Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) “has started reserving television airtime in the first four nominating states, seven months before a vote is cast,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The Florida senator has reserved airtime in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada that is set to run from November through February.”
Donald Trump says that Jeb Bush, the front runner for the GOP presidential nomination in recent polls, views him as a serious political threat, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Trump: “Trust me, he takes me seriously.”
He added: “I actually felt bad because I hit him very hard one day. I really think he’s a nice man… I don’t know if I want him negotiating with ISIS. I think Trump will do a lot better.”
Mike Huckabee suggested that if he were elected president in 2016, he would decline to enforce the Supreme Court decision finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Hcukabee: “I would say, when the Congress provides enabling legislation and the people’s representatives vote and it gets to my desk, then we’ll consider it. This was done through a court edict of five unelected lawyers, a part of a committee, who decided that they knew better than the legislators.”
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said that his state will comply with the Supreme Court’s order legalizing same-sex marriage, Politico reports.
Said Jindal: “We don’t have a choice. Our agencies will comply with the court order.”
But he added: “I think it is wrong for the federal government to force Christian individuals, businesses, pastors, churches, to participate in wedding ceremonies that violate our sincerely held religious beliefs. We have to stand up and fight for religious liberty. That’s where this fight is going.”
“We’re called upon not to be the thermometers that reflect the temperature in the culture. We’re called upon to be thermostats, which can read the temperature and seek to adjust it to where it should be.”
— Mike Huckabee, quoted by the Washington Post.
“Most Republicans look at what’s happening and think we’re watching a new stage of left-wing nuttiness. It’s just surreal.”
— Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R), quoted by the Washington Post.
“So I’m at a wedding at one of my clubs, and I always try to go by and say what a beautiful bride, and they’re happy as they pay me $600 or $700 a head, and after about two minutes I’m bored stiff.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Bloomberg.
“A cascade of events suggests that 2015 could be remembered as a Liberal Spring: the moment when deeply divisive and consuming questions of race, sexuality and broadened access to health care were settled in quick succession, and social tolerance was cemented as a cornerstone of American public life,” the New York Times reports.
“Yet what appears, in headlines and celebrations across the country, to represent an unalloyed victory for Democrats, in which lawmakers and judges alike seemed to give in to the leftward shift of public opinion, may contain an opening for the Republican Party to move beyond losing battles and seemingly lost causes.”
Washington Post: “This uneven terrain is now a key battlefield in the 2016 campaign, unnerving red America and fueling intense debate within the Republican Party about how to navigate such changes — or whether to adapt to the mainstream at all.”
“There are many divides in American politics. There’s red and blue and black and white. But some of the starkest differences exist between rural and urban America. And events in the news this past week only highlighted the size of those divides,” NBC News reports.
“On trade, the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage, rural America has different opinions than those who live in urban and suburban areas, according to polling data. And on each of those issues, the news out of Washington over the past few days has signaled a negative shift.”
“The White House has churned out about 40 new measures to fight carbon pollution just since the start of 2015, stepping up the pace ahead of critical talks for a global climate change deal,” the Guardian reports.
“Two years after Barack Obama’s sweeping promise to fight climate change on 25 June 2013, the president has used his executive powers to spit out new climate events or announcements at a dizzying rate of one every 4.5 days this year, according to the running tally kept by the White House.”
Gary Hart: “Can anyone seriously doubt that our republic, our government, is corrupt? There have been Teapot Domes and financial scandals of one kind or another throughout our nation’s history. There has never been a time, however, when the government of the United States was so perversely and systematically dedicated to special interests, earmarks, side deals, log-rolling, vote-trading, and sweetheart deals of one kind or another.”
“What brought us to this? A sinister system combining staggering campaign costs, political contributions, political action committees, special interest payments for access, and, most of all, the rise of the lobbying class.”
Newark Star Ledger: “The fact that the GOP field is the largest since Abraham Lincoln may have changed the monetary calculus for Christie, according to some of the donors supporting his run. They say rather than taking on one big-money candidate such as Bush, Christie will simply need enough to compete with the crowd of over a dozen, at least for now.”
“Christie’s campaign, which went live on Saturday ahead of an formal announcement Tuesday, won’t say officially just how much cash is needed But top Christie donor Al Hill, Jr. – the Texas oilman who’s the grandson of billionaire H. L. Hunt – told NJ Advance Media: ‘My understanding is $20 million needs to be raised between now and the first of December.'”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) “has proposed a constitutional amendment that would subject Supreme Court justices to periodic judicial elections in the wake of rulings that upheld a key portion of the Affordable Care Act and affirmed gay couples’ right to marriage,” the Washington Post reports.
“Exhilarated by the Supreme Court’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, gay rights leaders have turned their sights to what they see as the next big battle: obtaining federal, state and local legal protections in employment, housing, commerce and other arenas, just like those barring discrimination based on race, religion, sex and national origin,” the New York Times reports.
“The proposals pit advocates against many of the same religious conservatives who opposed legalizing same-sex marriage, and who now see the protection of what they call religious liberty as their most urgent task.”
Donald Trump’s “fight with Univision is heating up. On Friday he published an anchor’s personal phone number, called for the resignation of a top executive and banned all of the channel’s executives from using Trump’s golf course in Miami,” CNN reports.
Wrote Trump in a letter: “Under no circumstances is any officer or representative of Univision allowed to use Trump National Doral, Miami.”
He added a P.S.: “Please congratulate your Mexican Government officials for having made such outstanding trade deals with the United States. However, inform them that should I become President, those days are over.”
Al Gore declined to endorse Hillary Clinton for president when asked about her prospects, the New York Post reports.
Said Gore: “I wouldn’t refuse to answer that question, I would try to cleverly dodge that question. I would say it’s actually too early.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Wonk Wire, Political Job Hunt and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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