which had 10 delegates for Trump and three for Rubio. Rubio finished with 10.6 percent,...

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for president, the senator's staff confirmed to the Washington Examiner. Hatch is one of the highest ranking Republicans in Congress, and he is third in the line of the succession to the U.S. presidency as president pro tempore of the United States Senate. The six-term senator had previously endorsed Jeb Bush and sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. Hatch's endorsement could be interpreted as a sign of the party's governing class rallying to Rubio.

Donald Trump is "far and away the front-runner," for the GOP presidential nomination and the establishment is "living in a fantasy land," by denying that big changes are happening, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday. "Trump is tapping into something in the country that's real," Gingrich told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. "If you take Trump's vote and Cruz's vote and Carson's vote -- the three outsiders -- they are once again at about 62 percent in South Carolina, and they have been consistently above 60 percent everywhere in the country. If you pull together all of the...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Monday he’s fired campaign communications director Rick Tyler, after his top spokesman promoted a video that wrongly depicted Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as trash-talking the Bible. The Texas senator announced that he's asked for the resignation at a press conference Monday afternoon.

Donald Trump's Perfect Foil How the real-estate mogul's attacks against Jeb Bush fueled his rise Peter Beinart 9:19 AM ET If Jeb Bush hadn’t run for president, Donald Trump would have had to invent him. The former Florida governor was Trump’s perfect foil. First, because Jeb was prim, proper, and incapable of expressing the rage—especially towards Muslims and Mexicans—that many Republicans currently feel. Second, because Jeb’s candidacy represented the reductio ad absurdum of the campaign finance corruption that Trump, alone among GOP candidates, calls out. ...snip... In a searing column last week, the former Marine J.D. Vance, author of the...

Unlike more moderate New Hampshire, Ted Cruz needed to do more than merely finish well in South Carolina - he needed to win. The Cruz campaign pulled out all the stops in a manic effort to secure victory. Instead, it appears he will finish a distant second or third to Donald Trump. It is a finish that has his donors reconsidering the longer term viability of a campaign that is now for the first time in weeks, said to be spending far more dollars than it is taking in. And where Marco Rubio now appears poised to receive an influx...

The official road map for the GOP candidates

The Donald Trump campaign began courting top staffers with the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity late last year, in order to bolster its ground game ahead of big primary nights in March, according to BuzzFeed News. The billionaire businessman's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is a former AFP state director whose intricate knowledge of New Hampshire paid dividends in that primary. One top AFP staffer in a March primary state said he was approached by Lewandowski, who told him Trump "was for real. He's going all the way." "Anecdotally, I'd say a lot of people have been approached," another source close...

Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic, Reihan Salam of the National Review, Mark Leibovich of the New York Times Magazine, and USA Today’s Susan Page break down presidential politics in the aftermath of the South Carolina and Nevada contests.

In this video report from CBSN before the South Carolina results came in, the reporter says that they have been hearing allegations that the Marco Rubio campaign was calling voters to tell them Jeb had suspended his campaign and to vote for Rubio instead. https://youtu.be/dhI5u1wP0Uc

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is finally getting off the sidelines to endorse Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), in a final effort to defeat Donald Trump after the billionaire took early states in New Hampshire and South Carolina by storm. According to the Huffington Post’s Scott Conroy, Romney had been waiting for Jeb Bush to exit the race before endorsing Rubio citing “respect" for the former Florida governor.