Michele Bachmann is surging. Newt Gingrich is struggling. And, as usual, Ron Paul is stirring the pot. The 2012 Republican presidential primary field is crowded -- specifically with current or former members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Indeed, Bachmann and Paul may very well be among the top performers...
What a week it has been! As the political world recovers from its deep exhaustion and wonders about the fallout from the debt ceiling deal, it’s worth taking a step back. First, let’s all remember that 15 months from now, when Americans go to the polls to vote for president...
As recently as the mid-20th century, white southern men from the Democratic Party dominated the Congress. There was Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson of Texas, who, respectively, ruled the House as speaker and the Senate as majority leader for much of the 1950s. And there were numerous Southern committee chairmen,...
Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer is expected to officially launch his presidential campaign today. His announcement again tests the famous philosophical question: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Roemer, who the Crystal Ball has ranked dead...
In November 1946, a tall, mustachioed figure stood alone on a railroad platform at Washington’s Union Station, waiting for the president of the United States to make his ignominious return to the capital. In victorious times, the platform would have been full of welcomers; as it was then, at the...
We all know that Louisiana is losing a U.S. House seat this year because of Mother Nature. The terrible destructive power of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused the population of New Orleans to decrease by about 140,000 people from the 2000 to 2010 census, which greatly contributed to the state’s...
The nation got a preview of the Democrats’ sweeping congressional election victories in 2010 when Democratic candidates pulled off victories in three close special House elections. The results were just the first of many for Democrats in the last cycle, when… Err, wait a second, let’s start over here. Democrats...
Between 1932 and 1994, Democrats controlled the U.S. House of Representatives for 58 of 62 years. Since then, however, party control has changed three times, with Republicans controlling the House from 1995 through 2006, Democrats from 2007 through 2010, and Republicans since then. It seems clear that neither party has...
If Barack Obama’s political standing is helped by a slowly recovering economy, talk among Democrats will quickly turn to taking back the House. However, control of the House of Representatives after the 2012 elections will still belong to the Republicans. There are three compelling arguments for why Republicans will keep...
When it comes to congressional redistricting, the nation’s most populous state is in a class by itself. About a decade ago, the Democratic state legislature passed what would prove to be one of the most perfect “status quo” congressional district maps imaginable. It was designed to create a large cadre...
Following the 2010 House “shellacking” by the GOP, Democrats are hungry for revenge while Republicans are hungry for more. While there is an endlessly long list of unknowns as we assess the November 2012 races from our current vantage point, 22 months removed from Election Day, there are also several...
