February 21, 2011
A new
Gallup poll finds that between 2008 and 2010, the number of states that are lean-Democratic or strongly Democratic has decreased by more than half, from 30 to 14.
Additionally, the number of lean-Republican and strongly Republican states has doubled in that time, going from five to 10, and the number of competitive states has almost doubled, going from 10 to 18.
New York Times: "Members of Libya's mission to the United Nations publicly repudiated Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Monday, calling him a genocidal war criminal responsible for mass shootings of demonstrators protesting against his four decades in power. They called upon him to resign."
The
New York Times looks at the recent austerity efforts by Republicans, from the budget standoff in Congress to the labor protests in Wisconsin, and notes that "Republicans may be risking the same kind of electoral backlash Democrats suffered after they were perceived as overreaching."
"At the very least, the huge demonstrations in Wisconsin over Mr. Walker's efforts suggest that the Republicans have succeeded in doing what Mr. Obama was unable to do last year: energize the Democratic base."
Politico: "Labor hopes the public will see Walker's attempt to use a budget gap to reshape labor-management relations as an overreach. But for many people watching from afar, the...fight is playing out as yet another in a long string of recent state-based brawls over the high cost of the public sector."
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Central Falls, RI Mayor Charles Moreau (D) "has not set foot in City Hall since July 19, the day that a state-appointed receiver took control," the
New York Times reports.
"The state police knocked on his door that morning, he said, demanded his city-owned car and cellphone and keys to City Hall and handed him a letter announcing his salary of $71,736 was being cut to $26,000. His role was now advisory, he was informed."
Said Moreau: "I was told they'd call if they needed me. They haven't called since."
Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) will announce his primary challenge to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) tomorrow "with the support of a majority of both the state's 92 Republican county chairmen and its state party executive committee,"
The Fix reports.
Said Mourdock: "I feel bad that he's going to be humiliated by this list."
"That such a large contingent of the party establishment should come out against or withhold support from an incumbent senator is highly unusual and reflects the difficult path ahead for Lugar in advance of the May 8, 2012, primary fight."
Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi's regime "showed more signs of crumbling as dozens were reportedly killed in the capital and Gaddafi's son and heir-apparent declared in a televised speech that the North African nation could fall into anarchy if his father was ousted," the
Washington Post reports.
"The six-day-old uprising had reached the capital, Tripoli, with reports of buildings being set ablaze, looting in some neighborhoods, and military helicopters shooting at protesters on the ground."
New York Times: "The revolt shaking Libya is the latest and most violent turn in a rebellion across the Arab world that seemed unthinkable just two months ago and that has already toppled autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia."
"Our Peace Prize-winning president is very busy bowing these days to kings. He is bending down to dictators, and he is brown-nosing the elites that are in Europe, and he's babying the jihadists who are following Sharia-compliant terrorism. He is callow and confused and inconsistent in his response to the Egyptian crisis, and to the uprisings in Iran, and to the terrorist threats. And he's accomplishing something nobody thought even possible: He's making Jimmy Carter look like a Rambo tough-guy."
-- Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), quoted by the
Spartanburg Herald Journal during a visit to South Carolina.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) told
Radio Iowa what's he's weighing in order to possibly make a White House bid:
Said Barbour: "There's a lot that enters into it. I have been political director of the White House under Ronald Reagan and I understand what I'm getting into. I'm 63 years old and this is a 10 year commitment if you run and get elected, you're commiting yourself for reelection and so you've got to be prepared for a 10 year commitment and that's the majority of the rest of my productive life and you have to decide am I willing to take on the most consuming job in the world, which the presidency is, and I have to see if I have the fire in the belly and the willingness, to the exclusion of all other things, to take that on."
The
AP notes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) "has cut more than the state budget in his first year in office: he has also dropped a few notches in his belt."
"He will not say exactly how much he has lost, but his suits have been getting noticeably baggy."
Said Christie: "I'm motivated by the fact that the job is pretty stressful at times and I have four kids, so I need to be around for them. I don't want to be in a situation where, as I get older, my health is really at risk."
In the mail:
American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt by Daniel Rasmussen.
"I hate this damn job."
-- Sarah Palin, quoted by the
Anchorage Daily News, in an email sent to a staffer before she resigned as governor.
On President's Day, a new
Gallup Poll finds Americans are most likely to say Ronald Reagan was the nation's greatest president -- slightly ahead of Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton.
Reagan, Lincoln, or John F. Kennedy has been at the top of this "greatest president" list each time this question has been asked in eight surveys over the last 12 years.
Cheri Daniels, the wife of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R), is not sure whether she wants her husband to run for President, reports the
Greenfield Daily Reporter.
Indiana's First Lady wants her family to "consider how a presidential campaign might affect them over the next four to eight years and the impact it could have on the rest of their lives."
An aide close to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) tells the
Courier Post that the governor is mulling the creation of a federal fundraising committee.
Said staffer Bill Palatucci: "There's so much interest out there, it's leaving money on the table by not having one."
Mike Huckabee tells the
Washington Post that President Obama "is going to be much tougher to beat than people in our party think."
"He's going to have a clear ride through to the Democratic nomination, because no one is going to oppose him or challenge him. He's going to start out with a billion dollars, no opponent, so he can save his money to the last four months. He's got a huge social network and he has the power of the incumbency. People underestimate how sweet it is flying on Air Force One with all the trappings of the presidency."
Meanwhile, Huckabee says the Republicans "could in fact end up with a demolition derby. Whoever emerges will come out bloody, bruised and broke."
The
Chicago Tribune profiles Valerie Jarrett, the only remaining of President Obama's four original senior advisers when he took office.
"Long the closest personal confidante of Barack and Michelle Obama, she is steadily becoming more visible at Obama's side... She is a consensus builder who reinforces Obama's tendency toward centrism, but is also a voice for women and minorities in policy considerations. Her involvement in an issue has the presidential imprint. Her presence is seen as his proxy... As a measure of the trepidation she inspires, when one business leader was asked to talk about Jarrett on the record, he said: 'It would only be good.'"
The RNC raised $5.7 million last month, its first month under new chairman Reince Priebus,
Roll Call reports.
Now the bad news: The RNC still had $21.4 million in debt and only $2.1 million on hand by the end of the month.
February 20, 2011
The
BBC has a useful map to quickly follow the latest developments in the Middle East as unrest spreads throughout the region.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) said in unprepared remarks on the House floor that she had an abortion almost 20 years ago after she miscarried and doctors told her the baby wouldn't survive. Speier made the remarks after Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) described the procedure of an abortion on the House floor, the
San Jose Mercury News reports.
Said Speier: "I was thinking to myself, 'Not one of you has endured this procedure.' It was pretty tense in the chamber anyway. The language being used, the nature of the comments, it got so incendiary."
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told
CNN that if the U.S. knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, it probably wouldn't have decided to invade.
"Rumsfeld noted there were multiple reasons for attacking Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein from power. However, intelligence reports -- now shown to have been false -- that Iraq possessed so-called WMDs was the main reason for going in, Rumsfeld said."
Said Rumsfeld, when asked if the Bush administration would have decided against invasion if it didn't think Iraq had WMDs: "I think that's probably right."
"We are saying, 'Negotiate,' and they're saying, 'Do it my way' before any negotiations even begin."
-- Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), in an interview with
CNN, accusing Republicans of playing politics on the federal budget.
Dave Weigel takes stock of an interesting subplot around the Wisconsin union protests: Why aren't unions up in arms about the pension reforms proposed by California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D)?
"Well, they sort of are... But in the state with the most union members, and the state with the highest proportion of unionized workers, the unions are mostly holding their power. And that's because unlike Scott Walker, the Democratic governors are limiting their reforms to pensions and other items relevant to the budget. Walker is doing that and 1) going after collective bargaining rights and 2) asking for mandatory annual elections to determine union membership. And those measures are patently designed to weaken labor for all time, long after the crisis is over."
The Fix notes that while DNC Chairman Tim Kaine (D) may be Democrats' strongest prospect for holding Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) open seat in 2012, that's not the only reason why getting Kaine into the race is important.
"Landing Kaine -- a top-tier recruit who has wavered on the idea of running -- would be the sort of foundational building block that Senate Democrats could build around. Recruiting in politics is a lot like recruiting in sports. Get one star and use that star as leverage -- he's doing it, so should you -- to bring in other stars."
February 19, 2011
Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) "has yet another matter to add to his growing list of re-election problems. In addition to a Senate ethics probe and lagging poll numbers, a once-reliable base of support -- D.C. lobbyists -- has quietly started pushing party leaders to get the Senator to exit the race altogether,"
Roll Call reports.
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