Barry Goldwater

WASHINGTON -– One of the first clues that President Barack Obama intended to paint Mitt Romney as a right wing extremist came during his remarks at ...

George Romney stood up to the GOP's right-wing extremists, including his party's presidential candidate, while his son trembles before the loutish Limbaugh. Though Mitt Romney may carry his father's DNA, he failed to inherit his father's spine.

Olympia Snowe's ethic of reaching across the aisle to solve the nation's problems seems a relic of a bygone time, when politics was the art of the possible rather than trench warfare.

An organization that always turns right can only move in circles, or more accurately, in an ever tightening spiral. Rule and Ruin aims to explain how the GOP came to be drawn into its accelerating tornado of extremism.

Why have Republicans allowed the family planning issue to tie their candidates up in knots in 2012? The answer is in just how outsized the influence of a minority viewpoint can be on a political party, so long as it represents the base of that party's support.

It was 48 years ago and in the annals of American presidential election lore, but looking back at the campaign of 1964 reveals some dramatic differences and striking similarities to this year's contest, as well as some familiar last names.

As I read this magnificent book, I found myself regretting my youth, wishing that I had been born 40 years earlier so that I could have voted for this man in his trailblazing contests.

Today, we know a lot more about mental illness than we did forty years ago. But given the grueling and brutal demands of modern campaigning, we would be extremely unlikely to embrace a presidential candidate who acknowledged taking drugs for a psychiatric condition.

As conservatives prepare for an urgent meeting this weekend to discuss their options in the 2012 campaign, they face an epic crisis of identity and el...

As Obama battles to enact a tax cut for 99 percent of Americans, the House GOP is making a political blunder reminiscent of the self-destructive overreaching of then-Speaker Gingrich that rejuvenated the Clinton presidency during the 90s.

Just as Goldwater won his party's nomination, so may Perry. Perry can play to the party base and capitalize on his Thompson-like, tough, law-and-order persona, but in the end, it is unlikely that a Thompson-Goldwater hybrid can carry the general.

In a few weeks, DADT will be history. Now is not the time for Congresswoman Bachmann or other candidates to be second-guessing our military leaders, attempting to create uncertainty or unrest in the ranks, and shamelessly using our troops in order to score a few political points.

Hilary Rosen and Kellyanne Conway disagree about how heavy the economic albatross will be politically and whether the GOP fringe will taint its nominee. Did President 'Aiken' just declare victory and come home?

Barbour's statement is significant for two reasons: First, it sounds like the Mississippi governor is indeed running for the GOP presidential nomination. Second, it suggests his state has changed considerably since the 1960s.

If its horror can lead us to constructive change in ourselves and our society, a glimmer of silver lining might yet emerge from the attempted political assassination in Arizona.

WASHINGTON -- While pundits debate whether the tone in Washington will change in the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Arizona, the dean of the U.S....

Listen, Congress. The majority of the people have spoken, and it's not so much "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," as simply, "Don't Care."

I was discussing the prospects for the Tea Party in the 112th Congress with a friend and former co-worker of mine when we began discussing fiscal cons...

Sarah Palin is hoping the victories she stokes in a 2010 House takeover by the Right will evolve into an incarnation of the Ronald Reagan revolution. However, the Republican she most resembles is Barry Goldwater.

A Federal Judge has done the right thing to order an immediate end to 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' The government needs to let that ruling stand, and move on.