By Chris Cillizza, Published: January 11

In the wake of his second-place showing in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night, Texas Rep. Ron Paul declared: “We are dangerous to the status quo of this country”.

He’s right. And that could be a very bad thing for a Republican party hoping to take back the White House this November.

A look at exit polling from New Hampshire suggests that Paul has a significant — and steady — following that exists almost entirely apart from the Republican party and is, in many ways, based on a disgust with the GOP.

Two numbers from the exit polls jump out.

1) Almost seven in ten people who voted for Paul on Tuesday in New Hampshire said they would be “dissatisfied” if former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee.

2) Fully 78 percent of Paul’s New Hampshire support came from those who are dissatisfied or angry with the Obama administration — not surprising given the low regard in which the current president is held by Republicans. But, consider this: 77 percent of Paul’s Granite State supporters in 2008 were similarly upset with the Bush administration. In fact, half of all Paul’s votes four years ago came from voters downright “angry” with Republican president.

Combine those two data points with the fact that Paul’s vote total more than tripled between 2008 (18,308 votes) and 2012 (56,000 votes and counting) and it’s clear that the Texas Republican’s support is not only primed and ready to follow him wherever he leads but it is also growing.

That double-barreled dose of reality leads naturally to a discussion of a possible third party bid in 2012 by Paul. He’s been asked any number of times about it and always demurs, insisting that it’s nothing he’s planning on doing. (In an interview with Fox News Channel’s Greta van Susteren Monday, Paul said: “That thought doesn’t cross my mind. I’m not thinking in those terms.”)

We believe him. But, circumstances change.

Imagine this scenario: Between now and Super Tuesday — March 6 — Romney wins enough primaries that he becomes the de facto nominee. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and the rest of the field bows to the inevitable and gets out. Paul, on the other hand, stays in the race — continuing to accrue delegates and strengthen his negotiating position for a larger voice in the party (if that’s what he wants).

The Republican party will then be faced with a choice. Do they bow to Paul’s demands — a speaking slot at the convention or perhaps more? — or do they simply ignore him in hopes he goes away.

If the party takes the latter course, Paul may well adjust his thinking on a third party bid. (Remember, he has already done it once: he ran as the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee in 1988.)

And, some of his rhetoric on Tuesday night certainly suggested that Paul viewed his candidacy as the leading edge of a much larger movement. “I think the intellectual revolution that’s going on now to restore liberty in this country is well on its way, and there’s no way they’re going to stop the momentum that we have started,” he said.

Should Paul decide that his cause is best championed via a third party bid for president, the impact would be disastrous for Republicans next fall.

How disastrous? Take a look at the Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in mid-December. In it, President Obama and Romney are tied at 47 percent in a traditional two-way race. Add Paul in as a third party candidate and Obama takes 42 percent, Romney 32 percent and Paul 21 percent. That’s a pretty stark difference in potential outcomes.

There is one x-factor that may lead Paul to accept a negotiated detente with the GOP rather than go to all-out war as a third party candidate. And that x factor’s name is Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican senator and son of Ron Paul.

It’s no secret that Rand, who was elected to the Senate in 2010, has national ambitions. (There was even some talk he might run instead of his dad in this election.)

A Ron Paul third party bid in 2012 would almost certainly tank Rand’s chances of being taken seriously as a candidate for the Republican nomination in 2016 or 2020 (or maybe ever). The Paul forces know that and it may ultimately be a major reason why Ron Paul decides that a deal with the establishment is the more prudent course of action.

Make no mistake: What Ron Paul decides to do over the next few months will be watched with a mixture of fascination and trepidation by the political world. And that makes him the most dangerous man in (and to) the Republican party.

By Joe Davidson, Published: January 11

While Republican presidential hopefuls are talking about pink slips and the joys of firing people, many agencies in the Obama administration are quietly paying employees to leave their jobs.

Buyouts and early retirement programs are the scalpel Uncle Sam uses before he has to turn to the hatchet of layoffs.

“I don’t think it is any secret that going forward the federal government will be on a strict diet and will require some belt tightening,” said John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management.

Federal-employee belts are the ones likely to get a lot of that tightening because the salary lines of agency budgets consume a lot of money.

OPM uses two tools to help agencies reduce their staffing levels without resorting to pink slips and firings. One is the Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP) program, which is government-speak for buyouts. Employees can get up to $25,000 to quit. The other is the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA), which allows workers to get annuities years earlier than usual.

These programs give agency officials “the flexibility to respond to the budget situation,” Berry said, allowing them to create a “glide path” to workforce reduction rather than the crash that layoffs would be.

But if the two V’s don’t get the job done, he added, “agencies do have the tool box, which we all know goes in the direction of reduction in force” or RIFs, which means pink slips.

“Our hope is through creative use of VERA and VSIP authority and workforce strategic planning that agencies will be able to respond to the . . . ’12 and 2013 budget years without having to move into more drastic approaches like reductions in force,” he said, adding: “There may be cases where people, they’ve done all they can do with VERA and VSIP and will have to look at other options.”

OPM has a strike team to provide quick responses to agency requests for buyouts and early retirements. “We’ve approved quite a few of them, and we’ve managed a pretty good turnaround time on almost all of those,” he said. “We know, done well, this is the best way to respond to this and allow you to design your workforce to address your budget.”

Despite the increased budget pressures, he doesn’t expect the number of buyout and early retirement requests from agencies to be dramatically higher this year than last.

“It’s not a cliff,” he said.

Jack Lew, the Office of Management and Budget director, whom President Obama has named to be his chief of staff, understands how important career employees are and knows “that jarring impacts can really upset the system,” Berry added. “He recognizes we’ve got to have a tighter, leaner government, but we can do that responsibly without creating chaos.”

In fiscal 2010, OPM gave 14 departments permission to offer buyouts: Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, Treasury, Transportation and Veterans Affairs.

The same agencies were allowed to offer early retirement, except for Defense and Health and Human Services.

The next year, a dozen departments, including several of the same ones, got the okay for buyouts from OPM: Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.

For fiscal 2011, all of those departments, except the Pentagon, were granted early retirement authority, and Homeland Security was added to that list.

OPM does not have the number of employees who potentially could get a buyout or an early retirement offer from their agencies.

Despite the early outs, the overall number of federal workers may not decline, at least not by much.

The White House budget plan for this fiscal year projected an increase in federal employment to 2,116,000, from an estimated 2,101,000 in fiscal 2011, not including the Postal Service. But those projections were made before the budget battles between Democrats and Republicans and the threat of automatic spending cuts to reduce the deficit.

“That being the case, I think the 2012 estimate is probably a bit high,” said John Palguta, a senior vice president of the Partnership for Public Service, a think tank that focuses on federal workplace issues. (The Partnership has a content sharing relationship with The Washington Post.) “My prediction is that the size of the federal workforce . . . at the end of FY 2011 will be the high water mark. I think we’ll see a small dip in FY 2012 and a bigger dip in FY 2013.”

Closing note: According to White House data, the number of federal employees in 2011 was less than in 1985, under former president Ronald Reagan, whom Republicans consider to be the godfather of small government, despite a national population that is about 30 percent larger now.