In its December 18th issue, the New Republic offers a window into the soul of Kansas Republican Senator and 2008 White House hopeful Sam Brownback. Tracing Brownback's dual conversions from small government Gingrich acolyte to red meat culture warrior and from devout evangelical to Catholic firebrand, TNR ponders his presidential prospects. But Brownback's' new found […]

The Avenging Angel, punisher of conservative miscreants, enjoyed another busy week delivering retribution to the wrong-doers of the right. In one of the least surprising political announcements in recent years, former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist decided against a run for the White House in 2008. After his SEC insider trading investigation, misuse of […]

In a sure sign that the jockeying for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination is underway, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney fired the opening salvo against Republican front-runner John McCain. But in calling McCain "disingenuous," Romney also offered the first pot-calls-kettle-black moment of the '08 campaign. In advance of the GOP primaries, McCain and Romney alike are […]

While the GOP this week wrestled with its new status as minority party, leading lights Trent Lott and Mitt Romney showed the Republicans' attitude towards minorities remains unchanged. In the Senate, the Republicans resurrected Mississippi's Trent Lott as the new Minority Whip. Lott, who surrendered his Majority leader post in 2002 following his ebullient praise […]

With the mid-term elections only days behind us, the jockeying in the 2008 GOP presidential horse race has already begun. The flood of candidacy announcements and exploratory committees this week includes the predictable (John McCain), the improbable (Tommy Thompson) and the ridiculous (Duncan Hunter). But this week's most intriguing prospect may be Rudolph Giuliani, the […]

My email in-box this morning contained one of the more surprising political developments of recent weeks. Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, one of the early front-runners in the 2008 Democratic White House race, has decided not to run for president. The unanswered question is: why? The email missive from Warner's Forward Together PAC offered only […]

By now, Perrspectives readers have grown familiar with the surprising neo-Confederate tendencies of Virginia Senator and presidential aspirant George Allen. (His abiding love of the CSA flag and the heritage of the ante bellum South are all the more surprising, given that Allen was born and raised in Southern California.) Today, the New Republic's Ryan […]

Virginia Senator and 2008 GOP presidential hopeful George Allen continued to burnish his neo-Confederate credentials this week. During a reelection campaign event in front of an all white audience, Allen singled out Jim Webb campaign volunteer and U.S. citizen S.R. Sidarth as a "macaca." In his apology, Allen feigned ignorance of the meaning of the […]

Massachusetts Governor and '08 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney showed his true colors in Iowa this weekend. Effortlessly using the racial slur "tar baby" to describe the Boston Big Dig project, Romney joined White House press secretary Tony Snow on the long list of Republicans who by design or by blunder traffic in the language […]

On Friday, E.J. Dionne used Mexico's cliffhanger election ("It Couldn't Happen Here") to show the comparative electoral dysfunction of the United States. Not so tongue in cheek, Dionne asked of disputed voting results in a critical swing state, "How would it look if the governor of the state was your own brother?" For today, though, […]