PPP says that as of this moment Mike Huckabee is the best GOP bet to beat Barack Obama. The best, mind you, not necessarily a good one. But the best.

When I go down the list, I’m inclined to agree. I don’t think Huckabee is a very strong national candidate. By rights, that should be Mitt Romney. Except that the 2012 presidential campaign will be fought over health care reform and Romney’s signature accomplishment is having passed reform in Massachusetts that was the blueprint for the one Dems passed last year. Pretty hard to head into a national campaign carrying that big a contradiction.

I was sort of wondering what happened to Chip Saltsman, the guy whose campaign to be RNC chair in 2008 crashed and burned after he was caught distributing the “Barack the Magic Negro” song parody. Now I know. He just signed on as Chief of Staff to Rep. -elect Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN).

Michele Bachmann considering 2012 presidential bid, will travel to Iowa later this month.

As John Boehner approaches his rendezvous with destiny today, we bring you Boehner’s greatest moments from the last Congress.

A rumor no more apparently. Robert Gibbs is stepping down as Press Secretary and will become an outside advisor to the president.

I sat down last week to start planning our coverage of the 2012 GOP primaries. One of the first orders of business was assigning specific candidates to each of our campaign reporters, so I drew up a list of all the prominent GOP contenders, hopefuls, wannabes, etc. It wasn’t until I had that list in front of me that it truly hit me how weak the Republican lineup is for 2012: Read More

Are they going to do this? Filibuster reform effort gets underway today.

Howard Dean gives departing Obama staff a swift kick in the rear on the way out the door.

My reporter antenna perked up when news emerged early this week that the body of a former Bush Pentagon official and national security consultant had turned up in a Delaware landfill and was being ruled a homicide.

John P. Wheeler, who once was the national leader of MADD and spearheaded the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall, worked in Washington but lived in Wilmington. He was supposed to have traveled back home from DC on Amtrak last Tuesday. It doesn’t appear he ever made it home. His body was discovered in a nearby landfill on Friday, New Year’s Eve, in a batch of garbage not from Wilmington but from nearby Newark.

The circumstances of his disappearance and ultimate death of remain murky but what details are emerging suggest not the opening scenes to a political thriller but the sad and possibly troubled ending of a public life. Rachel Slajda has more.

Brian Beutler gets the first look at the package of filibuster reforms that Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) will bring to the Senate floor today.

You can read it the proposal here.