Contraception is the latest wedge issue. Each party’s electoral coalition is now bound together far more by shared cultural values than by common economic interests.

Increased spending on safety-net programs has mainly stemmed from plummeting economic security, not from Washington fostering a culture of dependency.

Newt Gingrich faces a February freeze, but he can learn a lot from other presidential contenders who survived big losses.

Obama and Gingrich offer competing populist styles. But the current that surges most powerfully through 2012 may not be the one either side prefers.

Race colors just about everything in South Carolina politics and is central to party clashes over taxes and spending. In that way, the state could be a window into the nation's political future.

The outcome of a general-election race between Obama and Romney could hinge on ideology; the economy; and perceptions of Romney’s years at Bain Capital.

Rick Santorum’s potential emergence as the principal challenger to Mitt Romney signals a continuing class realignment of the Republican coalition.

The best way to measure the prevailing breeze inside the Republican Party is to track the direction of the argument in the current presidential race. Almost every attack from one candidate against another has come from the right; almost always, the underlying message has been that Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry, or fill-in-the-blank is not a trustworthy conservative. The race has resembled a shoot-out in which every gun is pointed in the same direction.

As they crisscross Iowa and New Hampshire, the Republican presidential contenders are promising impatient audiences that they will slash government more aggressively than any nominee since at least Ronald Reagan in 1980, if not Barry Goldwater in 1964.

By attacking each other with gusto, Republicans are giving President Obama ammunition for the fall campaign.