Mark Sanford completed his political redemption Tuesday night as he handily beat Democratic challenger Elizabeth Colbert Busch in the special election for the seat South Carolina’s First Congressional District. The former disgraced governor of the state, who exited  the office a shamed man in 2011 following revelations of an extramarital affair, garnered nearly 55% of the vote.

Just a few weeks ago, it appeared as if the election was going to be a nail biter, with Colbert Busch even enjoying a small lead in some polls. In the end though, garnering the support of a majority of voters in a deeply-red district of a deeply red-state for the neophyte Democrat, was too big a hill to climb.

On Capitol Hill today, the deadly attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya takes center stage. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will get the chance to grill State Department witnesses, including Gregory Hicks, Foreign Service Officer and former Deputy Chief of Mission/Chargé d’Affairs in Libya. Hicks’s testimony is expected to be used by Republicans to further pin the blame for the attack directly on President Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The commander-in-chief was seething Tuesday after the Pentagon released a survey estimating that 26,000 people in the armed forces were sexually assaulted last year, up from 19,000 the previous year. President Obama pulled no punches declaring, “The bottom line is, I have no tolerance for this. If we find out somebody’s engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable, prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period.”

Will an F.B.I. proposed overhaul of surveillance laws, making it easier for Internet users to be wiretapped, upset the titans of Silicon Valley? The Obama administration appears likely to back the new plan.

Finally, as the rescue of three kidnapped women in Cleveland continues to captivate the nation, questions are emerging as to why the trio wasn’t found sooner. The three alleged abductors, Ariel Castro, 52, Pedro Castro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50 are expected to be charged later today.

Traditionally, the congressional cohorts of second-term presidents do not fair well in the midterms. Even iconic figures like Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower suffered bruising midterm losses in their second terms. In fact, only five times in American history has the president’s party avoided losing seats in Congress during non-presidential election seasons.

Conditions may be ripe for Democrats to be able to buck that trend in the 2014. The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly broke the 15,000 barrier for first time ever Friday, before slipping back down below that mark. The employment numbers came in better than expected for April with the economy adding 165,000 jobs and unemployment dropping to 7.5%.  Most glaringly though, a wildly unpopular Republican opposition exists as the party searches for an identity and some new ideas.

“[The Republican] strategy is, ‘Let’s not give the president any credit.’ So one of the issues that’s going to be litigated in this cycle is, are you a part of the solution? Are you helping improve the economy or are you trying to just score political points?” Democratic strategist Michael Feldman told Chris Matthews on Friday’s Hardball.  ”The sequester is a great example of this. It’s an unnecessary drag on the economy right now. We should be working on a balanced plan to solve the deficit problem.”

Amy Walter of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, had a more measured view of the Democrats’ chances to pick up some seats in 2014.

“Here’s the good news for Democrats, the silver lining. They lost so many seats in 2010, there are no more to lose,” Walter said. “The question is, can they expand it? A good economy is better than a terrible economy.”

There is still 18 months until November of 2014 rolls around, plenty of time for geo-political and domestic events to alter the Democrats’ positive mojo. In order to stave off Democratic gains though, Republicans may have to come up with a different strategy than simply trying to thwart President Obama, who does not have to run for re-election.

“This has been the problem for Republicans is that they’re very good at saying ‘We don’t want to do whatever President Obama does.’ They don’t have a message for, what are we going to do?” said Walter.

Despite the “reboot” effort Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus talked about following his party’s crushing electoral losses in November, that message of change doesn’t seem to be resonating.

Instead of shying away from the toxic social issues that have damaged the party’s reputation of late, many state lawmakers have forged ahead with controversial bills that could work to further alienate moderate voters. Republican policymakers in North Dakota, Arkansas and Texas in recent months have been responsible for passing some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. Now, politicians in these three states are looking to defund sex education programs for at-risk teenagers.

“As a political party, you can be still pro-life but advocate for responsible behavior. I think all of this coming on the heels of the ‘reboot’ again further exacerbates the problem we are having. They did not get the message,” former RNC Chairman Michael Steele told Chris Matthews on Hardball Tuesday.

At the heart of the matter in these defunding efforts appears to be the role conservative boogeyman Planned Parenthood would play in the sex-ed programs. The case garnering the most attention was the attempt in North Dakota to attach an amendment to the state’s latest anti-abortion bill that would have blocked a $1.2 million federal grant for a sex education program for teens who are homeless or in foster programs. The grant was targeted because Planned Parenthood is to be involved in administering the program in conjunction with North Dakota State University.

Word filtered out Tuesday night that the amendment was being struck from the abortion bill—conservative lawmakers couldn’t stomach an organization, which they perceive as an advocacy group for abortion, being involved in even well-meaning sex education efforts.

“If your problem is with Planned Parenthood, then make that the central argument…but don’t nickel and dime. Don’t cut and slice through programs that have nothing to do with abortion,” Steele said. “States can do what they want to do with respect for Planned Parenthood funding. Where I have a problem in this particular case is not affording a homeless child, a child that is not in the system to have access to information that could protect their lives, could be beneficial to them is some way.”

Lauren Ashburn of Dailydownload.com took a larger picture view of contraception vs. abortion argument, pointing out that Republicans can’t have their cake and eat it too.

“I think Republicans, what they need to do, is choose. They need to choose is abortion more important, or is contraception more important to them as an issue because right now, you can’t have it both ways in this society,” Ashburn said. “They are trying to have it both ways in this society. I think that you have to understand from a political point of view that you can’t.”

The conservative shock jock admitted on his radio show Wednesday that it’s only a matter of time before gay marriage is the law of the land.

“The bottom line is all of this is academic. This is going to happen, whether it happens now at the Supreme Court or somehow later, it is going to happen. It’s just the direction the culture is heading. There is hardly any opposition to this. The opposition that you would suspect exists is crumbling on it,” Limbaugh said.

Indeed, a number of lawmakers have recently changed their tune on gay marriage, including Republican Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman, moderate Democratic Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and North Carolina’s Sen. Kay Hagan

The latest edition of Time magazine reflected the shift. It features two different provocative covers, showing a female and a male same-sex couple kissing, with a headline that reads: Gay Marriage Already Won. The Supreme Court Hasn’t Made Up It’s Mind–But America Has.

“However the Court rules, we have crossed a cultural Rubicon where gay marriage is here [to stay],” Time‘s Michael Crowley told Chris Matthews on Thursday’s Hardball.

But many social conservatives are still red hot on the issue. Take conservative blogger Erick Erickson for example, who was not shy about his disdain for the cultural shift when he tweeted, “You’re not really loving your neighbor when you’re cool with him staying on the road to hell”.

Perhaps, the most interesting statement about the political ramifications of the a possible GOP pivot on the gay marriage came from former evangelical leader Mike Huckabee. When asked by Newsmax.com whether he thought Republicans may eventually punt on the issue, Huckabee responded, “They might. And if they do, they’re going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk.”

Crowley thinks that might not be such a bad thing for the GOP, which seems to be hamstrung by its right-wing evangelical base when it comes to presidential elections. “In this case, I think what would happen is, imagine the evangelicals out of the process in the 2012 Republican primaries, you end up with a nominee in Mitt Romney that has not been pushed to the right on social issues and maybe just taken that pressure off,” Crowley said. “That might well be good for the Republican party.”

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein had a different take, downplaying the power the Christian right wields on the GOP. “Maybe we are overstating [evangelicals'] influence because Romney was the nominee. There is a big Libertarian strand taking over the Republican Party, and they are more comfortable with states having the right to choose what to do with marriage.”

Joshua Green of Bloomberg Businessweek revealed the juicy details of one of the “great untold stories of the 2012 presidential campaign,” one which could have conceivably produced a different nominee on the Republican ticket. With Mitt Romney’s candidacy flailing heading into the Michigan primary, a “unity ticket” between the two insurgent challengers was discussed, but never materialized.

“That’s why this eventually fell apart, because even when Gingrich was losing steam and Santorum was winning, Gingrich still envisioned himself as the top dog on the ticket,” Green told Chris Matthews on Hardball Friday. ”[Newt's] always viewed himself as an executive, as this kind of grand figure, historical figure who lead his party to the majority and can do so again. I think at the time, he viewed Santorum as a junior partner even when he was losing badly, he still viewed Santorum as a junior partner.”

Gingrich and Santorum certainly never hid their disdain for Romney’s past moderate streak as governor of Massachusetts, an agent which bonded the two together and almost created the unlikely alliance. At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)  last year, when Santorum’s fate as the runner-up to Romney was all but sealed, Santorum drew a clear line of where he thought the party should head.

“We won in 2010 because conservatives rallied. They were excited about the contrast [with Democrats],” Santorum said. “We always talk about well how are we going to get the moderates? Why would an undecided voter vote for the candidate of a party, who the party’s not excited about?”

Time Magazine’s Michael Scherer is not so sure the Republican establishment agrees with Santorum’s assessment.

“I think the most interesting part of this thought experiment is if they had beaten Romney and then gotten thumped in the general, which they most likely would have, would the Republican Party be in a different position now? The Republican Party as an institution is trying desperately to expand itself beyond [Santorum's idea of needing to be more conservative] “

Matthews concluded with a prediction on where he thought the Republicans were headed for 2016. “My hunch is they’re going to go right, because they’re going to see Hillary Clinton coming and they’re going to say we’re not going to beat her, let’s have some fun at least.”

This is the dilemma that many of the speakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) have addressed the past few days. Two of the young rising stars in the GOP, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, made vastly different statements Thursday about which direction the party should head.

Rubio, who has aligned himself with the establishment wing of the party said, “We don’t need a new idea. There is an idea. The idea’s called America and it still works!”

By contrast, just minutes after Rubio uttered these words Paul, a Tea Party favorite and noted Libertarian, took a far more critical angle. “The GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered,” said Paul. “I don’t think we need to name any names,” he added with a chuckle. This appeared to be a clear dig at Sen. John McCain, perhaps the most recognizable face of the Washington Republican establishment, who last week chided Paul following  the junior senator from Kentucky’s almost 13-hour filibuster on the government’s use of predator drones.

“Rand Paul says ‘we need new ideas and we need to be more Libertarian and less interventionist’ just to hit his basic themes,” The Washington Post‘s Eugene Robinson told Chris Matthews on Friday’s Hardball. “Marco Rubio says ‘we don’t need to change anything except the candidates. We need to have candidates who better articulate what we’ve been saying all along’ and that’s going to be the fight in the party. I’m a believer in inertia. I think they stick with the same basic ideas but with a new face.”

Clear battle lines are being drawn inside the Republican Party on which course to chart forward. The exclusion of moderate governors such as New Jersey’s Chris Christie and Virginia’s Bob McDonnell from speaking at CPAC give an indication which factions hold the most sway and who might emerge as the GOP’s leader in 2016. The infighting of today’s Republican Party is of a different nature than the fight that was waged in years past.

“For decades there was a fight within the Republican Party between realists and the neoconservatives. Modest intervention vs. the neocons who had a messianic view of promoting democracy,” Mother Jones‘s David Corn told Matthews. “There always was a small part of the party, paleoconservatives like Pat Buchannan, but they were never even in the debate. They were so far out of the mainstream of their own party. Now with Rand Paul, we see them kind of rising and the debate is between them and the neocons. The realists are gone. I think the GOP establishment is still squarely in the neo-conservative camp with maybe a toe or two in the realist camp and they will find a way to drown out Rand Paul at least in the conversation in Washington in the halls of power.”

Not only did the New Jersey governor seem unfazed about not being invited to speak  at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 14, but other Republican heavyweights have since stepped up to help prop up Christie’s 2013 re-election campaign.

Word has it that failed 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has forked over the maximum $3,800 contribution to the governor’s re-election bid. This comes as a bit of a surprise because of the fury that Christie’s chumminess with President Obama ignited inside Romney’s inner circle in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Romney is not the only Massachusetts politician sticking his neck out for Christie, (whose record-breaking approval ratings in New Jersey appear to make him a virtual lock for reelection). Former U.S. Senator Scott Brown is slated to host a $3,800-per-person dinner in Boston Friday night in support of Christie.

“Part of the reason he is popular is because he is not the type of conservative that CPAC embraces,” the Daily Beast’s Michelle Goldberg said on Thursday’s Hardball. ”A candidate who spoke only to CPAC audiences would never be so successful in deep blue New Jersey. Because he has a reputation as an independent, because he has a reputation as someone who will put the state’s welfare above the conservative orthodoxy, that’s why he is beloved right now, but that’s also why the party is angry at him.”

Congressman Peter King (R-NY), who also has not been shy about critcizing his party’s extreme right flank, did not hold back in his disdain for the CPAC and its short-sighted orthodoxy. King told The Hill Thursday that “if Republicans had any brains they’d stay away from CPAC. The thought that he’s being penalized because he sought to get the aid for Sandy relief is disgraceful regional bias. To hold that out against him shows a narrow-minded bigotry from the party.”

“The Republican Party now is suspicious of anybody who’s popular with the majority of Americans,” said Politico‘s Roger Simon on Hardball. “CPAC figures this guy is popular, there’s got to be something wrong with him. This [thought process] started when ideology started driving the party instead of getting people elected to office.”

With Hagel now confirmed, it begs the question – was the Republicans’ anti-Hagel crusade worth it? Aaron Blake in The Washington Post makes an argument for both sides. The general takeaway is that the American public really wasn’t very interested in this inside-the-Beltway drama.

Speaking of more pressing inside-the-Beltway drama, the clock continues to tick on the enormous automatic spending cuts slated to take effect at the start of the month. One might think that would spur the big players from each party to be furiously trying to hammer out a deal before sequestration ravages the country’s fragile psyche. But this is today’s Washington so does it come as any surprise that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner haven’t spoken since Thursday?

The Violence Against Women Act appears to be on the path to passage sometime this week, with House Republicans resigned to the fact that their version of the bill is a losing one.

Move over NRA…you have company. New York City Mayor and anti-gun crusader Michael Bloomberg flexed his political and substantial financial muscles helping local Chicago official Robin Kelly, a fellow gun control advocate, win the Democratic primary to replace disgraced former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL). Bloomberg spent more than two million dollars attacking NRA-backed candidate Debbie Halvorson, helping Kelly throttle her and over a dozen others for a chance to take the seat in Congress.

Finally, the Supreme Court, in a narrow 5-4 decision Tuesday, rejected a challenge to a 2008 law that expanded the federal government’s ability to eavesdrop on international calls and emails.

The president touched on a number of different issues in his exactly one hour speech, but the crux of his message was focused on the economy, jobs, and strengthening the middle class in America. Chris Cillizza argues in The Washington Post that though the “bulk of the speech dealt with the economy,” President Obama did not offer enough specifics to help move the debate with his Republican counterparts forward.

One concrete fix the president proposed is to raise the federal minimum wage requirement to $9.00 an hour. Dylan Matthews of The Washington Post thinks that a more cost effective way to lift more families from poverty would be by increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit for large families.

Among the usual vagaries heard in State of The Union speeches, President Obama did make strong plays in the areas of climate change and the voting problems that plague the nation, to name a couple.

Strikingly, the first mention of the massacre in Newtown, Conn., and a push for gun reform did occur until almost the end of the address. When the president finally got around to the issue, it was probably the most impassioned portion of his speech. Citing Gabby Giffords, the families of Newtown and the families of Aurora, among others, President Obama pleaded with Congress to vote on the “common-sense reform” he is proposing.

One time Tea Party hero Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., whose 2016 presidential aspirations appear to have forced him to move closer in line with the establishment wing of his party, delivered a fact-challenged Republican response to the president’s speech. Rubio’s harsh personal assault on President Obama was overshadowed by an awkward water-sipping moment, begging the question of whether Rubio is ready for primetime.

Predictably, the next morning’s response to the president’s speech from high-profile Republicans such as Paul Ryan was not a glowing one.

The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank penned a piece Wednesday, in which he outlined recent events suggesting an atrophy of the Tea Party’s muscles in Republican circles. Here are the five developments within the past week Milbank used to make his case:

• Last Thursday: At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a possible presidential candidate, scolds fellow Republicans for obsessing over cutting budgets and says, ”We’ve got to stop being the stupid party.”
• Friday afternoon: Sensing a possible national backlash, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (another likely 2016 Republican presidential hopeful) comes out against a GOP electoral college-rigging plan hatched by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature. Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder have since distanced themselves from similar legislative proposals–which many Tea Partiers endorse–in their states.
• Friday night: Word leaks out that Fox News and Tea Party hero Sarah Palin have decided to part ways after a three-year marriage. How the mighty have fallen.
• Saturday: Reports surface that House Speaker John Boehner made a speech to the Ripon Society, a Republican public policy organization, in which he called some members of his caucus “hard heads.”
• Monday: A bipartisan group if senators, including rising star (and Tea Party favorite) Marco Rubio, unveils a comprehensive immigration reform plan. The plan doesn’t focus just on enforcement, but allows for a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country.

Despite signs Republicans and their supporters are growing wary about the Tea Party’s grip on the GOP, Milbank told guest host Michael Smerconish on Wednesday night’s Hardball that the Tea Party’s ultimate demise does not appear to be imminent.

“The Tea Party itself isn’t over but what I think you have is some of the more sober revelers in the Tea Party heading for the exits because they realize this thing is getting rowdy and police are going to be showing up and it’s going to get really ugly,” Milbank said. ”People who have national aspirations, who are interested in 2016, who realize the party has to change are growing a bit of bravery right now and saying, ‘we can’t continue to tolerate this.’”

Those with national aspirations have clearly disassociated themselves from some of the far right wing dogma that has overtaken the Republican party in recent years. Yet, because of redistricting, there is a decent chance the far right will remain a force in the House GOP caucus for years to come. Nate Silver delved deep into the numbers in his Five Thirty Eight blog in The New York Times  last month, and estimated that because of GOP-friendly gerrymandering, there are only 35 so-called “swing districts” left in the entire country.

“What you’re seeing is that those districts, people are only afraid of a primary challenge from the right, they don’t have to fear any Democrats or Centrist Republicans,” said Salon.com’s Joan Walsh told Smerconish. ”I would love to [buy the demise of the Tea Party argument], but I think it is a little too soon. This perspective on spending that the Tea Party brought, certainly hasn’t gone away. Any time you’ve got 36 United States Senators that voted down Sandy relief a couple of days ago, you know something has fundamentally changed about the way Republicans talk about government.”

Recent numerical evidence also suggests a steep decline in in the Tea Party’s popularity. According to a CNN/ORC poll from November of 2012, the Tea Party saw its unfavorability rating jump to 50%, almost double  the January 2010 number, when it was only at 26%.