Republican Party

Since announcing her resignation, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been pummeled by critics who have called her incoherent, a quitter, a joke and a "political train wreck." And those were fellow Republicans talking. Palin has been a polarizing figure from the moment she stepped off the tundra into the bright lights last summer as John McCain's surprise vice presidential running mate. Some of that hostility could be expected, given the hyper-partisanship of today's politics.

Amid a rebirth of conservative activism that could help Republicans win elections next year, some party insiders now fear that extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the angry reaches of the conservative base are undermining the GOP's broader credibility and casting it as the party of the paranoid. Such insiders point to theories running rampant on the Internet, such as the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be president, or that he is a communist, or that his allies want to set up Nazi-like detention camps for political opponents.

If the Republican Party thinks it has problems now, just wait. The party's incredibly poor performance among young voters in the 2008 election raises questions about the long-term competitiveness of the GOP. The "millennials" -- the generation of Americans born between 1982 and 2003 -- now identify as Democrats by a ratio of 2 to 1. They are the first in four generations to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives.

While Mark Sanford works to salvage his marriage, Republicans are facing the prospect of a different kind of breakup: religious voters walking out on the GOP. A series of sex-related scandals over the last few years has undercut the party's assertions of moral authority and, worse, may serve to reinforce the doubts that many evangelical voters have traditionally harbored about the unholiness of the political realm.

He is the Republican Dream Date, a smooth-speaking, polished product of Illinois, as comfortable with Facebook as a face-to-face. John McCain's daughter gushed over him as the future of the party. He blogs for the liberal webzine Huffington Post, which said he sports the best abs in Congress. TMZ trails him like a pop star. And he is two decades younger than Barack Obama. Aaron Schock, 27, hasn't wanted for attention since being elected to the House of Representatives last fall.

Republicans have chosen Jeff Sessions to be their leader on the Senate Judiciary Committee, making the conservative Alabaman the public face of the GOP during coming battles over immigration and the next Supreme Court nominee. A formal vote installing Sessions to replace Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania -- who announced last week that he was switching to the Democratic Party -- as ranking Republican on the committee could come as early as today.

With congressional Republicans defying him on healthcare, President Obama is trolling for prominent GOP officials and independents outside Washington who will publicly endorse his plans as the legislative fight moves toward a crucial phase. On Tuesday, the White House rolled out its latest trophy -- a letter from Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger saying he shares many of the same healthcare goals as the president, including "slowing the growth in costs" and "enhancing the quality of care."

The Obama White House has begun advancing an aggressive political strategy: persuading the country that real power behind the Republican Party is not the GOP leaders in Congress or at the Republican National Committee, but rather provocative radio talk show king Rush Limbaugh. President Obama himself, along with top aides and outside Democratic allies, have been pushing the message in unison.

A hilariously sad e-mail is circulating nowadays proposing that members of Congress be required to wear colorful, logo-splattered uniforms like NASCAR drivers so that voters can know their corporate sponsors. So no surprise that the Republicans went out of town to find their official responder to President Obama's Feb. 24 address to a joint session of Congress: Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal.

It's not just Mike Huckabee's top rival in the Republican race who is responsible for attack ads that have damaged his candidacy in the closing days of the Iowa campaign. Huckabee has been the target of a $550,000 campaign waged by the conservative anti-tax Club for Growth. An Arkansas man who is responsible for a separate low-budget hit vowed Monday to take his anti-Huckabee campaign to South Carolina, which holds its GOP primary Jan. 19.