Robert Schmuhl -- Politics Daily

Published: 02/20/11

Presidential Primaries: Why We Need a Better Way to Pick Nominees

What's the matter with Iowa? That's a question worth asking as news from the Hawkeye state circulates about next year's presidential caucuses, scheduled for Feb. 6, 2012. According to a recent Associated Press dispatch from Des Moines, Mitt Romney and other potential Republican White House aspirants are considering strategies of avoiding or not emphasizing Iowa in their nomination bids. With conservatives, particularly evangelical Christians, so involved in Iowa GOP politics, Romney and someone like Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana (who is on record for wanting "to call a truce on the ...

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Published: 11/3/10

Indiana Political Landscape Turning Red After Democrats' Midterm Losses

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Republican midterm victories in Indiana represent an almost complete about-face from recent Democratic gains and foreshadow a vastly different political landscape in the Hoosier state. Dan Coats easily defeated U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth in the race to fill the Senate seat vacated by the retirement of Democrat Evan Bayh. This GOP pick-up means Coats, a senator from 1989 until 1999, rejoins fellow Republican Richard Lugar as the Indiana senators. Going into Tuesday's voting, Democrats held five of the state's nine U.S. House seats. For the next Congress, beginning in ...

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Published: 11/2/10

Casting One's Vote: Fathoming a Private Ritual With a Great Public Consequence

On the first page of the first volume of "The Making of the President" series, Theodore H. White describes the mysterious nature of Election Day. Noting that on Nov. 8, 1960, Republicans went to the polls during the day while Democrats tended to cast their ballots later in the afternoon and early evening, he builds to a larger point about the collective ritual then taking place. "All of this is invisible," White writes, "for it is the essence of the act that as it happens it is a mystery in which millions of people each fit one fragment of a total secret together, none of them knowing the ...

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Published: 09/16/10

Is Sarah Palin the Next Barack Obama?

When Sarah Palin took the stage in Des Moines on Friday night to keynote the Iowa Republican Party's Reagan Dinner, she sent the clearest signal so far that she can see the White House from her home in Wasilla, Alaska. With C-SPAN covering her speech live, the former governor had a chance to woo not only Hawkeye voters who will be involved in the first nominating caucuses for 2012, but also a national audience curious about an intriguing figure's future. For someone who tries to follow and make sense of American political trends, the now-probable run by Palin provokes some questions: Have we ...

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Published: 08/7/10

Obama's Place in Midterm Election and the Roles of Presidents Past

Even though the presidency won't be on a ballot in November, you never know what role the occupant of the White House -- or a former occupant -- might play in the mid-term voting. With Barack Obama's poll numbers sagging, there's already talk that Democratic candidates in competitive races would prefer not to welcome the president into their states. At this point, it seems more likely that he'll serve as his party's fundraiser-in-chief at events for the well-heeled faithful. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, has been working on a memoir (Decision Points) since leaving office, with the ...

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Published: 07/31/10

U.S. Debt Could Be Cut by Sending Leftover Campaign Cash to Uncle Sam

While senators and House members look for ways to tackle, if not tame, the gargantuan federal debt, they might look directly in the mirror for one source of available money. A principal criticism of American politics today is that there are too many dollars bankrolling the electoral system, making many races for public office overly expensive. Ironically, at the same time campaigns are awash with cash, the federal government is drowning in a sea of red ink. How, you ask, could the political situation help the governmental one? It's not that difficult. If you study the financial reports ...

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Published: 07/19/10

Sarah Palin: Running Against History -- and the VP Curse?

Sarah Palin's fan dance -- will she or won't she run for president in 2012? -- teases money from supporters and seduces the celebrity-centric media. Yet, before too long, the former governor and her devoted followers will face a sobering reality. Should she seek the Republican nomination, she not only will confront several White House-minded candidates in her own party but also the unalterable facts of American political history. To be tactful about the subject: Voters haven't been particularly kind to losing vice-presidential nominees of either party for nearly a century. Interestingly, ...

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Published: 06/9/10

2010 Elections: Reality Show Politics?

While the chattering classes and commentariat keep defining 2010 as an anti-incumbent, pro-woman political year, another dimension to this midterm election season might ultimately prove to be more significant. Outsiders, with varying backgrounds and in growing numbers, are stepping up to run for electoral offices across the country. Tuesday's California primary put two successful business executives, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, at the top of the Golden State's Republican ballot for November, with Whitman seeking the governorship and Fiorina vying for the U.S. Senate. Ophthalmologist Rand ...

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Published: 05/26/10

Indiana Congressional Candidate Tim Crawford's Puzzling Letter to Voters

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Before the Indiana primary earlier this month, Republican races for the U.S. Senate and House nominations received most of the media -- and public -- attention. Now, it seems, the campaign on the Democratic side for the 5th Congressional District really deserved eyes-wide-open scrutiny of its own. Tim Crawford, who will be 29 on June 1, took on Dr. Nasser Hanna, a lung cancer specialist at the Indiana University School of Medicine, in the primary, prevailing by 61 percent to 39 percent. With the slogan "Choose the person, not the party!" Crawford trounced Hanna, who had ...

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Published: 05/18/10

Will Mark Souder Sex Scandal Hurt the Comeback Chances of His Ex-Boss Dan Coats?

SOUTH BEND, IND. -- When Congressman Mark Souder took the microphone at a tea-party gathering of the Elkhart County Patriots last month, I thought to myself that he must be feeling pressure from his deep-pockets challenger, Bob Thomas, who was commanding the area's airwaves with commercial after commercial criticizing Souder as "a career politician." Disheveled and about the furthest from anything resembling dapper or dashing, there was an urgency in Souder's voice as he praised "the premises of our country" and noted that it was necessary "to put the fire back in the Republican Party." Just ...

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