"... It’s a mistake to think that voters who describe themselves as 'conservative' think about politics and react to politicians the same as people who are professionally or avocationally conservative. ...

"In the end, professional and avocational conservatives want a candidate who was in the trenches with them, who speaks their language and whose views resonate with theirs down the line. They want purity. 

"The conservative voter? She doesn’t care all that much about purity. Turns out she wants a winner."

"All six candidates have enough resources to run hard in the next contest, in South Carolina on Jan. 21. Already, five campaigns have placed over $6 million on television in the state, with Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Romney accounting for over $4 million of it. ... 

"South Carolina will be the last chance for several candidates. It will be hard to justify going on after being at the back of the pack in three contests — especially with Florida's 10 expensive media markets and four million registered Republican voters for this closed primary looming at month's end."

"Romney’s chronic flip-flopping political career is teeming with reasons for grassroots conservatives to oppose his nomination — his support for racial preferences and government funding of abortion, liberal judges, global-warming enviro-nitwittery, TARP, auto bailouts, the Obama stimulus, gun control, and, of course, the Massachusetts individual health-insurance mandates that presaged Obamacare. But instead of focusing on his long political record of expedience, incompetent non-Romneys have borrowed from McCain’s 2008 playbook and thrown wealth creators of all kinds who take risks in the private marketplace under the bus.

"With frenemies like these, who needs Democrats?"

"One reason so many Americans entrusted Barack Obama with the presidency was his pledge to correct the prior administration's tendency to push unilateral executive power beyond constitutional and customary limits.

"Yet last week's recess appointments of Richard Cordray as the first chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three new members to the President's National Labor Relations Board — taken together with other aggressive and probably unconstitutional executive actions — suggest that this president lacks a proper respect for constitutional checks and balances.

"The Obama administration has offered no considered legal defense for the recess appointments. It even appears that it got no opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel in advance of the action — a sure sign the administration understood it was on shaky legal ground."

"The percentage of Americans identifying as political independents increased in 2011, as is common in a non-election year, although the 40% who did so is the highest Gallup has measured, by one percentage point. More Americans continue to identify as Democrats than as Republicans, 31% to 27%. ...

Despite the Democratic advantage in party identification, proportionately more American independents lean to the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party. Thus, when independents' party leanings are taken into account and combined with the party's core identifiers, the parties end up tied. In 2011, 45% of Americans identified as Republicans or leaned to the Republican Party and 45% identified as Democrats or leaned Democratic. ...

"Increased independent identification is not uncommon in the year before a presidential election year, but the sluggish economy, record levels of distrust in government, and unfavorable views of both parties helped to create an environment that fostered political independence more than in any other pre-election year."

"President Obama’s executive power-grab this week — making four 'recess' appointments when the Senate isn’t in recess — is a mark not of his strength, but of his relative weakness. He is asserting an authority he does not possess through the Constitution because he has precious little personal authority left to assert. 

"He had it and he lost it, and he can’t figure out how to get it back — so he’s just going to take it."

"One of the claims made by each of the Republicans seeking their party's nomination is that they are the best equipped to defeat President Obama. Certainly, they are being judged by voters and GOP officials in terms of that very quality. When asked which candidate quality was most important, one-third of Iowa caucus voters said the ability to beat Obama. Yet history demonstrates that it is a dauntingly difficult job to unseat an incumbent president who is seeking a second term. Indeed, the number of presidents who have won a second term is almost twice the number of those who have failed to gain the favor of voters a second time. ...

"History may weigh heavily on the side of challengers with the good timing to run against an incumbent president during a time of economic hardship. The fate of such presidents from Martin Van Buren in 1840 to Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992 has convinced many hopeful Republicans that President Obama's hopes for re-election are doomed, but the cases are few enough to cast some doubt on economic determinism as the sole key to victory. ...

"To be sure, a desperate electorate may decide on a roll of the dice, but there is another game with table stakes in which the president holds a pretty powerful hand."

"The Iowa caucuses may not have much predictive value, but they did a wonderful job of simultaneously unmasking elitist wingers on the Left and incompetent whiners on the Right. ...

"When I was a kid, we took something called the Iowa Test of Basic Skills — a nationally standardized test of minimum competence in core subjects. The Iowa caucuses serve a similar purpose. When campaigns fail to meet the most elementary requirements of organizational politics, don’t blame the messengers. Blame the test-takers."

"If Democrats saw Obama’s 2008 victory as a chance to build a progressive majority, they have so far failed to capitalize. Gallup recently asked Americans to rate their ideology on a liberal-to-conservative scale of 1 to 5. The average result was a right-of-center 3.3. 

"More alarming for Obama, voters scored him at 2.3, to the left of center — and put Mitt Romney at 3.5. Every other GOP contender was to the right of the mean, except Jon Huntsman, who hit the ideological bull’s-eye. But even Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann came closer to the middle than Obama did. 

"The president’s campaign plans to launch a populist attack on income inequality. But the numbers imply that that is not a promising message; indeed, Gallup has recently found that the public favors pro-growth policies over pro-equality policies, 52 to 40."

"President Obama may best be known as the president who took kicking the can down the road to new, unimagined levels. Obama has demonstrated an unusual ability to delay decision-making, to obfuscate issues, to divert attention from matters of critical importance, and his preference to take half measures when pushed to the brink is now well known. Obama is the Grand Master of Kicking the Can Down the Road.

"But in 2012 that seems likely to change -- the can is going to kick back."