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Forgive South Carolina voters if the looming 2016 presidential contest is giving them a strong sense of deja vu. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is leading the Democratic pack among this state's voters, according to a new Palmetto Politics poll, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is receiving the most love here on the GOP side. "I think it's hilarious," College of Charleston political scientist Gibbs Knotts said. "This is not 1992 all over again, but we've still got Bush and Clinton. Of course, we're talking about a different Bush and a different Clinton." About one-third of 1,000 likely...

Hillary Clinton isn’t likely ever to become president of the United States. In fact, there is a greater possibility than is generally recognized by the Washington cognoscenti that she won’t even run. If she does, though, the barriers she faces will prove overwhelming. Her 2008 campaign was her last good shot for the office, and she failed. Since then, numerous developments have conspired steadily to diminish her prospects. Those prospects are now near zero. This analytical framework holds absolutely no credulity in Washington, where thinking rarely extends beyond the conventional. The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Mrs. Clinton’s nomination...

How can a president who seems to do so many things wrong and spends so much time running around on vacation surge to all time highs in popularity? Some of you look a little confused, so allow me to reassure you… I’m not talking about Barack Obama. This story is about Russian leader Vladimir Putin. As our good friend (and Prince of Twitter) Andrew Malcolm notes, Putin is more popular than ever in his home country, at least according to a major polling outfit. As Obama wallows in the low 40′s in overall job approval among Americans, with even lower...

Anyone who believes that Hillary Clinton will not run for President in 2016 should examine her recently-published book, Hard Choices, which in places reads like a campaign manifesto. The 600 pages of text offer much more, but on myriad domestic and international issues readers can readily predict her positions as president, even beyond what she has already indicated as first lady, senator from New York, and Barack Obama’s first secretary of state. With the escalating violence in Israel and Gaza, for example, her chapter on the Middle East indicates in detail how she dealt with key regional leaders in earlier...

There are three questions surrounding Hillary Clinton: Will she run? If she runs, will she win? And if she wins, will she be President Barack Obama in a skirt or Bill Clinton in a pantsuit? Will She Run? The Hillary Inevitability, far in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has a “déjà vu all over again” atmospheric. That's because 2008 was really supposed to be Hillary’s year: She had the highest name recognition, deep financing, major political backers and her politically canny husband to game-plan campaign tactics. But a funny thing happened on the way to the nomination: "Black...

Today was the day we never wished we would ever see.The shooting down of a commercial passenger plane via ground to air missile attack.Could this be Barry's 9/11?And all he could say that it looks like a terrible tragedy?It's as if we are reliving the moment when Hillary said "What Difference Does It Make"?.The country is in utter shock! And then he's off to another fund-raiser right after Americans have been murdered in Ukraine.Can anyone take another two years of this?

The John Ben Shepperd Leadership Institute at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin raised some eyebrows Wednesday with the announcement that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be the speaker at its Distinguished Lecture Series event on Feb. 12. For many of our readers, a night with Sarah Palin is a must-attend event. Fortunately for some of those readers, there will not be a four-digit-a-plate price tag to hear the former Republican nominee for vice president. If you are into politics, we would encourage you to make the event at the Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center on UTPB’s...

We just talked about the HuffPo/YouGov poll, which is rather cut and dried. This Rasmussen poll, however is a bit different, as it gives voters different choices. More people favor electing an opposing Congress [Republicans] than impeaching Obama, as a solution to the problem. This troubles me, simply because those folks must not have been paying attention as Obama has ignored Congress, and the Rule of Law, for quite some time. We already have proof positive that Obama will never follow the Rule of Law, and will continue to do as he pleases until he is removed from office. The...

Pollster John Zogby reports in our weekly White House report card that the troubles dogging President Obama and his inability to handle them have prompted even his most ardent supporters to give up. "Now some people have really bad weeks. Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff got an 'F' after the nation's soccer team lost to Germany. “But President Obama's week was just as bad. Israel and the Palestinians are at war again. The president should have visited the U.S.-Mexican border where so many immigrant children are in danger and so many American citizens are worried. “It just seems that even those...

The WMUR/Granite State Poll gives Christie a first-place 19 per cent showing among New Hampshire Republicans But when Romney is added to the mix, he draws 39-percent support and leaves everyone else in single digits Paul Ryan has the highest 'favorable' numbers of the field, at 55 per cent Christie's 46 per cent favorable number is soft since a separate 36 per cent say they don't like him When asked which potential White House hopeful they would never support, More Republicans name Christie than any other pol.Chris Christie narrowly leads the pack of potential Republican presidential candidates in a poll...

More than half of the country has a message for former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin: enough. That's the result from a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Annenberg poll in which 54 percent of voters say they've heard enough from Palin and would prefer that she be less outspoken in political debates. That includes nearly two-thirds of Democrats, a majority of independents, and even nearly four-in-10 Republicans. And the results come as Palin has called for President Barack Obama's impeachment. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)But Palin isn't the only former politician voters wish would stay away from politics. Fifty-one percent of voters say they've heard...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a clear lead in the Democratic primary, topping her potential challengers by an almost 50 percentage point margin, yet fails to hit the 50% mark against any of her potential Republican opponents, a Quinnipiac University National Poll, published Tuesday, shows. Hillary leads the Democratic primary with 58 percent, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts with 11 percent, Vice President Joseph Biden with 9 percent and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo with 4 percent. No other candidate tops 1 percent, the poll found. On the contrary, the Republican presidential primary is wide open....

Hillary Clinton’s artificially inflated poll numbers have made her seem like an especially strong presidential candidate, but the Clinton bubble is quickly coming to an end. Earlier in June, Ross Douthat of The New York Times noted that she has been “leading every potential Republican candidate by around 10 points” and “running far ahead of President Obama’s job approval numbers.” Carl Cannon, the Real Clear Politics Washington bureau chief, cited her standing as the most admired woman in America, a contest in which she easily topped Oprah in 2013. But Ms. Clinton’s re-entry on the political stage over the last...

After an absence of several years, the new Pew Research Center political typology poll was just released. It breaks the American political electorate into eight groups. And, it makes clear what the Democratic challenge is in November midterm election. The Pew political typology has two dimensions. One is the likelihood of voting. Pew factors voters into three categories: "General Public," "Registered Voter," and "Politically Engaged." I'll assume the "Politically Engaged" are those likely to vote in the November midterm election and focus on those percentages. The second Pew dimension is the degree of partisanship. Pew sees three clusters. The first...

As Charlie Crist has pretty much established his persona as a incompetent Democrat,along with becoming another laughing stock for Floridians,Debbie Wasserman being at the top of the list,so what happens when Floridians say "Sorry Charlie" come November? Is he off to 2016? God Help Us Please!Charlie Crist,and easy contender for a nightmare Democrat Ticket!.Hard to say what would be the worst Democratic ticket for 2016,but Charlie Crist will easily make the list of possibilities along with Howard Dean,Bernie Sanders and John Kerry.

DALLAS – Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis said Saturday it’s “absurd” to suggest it’s too late for her to overtake Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott in the race for governor Davis, pausing to speak to reporters after a breakfast speech at the Texas Democratic Convention, said her campaign will have the resources to compete with Abbott. He has a substantial war chest, years in the making, and his campaign recently confirmed to the Express-News that he has reserved $10 million of airtime in October ahead of the general election. Davis, however, has raised millions since announcing last year, and observers are...

HATTIESBURG, Miss. — With only hours before the polls were to close in the Republican Senate runoff here, Senator Thad Cochran’s campaign was still reaching out to traditional black Democrats in his effort to defeat his Tea Party-backed opponent, State Senator Chris McDaniel. But turnout in African-American precincts appeared to be low, and McDaniel supporters were optimistic. The hard feelings generated by the race were also in evidence, with both conservative groups and the N.A.A.C.P. sending out poll watchers to look for what they considered to be fraud or intimidation. The United States Justice Department also said that it was...

He's said over and over that he won't run for the White House a third time, but a new poll indicates that if Mitt Romney changed his mind and made another bid for president, he'd be the frontrunner among Republicans in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire. According to the Suffolk University/Boston Herald survey, which was released Thursday, 24% of Granite State Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say that Romney would be their first choice for their party's presidential nomination. Among the potential 2016 GOP contenders, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was a distant second, at...

Have you seen the “Ready for Hillary” bumper stickers? I’ve seen one already, and wondered about the implied insult to the current occupant of the White House. You’re “Ready for Hillary” when the greatest statesman of our age isn’t even halfway through his second term? Are you ready because Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state was such a rousing success? As of this writing, Islamist forces are marching south from newly conquered Mosul and Tikrit in Iraq. Wasn’t Clinton the chief architect of our foreign policy when we failed to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement with Iraq in 2011? Reviewing that...

Just days after becoming Iowa's Republican Senate nominee, Joni Ernst has taken the lead over Democrat Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) in two polls in a race that could decide which party controls the U.S. Senate. A poll by Loras College's Public Opinion Survey Center found Ernst leading with 48% to Braley's 41.7%. A Rasmussen Reports poll also has Ernst leading Braley by one percentage point (45%-44%). Ernst navigated the GOP civil war, getting the endorsements of everyone from Sarah Palin to Mitt Romney. Republicans, who need to gain six seats to take back the Senate, coalesced around her because, as...