Commentary Iowa Republicans owe their Democrat colleagues a big thank you. The Democrats’ extreme positions have crippled their own party’s position in the state. That’s the conclusion I reached after talking with more than 30 Republican leaders during a two-day visit to the Hawkeye State. I have been going to Iowa for nearly 40 years…

Commentary CAMP HILL, Pennsylvania—Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) left little doubt during his speech Saturday to Keystone State conservatives gathered for the annual Pennsylvania Leadership Conference: He is running for the Republican nomination for president. Nothing and no one will get in his way of doing that. “We have a responsibility to preserve what the founders…

Commentary PITTSBURGH—In 2016, then-Reps. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) and Tom Marino (R-Pa.) became the first sitting members of Congress to endorse then-candidate Donald Trump for president. Their colleagues in Washington gave them the side-eye. Barletta told me at the time that when that didn’t work, their colleagues tried to talk them out of it. It didn’t…

Commentary The Republican Party’s slow transformation from the Bordeaux-sipping party of Acela Corridor suburbanites into the beer-drinking party of working-class Rust Belt-ers and Sun Belt-ers has been picking up some steam lately. And as the GOP’s divorce from the Chamber of Commerce over irreconcilable cultural differences accelerates, a golden opportunity has emerged to recast the…

Commentary Last year, we were treated to astonishing hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021 protests on Capitol Hill. The Democrats running the show portrayed an insurrection, sedition, and even an attempted coup d’état. The theater was selective and manipulative but it was very effective and implausibly so. It made it impossible to publicly suggest that…

Commentary The 2024 presidential race gets more exciting each day. Now 37-year-old entrepreneur businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has entered the race as the newest Republican candidate. Whether this political novice has a chance at winning the highest elective office in the land remains to be seen. But for sure he has something to say and contribute….

Commentary The American Republic was established through the blood of revolutionaries. The preamble of the U.S. Constitution provides the beacon for successive generations of Americans: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and…

Commentary HONOLULU—If one discounts Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, Hawaii is about as far—geographically and politically—from Washington, D.C., as one can get. There are just six Republicans out of 51 in the State House of Representatives and two out of 25 in the Senate. One of them is Rep. Gene Ward, who has spent a total of…

Republicans voted 15 times before they elected Kevin McCarthy to be House speaker and second in line to the White House. Mainstream media complained that the delay was evidence the GOP can’t govern. In fact, it showed how democracy is supposed to work, and how a small faction led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) used…

Commentary After Republicans clinched their narrower-than-expected new House majority in November’s midterm elections, the only relevant questions for Congress-watchers seemed to pertain to what Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) impending House speakership would look like. To what extent, if any, would he return House rules to “regular order,” whereby bills are drafted and marked up in…