By keeping most tax rates at present levels, Obama and the Democrats will claim that they have championed tax cuts for the middle class.

Obama is talking to voters as though he is their boss, or their principal, or their father. He is not any of those things. He is their employee. And employers don't like it when their employees yell at them - even if their employees have it right.

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.

Memories of the last nine years have turned Ground Zero from a site of horror, to a reminder of grief, to an occasion for ludicrous artistic posturing - and now to something very close to parody.

Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.

I was wholeheartedly attracted to the conservative atmosphere that permeated the city of Washington.

You know, you just know, that after the president goes out there and announces he wants to make community college free for all Americans - as though anything government does is 'free' - or is unilaterally and unconstitutionally legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants, he comes back to the offices, pulls out the presidential BlackBerry, and gleefully follows along as the Right goes completely ape over these wild policy decisions.