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(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Dallas, Texas (CNN) -- In the afterglow of Chris Christie's smashing re-election win last November, a chorus of big-name Republicans heralded the charismatic New Jersey governor as the party's savior in 2016. Not everyone was so enamored. Just days after the election, Texas Gov. Rick Perry appeared on national television and poured cold water on Christie's impressive victory. "He was a successful governor in New Jersey," Perry said on ABC's "This Week." "Now does that transcend to the country? We'll see in later years and months to come. We're all different states. Is a conservative in New Jersey a conservative...

Despite Wendy Davis's national name recognition, it appears the weeks of bad publicity are finally catching up to her campaign. Likely Republican opponent and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott raised three times the amount of money as Davis did in the past cycle, a sign that Texans are quickly choosing sides in the election. According to the Austin American-Stateman, Abbott raised $3.1 million in January, compared to Davis's $913,000. This raises Abbott's total to $29.4 million to Davis's $10.2 million war chest. Austinist suggests that among the most significant factors leading to such an advantage for the Republican candidate is...

Wendy Davis needs to remember one important thing: She is running for governor of Texas, and for now, her focus needs to be on the Democratic primary. Period. Which means she doesn’t have to answer to Rush Limbaugh or any other GOP commentator on the national stage. She is not vying for Rush’s vote, nor is she going to win over the kinds of Texas voters who listen regularly to Rush Limbaugh. So who cares what he thinks? Doubly so for Bristol Palin. The daughter of embarrassingly disastrous GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has zero political insights that are...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Texas gubernatorial hopeful Wendy Davis brushed off criticism about her life story from Bristol Palin, saying that nothing Palin accused her of was true. Davis was responding to a blog post from the daughter of former Gov. Sarah Palin, who wrote last week amid questions about the timeline of Davis’s personal biography, slamming her for allegedly leaving her kids behind with her ex-husband after finishing law school. “Gosh, children are sooo inconvenient, huh? I’m glad my mother didn’t put motherhood on the shelf when she was elected to City Council, then became our mayor, then governor,” Palin wrote, addressing her...

It’s an unseasonably warm midwinter day when a giant blue campaign bus arrives at a downscale strip mall in Pasadena, Texas, announcing the imminent return of a Republican dynasty. George Prescott Bush, the scion of arguably the most successful political family in American history, is launching a statewide bus tour that will introduce him to public prominence as he runs for commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, an important but generally obscure statewide position. Bush is a lock: He faces no serious challengers, a fact attributable largely to the overwhelming advantages that accompany his name. Come November, the handsome,...

Using Google's advanced search and the key words "Todd, Akin, Rape," I stopped counting after finding 50 separate Politico stories covering or touching on Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin's stupid comments about rape, between the day the story broke, August 19, 2012, and August 26, 2012

Sarah Palin is known to say that America is governed by a “permanent political class,” and recent comments by former first lady Barbara Bush about how she views former President Bill Clinton lends credence to that point of view. Before Bush’s recent health issues, she sat down for an interview with C-SPAN, part of a series of profiles on America’s first ladies, Investor’s Business Daily reported. In a candid conversation, Mrs. Bush reveals the bond of friendship that has formed between former President George H.W. Bush, herself and Clinton, whom she said visits “every summer.” While noting that they do...

A conservative politician knows when he or she has arrived when someone in the mainstream media has consigned him or her prematurely to the dustbin of history. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has joined those dubious ranks, thanks to some media reports, including a January 17, 2014 article in Salon. Ronald Reagan was thought to have had his last hurrah in 1976 when he failed to take away the Republican nomination from then President Gerald Ford. His administration was considered a failure by many in the media in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal. Of course Reagan was elected twice to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Former first lady Barbara Bush reiterates in a new interview that presidents don’t have to be members of political dynasties. "If we can't find more than two or three families to run for office, that's silly, because there are great governors and great eligible people to run," Bush says in an interview that will air Monday on C-SPAN. "And I think that the Kennedys, Clintons, Bushes — there are just more families than that. And I'm not arrogant enough to think that we alone are raising" presidential candidates. Her son Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, is considered a potential...

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who has decried the failure of Congress to extend unemployment benefits before its December recess, is talking about changing the vocabulary of assistance. In a speech Jan. 8 on the House of Representatives floor, Jackson Lee suggested renaming government welfare. "Maybe the word 'welfare' should be changed to something of, 'a transitional living fund,'" Jackson Lee said, according to a post on The Minority Report blog. "For that is what it is - for people to be able to live," she said....

Former Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said he’s still pondering a run for the White House because he doesn’t want Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) define the GOP. King, who’s made five trips up to early primary state New Hampshire and admitted in July that he’s toying with the idea of a presidential campaign, told MSNBC he hasn’t made up his mind yet and his decision should come “sometime next year, either next year or the beginning of 2015.” “Again, I’ve been up there five times. I am looking at it. People are talking...

The day after Chris Christie, the cuddly moderate conservative, won a landslide reelection as the Republican governor of Democratic New Jersey, I took the Internet Express out to Iowa, surveying its various newspapers, blogs and such to see how he might do in the GOP caucuses, won last time by Rick Santorum, neither cuddly nor moderate. Superstorm Sandy put Christie on the map. The winter snows of Iowa could bury him. From a Web site called the Iowa Republican, I learned that part of the problem with John McCain and Mitt Romney, seriatim losers to Barack Obama, “is they were...

Cornyn was rated the second most conservative of all incumbent U.S. senators by the nonpartisan National Journal, based on his voting record in the last Congress, which sat during 2011 and 2012. He scored 93.8 percent on the Journal’s “composite” conservative scale, which melds ratings on economic, social and foreign policy votes. Similarly, the anti-tax group Club for Growth has consistently rated Cornyn among the most conservative GOP senators over the years. The anti-abortion National Right to Life Committee gave Cornyn a rating of 100 percent in the last Congress, and also 100 percent in the current Congress to date....

Longtime Houston Community College Board Trustee Bruce Austin said he will request a recount after narrowly losing his District 2 seat to his challenger in Tuesday’s election. Small business owner Dave Wilson was ahead of Austin by 26 votes, based on complete, but unofficial results. A candidate needs to garner a majority of the vote to win. Wilson had 50.1 percent, while Austin got 49.9 percent. HCC officials must canvass the votes and declare them official before Austin can request a recount. The canvassing process usually takes up to four to five days. Black district: Four other seats were up...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Wednesday said that former President Clinton's comments about ObamaCare were an effort to distance his wife from the program ahead of a possible 2016 run. “That was certainly revealing, and it suggests perhaps that Hillary Clinton is looking to run away from President Obama and run away from ObamaCare," Cruz, who's seen as a potential 2016 candidate, told "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday morning. "And that ought to be a signal to Democrats, this thing isn’t working." Clinton said President Obama should change the law to allow people to keep their existing plans under ObamaCare....

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...

Governor Rick Perry was in Iowa this weekend and during an interview on ABC’s This Week, he raised the $64,000 question about a potential Chris Christie presidential candidacy: Gov. Rick Perry of Texas credited Chris Christie for his re-election in New Jersey, but he pointedly questioned whether the 22-point victory by Christie held any greater meaning for the Republican Party. “Is a conservative in New Jersey a conservative in the rest of the country?” Perry said in an interview with “This Week.” “We’ll have that discussion at the appropriate time.” As he made his first visit back to Iowa since...

It is no wonder that with Christie’s 22.5 point reelection victory in the New Jersey governor’s race on Tuesday the national press has christened him a star. Other than Christie, there is not one political adult being mentioned as a serious candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. Rand Paul values property rights over civil rights, which should be reversed. Ted Cruz wants to close the federal government and seal the boarder from immigrants, which is odd for a Canadian. And Rick Santorum. Enough said. Truth be told, the GOP has not fielded many attractive candidates of late. ---snip--- Here...

Move to the right or try to pull the GOP away from the tea party and toward the center? That is the question Gov. Chris Christie will face if he trounces his way to victory Tuesday in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race and turns his attention to the prospect of a 2016 presidential bid. Some Republicans watching the final stages of the governor’s race say a decisive Christie win will send a message to the national party that the GOP can triumph without catering to the far right. Polls show Mr. Christie, who opposed the partial federal government shutdown last month,...

In 2007, journalist Michael Kelly wrote a devastating profile of Ted Kennedy. By then, Kennedy was a political lion in winter, but the article in GQ reinforced the worst instincts of some Americans about Kennedy – the drinker, the carouser, a fraud. Kelly wrote: “Up close, the face is a shock. The skin has gone from red roses to gin blossoms. The tracery of burst capillaries shines faintly through the scaly scarlet patches that cover the bloated, mottled cheeks … The Chiclet teeth are the color of old piano keys. The eyes have yellowed too, and they are so bloodshot,...