On Super Tuesday, the most dramatic night in presidential primary politics, Mitt Romney failed to clinch the field-clearing victory that had once seemed plausible. But even as he battled Rick Santorum late into the night in …
2012 Election
Super Tuesday: Primary Extravaganza Poised to Uphold Romney’s Lead, Status Quo
If you let your mind wander back many news cycles, all the way to the halcyon days of early last week, the Republican race was a muddle. Mitt Romney was scrabbling furiously to fend off Rick Santorum in Michigan. Even if Romney …
Rick Santorum: ‘I Would Consider’ Air Strikes in Syria
I spoke to Rick Santorum by phone for a few minutes on Monday afternoon as he rode across Ohio on the eve of tomorrow’s Super Tuesday extravaganza. The interview mostly covered ground for a piece you can read in the upcoming …
Mitt Romney Is Losing the Pop-Culture Primary
Roughly around this time in 2008, a bunch of celebrities got together to put the words of an Obama campaign speech to music. The result, four and a half minutes of doe-eyed tribute from will.i.am, Scarlett Johansson et al., was a viral hit on YouTube. “Yes We Can” captured the kind of vague hope-iness that defined Obama’s pop image at …
Apology Not Accepted
Rush Limbaugh is having a bad day. His radio sponsors are jumping ship. Sandra Fluke refused to accept his apology. Republicans are finally piping up with more fulsome condemnations. Jim Poniewozik raises the most important question here: Has Limbaugh reached an Imus-like tipping point, where his power and audience will be severely curtailed?
The Campaign Spendageddon That Already Happened
Consider this campaign finance reformer’s nightmare scenario: Corporate interests flood a presidential election with money, ballooning campaign spending at six times the norm, and throwing a 5-to-1 spending advantage to the eventual winner largely because of one issue. This is not what’s happening in 2012. It’s what transpired in 1896:
How Florida Is Leading U.S. Politics Back to the Culture Wars
They don’t call economics the dismal science for nothing, which helps explain why U.S. politics is riveted once more by social issues. After being locked for three years in a torture chamber of financial disaster, our elected …
Democrats for Stupidity
Bob Kerrey has given the Democratic Party the chance of actually retaining a Senate seat in Nebraska–and so, predictably, the usual leftist wingnuts have decided to trash him. The left-wing blogosphere has been in a swoon in recent years; it just can’t compete for attention with the hilarious extremism of the Republican party. But it …
Political Pictures of the Week, Feb. 25-March 2
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures of the past week from the Beltway and beyond.
Can the Georgia Primary Relaunch Gingrich’s Campaign?
Ohio may be the most critical state on Super Tuesday, but Georgia carries the largest prize. The Peach State will award 76 delegates on March 6, and while his rivals crisscrossed Michigan last weekend, Newt Gingrich was preparing …
Game Change: What Sarah Palin Wants Us to Remember About 2008
The mama grizzlies at Sarah Palin’s political-action committee have a well-produced video up today that aims to do some damage control before the release of a not-so-favorable HBO dramatization of her role in the 2008 presidential campaign, based on a book co-written by TIME’s Mark Halperin.
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What Santorum Got Wrong About JFK’s Religion Speech
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Writing in the new issue of TIME, Jon Meacham challenges Santorum’s account of Kennedy’s views on Church and State:
Santorum suggests that Kennedy offered a secular call to arms, banishing religion from American life in ways that believers like Santorum are still crusading to reverse. Kennedy’s
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Mitt Romney’s Hairfire Manifesto
In my print column this week, which can be found here if you’re a TIME subscriber, I explore the implications of Mitt Romney’s declaration that he wouldn’t set his “hair on fire” by making the sort of outrageous comments about the President that his opponents have used to boost their poll ratings. This is a crucial moment: For the first …