I don't feel alienated from American culture, but I understand people who do.

The 2004 presidential election that saw George W. Bush win with 51 percent of the vote was the last one Republicans will ever win with the overwhelmingly white and male coalition they have now.

America may be in a dour condition, but it is not going to elect a dour president.

In the Democratic primary in 2008, the Obama team devised a strategy to use the caucuses and a complicated system of awarding delegates in the state primaries to sneak up on Hillary Clinton and establish a lead Obama never surrendered.

The most passionately anti-Obama Republican politicians and activists consider themselves the truest and purest of conservatives, and often unleash their scorn and fury on others who also call themselves conservative but differ on strategy and tactics.

I don't feel alienated from American culture, but I understand people who do.

Some candidates need to say provocative things that make noise to break through the media muffle and get themselves noticed.