Bill Schneider

Will Mitt Romney or the Republicans in Congress define the Republican message this year? That's a big problem for the Romney campaign. It's beginning to look like congressional Republicans want to put Romney in office so he can sign off on the Tea Party agenda -- their agenda, not his.

The Supreme Court debate on health care was shocking to many Americans. The shock was that the arguments going on inside the court sounded so much like the arguments going on outside the court. It was nakedly political. The partisan takeover of American politics has now engulfed the Supreme Court.

"Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
...

The 2012 election has crossed a barrier. In the latest CNN poll, 40 percent of Americans say things are going well in the country. Is that good? After all, 60 percent still say things are going badly.

For the Democrats, it is good.

When the number of Americans...

They say Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. Not in South Carolina, they didn't.

Newt Gingrich insisted that his victory in the South Carolina primary was an act of defiance of the nation's elites. In his victory speech, Gingrich called it a victory for those...

Ron Paul is likely to win the Iowa Republican caucuses next week. What can that possibly mean?

Ron Paul is something of a crank. He's a libertarian with extreme anti-government views. He wants to abolish the Federal Reserve system. And the federal income tax. And cut spending by one trillion...

Will a long, competitive race between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich give Republicans a boost? Don't bet on it.

A hard-fought race for a party's nomination often does the party a lot of good. That was certainly the case for the Democrats in 2008. The spirited race between Barack Obama...

You can't win a horse race without a horse. That's something people planning a third-party campaign in 2012 need to keep in mind.

Look at what's happening to the Tea Party movement. It doesn't have a horse. Tea Party conservatives have been trying out a different horse every few weeks...

What will the 2012 presidential election look like? Extremely close. And extremely frustrating. Voters will be forced to choose between fear of the unknown and fear of the known. The known? President Obama's inability to turn the economy around. The unknown? The scary prospect of giving Republicans control of the...

Ironically, the end of the war in Iraq was announced the day after the campaign in Libya ended. Iraq and Libya epitomize two radically different approaches for dealing with terrorism: massive intervention and targeted strikes.

The war in Iraq was led by the United States. It lasted nearly nine...

The Republican Party is split. But is it deeply divided to the point where one side is likely to bolt the party if the other side wins the nomination? Not yet. But it's early. The possibility of a civil war is still a distant threat. But not an unthinkable one.

President Obama the problem-solver is turning into President Obama the warrior. It just might save him.

Politics is the enemy of problem-solving. That's common knowledge. Why can't the country deal with the national debt? Politics. Why can't we do something about climate change? Politics.

We see more evidence of it...

It's about time.

Throughout the long health care debate and the nerve-wracking confrontation over the debt ceiling, the voters' concern has never wavered. It was always focused on one issue -- jobs. Now, finally, Washington is beginning to pay attention.

Politicians should have learned an important rule of politics...

The Republican race for President is wide open. But the party has already settled on its vice presidential nominee: freshman Sen. Marco Rubio.

Rubio spoke at the Reagan Library last week at the personal invitation of Nancy Reagan. During his speech, he remarked, "The reality is, I'm not...

Eleven years after the 2000 election, politicians are finally trying to reform the electoral college. Reformers want the president to be chosen by national popular vote. A popular vote system would certainly be different. But would it be better?

Eight states and the District of Columbia have passed the

Democrats are waking up to a terrifying realization: there is nothing President Obama can do to get himself re-elected next year. Things look just that bad. On the other hand, there are plenty of things Republicans can do to get Obama re-elected. And they seem to be doing them.

How...

It's baaaack! This week, Congress will vote, yet again, on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

A two-thirds majority in each house of Congress is required to amend the Constitution. Since 1980, Congress has voted on a balanced budget amendment five times. The closest it has come to passage...

How exactly did compromise come to be a dirty word?

Republicans insist that any form of tax increase be taken "off the table" in negotiations with the White House. Congressional Democrats are equally insistent that entitlement programs -- Social Security and Medicare -- be taken "off the table," despite President...

The Bush Doctrine is dead. It was mortally wounded in Iraq. It finally expired in Afghanistan.

The doctrine was promulgated by President George W. Bush in his second inaugural address on January 20, 2005, when he said, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of...

"Smart . . . smart . . . and stupid." That was my eighty-something-year-old mother's reply when I asked her what she thought of Bill Clinton during the impeachment saga of 1998.

We can now add Anthony Weiner's name to the list of smart, smart and stupid politicians. It's a...