Hill column  .

With Richard Wirthlin’s passing, the world of survey research lost a pioneer, the business of political consulting lost a giant and I lost a role model, whose creative mind, interpretative…

Budget-cutting isn’t easy. As we go through the process, or at least through the debate, both parties err in interpreting public opinion. Democrats can take some solace from the fact…

Wisconsin is flashing a big red (or better blue) warning light to Republicans everywhere – uncompromising pursuit of an extreme agenda will hurt, badly. Two weeks ago, I argued here…

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) jihad against public employee unions is about 30 years late and likely to make Republicans even less popular with voters, who endorse collective bargaining rights…

Extremism has long held pride of place in Republicans’ ideological pantheon. Whether it is eliminating the Department of Education, ending Medicare or outlawing all abortion, the GOP has long advocated…

Predicting revolutions is a tough business. Even those threatened with loss of power – and sometimes their heads – seem relatively oblivious to bubbling discontent. Hosni Mubarak employed a vast…

Egypt’s revolutionary turmoil has produced any number of fairly confident predictions about its future as a pluralist democracy. John McCain expressed it this way: “I have confidence in the Egyptian…

History, as I recounted in excruciating detail last week, would predict little bounce for President Obama from his widely praised State of the Union. So how’d he do?   The…

While the State of the Union is the most important address a president gives, it has much less influence on public opinion than most observers assume. Its potential for impact…

It’s hard to imagine that a game I played with my kids merited a Ph.D. for a Stanford psychologist. It turns out the game reveals a deep truth of which…