Recent News

Presidential campaigns are where egos go to die. You spend months as a traveling salesman, your mind is the product, and in the end the voters almost always buy something else. But rarely is the brutality of the process clearer than it was Thursday evening in Des Moines.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry became the first candidate to drop out of the 2016 presidential campaign this evening, as USA Today reports:

Rick Perry drops out of 2016 race

Former Texas governor Rick Perry is suspending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination after failing to convince primary voters to give him a second look.

Perry also withdrew from the 2012 field after finishing fifth in the Iowa caucuses. He had been scheduled to participate in the lower-tier debate hosted by CNN next week….

Perry ... Read More >>

A lot of the support for Donald Trump is fueled by outrage against the Republican establishment. But those who ask us to understand this anger—as if it were a totally new phenomenon that none of us had ever noticed before—are ignoring the fact that Trump divides the right just as much as the establishment does.

Candidates for their party’s nomination in 2016 began the process with certain assumptions and strategies, all hoping their plans would work well enough to eventually put them in the White House. As the summer campaign season draws to a close, however, it’s become clear for some that earlier assumptions were wrong, strategic decisions didn’t pan out the way it was hoped, and some serious changes may be in order.

Several stories this morning highlight some of these strategic errors and shifts, ... Read More >>

Like other hapless Republicans before him, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal launched an offensive against billionaire rival Donald Trump this week. On Wednesday, Jindal released a video comparing Trump to Charlie Sheen, the actor who popularized “#winning” after being fired from his successful sitcom, Two and a Half Men.

Ahead of the first Republican presidential debate last month in Cleveland, Rick Perry faced a question that seems quaint in retrospect: Was he polling high enough to qualify for the prime time event?

As current New Jersey Republican Chris Christie struggles to qualify for next week’s prime-time debate on CNN, other candidates are just hoping to achieve relevance and rise past (or even get to) the 1 percent level in polls. Several “super PACs” plan to ride to the rescue to boost these faltering candidates’ chances (super PACs can raise unlimited contributions but cannot legally coordinate their efforts with campaigns, although the definition of “coordinate” is a bit tricky). Here’s a sample of ... Read More >>