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Over the weekend, Kasich’s campaign teamed up with Trump’s operation in Michigan to help Trump delegates gobble up convention committee posts that would otherwise have gone to Cruz. While the effects of the Michigan deal may be marginal, it was the best evidence yet that Team Kasich is more comfortable with a Trump nomination than a Cruz one. The Kasich campaign defended aiding Trump on the grounds that Cruz deserved it as a punishment for trying to scoop up too many delegates. But whether it was bad blood, pique or part of a larger strategy, Kasich’s part in any anti-Trump...

Republicans won't need to put a candidate like Sarah Palin on the presidential ticket this year, veteran party strategist Charlie Black says, because the candidates are already conservative enough. Asked at National Journal's Election Preview on Tuesday whether he thought the party might name a vice presidential candidate like Sarah Palin, whose addition to the GOP 2008 presidential ticket excited conservatives -- but also turned off independent voters -- Black argued such a pick won't be necessary given the current crop of presidential candidates. "We don't have any moderates running," Black said. "I don't think there will be any need...

Now, this piece in the New York Times illustrates the obstacles Tea Party lawmakers are up against. All these Republican freshmen in the House, for example, this article makes it plain how difficult their job is. There's even a section in this story on compromise, the bad kind of compromise, the kind of compromise that Republicans have been known for, get along with the Democrats, please the media, show that we're not the unreasonable Tea Party types. That's what's shaking down here. The Tea Party is under assault from the Democrats and the Republican elite, and now the battle has...

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, there's a big piece in the New York Times Magazine coming this weekend. It is entitled: "Does Anyone Have a Grip on the GOP?" The subhead: "The Republican Elite Tries to Take Its Party Back." This article prints like 24 pages. It is a major, major New York Times Magazine piece. It confirms everything that I have thought, everything I have speculated, everything I have said about the battle between the Republican elite and the Tea Party. I can't read the whole thing on the program; I don't intend to. I've got some highlights or quotes...

Step 1: The first rule of the establishment is: Do not admit you are part of the establishment! Step 2: Disarm them with praise Step 3: Moderate whoever they pick as the 2012 nominee. Step 4: Teach them about compromise. Step 5: Never forget reality

UPDATE: ABC News' Ron Claiborne, traveling with the McCain campaign, reports that McCain senior adviser Charlie Black would not say whether people around McCain while he was en route to Rick Warren's forum had access to blackberries and cell phones from which they could have tipped off Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., about the questions. "There's no reason we would do that," was all Black would say, though quite obviously there is a reason.

This is just too good! The Obama Campaign, in their desperation to explain away John McCain's masterful performance at the Rick Warren "Civil Forum on the Presidency" Saturday night, have allowed their minions in the press to put forth the vile assertion that John McCain cheated by listening in on Obama's time with Rick Warren. Byron York is now reporting that actually it was Barack Obama who had more information going into the questioning than did John McCain! It turns out that Rick Warren shared a third question with Obama, in addition to the first two he shared with both...

FRESNO, California (Reuters) - A top adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain apologized on Monday after he was quoted as saying a September 11-type attack before the November election would benefit McCain. The campaign of Democrat Barack Obama condemned the remark by McCain political adviser Charlie Black, calling it a "complete disgrace." "I deeply regret the comments, they were inappropriate," Black said in a statement after McCain said that if Black had made such a comment, "I strenuously disagree" with it. "I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its...

The MSM is sure to have a field day with McCain advisor Charlie Black's statement that a terror attack on U.S. soil "would be a big advantage" to the Republican candidate. McCain has been quick to dissociate himself from the remark, and surely Black would have been well-advised not to make it. Predictably, CNN's Jack Cafferty has been leading the charge against Black. In his "Cafferty File" question this afternoon, the CNN commentator called Black's remark "breathtaking in its stupidity" and asked viewers whether Black should be fired. View video here. I wonder if Cafferty's aware that in the course...

Disturbed by troubling connections and unflattering publicity, John McCain has just purged several prominent Washington lobbyists from his presidential campaign. Surely his intentions are laudable, but if Sen. McCain is consistent in ridding his campaign of such compromised people, he will find himself riding lonesome on the Straight Talk Express. That's because nearly all of his advisers, fundraisers and top staffers have worked on K Street, starting with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, and his senior adviser and spokesman, Charles Black. From the beginning, the McCain team has been thoroughly infested with representatives of corporate special interests, from the campaign's...

For reasons of financial necessity, personal preference and plain politics, John McCain is gearing up to run one of the least traditional presidential campaigns in recent history. The problem is that even prominent strategists within McCain’s own party wonder if his unorthodox strategy will work. Facing the prospect of competing against a Democrat who is on track to shatter every fundraising record — and confronted by his own inability to rake in large bundles of cash — McCain and his key advisers have largely been forced into devising a three-pronged strategy that they hope can turn their general election weaknesses...

Two of Sen. John McCain's top advisers and fundraisers are among several Republican and Democratic presidential campaign officials whose lobbying firms have been paid more than $15 million by foreign governments since 2005. The firms of McCain senior adviser Charlie Black, who until recently was the chairman of Washington-based BKSH & Associates, and campaign co-chairman Thomas G. Loeffler, who heads the Loeffler Group in San Antonio, received millions of dollars lobbying the White House, Congress and others as agents of nearly a dozen foreign clients in recent years. [snip] c Rob Allyn, head of the Dallas-based Allyn & Co., a...