With McCain’s win in South Carolina and Romney’s in Nevada, the Republican field is beginning to shake out. McCain has emerged from the brink of collapse to be running second in the delegate count while Romney is pursuing a cagey strategy that maximizes delegates that can be won wherever other candidates aren’t doing the work to win them. The result may be a two-man race for the Republican nomination.

(Ross Douhat agrees  that it is a two-man race.) (more…)

The 2008 election season is already shaping up to be one of the most closely contested in history. Neither party is likely to produce a clear nominee in the short term, and one or both might wind up in the first contested convention in the United States in decades. But while there is not yet any winners, there is a clear casualty — the idea of the “big tent” party may be dying under withering factional fighting in both parties. (more…)

Kenneth Anderson at the Weekly Standard captures the concern that many moderate conservatives have about the emerging dynamic of the Huckabee/Romney conflict within the Republican Party. Specifically, while many non-evangelical conservatives have been sympathetic to evangelical concerns about the anti-religious prejudices they face from many elements on the left (what Anderson calls the “predictable bigotry of the NPR cohort”, but now find themselves outraged at the willingness of many evangelical conservatives to embrace some of the grossest and most dishonest forms of anti-Mormon bigotry as their main reason for preferring Huckabee to Romney. (more…)

In this guest post, by Christine Stanley and Claudia, an atheist and a Catholic try to find common ground. (more…)

Today we can publish the seventh guest post: Justin Gardner believes that Ron Paul should run as a third party candidate. (more…)

Today I’m happy to publish the sixth guest post of this week: it’s Rick Moran with “Release of Iran NIE a Remarkable Testament to American Exceptionalism.” (more…)

Our fifth guest blogger is the man who out-Reagans Ronald Reagan: Jon Swift. (more…)

Our fourth guest blogger is an Islamic thinker, well known throughout the blogosphere and outside it: Ali Eteraz. Ali picks us where Shadi Hamid left off: will an Islamic reformation ever come? (more…)

The second special guest blogger of launch week is Jules Crittenden. Is there hope for Europe?

(more…)

Shadi Hamid, Middle East expert, is our second guest blogger. “Will an ‘Islamic Reformation’ ever come? Read it. (more…)

One of our surprises guests is Dave Schuler. Click here to read his guest post! (more…)