The following appeared in the National Review Online Symposium, “Republican Civil War? Our experts respond.” There is no civil war going on in the GOP. Even the brush fires we see are pretty tame. In fact, during the last year in the political wilderness, Republican recriminations have been, for the most part, fairly minor and

The results of races for the governorship of Virginia and New Jersey were ominous for Democrats. The most alarming development for them should be that independents voted for the GOP candidates by roughly a 2-to-1 margin. This was a sea change, and it took place in only a year. There are several reasons Democrats are

It is an anniversary that should rank among the greatest we recognize: the fall of the Berlin Wall and, with it, the end of Soviet Communism and a successful conclusion to the Cold War. And yet it passes with very little attention, as almost an afterthought. It is an astonishing oversight on our part. There

1. The outcome of the New Jersey governor's race and the magnitude of the victory by Bob McDonnell and other Virginia Republicans will have unusually far-reaching ramifications for a off-year election, including on the health-care debate. I have said before that while politicians follow polls carefully, they really follow election results carefully. And the results

I have argued before that the tone and manner in which one practices politics are undervalued commodities, especially at a presidential level. The public looks for leaders who are large-minded rather than petty and peevish, who engage in public arguments rather than in personal attacks, who want to solve problems rather than settle scores. Tone

In his column for the Washington Post on Tuesday, the influential conservative George Will provided intellectual fodder for the campaign among some Republicans to hang the Afghanistan war around the Obama administration's neck. Washington, he wrote, should “keep faith” with our fighting men and women by “rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan.”

At some point about five years ago, America became a “One-Party Country” — and the party in question was the GOP. Such, at least, was the conclusion of Los Angeles Times reporters Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten in the book they wrote under that title following the 2004 presidential election. Bizarre as their claim may

Barack Obama is a young president in a hurry. He is a man of preternatural self-confidence and soaring ambitions. That combination, tethered to a liberal worldview, is inflicting considerable damage upon his presidency. Like most presidents, Obama took office intending to bend history to his liking. This impulse, while understandable, leads to overreach. In the

President Obama remains in a fairly strong — but no longer commanding — political position. The RCP poll average of Obama's job approval rating is 56 percent. But if one carefully tracks the evolution of public sentiment since Obama assumed office, one would notice several trends — nascent but discernible — that should concern Obama

While I realize my efforts to decode Barack Obama may turn into a never-ending task, I want to focus on another of his rhetorical habits: his ceaseless attempts to portray himself as America's philosopher-king, the person standing not only above country but above politics itself. Obama is, he would have us believe, uniquely able to