Steffen Schmidt

In suspending his campaign Saturday, onetime presidential contender, short flash-in-the-pan, and former Godfather’s Pizza executive Herman Cain thundered, “I’m not going away!” Here's why that might not be such a good thing for the other GOP candidates.

The burning question of whether Mitt Romney’s faith will be a liability in his quest for the 2012 Presidential nomination is plaguing Iowa pundits as we try to predict the GOP caucus in January.

Gingrich is playing a fake to the center in order to influence independents and moderate Republicans.

We are now recovering from gazillionth GOP presidential debate, and there is no end in sight. The ratings show that people are enjoying watching the contenders slug it out, but they can obscure the questions the candidates should be getting grilled about.

Ohio is also a crucial state in the November 2012 presidential contest, and this victory suggests that labor unions and moderates (or even liberals) may have recovered some lost momen...

The election of 2012, after all, is about Republican's vision of smaller government and less regulation vs. Obama and the Democrats' “Big Government” and more robust oversight. -Ste...

If another state moved to replace Iowa and New Hampshire at the top of the heap, the small, grassroots aspect of presidential selection will be discarded. Only candidates who come loa...

When will the primary and caucus season for 2012 officially start? Ask Bill Gardner, the Secretary of State of New Hampshire.

Gardner started his career in New Hampshire politics as a state representative, and was elected Secretary of State in 1976 by the state legislature and has remained in that ...

The GOP political season is littered with special interest organizations that sometimes trump and overshadow the established GOP party organizations. As I watch all of this I’m again ...

We can barely keep up with the unfolding political events in the past week.

The big panic is that with Nevada setting its caucus date for January 14 the whole calendar has been trashed. Iowa has to have its caucuses one week before New Hampshire so we are now faced ...

Being partly an agricultural state we also watch to see if the candidates are smart enough not to step on the political cow pies that litter the Iowa landscape. -Steffen Schmidt, It...

I don’t want to be a party pooper, but Chris Christie will not go down smoothly with Iowa’s Tea Party infused Republican base. He'll very likely need to skip Iowa - it’s too late to s...

This week is nothing less than a tsunami, the convergence of declining confidence in and support for Obama, which has been building like a pressure cooker for a year and a half.     ...

The Texas Tea Party has been warning Tea Partiers in other states that Perry is not the real thing. -Steffen Schmidt, It's A Free Country blogger.

Obama will not face an in-party challenge for the Democratic nomination, but unless things turn around pronto, he limps towards November like Jimmy Carter. -Steffen Schmidt, It's A...

There is no one Tea Party, and they have no formal political party structure or candidates. They are a movement and as such they are fluid, unpredictable, and very subject to the whim...

There is nothing to illustrate how much we need effective government than a disaster such as a hurricane. You can rant about how bad Big Government is and argue for cuts in spending, ...

The lesson is that presidents who are challenged within their own party are often wounded politically and lose the election to the other party. A serious challenge to an incumbent pre...

All Bachmann did was hold on to a tenuous first place in a rapidly changing and dangerous environment. Ron Paul may have actually “won” the straw poll because it’s an expectations gam...

The straw poll allows minor and far-fetched individuals to run in a visible contest and have a good time, but doesn't mean much. The 2007 Poll was an especially good example of this w...