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Long-simmering tensions within the Republican Party spilled into public view Wednesday as the pragmatic and conservative wings of the GOP blamed each other in blunt terms for the party’s failure to capture the Senate. With tea party-backed candidates going down in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada, depriving Republicans of what would have been a 50-50 Senate, a bloc of prominent senators and operatives said party purists like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had foolishly pushed nominees too conservative to win in politically competitive states. (snip) Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott put it plainly: “We did not nominate our...

Long-simmering tensions within the Republican Party spilled into public view Wednesday as the pragmatic and conservative wings of the GOP blamed each other in blunt terms for the party’s failure to capture the Senate. With tea party-backed candidates going down in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada, depriving Republicans of what would have been a 50-50 Senate, a bloc of prominent senators and operatives said party purists like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had foolishly pushed nominees too conservative to win in politically competitive states. Movement conservatives pointed the finger right back at the establishment, accusing the National Republican Senatorial...

With Sarah Palin denouncing my colleagues for veiling the Republicans who want to stop her in anonymity, POLITICO executive editor Jim VandeHei responds: We have promised since the earliest days of POLITICO to pull back the curtain on how Washington really works and to let readers inside the conversations taking place among the people in power. Sometimes that requires extensive use of anonymous sources. This is what GOP insiders in this city are talking about and their concerns are widely known, if not publicly discussed. None of these Republicans would speak on the record for obvious reasons: they fear the...

GOP mega-donors look toward 2012 By: Maggie Haberman and Kenneth P. Vogel October 23, 2010 05:33 PM EDT As the 2010 campaign draws to its raucous close, the Republican Party's biggest donors are slowly beginning to choose sides, with some still looking for a strong alternative to a populist conservative movement that makes them uneasy. The big New York, Texas, California and Florida donors who traditionally play a key role in choosing the GOP nominee lined up behind George W. Bush in 2000 and, largely, John McCain in 2008. This year’s early favorite appears to be Mitt Romney, donor...

It's two weeks before the 2010 elections. Which means now's a fine time to start obsessing about the 2012 campaign. The next presidential race will unofficially begin on No. 3 -- the day after the midterm elections. It's possible we may not know the outcome of all the critical House and Senate races by then, and these races could determine which party controls the House and Senate. But once most of the 2010 votes are counted, the politerati will quickly pivot toward the next big thing. So let me get an early jump and tell you this: watch out for...

Mitt Romney’s political operation raised $1.7 million from July through September, again pacing the field of prospective 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls. The former Massachusetts governor, who lost a bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and is widely believed to be preparing another run, has built a robust political operation including political action committees at the federal level and in five states with strategic significance in the pending battle for the Republican nomination: Iowa, New Hampshire, Alabama, South Carolina and Michigan.

Even after an above-the-fold, front-page story in the Washington Post, the establishment media seems determined to sit back and wait rather than do any "enterprise reporting" on the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case and, more importantly, on the much bigger and broader policy and ethics questions swirling around it. This is a serious dereliction of journalistic responsibility. For those reporters who actually want to do their jobs, and for all of you readers who rightly continue to insist that this is an important topic, herewith is a guided tour to the Panther scandal and its broader implications. The uncontroverted...

The Left Wing Media Machinus Maximus once more trundles the old rusty guns into place and starts firing…sort of. These old cannons date back to at least the late 1940s. Let's run the list. 1966: Ronald Reagan runs for Governor of California. RESPONSE: Reagan is accused of being an extremist, a nut, a member of the John Birch Society, an idiot, stupid, dumb a Fascist and a racist. 1988: Dan Quayle is nominated for vice president by the GOP. RESPONSE: Quayle is accused of being not very bright, dumb, an air-head, a fool, a draft-dodger. 2004: Dick Cheney is re-nominated...

A Justice Department prosecutor defied his superiors by testifying at a U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing Friday, where he leveled an explosive allegation: top officials in the department gutted a voter intimidation case against a fringe African American militant group because the suspects were black and their alleged victims were white. The prosecutor, Christopher Coates, also said the downgrading of the case against the New Black Panther Party was evidence of a Justice Department culture which discouraged “race neutral” enforcement of civil rights laws, frowned on prosecuting minority perpetrators and folded under pressure from black and Latino rights groups. After...

In a strange departure from Morning Joe's typical spontaneity, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski issued what was clearly a scripted, teleprompted, manifesto this morning. The statement purported to be non-partisan condemnation of "angry voices" and a call, citing a WWII poster, to "keep calm and carry on." But even a cursory analysis reveals that the manifesto's message suits Dem themes to a 'T', and carries clear echoes of a recent partisan speech by Pres. Obama at a political event. The manifesto amounted to a condemnation of the "angry voices" and the "political extremists" who, claimed Scarborough, "are dominating the airwaves...

Marketing consultant Christine O'Donnell upset Rep. Mike Castle in the Delaware Republican Senate primary tonight, handing the tea party movement a major victory and giving Democrats an unexpected chance to hold the First State seat.O'Donnell, who is making her third run for the Senate in as many elections, relied heavily on national surrogates -- from the Tea Party Express to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- to fuel a shoestring campaign against the iconic Castle who had held elected office in the state for more than four decades. "The people of Delaware have spoken," said O'Donnell in her victory speech....

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday tried to find the upside to a possible Democratic landslide in November. Talking to Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, he wondered if major Republican gains could be "a blessing in disguise for President Obama." (Snip) At one point during the interview, O'Reilly derided the President's plan to let tax cuts for upper income groups expire as "class warfare." He pressed the ABC host, "Would you agree with that?" The ABC journalist unsurprisingly quipped, "Not necessarily."

CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer got personal with the top House Republican on "Face the Nation" Sunday, asking him whether he’d consider kicking his smoking habit if he becomes speaker. Schieffer, a former smoker and cancer survivor, noted that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has taken $340,000 from the tobacco industry during the course of his career. The discussion: Bob Schieffer: "They've been the largest contributor to your political campaigns over the year. How do you square that with the fact that cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in this country, 435,000 people, their deaths are...

Calif. Senate Boxer (D) 48% Fiorina (R)44% CNN/Time Tuesday, September 7, 2010 Matchup Results Source Dates Sample Boxer vs. Fiorina Fiorina (R) 48% Boxer (D) 47% Rasmussen Reports 9/6 750 LV Wednesday, August 25, 2010 Matchup Results Source Dates Sample Boxer vs. Fiorina Boxer (D) 44% Fiorina (R) 43% Rasmussen Reports 8/24 750 Calif. Governor Whitman (R)48% Brown (D)46% CNN/Time Fla. Governor Sink (D)49% Scott (R) 42% CNN/Time Wednesday, September 1, 2010 Matchup Results Source Dates Sample Sink vs. Scott Scott (R) 45% Sink (D) 44% Rasmussen Reports 9/1 750 LV Friday, August 27, 2010 Matchup Results Source Dates Sample...

Americans increasingly are convinced — incorrectly — that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and a growing number are thoroughly confused about his religion. Nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, said they think Obama is Muslim, up from the 11 percent who said so in March 2009, according to a poll released Thursday. The proportion who correctly say he is a Christian is down to just 34 percent. The largest share of people, 43 percent, said they don't know his religion, an increase from the 34 percent who said that in early 2009. The survey, conducted by the...

Harry Reid may have deserted Pres. Obama over the Ground Zero mosque, but PBO can count on at least one stalwart defender: Norah O'Donnell. On today's Morning Joe, the MSNBC "correspondent" declared that the prez is deserving of praise for his position. Then, dancing a quantum leap further, O'Donnell accused mosque opponents of acting "like the people who attacked America and killed 3,000 people." View video here.

One of things for which Sarah Palin gets criticized, in this case often by Republicans, is her willingness to get into “pissing matches” with members of the media. This is described as either “un-presidential” by those who think nothing in life matters but presidential politics, or otherwise just bad form because of the cliche that says you can’t win an argument with people who buy ink by the barrel. Whether it’s good political strategy or not – and I don’t think Palin cares about that as much as her critics suppose – it’s God’s work and it’s about time someone...

Katie Couric, whose real name is Katherine Anne Couric, mocked the names of Sarah Palin’s children during a rehearsal in her studio. Her comments, made during the 2008 presidential campaign, are being discussed in the blogosphere today after being leaked. “Where the hell do they get these names from?” she asked, referring to Palin children Trig and Track, sending her crew into peals of laughter. I have some new names for CBS. In a tragedy in Louisiana this Monday, six young teenagers drowned. Their names were: Takeitha, JaMarcus, JaTavious, Litrelle, LaDairus and Latevin. These, like the names of Palin’s children,...

One of the delights about the Internet is watching new people use a new technology to make the same old mistakes. Consider the admissions by Politico and Greg Sargent that they regularly run items on Sarah Palin simply to drive traffic. From Politico: “More traffic comes from an item on Sarah Palin’s ‘refudiation’ faux pas than from our hundreds of stories on the complexities of health care reform or Wall Street regulation.” Perhaps if Politico were as vigilant in its coverage of health care reform and Wall Street regulation as it is every slip by Sarah Palin readers would be...

This tripe from Kathleen Parker is something. She bemoans the loss of privacy and kinship when the Journolist blew up in the faces of some 400+ reporters: It should come as no surprise that self-identifying liberals have liberal thoughts and friends, so no foul there, as Carlson has said. And, indeed, some of the comments are, on their face, condemnable, not to mention banal. But some also have been presented out of context and, besides, were offered as part of an ongoing argument among colleagues who believed they were acting in good faith that theirs was a private conversation. Were...