I've been taking a look back at the Obama presidency this week, so I thought it'd only be fair to look forward today and lay out the possible outcomes of the presidency of Donald Trump. Now, before I even start, I realize this is largely a fool's errand, for any number of reasons. But that's never stopped me before, and today I intend not to make predictions of what will happen, but rather run the whole gamut of what could conceivably happen. If rampant speculation without a shred of conclusion isn't your cup of tea, then I'd advise just skipping today's column altogether.

Read Complete Article »

Donald Trump's impending presidency is cause for a lot of concern among many, including both his political opponents and members of his own party. This can all be boiled down to the basic question of what, exactly, Trump is going to do as president. At this point, it's almost impossible to know whether he'll try to follow through on even the strongest of his campaign promises, or whether he'll decide to chart a completely different course once in office. That's what is worrying so many -- people both against Trump and for Trump alike.

Read Complete Article »

Well, the first presidential debate is a done deal, and as always I like to quickly type out my own personal reactions before reading everyone else's, to give you an opinion uninfluenced by the herd mentality of the rest of the media.

Read Complete Article »

Donald Trump finally stopped talking, so I can now start writing. His speech went on for almost an hour and a half, which was a bit much for me -- especially after an exhausting week of listening to Republicans talk. But that's the end of the evening, so let's go back to the beginning and see how we got here.

Read Complete Article »

Heading into tonight's speechifying, I was convinced that Ted Cruz would emerge afterwards as the heir apparent to the Republican nomination in 2020, should Donald Trump fail to win in November. Now, I'm not so sure.

But before we get to the big story of the night, let's start at the beginning. Today, the realization finally dawned in the Trump camp that they had to do something to stop the bleeding over the plagiarism storyline. A staffer was summarily dragged out who offered to fall on her own sword, and magnanimous Donald pardoned her, saying "everyone makes mistakes." So they likely successfully prevented the story from continuing for another day. But it would have been overshadowed anyway (obviously) by the end of the night.

Read Complete Article »

Tonight, Barack Obama gave his final State Of The Union speech, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley gave the Republican response. Both speeches were unusual -- not in a negative way, but in a more literal "not the usual thing" sense. Obama's speech was not a laundry list of legislative agenda items, but rather a definitional moment for Obama and for the Democratic Party platform. Haley's speech was not a vitriol-filled rejection of all things Democratic while glossing over her own party's faults. The speeches, or at least the general tone of them, were actually more similar than different (again, not on policy but rather on tone).

Read Complete Article »

Once again, welcome to a post-debate column. As always, these are my own snap reactions, uninfluenced by what others are thinking or saying. Also as always, any of the quotes below were hastily jotted down, and may not be word-for-word accurate. That's enough of an introduction, at this point, so let's just dive right in.

Read Complete Article »

Ben Carson hasn't had a very good couple of weeks. He first exposed his ignorance on what is happening in Syria during a debate, claiming (falsely, he later sheepishly admitted) to have solid proof that China was in the midst of the conflict. This was just before the Paris attacks, so it might have been prominently in voters' minds during the aftermath. Then some of his advisors went public in the New York Times claiming Carson desperately needed to study up on the rest of the world because he knew so little about such things as the Middle East, while the candidate himself was making news by claiming the pyramids were nothing more than grain silos. After the Paris attacks happened, Carson wrote an editorial on what to do about the Islamic State for the Washington Post which was borderline incoherent (read it in full if you think this is an exaggeration). And now it looks like this floundering on foreign policy is beginning to hurt his standing in the polls. Could this be the start of Carson fading into irrelevance in the Republican presidential nomination race?

Read Complete Article »

Imagine for just a moment that, right now, there were thousands of refugees from a land over the seas who not only wanted to come to America, but were actually now physically on the North American continent, heading north towards our southern border. In this scenario, the country they're fleeing has, in the past, dumped on American shores criminals and mentally disturbed people, in a wave of migrants. Up until the very recent past, this country was also officially listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. It actually sheltered terrorists who had committed acts of terror against Americans on American soil. And now 2,000 people from this country were trying desperately to get north to the United States.

Read Complete Article »

Since it's such an auspicious day, perhaps it's time to have a discussion about the increasingly-real possibility that Donald Trump or Ben Carson could actually become the Republican nominee for president next year. It's a scary, scary thing for most to contemplate, but the punditocracy's inside-the-Beltway strategy of just clapping our hands real hard and hoping that Tinkerbell quietly lies down somewhere to die just doesn't seem to be working. Pretty much every pundit under the sun -- from the hard left to the hard right -- has so far written a column this year predicting Trump's imminent political demise. To date, none of them have proven even slightly true. Trump is now challenged for the lead, but he's still polling at roughly the same level of support that he has pretty much ever since he got in the race. Ben Carson has risen to Trump's level in the polling much more than Trump has fallen back. The "Trump (and now, Carson) is going to fade -- it's inevitable" line of thinking is getting more and more divorced from the polling realities. So perhaps it's time to start thinking the unthinkable: either of these two men could actually become the Grand Old Party's nominee for the highest office in the land.

Read Complete Article »