We're one year away from the 2012 elections, but votes cast in the coming days will say a great deal about the political direction of the nation as Americans prepare to pick a president. Even as Republican candidates continue to audition for their party's nomination, it's the voters who will take center stage this month.

The biggest drama in this November's off-year elections fittingly comes from Ohio. The same state that could make or break President Obama's re-election hopes a year from now will see voters go to the polls on Nov. 8 to cast judgment on the president's signature program - a health law that requires all Americans to purchase private insurance or be enrolled in a government program.

Other states have passed similar measures to the proposed amendment to the Ohio state constitution that would prohibit any such insurance mandate from being imposed on the residents of the Buckeye State. But the stakes are higher in must-win Ohio. If the president sees voters in the king of swing states still riled up about the biggest accomplishment of his term, it will be a disquieting sign for him and his fellow Democrats. (read more)

American Crossroads, the independent expenditure group that, together with affiliated Crossroads GPS, spent more than $40 million targeting Democratic candidates in 2010 is unleashing a brutal attack on President Obama's economic record far in advance of the 2012 election.

Crossroads GPS has announced a $20 million nationwide campaign over the next two months, starting Monday with a $5 million ad buy on national cable channels and targeted local stations in the swing states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, and Virginia.

The ad, "Shovel Ready," contrasts Obama's statements about economic growth with sobering statistics on unemployment, debt and gas prices. The 30-second spot includes the president's joke at a campaign event in North Carolina about the unmet expectations of his 2009 stimulus package: "Shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected."

The spot closes with the announcer saying: "14 million out of work, America drowning in debt: It's time to take away Obama's blank check."

You can watch the ad by CLICKING HERE.

Tempers are flaring on Capitol Hill ahead of a vote on a compromise plan to fund the government for the remaining 25 weeks of the federal fiscal year.

Pete Meachum, an aide to House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, sent out a blast email to the staffs of House Republicans Thursday morning touting a Weekly Standard blog item dismissive of mounting conservative complaints:

"For the handwringers out there, buck up: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/budget-confusion_557395.html.  Please print and hand to your boss. For those seeking other office please campaign at home, not on the backs of your colleagues."

The caustic tone of the email came as something of a surprise to staffers accustomed to an always-respectful tone from McCarthy's office. The surprise turned to dismay when they clicked on the second link, which directed them to a page of a veteran's group attacking Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam and posing for photos with soldiers of the communist nation's army at the height of the U.S. war effort and with many servicemen held captive. (read more)

In the month of December, the federal government paid the equivalent of $3.4 billion a day in interest on the national debt.

The nation's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, needed three months and the work of more than 2 million employees to generate $3.4 billion in profit.

Think about that.

It took all of the blue smocks and smiley faces, deep-discount bath tissue and pump shotguns at more than 3,800 stores in this country and thousands more around the world all of July, August and September to produce the same amount of wealth that the federal government needed for one day of debt service.

This week, the Congressional Budget Office announced that the federal government will end up borrowing another $1.48 trillion this year. That means that the size of our debt will grow to at least $14.3 trillion and interest payments could top $430 billion for the year.

What's even scarier is that the interest payments could grow well beyond that if international lenders, particularly our main creditors in Asia, begin asking for higher rates of return because of fears that America's not good for the money anymore.

The economies in Europe and Japan are already suffering badly because it costs them too much to borrow money because investors demand more in return for buying bonds. Just like an individual, a bad credit score means fewer options. (read more)

They're also looking to strip funding for Planned Parenthood, as part of their general move for budget austerity. And we can expect more moves on this front in the weeks to come.

Part of this is Republicans doing the bidding of the people who put them back in the majority. Pro-life groups are a huge bloc of the Republican coalition and activists demand results in exchange for all the help they provide. Even if the GOP doesn't succeed in changing laws right away, it's good base politics.

And for all the talk about the 2010 elections being all about taxes, spending and the size of government, the issue of abortion played an unmistakable role on both sides.

Of the 22 pro-life House Democrats who voted for Obama's health-care law, despite concerns among pro-life groups about the federal subsidy loophole, only five returned to Congress this year. Some would have lost or retired anyway, but there's no doubt that the issue, and the pressure from pro-life groups, turned some races. (read more)

The latest FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows President Obama rebounding from 40 percent to 47 percent in his job approval rating among registered voters from last month.

But the reason for the increase is instructive: Obama's spike in support comes from Democrats rallying around him. While his job approval among independents and Republicans is up only a tick, Democratic job approval was up 12 points from 75 percent to 87 percent from last month. Democrats seem to be getting fired up for a fight against the ascendant Republicans and are coming to Obama's defense.

Many pundits have suggested that Obama's bump in the polls reflects perceptions of Obama as a liberal softening as the president makes overture to the center, but while the percent of voters who think him a moderate is up 3 points since October to 32 percent, a plurality still see him as a liberal.

The Obama boost, it seems, is a result of disaffected Democrats who previously groused about Obama's policies - especially on the lack of a government-run insurance program and national security issues - who are now circling the political wagons rather than a shift in the center.

Today's results on health care are instructive on this point too. (read more)

President Obama used to tell critics of his ambitious first-term agenda, "I can do more than one thing at a time."

Yes, but it depends on what the things are.

Obama began his presidency with five major initiatives: stimulus for job creation, an overhaul of the financial industry, global-warming legislation, universal health insurance and a new "cradle to career" expansion of public education.

In the end, his health insurance battle overtook almost everything else. And now, the same thing is threatening to happen again.

Of his post-inaugural priorities, the education initiative disappeared in short order and his proposed fees for carbon emissions died a quick and ugly death.

Obama did get a financial reform bill in the end, but it may have consequences that he did not intend. Rather than forcing banks that were bailed out by the federal government to provide "more lending for the American taxpayer" as promised, the measure is widely expected to reduce access to credit because of new regulations. It happened as lobbyists and lawmakers battled in the background while the health-insurance debate took center stage. He got a win, but not a very satisfying one. (read more)

It's been a pretty rotten 12 months for liberals.

It was January 19, 2010 when Scott Brown won his shocking victory in the Massachusetts Senate race. And that proved to be only a foretaste of the beating that was waiting for Democrats in the fall.

A year ago, Democrats controlled the White House as well as supermajorities in the House and Senate. Now, the Senate is in filibuster gridlock, the liberal speaker of the House has been replaced with an arch conservative and Democrats hold fewer than 200 seats in the lower chamber for the first time since 1947.

And while liberals suffered as voters punished Democrats badly for the perceived excesses of the first-two years of the Obama era, the real pain for the self-styled "progressive" movement has come from the Democratic Party.

While many on the left thought that the battle between moderate Democrats and the party's liberal base ended with the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries, the middle is reasserting itself with a vengeance as President Obama sprints to the political center. (read more)

America has been going through something of a political time-warp in the aftermath of the Tucson massacre.

The public discussion again and again harkens back to the mid-1990s when the Oklahoma City bombing spurred the American elite to a lengthy discussion about the rise of radicals on the right. Reporters and analysts this week have endlessly reprised the arguments of 15 years ago.

Will President Obama's memorial speech at the University of Arizona evoke Bill Clinton's mix of sympathy and political accusation in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing? Is a toxic political climate to blame for setting off a madman? Are conservative opinion mongers to blame?

Even some of the faces are the same.

Sarah Palin was a 31-year-old city councilwoman in Wasilla, Alaska when Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. And Glenn Beck, also 31 at the time, was a morning show host at a Top 40 radio station in Connecticut. Neither could have imagined that they would one day be blamed for the attempted murder of a congresswoman.

But in evidence of what must be the most successful career in radio broadcasting since Guglielmo Marconi, Rush Limbaugh has managed to be blamed for both McVeigh's atrocious attack and an assassination attempt on a congresswoman 15 years apart. (read more)

It's been rough going for middle-of-the-road politicians.

The 2010 elections saw both parties push out moderates in favor of ideologically pure alternatives. Failed Senate candidates Arlen Specter and Mike Castle could get together and have a good cry about the political dangers of centrism.

The poster boy for this trend, though, is Florida's Charlie Crist, who went from being a popular Republican governor to a flailing independent Senate candidate. Crist's unraveling should cool, for a little while at least, the undying media narrative that what voters really want are nonpartisan centrists.

Election after election shows that voters are less concerned about labels than they are with character and competency. Americans elect lots of conservatives and many liberals, but have deep misgivings about candidates whose views vary with the situation.  (read more)