The primary loss for the longest-serving GOP senator is the latest blow to the political center in the polarized chamber. Nearly half a dozen moderate senators are retiring.

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Lugar’s loss polarizes U.S. Senate

How Twitter’s hashtag is helping shape the political debate

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Twitter hashtag’s political power

Mitt Romney may be inclined to start moving to the political center, but the Obama campaign would much rather keep him in the conservative territory he staked out in the Republican primary race.

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Campaign Memo: Campaign Memo: In Strategy Shift, Obama Team Attacks Romney From the Left

Typically when a presidential candidate wraps up his party's nomination after months of reaching out to base voters in the primaries, the question becomes whether he can appeal to the political center for the general election.

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Romney faces challenge rallying right

Papers reflect on the political week that was

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Papers assess by-election upset

On Sept. 5, 2001, at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., the political career of state Sen. Barack Obama received a huge lift. If not for that odd moment, he might not be where he is now, in the Oval Office, heading into a difficult reelection campaign in which his prospects nonetheless appear slightly more favorable week by week. What happened that day in the land of Lincoln was a matter of luck and chance. His future was pulled out of Old Abe’s stovepipe hat. Read full article > >

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The luck that propelled President Obama’s rise

LAS VEGAS — A pair of hand-knit slippers, adorned with a Mormon symbol. A tiny stack of yard signs. An autographed Ron Paul placard. And a wadded, used tissue, tucked in a candidate’s pocket. Nevada had its strange moment in the political spotlight this week, as stage-managed campaigns roared through with rallies and TV ads. This was faux intimacy, done in a city where faux is a fact of life: The casinos are named after Paris and New York, and the dust-dry streets around them are named, aspirationally, for trees and oceans. Read full article > >

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Gifts and pocket fillers on the campaign trail

Haunting the political landscape is the ghost (or soul or spirit or memory or image, depending on how you see these things) of Gabriel Michael Santorum. Born at 19 gestational weeks, too young to live outside the uterus, Gabriel died within two hours. Read full article > >

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For Santorums, personal tragedy turned political

MOSCOW — Don’t expect Moscow-style protests in Kazakhstan, the big Central Asian country on Russia’s southwestern border, even though elections there are also approaching, the political system is similarly regulated and a violent conflict last month left at least 16 dead. The party of President Nursultan Nazarbayev is expected to win the Jan. 15 parliamentary elections easily and by whatever percentage he desires, his critics say. And what exactly happened when striking oil workers were killed Dec. 16 in the city of Zhanaozen remains unclear: Earlier this week Nazarbayev extended the state of emergency there until the end of the month, limiting communication with the outside world. Read full article > >

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Unlike Russia, Kazakhstan keeps a tight lid on protests ahead of elections

The only danger about people like me and Ed saying Ron Paul can never win is that it fuels his anti-establishment cred. Paul has two bases of support: a libertarian base that likes Paul for his consistent purism on stripping government of all but extremely limited powers and a really angry base that is more about creating chaos than philosophy. This second group would like nothing more than to send a giant message of anger to the political establishment, and Paul is a good vehicle for that. Read full article > >

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Ron Paul’s un-electability will be his undoing

Opposition leaders hoped Saturday’s demonstration would mark an end to years of quiet acceptance of the political consolidation that Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin introduced.

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Huge Moscow Rally Suggests a Shift in Public Mood

WASHINGTON — The House voted Tuesday to end per-country caps on worker-based immigration visas, a move that should benefit skilled Indian and Chinese residents seeking to stay in the United States and the high-tech companies who hire them. The legislation, which passed 389-15, was a rare example of bipartisan accord on immigration, an issue that largely has been avoided during the current session of Congress because of the political sensitivities involved. Read full article > >

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House votes to end country limits for skilled workers seeking green cards

The 2008 election was a reminder of the demographic forces that are changing America and potentially the political balance in the country. The most diverse electorate in the nation’s history added to the favorable winds that pushed President Obama to victory. He will need the assistance of those shifts even more in 2012 if he is to avoid defeat. Read full article > >

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Will demographic shifts save Obama in 2012?

With the Congressional deficit-cutting committee’s inability to compromise, Americans say they are losing faith in the political system.

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Disgust, but No Surprise at Supercommittee Failure

BALI, Indonesia — Burma seemed poised for a historic shift Friday as dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi ended her long boycott of the country’s authoritarian political system and President Obama announced plans to send the U.S. secretary of state there for the first time in half a century. The back-to-back announcements were the clearest sign yet of how seriously the Obama administration and Suu Kyi — the standard-bearer of Burma’s long- persecuted democracy movement — are taking the political changes instituted by the country’s leaders. Read full article > >

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U.S. sees Burma reforms as strategic opening to support democracy