published Oct 17th 2016, 8:30 am, by Leonid Bershidsky (Bloomberg View) — Forty-one years ago, 14 people gathered in a small room on California Boulevard in Fayetteville, Arkansas, for the wedding of an aspiring local politician and his law school sweetheart from up north. The bride was wearing a $53

©2016 Bloomberg News O1P0VY6JTSEG (Bloomberg) — The first Donald Trump-free Republican debate began Thursday night in Des Moines with chief rivals reveling in the chance to hit the front-runner without him hitting back—and actually get some attention themselves. “I’m a maniac, and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and

©2016 Bloomberg News O1MO9G6JTSEA (Bloomberg) — Roughly 45 minutes before Donald Trump’s campaign would announce on Tuesday that he was skipping Thursday night’s Fox News debate, as always giddily tipping the Republican race into chaos in a yet another pique of strategic petulance (or is it petulant strategy?), Ted Cruz was

©2016 Bloomberg News O0P7HT6S9728 (Bloomberg) — U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan and several Republican presidential hopefuls appeared at an anti-poverty forum in South Carolina on Saturday, hoping to counter the notion that only Democrats care about non-whites, single mothers, the unemployed, and the working poor. The Kemp Forum on Expanding Opportunity

©2016 Bloomberg View O086W36JTSEA (Bloomberg View) — National Review’s Tim Alberta and Eliana Johnson report a potentially important development: The emergence of an Anybody-But-Cruz-(Except-Trump) movement from the soon-to-be ashes of the Iowa campaigns of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. It would seem that some social conservatives, including a few currently supporting

©2015 Bloomberg News NZGZIHSYF01S (Bloomberg) — Janet Yellen and the Federal Open Market Committee have finally taken the world’s biggest economy off life support. Now, U.S. government deficits will rise, insurance companies will get relief and savers — who’ve weathered years of earning next to nothing — will continue to

©2015 Bloomberg News NZBF3P6KLVR4 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky will be on the prime-time stage for the next Republican presidential debate on Dec. 15, sponsor CNN announced Sunday. Donald Trump, who’s spent much of the primary race atop polls of the party’s crowded 2016 field, will again

 ©2015 Bloomberg News NYZXDV6JTSEC (Bloomberg) — Every four years, Iowans are given the task of assessing a larger presidential field than any of the states that follow the first-in-the-nation caucuses. In 2016, their job is even more difficult, with 14 Republican candidates—the largest field on record—actively seeking their party’s nomination. How

©2015 Bloomberg View NYSC8J6S972U (Bloomberg View) — If Marco Rubio is the front-runner to win the Republican presidential nomination, as election prediction markets are saying (and I agree!), then why aren’t his poll numbers spiking? That’s what the Rubio naysayers keep asking. No matter that the Florida senator just moved into

 ©2015 Bloomberg News NY5ECK6S972A (Bloomberg) — Seated at a table designed to look like Thanksgiving and reminiscent of the Last Supper, seven Republican presidential candidates gathered Friday for an Iowa forum where there were more fireworks from the audience than from a stage that lacked front-runner Donald Trump. After quelling several outbursts