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How SuperPACs Are ‘Gaming’ The 2012 Campaign

If you thought the 2008 election cycle was full of negative ads, just wait until 2012′s campaign gets fully underway. The upcoming presidential campaign, says journalist Joe Hagan, is expected to “be the most negative in the history of American politics.” Hagan says a big factor in what he calls the “tsunami of slime” is [...]

As Florida Votes, Polls Put Mitt Romney Comfortably Ahead

Odds are that today’s Republican primary in Florida won’t be nearly as dramatic as the previous contest in South Carolina. Polls have been predicting a comfortable win for Mitt Romney and, as The Washington Post reports, a Quinnipiac University poll released, yesterday, gave Romney a 14-point lead over Newt Gingrich. And unlike South Carolina, the [...]

The Slimary Process: Is This The Nastiest Race Ever?

The prolonged procedure of picking a Republican presidential candidate just gets nastier and nastier. One man maligns another; the victim viciously bites back. And everybody piles on President Obama. There is more slime being slung back and forth among candidates today than in Ghostbusters II. Maybe we should just rename the whole thing the Slimary [...]

The Golden Age: Florida Primary Centers On Seniors

Just how important is the senior vote in Florida? Nearly one in five Floridians is retired. And a survey conducted by AARP predicts that as many as 60 percent of those who cast ballots in Tuesday’s Republican primary — 6 out of 10 voters — will be retirees. If that number is surprising, AARP Florida [...]

Santorum Family’s Trisomy 18 Saga Casts Spotlight On Sad Condition

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum was back on the campaign trail Monday after improvements in the medical condition of his hospitalized young daughter Isabella or “Bella.” Bella’s pneumonia, linked to a severe genetic condition, forced the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania to cancel campaign events in Florida over the weekend. But with the three-year old’s [...]

GOP Presidential Contest: Is It Over Or Just Getting Started?

Over the weekend, we heard Newt Gingrich assuring Floridians that his campaign was going all the way to the GOP’s August convention. Once the delegates got to Tampa, he said, all those who opposed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would unite to deny him the nomination. “My job is to convert that [anti-Romney majority] into [...]

Republicans, Democrats Aren’t That Far Apart, Study Says

If creatures from another planet are listening in on what our politicians and pundits have to say, they might think Democrats and Republicans are about as far apart politically as possible. But there’s new research that supports what many people already suspect: Most “real” Republicans and Democrats (that is, average Americans who have busy lives [...]

It’s ScuttleButton Time!

I’ve been on the road for much of the last two weeks — a visit to Oklahoma on behalf of NPR’s StateImpact project, a visit to member station KPCC in Pasadena, Calif., and then a trip to Orlando and member station WMFE, where we broadcast the Talk of the Nation Junkie segment in advance of [...]

Romney’s Unlikely And Persuasive Defense Of The ‘Individual Mandate’

For a candidate who keeps vowing to repeal the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney sure can make a convincing argument on its behalf. At least that’s how it appeared to a lot of people after last night’s Republican Presidential debate in Jacksonville, Fla. During a more than 10-minute back-and-forth on [...]

GOP Candidates Wrangle Over Reagan’s Legacy

As he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich almost always works the name of Ronald Reagan into his speeches. In fact, it’s become so common that Gingrich’s name-dropping has become an issue itself. Sometimes Gingrich invokes the name of Ronald Reagan to associate himself with the policies of the former president. “When I [...]