Here are some thoughts on where things stand in the aftermath of the certain passage of the Senate health-care bill. 1. Few Democrats understand the depth and intensity of opposition that exists toward them and their agenda, especially regarding health care. Passage of this bill will only heighten the depth and intensity of the opposition.

I received a note from a friend commenting on the Left's uprising against President Obama (see here and here and here). He told me that he thinks “all this lefty fulmination against Obama is sound and fury signifying nothing.” I have a different take. Quite apart from whether the revolt among Obama's liberal-Left base will

The decision President Obama made was better than the speech he gave. What will matter, long after his address is forgotten, is that Barack Obama gave Generals McChrystal and Petraeus, two of our greatest military minds, the troops (30,000, plus additional allied troops) and strategy (counterinsurgency) they need to prevail in Afghanistan. To the president's

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