Chris Ladd

The catastrophic performance of this year's Tea Party-endorsed presidential candidates has inspired some to imagine that the movement is dead. That kind of optimism is only possible by ignoring red state politics. The growing power of the Tea Party is apparent all up and down the Republican primary...

Last month Pat Robertson, televangelist and long-time icon of the religious right, announced that it's time to legalize marijuana. The firestorm of shock and indignation from all sides ... never materialized. Not a whimper.

Who still supports our prohibition strategy in the War on Drugs?

You won't find...

Supreme Court arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act have liberals worried. The ACA is a vast Rube Goldberg contraption built around the individual mandate. Without the mandate, Obamacare falls apart. The collapse of Obamacare need not be a legislative nightmare. Here's an alternative approach that could meet...

The Tea Party Movement was a surprise to nearly everyone, especially to the people who set it loose. It began in mundane fashion. A far-right interest group funded by the Koch brothers initiated protests in the wake of the Obama inauguration and coordinated coverage of the...

Right now it appears that the most likely winner of the GOP delegate race may be no one.

There will be 2286 voting delegates at the convention in Tampa in August, meaning it takes 1144 to win. Of the 810 delegates awarded so far, Romney has won

Anyone who has traveled to Europe may have experienced surprise at finding the pews of its beautiful, ancient churches occupied only by tourists. Europeans are commonly regarded as living in a 'post-Christian' age, contrasted with the relative religious enthusiasm of their American cousins. However, the thundering roar of American Bible-thumping...

As I kid I liked to get up early with Grandma and sit with her in the kitchen while she cooked breakfast. She'd give me coffee, southern-style -- thin, sweet and creamy. It was a treat because it was so wrong. Coffee, as any medical professional could have explained at...

The reason Mitt Romney seems so ideologically elusive is that he is striving for ideological elusiveness. He is a sane, reasonable guy trying to win over a pack of political cranks without isolating the plurality of sane, reasonable folks he imagines he's going to lean on once nominated.

We've seen...

In her fiery CPAC speech this year Sarah Palin accidentally outlined the thesis of the fantastic new book, Rule and Ruin, by Geoffrey Kabaservice. Palin awkwardly demanded that the party's presidential nominee be someone who always 'instinctively turns right.'

Nothing could better define the dysfunction that plagues...

The U.S. Attorney General has unveiled a joint state and federal settlement with banks aimed at "righting the wrongs" of the housing bubble. It's a start -- a start that comes after the battle has mostly ended. The reality is that the window of opportunity to address this...

When Walter Cronkite stepped out of character in 1968 and questioned Johnson on the Vietnam War it was a monumental event. Cronkite was a sort of national godfather, the arbiter of what is and what ain't. His statement on the war effectively doomed President Johnson.

No figure...

A political gift can come in an awkward package. The left's efforts to frame Romney's remarks this week about "the very poor" are likely to have an unintended consequence for Democrats. They are hardening the impression that the left is hopelessly disconnected from middle class concerns. Call it...

The lost hero of modern conservatism was a charismatic maverick who represented the best hope for the post-Cold War Republican Party. He gave us an opportunity to build the Party's center-right posture into a post-racial juggernaut that could have dominated our politics for a generation.

Intelligent, charismatic, and seemingly incapable...

Under Newt Gingrich's economic plan, Mitt Romney would owe roughly $0 in federal taxes. Let that irony wash over you for a minute.

The authentic political issue lurking in the pages of Mitt Romney's tax return is the failure of extreme tax policies authored and still...

Newt Gingrich's attack on Mitt Romney's business career is one for the textbooks. His statements are finely calibrated to stain one of Romney's strongest selling points without accidentally raising the more relevant and dangerous question -- what policies have made private equity the most powerful force in modern American business.

Mitt Romney's career as a private equity manager has suddenly become a hot issue in a party that normally avoids any criticism of the business community. We've heard Rick Perry describe private equity as "vulture capital." Newt Gingrich has painted Romney's former firm as a business equivalent of the Grim...

America passed a little-noted milestone in 2009 as drug overdoses outnumbered traffic fatalities for the first time ever to become the primary cause of accidental death. The cause? It wasn't cocaine or heroin or some terrifying new criminal import. The doubling in drug related deaths over the past...

Oil is to progressives what Planned Parenthood is to fundamentalists. There's little point trying to discuss reasonable ways to use or develop it. When progressives hear the word "oil" all that comes to mind is the left wing equivalent of dead babies which is, of course, adorable birds rolled in...

It's easy to forget now, but just a few generations ago African-Americans overwhelmingly identified themselves as Republicans. The story of how the Party of Lincoln lost its black support is long and sad, but understanding what happened is critical as the Party looks to improve its standing in the black...