The Hispanic population grew by 4.7 percent last year, while blacks expanded by 1.5 percent and whites by a paltry 0.3 percent. Hispanics cast 6 percent of the vote in 1990 and 12 percent in 2000. If their numbers expand at the current pace, they will be up to 18 percent in 2010 and 24 percent in 2020. With one-third of Hispanics voting Republican, they are the jump ball in American politics. As this vote goes, so goes the future.

Presidents generally do what they are good at in their first four years, then spend their second term responding to the agendas imposed upon them by events.

Today, a politician does not just need public support to win elections; he needs it to govern.

...nobody would think of asking the U.N. General Assembly what it thinks because it is dominated by nations with no power and less legitimacy

Now a great debate has been born. The thesis is Democratic Socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism. The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It is now up to the Republicans to pick it up and fight along these lines.

More and more, the Democrats are not merely inconsistent, wrong and/or misguided - they are the worst of all possible things you can be in Washington: irrelevant.

Growth demands investment, and investment demands stability. So the more Obama stirs the pot with his proposals and potential changes, the more he retards exactly the investment he needs to get the economy moving again.