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U.S. Republican Party

By Steve Huff 1/29 4:47pm

2012

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum Off Campaign Trail To Be With Sick Daughter

Former Pennsylvania Senator and current Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has canceled press appearances and Florida campaign stops to be with his 3-year-old daughter, Bella. Bella Santorum was born with a genetic disorder, Trisomy 18, that can lead to surgeries and hospitalizations. She is in Children's Hospital in Philadelphia with pneumonia in both lungs and Mr. Santorum and his wife have been at her side most of the weekend. Read More

By Steve Huff 1/21 1:47pm

Political Theater

Video

President Ronald Reagan

Invoking Ronald Reagan: A Video Guide

It is said that on wintry primary election nights, if you stand in a sensible Republican bathroom at the Witching Hour with a candle in hand, slowly turning in circles while playing the video below on your laptop, Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, may appear in the mirror.  Read More

By Staff 4/16/07 12:00am

Letters

‘Flutie’ Mooted To the Editor: In “Do They Really Want to Be Like Rutgers?” [April 9], Terry Golway wrote: “More than 20 years ago, dozens of colleges and universities around the country tried to take a page from Boston College, birthplace of the so-called ‘Flutie Effect.’ As writer Murray Sperber, a retired professor of American Read More

By Steve Kornacki 4/09/07 12:00am

Nancy Pelosi’s Katrina Problem

The outcry from Congressional Democrats was justifiably loud when conservative members resorted to procedural chicanery to kill their latest effort to give the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives. After all, the district’s 580,000 residents are subjected to the same federal income tax that everyone else is: Didn’t we decide a Read More

By Rebecca Sinderbrand 4/09/07 12:00am

The Mysterious Appeal of Fred Thompson

Five years ago, former Senator Fred Thompson seemed ready to say goodbye to White House dreams for good. He’d announced his re-election campaign in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, but seemed to lose steam after the death of his daughter a few months later, ultimately abandoning the run in the spring of Read More

By Steve Kornacki 3/19/07 12:00am

Rudy Giuliani: Because Beggars Can’t Be Choosers

If pragmatism prevails in the Republican primaries and caucuses next winter—a questionable proposition for a party that once dutifully lined up behind Bob Dole—then Rudy Giuliani will roll to the G.O.P. nomination. Simply put, the former Mayor would flip to the Republican column several deep, dark blue states that the G.O.P. has barely bothered to Read More

By Steve Kornacki 3/05/07 12:00am

Chasing the Joe Lieberman Booby Prize

Of the suggestion that Senator Joseph Lieberman will up and leave the Democratic Party for good, thereby handing control of the Senate to the Republicans, two points must be emphasized up front. One is how exceedingly unlikely it is that Mr. Lieberman will actually pull the trigger on a party switch, even if he did Read More

By Staff 2/16/07 10:43am

Loyal NJ Republican Flips

Mike Ferguson, a conservative Republican who was re-elected to his suburban New Jersey seat by less than two percent of the vote last year, just announced that he would vote against the resolution condemning the escalation of the war. The youthful and ambitious pol, who engaged in some rather embarrassing district-shopping before winning his 7th Read More

By Staff 2/15/07 11:12am

Kornacki on the House’s Iraq Sham

Steve Kornacki sends in this dark take on the progress of the House's Iraq War resolution: As even many House members have pointed out, there is a certain sham quality to the four-day Iraq War debate now underway in the people's House. All 434 members (there is now a vacancy, with Tuesday's death of Republican Read More

By Staff 2/07/07 11:43am

Maltese: No Defections

I just caught up with Republican state Senator Serph Maltese to talk to him about yesterday's victory by Craig Johnson. On one subject of immediate speculation -- the possibility of partisan defections -- Maltese said he spoke with John Bonacic and Joe Robach, two GOP state senators who, like him, are rumored to be considering Read More

By Staff 2/07/07 10:41am

Republican Reaction: Stay the Course

I caught up with Republican state Senator Frank Padavan on his way into session in the capitol just a moment ago and asked him about what the Senate Republicans will do now after losing the seat in Nassau. "We continue to do what we think is right for the electorate," he said. When I Read More

By Staff 2/06/07 12:41pm

Rudy and Arnie

Fresh off his "statement of candidacy," Rudy Giuliani will head off to California this weekend to raise some money and address the GOP convention in Sacramento. What isn't on the public schedule is a private meeting with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said a source familiar with the trip. With talk of California possibly moving up Read More

By Steve Kornacki 2/05/07 12:00am

The Man Who Hijacked The Straight-Talk Express

Chuck Hagel is the new John McCain. The old straight-talking, damn-the-talking-points John McCain, it is now clear, ceased to exist in the summer of 2004, when he put an emphatic end to four years of well-grounded chatter that he’d abandon the Republican Party and mount a Teddy Roosevelt–style Presidential bid as an independent. Instead, Mr. Read More

By Staff 1/30/07 6:00pm

Elsewhere: Koch, Skurnik, Bruno

In a sign that a plague of locusts may soon descend upon us, Ed Koch said that he agrees with the legislature in its fight with the governor. Hillary Clinton's electability question is getting answered...by Republicans. An NYU professor who went to college with Barack Obama says that his former classmate is Read More