“Bush has no money, he’s meeting today with mommy and daddy, and they’re working on his campaign. He’s a guy wants to run our country and he can’t even run his own campaign. Think of it.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by The Hill.
“Bush has no money, he’s meeting today with mommy and daddy, and they’re working on his campaign. He’s a guy wants to run our country and he can’t even run his own campaign. Think of it.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by The Hill.
Donald Trump “downplayed the results of two Iowa polls that show him slipping to second place in the key first state, and he took shots at Iowa’s new front-runner: Ben Carson,” CNN reports.
Trump read the day’s headline that he had fallen behind Carson in Iowa at a rally: “We informed Ben, but he was sleeping.”
Politico quotes Trump at the same rally: “Ben Carson is super low energy. We need tremendous energy.”
“In unmistakable ways over the last two weeks, whether he has intended to or not, Donald J. Trump has started to articulate a way out of the presidential race: a verbal parachute that makes clear he has contemplated the factors that would cause him to end his bid,” the New York Times reports.
Though he still leads in most polls, he suggests he wouldn’t be running if his numbers were to slip.
“He said he had not contemplated a threshold for what would cause him to get out of the race. And he noted that his crowds were even larger than those of Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is drawing thousands to rallies in seeking the Democratic nomination.”
You are reading the free version of Political Wire.
Ben Carson told CNBC that he would “replace more than just Obamacare with his plan for health savings accounts. He also wants his plan to replace all health insurance except for catastrophic coverage. He even wants it to replace Medicare—the extraordinarily popular health program for the elderly.”
“Blah blah blah blah, that’s my answer, blah blah blah.”
— Jeb Bush, quoted by MSNBC, responding to suggestions that his campaign is in a death spiral.
“A private investigator working for Sen. David Vitter’s gubernatorial campaign was arrested Friday and charged with illegally recording a conversation involving a local sheriff, throwing a last-minute wrench into Saturday’s all-party primary as other campaigns pounced on the news,” Politico reports.
Washington Post: “Bush’s retrenchment drew immediate parallels to Sen. John McCain’s campaign implosion in the summer of 2007. The Arizona Republican laid off most of his staff, including several top strategists, and retreated to New Hampshire to grind out a comeback. He eventually won the 2008 nomination.”
“Unlike McCain, however, Bush has no deep history with the voters of New Hampshire or any other early state. McCain’s task was to remind people why they had liked him, while Bush’s challenge in the three months before voting begins is to find ways to win over people who have been cool to his overtures thus far.”
“Overall, we’re making enormous progress. And it does make you wonder, why is it that Republican politicians are so down on America? Have you noticed that? I mean, they are gloomy. They’re like grumpy cat.”
— President Obama, quoted by TPM.
New York Times: “A beleaguered Jeb Bush slashed his campaign spending. Donald Trump lost his lead in Iowa. And a surging Ben Carson galvanized his support among social conservatives.”
“With Hillary Clinton emerging as the unrivaled leader in the Democratic contest, the unruly Republican presidential field suddenly seemed to lack a center of political gravity on Friday, leaving party strategists and voters to fear a long nomination fight that could end with a damaged standard-bearer facing a more unified left.”
New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran (R) “pleaded guilty to embezzlement and other charges Friday after abruptly resigning amid a fraud investigation that alleged she siphoned thousands of dollars from her election account to help fuel her gambling addiction,” the AP reports.
Jeb Bush “will attend a finance meeting this weekend in Houston convened by former President George H. W. Bush and attended by Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush,” CBS News has learned.
“The session, designed to assess where Bush’s candidacy stands in the face of large-scale staff cutbacks and underwhelming poll numbers, will also be attended by Bush’s mother, Barbara Bush. The governor’s campaign confirmed the meeting will be held Sunday and Monday.”
Matt Taibbi: “These morons in Gowdy’s committee were so bent on proving that Hillary is an unfeeling, ambition-crazed schemer bent on riding gleefully to the White House on the corpses of Benghazi victims that they ended up making her look like the one thing she really isn’t, at least not very often: a regular person.”
“Most of us who watched the fiasco imagined what we would do in her position, facing that same ludicrous barrage of circular questions. Most normal people would have done all of the same things she did: sighing, choking back angry retorts, shaking a head in disbelief at times, even laughing at the absurdity of it all.”
“Actually many people would have lost it early on and grabbed Gowdy by his goofy silver fro-hawk somewhere in hour six or seven, a fact that made Hillary by contrast look patient and presidential, in ways her campaign had been unable to achieve all year.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) lost a bet with Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) over the National League Division Series featuring the Dodger vs. Mets.
The video below shows how he paid up.
“Iowa’s annual Democratic fund-raising dinner is just another night on the rubber pork chop circuit, but it has a place in political legend as a pivot point for presidential races,” the New York Times reports.
“The dinner this weekend will unfold amid the hoopla of a mini-nominating convention. There will be bands, parades and orchestrated cheering sections for Mrs. Clinton and her main rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Bill Clinton, on his first visit to Iowa this year, will appear at a pre-dinner rally for Mrs. Clinton outside the Iowa Events Center in downtown Des Moines that will include a performance by Katy Perry.”
“Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So, without Tom a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.”
— Mitt Romney, quoted by the Boston Globe, praising the late Staples founder Thomas Stemberg.
“The video of a beautiful mayoral candidate writhing around on a bed has emerged just days before potential voters go to the polls. It shows Valeria Prokopenko, 21, who wants to become the next mayor of Odessa in south-west Ukraine, stripping down to her underwear and dancing to pop music,” the Daily Mail reports.
“The jobless law graduate claims she made the video to compete in a beauty contest known as ‘Miss Olymp’ and did not expect it to surface before the elections on Sunday.”
Jeb Bush “is shaking up his struggling presidential campaign, ordering across-the-board pay cuts, downsizing his headquarters staff, cutting ties with some consultants and refocusing his efforts on retail campaigning and on-the-ground organizing in the early voting states,” the Washington Post reports.
“The campaign, which entered October with $10.3 million in the bank, is taking significant steps to curtail spending. It is slashing its budget, excluding media and voter contact efforts, by 45 percent from its June plans, and is reducing ties to some consultants to eliminate what the campaign sees as extraneous overhead costs.”
Bloomberg: “Bush’s advisers, under pressure from their donors and from falling and stagnant poll numbers, have been discussing ways to retool the campaign in recent days, and came to the conclusion that a course correction was essential. While recent tangles with Donald Trump have energized the campaign, Bush’s senior team recognized a more fundamental set of changes was required that didn’t involve dealing directly with the party’s surprising—and surprisingly durable—front-runner.”
National Review: Jeb Bush is toast
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map 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.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.