By Andrew P. Napolitano
The president's men trash the Constitution to pursue antagonists
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
!["History is filled with stories of political comebacks ... and [Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican] has the capability to rehab her image and change the focus to her work instead of these other issues," said Keith Appeal, a GOP consultant.](http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2013/05/16/5_152013_movies-bachmann038201_mugshot_four_by_three_s101x76.jpg?38f271e3d49cdfd5d0ef8cac5cad23b117d14f23)
Nearly 18 months after she faltered on the snowy fields of Iowa in the GOP presidential primary, Rep. Michele Bachmann is making a return to the headlines this week, sponsoring the bill to repeal President Obama's health care law and giving a forum to tea party groups who say the IRS led politically motivated audits against them.
House Speaker John A. Boehner's new "Senate first" strategy could put red state Democrats — especially those facing potentially tough re-election battles in 2014 — in a tough spot: Reject the White House's liberal second-term agenda and run afoul of party leaders, or back the president and alienate voters back home.
Sen. Scott Brown entered the chamber in 2010 as the tea-party darling who made Republicans relevant in Washington once again, giving them the 41st vote in the Senate that allowed them to filibuster President Obama's agenda.
In the waning days of the election, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is playing up his bipartisan prowess, wooing voters with the notion that he will be the post-partisan leader that President Obama promised but failed to be.
A month into his vice presidential candidacy, it's clear Rep. Paul Ryan has had an impact. What is yet to be determined is whether the Wisconsin Republican's impact helps or hurts the Romney ticket on Election Day.
For three days in Charlotte, a parade of prominent Democrats — including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and President Obama himself — will try to rev up the base with live speeches. But one voice that dominated party politics for decades will be notably absent: the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
A semantic dispute over what defines "a tax" or "a penalty" has pushed Mitt Romney's presidential campaign deeply off message as he struggles for the right response to last week's Supreme Court ruling upholding the health care law.
Since kicking off his re-election campaign last weekend, President Obama has endured a rapid series of stumbles, including a debate on gay marriage initiated by his vice president and an embarrassingly close primary victory over a prison inmate.
The general-election campaign unofficially kicked off Tuesday with Mitt Romney continuing to sharpen his criticism of President Obama, saying a second term for the incumbent would be dangerous because he is not being upfront about the policies he plans to pursue.
Rick Santorum said Sunday that he wants to go head-to-head in a debate with Mitt Romney before the primary season is over — raising the possibility of one last showdown at some point.
Though he has called himself the true conservative in the Republican presidential field, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania continued to benefit from crossover Democrats in Super Tuesday's primaries, while front-runner Mitt Romney easily won the vote among actual Republicans, according to a Washington Times analysis.
An Alaska judge will decide by Friday a case that will determine the fate of Republican Joe Miller's challenge to how write-in ballots were counted in the U.S. Senate race.
Coming off an election in which voters unleashed their fury over Washington's perceived inability to grapple with tough issues, lawmakers spent much of the first week of the lame-duck session going after low-hanging fruit while leaving a number of big-ticket items on the table.
Bowing to political pressure from conservatives in his party and to voter anxiety over the federal budget, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday reversed course and supported a temporary ban on earmarks in order to show he is serious about cutting federal spending.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she is committed to holding a vote this year on extending middle-class tax cuts, though declined to say whether she would do so before the Nov. 2 midterm elections.
"As a Democratic strategist, I can't think of anything better for my party than to have Michele Bachmann raising her profile again on the national scene," Mr. Manley said, before sliding in a jab at her staunch support for traditional marriage. "Her views are so far out of the mainstream that it can only mean good news for the Democratic Party in 2014. For God's sake, same-sex marriage just passed in her home state of Minnesota, that is how out of touch she is."
Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist, said a Bachmann resurgence would be a gift to his party.
