John Avlon

The Florida primary has become a battle between money and momentum. Polls now show a virtual tie as Mitt Romney has plummeted 25 points in the state in the last week following Newt Gingrich’s decisive win in South Carolina. Romney has an edge in establishment organization and a big bankroll to blanket the Sunshine State [...]

President Obama’s election year State of the Union address was attacked in pre-buttals from the Republican presidential candidates and members of Congress alike. But there were thoughtful moments and policies with bipartisan potential that deserve attention beyond the predicable partisan spin. Yes, there were plenty of contentious election-year policy contrasts—especially a minimum tax on people [...]

Just last week, Rick Santorum received a much-vaunted endorsement representing the collective wisdom of more than 100 conservative evangelical leaders ranging from Tony Perkins to James Dobson to Gary Bauer. Where their benediction fell, their flocks were sure to go—or that was the idea.

Newt Gingrich has pulled a Double Lazarus, coming back from the dead twice in this campaign to win decisively in South Carolina. Exit polls showed a broad and deep victory in this conservative state, with Newt winning tea partiers and evangelicals — as well as both men and women.  Interestingly, Newt won voters who said [...]

All presidential primaries matter, but some matter more than most. South Carolina has voted for the eventual winner of the Republican nomination since 1980. And for the conservative candidates looking to stop the inevitability narrative that has surrounded Mitt Romney’s candidacy, South Carolina is a must-win state. Here are three things to watch as South [...]

We’re in the thick of the South Carolina Republican Primary, and all the ugly old stereotypes are being deployed as shorthand for one very beautiful state. You know, the characterization of South Carolina as a swamp of sleazy politics and brutal attack ads, a Bible Belt bastion of rednecks and racism, a state defined by [...]

In the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, I wrote a column on the five things to look at while the votes came in. Now we’ve got the results, and here’s how it played out: • Romney’s benchmark – Mitt Romney hit it. His 39% exceeded John McCain’s 2008 total, and he increased his popular [...]

That’s what it looks like if numbers from a caucus in the town of Moulton, Appanoose County, are correctly counted when the official certification begins Wednesday night. This not only would rewrite the election history of 2012 to date—it would invalidate the oft-repeated line that Mitt Romney is the only candidate to win both Iowa [...]

This Martin Luther King, Jr. Day finds our nation rightly united in honoring the man who challenged America to live up to the promise that all men are created equal. But it’s also worth remembering that it was not always this way. King was widely reviled in his lifetime, attacked as a troublemaker, a liar, [...]

Two Mormons, two Catholics, and two Protestants walk into a South Carolina church asking for votes. No, it’s not a bad joke—it’s the current state of play in the pivotal South Carolina Republican primary. It’s an unprecedented situation and a positive sign of how far we have come as a nation.

Mitt Romney scored a strong victory Tuesday night in New Hampshire, just exceeding John McCain’s 2008 vote total of 37 percent and beating third-place finisher Jon Huntsman by 20 points.

New Hampshire is all about the independents. And that’s why it’s the best test of general election electability. While Iowa’s caucuses are disproportionately dominated by social conservatives, in New Hampshire’s open primary, independents can vote — and they make up more than 40% of the local electorate.

Game day is here — the New Hampshire primary is under way. Here are five things to look for that could determine the election outcome and the shape of the GOP field going forward:

One year ago, a peaceful referendum created the Republic of South Sudan after decades of civil war in which more than 2 million people were murdered. In the first year of this young nation’s life, the troubles haven’t stopped coming.

Jon Huntsman had his best debate right on time—two days before New Hampshire votes. And Mitt Romney had his worst debate Sunday morning, finally coming under sustained and substantive fire from his competitors, as well as the debate moderator, Meet the Press host David Gregory.

The U.S. economy is showing new signs of growth—and that’s great news for the country as well as President Obama’s reelection effort. Friday morning, it was announced that the economy added 200,000 jobs in December, lowering the unemployment rate to 8.5 percent—the lowest in three years, marking six consecutive months of job growth.

There’s a lot not to like about Rick Santorum on the social-issues front. He’s an anti-abortion absolutist, no fan of gay rights, and possesses politics so influenced by faith that even contraception remains controversial in his mind. But Rick Santorum has at least one big idea that’s worth wider debate: eliminating the corporate income tax [...]

Santorum and Romney. David and Goliath. Behind the virtual tie in Iowa—technically an eight-vote win for Romney—was a moral victory for Rick Santorum, surging from the back of the back despite being dramatically outspent by Mitt Romney. Now Iowa is over. New Hampshire is next. The grueling January primary gauntlet is in full force, ending [...]

Youngstown, Ohio, had its 11th earthquake since St. Patrick’s Day on New Year’s Eve—a magnitude-4.0 on the Richter Scale, the highest to date. My wife and I were in town visiting my 96-year-old grandmother and felt the mid-afternoon rattle shake the roof for five to 10 seconds. What makes the minor rumble newsworthy is that [...]

It has become a great American tradition, an act of small-town civics, an example of direct democracy in action where citizens get to meet presidential candidates multiple times. But it is also an overhyped media circus, which helps give Iowa disproportionate influence on who gets the Republican nomination, despite the fact that no binding delegates [...]

Bread and circuses were what Romans leaders used to subdue citizens for hundreds of years before their civilization’s fall. We have celebrity gossip. It is greedily consumed and takes on the dimensions of real news – banner headlines, magazine covers and lead stories, with dependably high click-through rates. It is all artificial urgency, fiction parading [...]

“I live for laughter,” said Mitt Romney, unconvincingly. But there’s no question that highlighting Mitt’s alleged inner jokester is a now part of Team Romney’s charm offensive, designed to humanize their sometimes robotic candidate. This effort extends beyond the surgical removal of his tie and studied mussing of his hair before debates. On the humor [...]

Ten years ago, the streets of lower Manhattan were blocked off by barricades. The fires at Ground Zero were still burning. Streets were closed, guarded by police, as the recovery of body parts and cleaning up of ash from the worst terrorist attack in our history continued.

Only two Republican presidential candidates will appear on the ballot in Virginia next year, regardless of how many are in the race. Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will have the Dominion State all to themselves. Supporters of Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann will have to be content with yard [...]

The Blue Dog pack is thinning. Centrist Democrats saw their ranks cut in half after the 2010 midterm elections. Now, with Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson’s announcement that he will not seek reelection, an endangered species warning is appropriate. This is bad news for Democrats and, more important, the nation.

Among the political threats wielded by Donald Trump in his carnival barker quest for the presidency is that if denied the Republican nomination, he would run as an independent. As an independent myself, I usually cheer the prospect of any independent campaign. It shakes up the arrogant assumption that our elections are wholly owned subsidiaries [...]

A crowded post office is part of the scenery of the season-–long lines, arms full of packaged presents, spare Christmas decorations hanging under the humming lights.

Who is the Tea Party candidate for president? Michele Bachmann wants to be—but despite all her begging, she isn’t. Ron Paul probably should be, but the polls don’t bear it out. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is supposed to be Mitt Romney’s beard and tri-cornered hat in this particular vicinity, but the folks aren’t buying [...]

It is a small irony of history that playwright, prisoner, and Czech president Vaclav Havel died on the same day as North Korean dictator Kim Jung-il. But the world that Havel helped shape had reduced Kim Jung-il to a strange museum piece the last of the totalitarian rajas, bodyguarded by lies, surrounded by suffering.

The wild card in the Iowa caucus is Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas. As with all wild cards, his place in the top tier of candidates is itself unlikely and his ultimate effect on the Republican presidential nomination is unpredictable. But based on what I saw during my trip to Iowa earlier this [...]

Mitt Romney’s strange tack in the final Iowa debate was to speak to a New Hampshire and national audience. For perhaps the first time in this campaign, he unapologetically framed his Massachusetts record as a center-right leader who could achieve bipartisan consensus. He actually began his answer opposing gay marriage by bragging on the fact [...]

The “conservagencia” is starting to give Jon Huntsman a second look. He deserves it. But the stirrings of respect may be too little, too late. Too bad, because he might stand the best chance of beating President Barack Obama. RINO hunting has become a reflexive sport inside the Republican Party. And so when Jon Huntsman [...]

It was a cold night in Iowa with a full moon at the ABC News/Drake debate. And if Newt Gingrich and George Stephanopoulos had conjured this future 20 years ago, it would have been both a good dream and a nightmare. Because here was Newt as the newly minted GOP frontrunner in the second decade [...]

Thursday’s shooting on the college campus stained by the deadliest campus massacre in American history is likely to bring new scrutiny to Rick Perry’s support of a controversial new Texas law that makes it legal to bring concealed weapons onto a college campus.

The town of Osawatomie, Kansas, was chosen as the location of a major speech Tuesday framing the 2012 election as”a make-or-break moment for the middle class,” what the president described as “the defining issue of our time.”

Did Dan Quayle’s endorsement help Mitt Romney’s campaign? Probably not. But just because that bland, punch-line-ready pairing seemed like a sad response to plummeting poll numbers doesn’t mean endorsements don’t matter.

Imagine them all clustered in a roadhouse, having a beer around sunset, shaking their heads over the lost opportunity. There on the bench are Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and my former boss, Rudy Giuliani. On TV they watch the political circus of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich—all [...]

His poll numbers are plummeting in state after state, while Newt Gingrich is soaring across the board. One reflection of the rising tension was an awkward interview with Bret Baier, in which the normally unflappable Mitt Romney got rattled by fair questions. It revealed the irritability of a man accustomed to being in control who’s [...]

Congressmen coming back from Thanksgiving break are hoping that a seasonal spirit of forgiveness—or the lingering effects of a food coma—will erase the supercommittee’s stain of failure. It won’t. There will be an enduring political price to pay for last week’s pathetic face-plant. And while confidence in the entire institution’s capacity to reason together will [...]

There’s an old saying that a lie can go halfway around the world while the truth is putting its boots on — and in politics, a steady drumbeat of misinformation and mischaracterization can too often shape the national debate. So we wanted to set up a regular online column to confront fear-mongering with the facts, [...]

“It would be an irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign problems,” said Woodrow Wilson during his presidential campaign 100 years ago. World War I soon intruded on his plans — and international conflicts have not stopped intruding on America since. We now see that foreign policy is largely what [...]

Cynicism passes for wisdom in Washington for a reason. With the hours counting down before a November 23 deadline, the so-called supercommittee seems either unable or unwilling to make a deal that would reduce our debt by $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

I heard the helicopters in the middle of the night hovering over lower Manhattan as the eviction of Occupy Wall Street occurred. Only a few hours before, I’d walked past the Zuccotti Park encampment and Occupy Wall Street’s tent city was quiet on an unseasonably warm night. Irritation with the Occupy movements has been building [...]

The clock is ticking in Washington on the bipartisan supercommittee, those 12 members of Congress tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction by Thanksgiving. More than 140 of their colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, are encouraging them to be bold and go bigger — reaching $4 trillion of deficit reduction in order [...]

Swing voters asserted their independence again on Election Day 2011, repudiating Republican ideological overreach in key votes but denying Democrats clear-cut victories heading into 2012, as the cycle of over-reach and backlash continues.