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Zogby and the Wall Street Journal released a poll only two weeks after their last one. It represents a loss of 3.5 for Casey and a gain of 1.2% for Santorum. The Romanelli factor is unknown. Casey's lead has dropped from 9% in July and August to 4.1% today. The margin of error for poll was 3.3%. The polling was done between August 29th and September 5th, which means that only the last three days of polling would have covered the Meet the Press debate. The Casey performance's effect on this poll may be minimal. A 4.1% difference is closer...

In announcing he will resign his congressional seat, Rep. Tom DeLay did one last favor for his party, strengthening the likelihood that Republicans will retain the 22nd District of Texas this November and, with it, control of the U .S. House.     DeLay cited his desire to prevent "liberal Democrats an opportunity to steal this seat with a negative, personal campaign." But the underlying and unstated factor is the growing belief that the House GOP's 12-year majority is in jeopardy and every single race could count.     Still, long before a mounting array of legal charges and political turmoil combined...

WASHINGTON — 's request for broad, and constitutionally questionable, authority to control spending by vetoing specific items in larger bills is drawing limited interest in Congress.Even though he has yet to issue a single veto in his five years in office, Bush asked Congress in his State of the Union address to give him power. He said it and a movement to curb lawmakers' appetite for special projects, or earmarks, would provide a one-two punch in reducing government spending."We can tackle this problem together, if you pass the line-item veto," he said.White House budget director Joshua Bolten said the two approaches "go...

FORGET MAGAZINES AND EDITORIAL PAGES. The only endorsements that really matter in the GOP House leadership contest are those from the members themselves, especially the members with clout. Two such Republicans are Jim Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Mike Pence, head of the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), both of whom endorsed Arizona congressman John Shadegg this week. Shadegg, an erstwhile chief of both the RSC and (more recently) the Republican Policy Committee, remains a dark horse--but he's gaining steam. "The 'Big Mo' is on our side," says one pro-Shadegg Republican.The timing of Pence's public support came...

WASHINGTON--As readers of this page know all too well, excessive government regulation, taxation and spending strangle economic growth as frequently as runaway litigation and soaring health-care and energy costs do. What politicians say about these issues does not matter much, but what we do about them does. I'm proud of what House Republicans have accomplished on this front over the last several years, but I know that much remains to be done. House Republicans have cut the tax rate on capital gains and dividends, substantially lowered personal tax rates, and set in motion a plan to eliminate the death tax...

WASHINGTON--Ten years ago, the American people put Republicans in control of the House of Representatives for the first time in more than 40 years. It was a historic achievement, made possible because we stood for the principles the American people believed in: smaller government, returning power to the states, lower taxes, greater individual freedom and--above all--reform. Some Republican leaders in the House seem to have lost sight of those principles, though the American people still believe in them. Meanwhile, Americans are sick of scandals. To fully regain their confidence--and to retain and grow the Republican majority--we need to make a...

WASHINGTON--The Republican agenda is at risk because of a growing perception that Congress is for sale. The guilty plea of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham for bribery, the guilty pleas of scam artists Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, and rumors of future indictments, have all cast a pall over the public perception of the House of Representatives and corroded the public trust in our collective commitment to principle. We can't allow this to happen. Republicans need to prove to voters that our policies come directly from our principles. To rebuild trust in the institution and our commitment to governing, we need...

WASHINGTON — The contest to succeed Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) as House majority leader appeared to shape up as a two-man race Monday, as Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) and another possible contender announced they would not run for the powerful No. 2 position. That apparently leaves the field to two senior Republicans — Roy Blunt of Missouri and John A. Boehner of Ohio — to compete for support from fellow House Republicans, who will choose DeLay's successor in a secret ballot election the week of Jan. 30. There is a chance that another candidate may yet enter the race because...

Why did President Bush not do very well in Congress this year? Was it because he was politically inept? Was it because he offended members of his own party? Was it because they were afraid that sticking with him would kill any chance of reelection?All of these are possibly correct. But I think that there is a more efficient answer -- and that is that the President, in dealing with Congress, simply bit off more than he could chew. He thought that there were consensus positions for reforming certain issues, but there were none. He misread the number of people...

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 637 (Republicans in roman; Democrats in italic; Independents underlined) H RES 579 2/3 YEA-AND-NAY 15-Dec-2005 4:08 PM QUESTION: On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Agree, as Amended BILL TITLE: Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that those who celebrate Christmas believe that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected

Has the American conservative movement reached a dead end? That is the impression you might have gotten if you attended the panel discussions sponsored by the James Madison program at Princeton University earlier this month.Speakers hailed past beginnings and triumphs -- the founding of National Review by William F. Buckley Jr. 50 years ago, the Goldwater candidacy of 1964, the Reagan administration in the 1980s, the rise of religious conservatives and the vindication of market economics over the last 25 years.But speakers were much gloomier about the present. Voters have installed Republican majorities in Congress and a Republican president widely...

WASHINGTON -- There is no doubt Rep. John Boehner of Ohio is quietly enlisting support from fellow House Republicans to elect him as majority leader in January. The question is whether Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York also is campaigning to be majority whip.Reports of a Boehner-Reynolds ticket have circulated in Washington, but Reynolds vigorously denies it. If he does run for whip, Reynolds would be accused of cutting and running from his duties as House Republican campaign chairman because of the difficult 2006 midterm election ahead.A special election in January would mean House Republicans have given up on Tom...

Pathetic.One expected no better of the Senate Democrats, who want to get out of Iraq as soon as possible, or sooner than possible--most of them don't really care--and who want to embarrass president Bush. But couldn't the Senate Republicans have stood and fought against passing an irresponsible resolution suggesting that Americans want to get out of Iraq more than we want to win?The Republican leadership may have figured they didn't have the votes to defeat the Democratic proposal without giving their members a weaker alternative to vote for. But better to lose such a vote by a small margin than...

House Republican leaders have moved from balking at big cuts in Medicaid and other programs to embracing them, driven by pent-up anger from fiscal conservatives concerned about runaway spending and the leadership's own weakening hold on power. Beginning this week, the House GOP lawmakers will take steps to cut as much as $50 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget for health care for the poor, food stamps and farm supports, as well as considering across-the-board cuts in other programs. Only last month, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and other GOP leaders quashed demands within their party for budget cuts...

Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005 (Introduced in House) HR 2679 IH 109th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 2679 To amend the Revised Statutes of the United States to eliminate the chilling effect on the constitutionally protected expression of religion by State and local officials that results from the threat that potential litigants may seek damages and attorney's fees. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES May 26, 2005 Mr. HOSTETTLER (for himself, Mr. WAMP, Mr. NORWOOD, Mr. JENKINS, Mr. PAUL, Mr. DOOLITTLE, Mr. SODREL, Mr. WELDON of Florida, Mr. ALEXANDER, Mr. BACHUS, Mr. PITTS, Mr. INGLIS of South Carolina, Mr....

PRESIDENT BUSH WENT TO BED at the normal time, roughly 10p.m., on the night the House of Representatives voted on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. But he was awakened by White House staffers to talk to wavering Republicans on the House floor. A cell phone with the president on the line was passed by Bush's chief congressional lobbyist, Candida Wolff, from congressman to congressman. Then Bush watched the vote count on C-SPAN before giving up. The total for CAFTA looked to be stuck at 214, not enough for passage. He went back to bed, only to be called a...

GOP SUCCESSFUL IN MOVING FORWARD AMERICA'S AGENDAEnergy, Transportation, Trade Bills Pass Congress, President Signs Historic Legislation, In First Seven Months Of 109th Congress______________________________________________________________________   Congress Passed Energy Bill:   The House And Senate Passed H.R. 6, Comprehensive Energy Legislation Before Adjourning For The August Recess. (H.R. 6, CQ Vote #445: Adopted 275-156: R 200-31; D 75-124; I 0-1, 7/28/05; H.R. 6, CQ Vote #213: Adopted 74-26: R 49-6; D 25-19; I 0-1, 7/29/05)   Congress Passed Transportation Reauthorization:   The House And Senate Passed H.R. 3, The $286.4 Billion Transportation Reauthorization Act Before Adjourning For The August Recess. (H.R. 3,...

When Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) hustled onto the House floor Wednesday night, he knew that he was about five votes short of the number needed to pass a trade agreement that had become the toughest bill of the year for the Republican leadership. "Your adrenaline is pumping 100 miles an hour -- you're excited about the prospect of winning a big one," he recalled in an interview. "At the same time -- especially in something like this, when you go on the floor knowing you don't have the votes -- there's this seed of doubt back there that we...

Supreme Court Strikes Fatal Blow to Rights June 30, 2005 To the Editor: On June 23, 2005, four liberal-socialist U.S. Supreme Court justices — John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — joined by Anthony Kennedy, struck what may be a fatal blow to one of the three fundamental human rights upon which our Republic is founded, that of private property. Enlightenment thinker John Locke’s three fundamental rights of every human being — to life, liberty and property — were adopted by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as life, liberty and the pursuit of...

The speaker's inner circle is a political money-raising machine that provides a window on the way Washington worksWASHINGTON -- In his first campaign for the Illinois legislature nearly a quarter-century ago, Dennis Hastert had a problem. He had plenty of campaign posters, but no wooden stakes to make yard signs. His friend Dan Mattoon had the solution. Mattoon knew where former Rep. Tom Corcoran kept hundreds of wooden stakes and, as lore has it, he took them for Hastert without bothering to tell Corcoran. Since that time, Mattoon, 52, now one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists, and Hastert (R-Ill.), 63,...