Coming next week: The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s by Gil Troy.
Archives for September 2015
Control of the Supreme Court at Stake in 2016
Rick Hasen: “The future composition of the Supreme Court is the most important civil rights cause of our time. It is more important than racial justice, marriage equality, voting rights, money in politics, abortion rights, gun rights, or managing climate change. It matters more because the ability to move forward in these other civil rights struggles depends first and foremost upon control of the Court. And control for the next generation is about to be up for grabs, likely in the next presidential election, a point many on the right but few on the left seem to have recognized.”
Boehner’s Exit Roils the GOP Presidential Race
Rick Klein: “John Boehner was torn down by the same forces that empowered him five years ago. He’s led a group that did not want to be led; he’s been speaker of a House that’s wanted action for its own sake. His exit may calm congressional waters in the short term. But it roils the presidential race, in splits made evident by Republican candidates who are either praising Boehner’s service or calling for his colleagues in leadership to topple along with him. Tea party voters have been Republican voters, but this has been an uneasy marriage from the moment they started to elect individuals to serve in a Washington they profess to hate.”
“Channeling those energies is critical to GOP math these days. Yet these are voters (and interest groups, of course) that don’t respond to top-down leadership decisions. How they respond to a fluid presidential race – with Donald Trump still the frontrunner, outsiders dominant, and some establishment candidates potentially resurgent – could determine the nomination, and perhaps the general election. Boehner’s fate is a lesson, though not a particularly useful one inside a party that’s still at war with itself.”
McCarthy Has a Lock on Speaker
First Read: “As for the race to replace Boehner, it appears that it’s Kevin McCarthy’s race to lose — McCarthy is currently the No. 2 as House Majority Leader. Both Reps. Steve Scalise and Cathy McMorris Rodgers appear to be running for McCarthy’s job as majority leader. Remember, if Scalise (the majority whip) or Rodgers (the No. 4 in House leadership) loses, they get to keep their current post, so both essentially have a free shot.”
“Meanwhile, it’s interesting that Rep. Jeb Hensarling isn’t trying to make a run for speaker (or even Majority Leader). Is he the Texas Hamlet? Perhaps. But maybe his attitude is to see what happens later this year, especially if McCarthy has to make decisions that could alienate House conservatives.”
Christie Scores Big Iowa Endorsements
Chris Christie “will score a major coup this coming week: endorsements from a planeload of Iowa Republicans who pleaded with him to run for president in 2012 but whose interest in his 2016 candidacy had seemed to fade,” the Des Moines Register reports.
“Six of the seven Iowans who hopped into agribusiness millionaire Bruce Rastetter’s private jet last election cycle for a recruitment mission to the governor’s mansion in New Jersey are scheduled to reveal on Tuesday that they’re publicly backing Christie again.”
Trump Would Raises Taxes on the Very Wealthy
Donald Trump “is set to release a tax plan Monday that calls for major reductions in levies on middle-income and poor payers, while increasing taxes on the wealthy and reining in companies that pay less in taxes by moving their headquarters overseas,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The plan will offer a ‘major tax reduction for almost all citizens’ and help stimulate business in the U.S. again… The GOP presidential front-runner is also expected to call for the poorest filers to pay no federal taxes at all while also recommending that corporate levies be reduced.”
Ted Cruz’s Big Moment
“If Ted Cruz is ever going to break through in the Republican presidential primary, the time is now,” Politico reports.
“Cruz’s supporters see the showdown in Congress over Planned Parenthood and the budget — which kicks into high gear this week and could stretch into the winter, on the cusp of voting in early states — as a critical opening for the first-term lawmaker. With the spotlight focused on Congress, they say, it will allow Cruz to make a sustained case to tea party and evangelical voters that he’s the one candidate doing battle in the trenches for their causes, just as many of them are picking a horse in the race. The goal, he and allies stop just short of saying, is to expose his chief competitors for the outsider mantle as pretenders by comparison.”
Competitive Race for Louisiana Governor
A new Baton Rouge Advocate/WWL-TV poll in Louisiana finds Sen. David Vitter (R) and Jon Bel Edwards (D) deadlocked at 24% in the governor’s race, followed by Scott Angelle (R) at 15% and Jay Dardenne (R) at 14%.
Most Oppose Shutdown over Planned Parenthood
A new Quinnipiac poll finds 69% of Americans oppose shutting down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood.
Just 23% support closing the government over the dispute. Even among Republicans, 56% oppose a shutdown due to Planned Parenthood.
Wonk Wire: Why defunding Planned Parenthood won’t work
McCarthy Promises More Confrontation with Democrats
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), “who is quietly locking down support to be the next House speaker, is privately assuring Republicans he’ll take a tougher stand against the White House — and also the Senate GOP leadership,” CNN reports.
“He’s hearing from members angry that the GOP Congress has not advanced the conservative cause more forcefully, and he’s responding with a clear message: He is willing to take a more confrontational stand with the White House and the Senate to achieve the results the party has sought to enact.”
Wall Street Journal: “The most militant House Republicans are expected to be emboldened by Mr. Boehner’s departure, and even less likely to agree to a compromise with Democrats in setting spending levels for the rest of fiscal year 2016.”
Trump Quote of the Day
“My economy will expand so rapidly. We’re going to take jobs back from other countries. And we will be able to pay for it.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by The Hill.
Clinton Accounts for Previously Undisclosed Emails
BuzzFeed: “Late last year, Hillary Clinton gave the State Department copies of her work email from her four-year tenure as secretary of state. The records begin on March 18, 2009 — a day aides had long identified as the point at which Clinton started using the personal email account she maintained on a home server in Chappaqua, N.Y.”
“Clinton actually began using the account, hdr22@clintonemail.com, about two months earlier than previously stated, in January 2009, an official with her campaign confirmed on Sunday. The clintonemail.com domain, the aide said, was not housed on the Clintons’ Chappaqua server until March 2009 — at which point the server began storing Clinton’s emails, starting with messages on March 18, 2009.”
Fiorina Insists She Had Other Job Offers
Carly Fiorina said that “she had plenty of job offers after being fired as the CEO of Hewlett Packard, including posts in the George W. Bush administration, but she decided against them,” Politico reports.
Said Fiorina: “I didn’t want to go back to work as a CEO… I wanted a break, and then I wanted to give back.”
Top Donors Put Bush on Notice
Jeb Bush “is entering a critical phase of his Republican presidential campaign, with top donors warning that the former Florida governor needs to demonstrate growth in the polls over the next month or face serious defections among supporters,” the Washington Post reports.
“The warnings, expressed by numerous senior GOP fundraisers in recent days, come as Bush and an allied super PAC are in the early stages of an aggressive television ad campaign that they believe will help erase doubts about his viability. But Bush continues to battle against a steady decline in the polls, sinking to fifth place at just 7 percent in a national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday and similarly languishing in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire.”
Trump Will Promise Tax Cuts to Nearly Everyone
Donald Trump will release his tax policy proposals on Monday, The Hill reports.
Said the Trump campaign in a statement: “Essentially, the plan is a major tax reduction for almost all citizens and corporations, in particular, those in the middle and lower income classes. Likewise, a major beneficiary will be corporations and job producers, with an emphasis on businesses in the United States and bringing money back into the United States, which is locked in other countries (Corporate Inversion).”
The statement went on to claim that Trump “understands business incentives and taxes better than perhaps anyone that has ever run for office.”
Pelosi Not Sure She’ll Miss Boehner
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told CNN that Speaker John Boehner is a “fine person” but she’s note sure she’ll miss him when he retires at the end of October.
Said Pelosi: “I respect the people who send them here. I respect the fact that their caucus elected them to a leadership position.”
But, she added: “I don’t know if I’ll miss him.”
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