“The woman who helped carry out the shooting in San Bernardino Calif., on Wednesday had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook posting,” the New York Times reports.
Washington Post: “It’s not immediately clear when she posted the declaration referring to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the terrorist group that says it has established a caliphate in Syria and Iraq.”
“There’s not a lot of depth there.”
— Gov. Chris Christie, in an interview with The Atlantic, on Sen. Marco Rubio.
Missouri state Rep. Stacey Newman (D) has introduced a bill to apply “the restrictions placed on women seeking abortion services to all prospective firearm purchasers, such as a requirement that anyone buying a gun first watch a 30-minute video on fatal firearm injuries,” St. Louis Magazine reports.
Said Newman: “Since Missouri holds the rank as one of the strictest abortion regulation states in the country, it is logical we borrow similar restrictions to lower our horrific gun violence rates.”
First Read looks at today’s poll showing Donald Trump expanding his lead to 20 points over the GOP field:
“And here’s the thing: He’s likely to only get stronger, given that this poll was taken BEFORE the San Bernadino shootings. Why do we say that? According to the poll, more Republicans (46%) think he can handle ISIS better than his closest competition (Cruz at 15%); more Republicans (48%) think he’s better on illegal immigration than his closest competitor (Rubio at 14%); and more Republicans (30%) see him better on foreign policy than anyone else (Cruz at 17%).”
“There’s one more Trump-related point we’d like to make: Politics and security abhor a vacuum, and Trump fills it.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham said that if the ultimate GOP presidential nominee wants to ban abortion under all circumstances, the election “will be about rape. It will be about the nominee of the Republican Party telling a woman who’s been raped you’ve got to carry the child of the rapist. Good luck with that,” the Washington Examiner reports.
Said Graham: “If the nominee of the Republican Party will not allow for an exception for rape and incest, they will not win.”
The super PAC supporting Jeb Bush has produced a 15-minute documentary featuring him and will release it online on Saturday and will later show it on television, the New York Times reports.
“The plan is to air the spot in 30-minute blocks on the New England Sports Network, which would reach voters in New Hampshire — a crucial state for Mr. Bush, who has seen his poll numbers stagnate in the single digits. Voters in additional early primary states would also be targeted with the video digitally.”
“One day after the deadliest U.S. mass shooting in nearly three years, the Senate voted down a pair of gun-control measures that were designed by Democrats to put Republicans on record on the charged issue,” Politico reports.
A new CNN/ORC poll finds Donald Trump alone at the top of the Republican field with 36%, followed by Ted Cruz at 16%, Ben Carson at 14% and Marco Rubio at 12%.
All other candidates have the support of less than 5% of GOP voters in the race for the Republican Party’s nomination for president. Jeb Bush is at just 3%.
Key finding: “Trump is supported by 46% of Republicans without a college degree, compared to 12% for Cruz, 11% for Carson and 8% for Rubio.”
CNN: “Anxious that his lead may not fade before the voting starts, GOP strategists have begun to brace for a long and painful nomination fight, with Trump’s opponents hoping to grind him down over a period of months.”
“But even in the face of more evidence of Trump’s endurance — and grudging recognition that a Trump victory is no longer outside the realm of possibility — many establishment Republicans still insist that ultimately, the businessman is unlikely to clinch the nomination. They are starting to anticipate a protracted primary race that extends far beyond the early states and possibly into the summer, in which the party slowly wears Trump down.”
Jeb Bush, struggling to gain traction in a 2016 race moving away from him, argued that he could easily beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Politico reports.
Said Bush: “If I win this nomination, I will take it to Hillary Clinton and I will whup her.”
Politico: “Nearly 60% of Democratic insiders in the first four nominating states say the businessman — who has mostly avoided tapping his vast personal fortune to fund his campaign — would be the easiest of the leading GOP candidates to defeat in the general election.”
“Roughly two out of three picked Rubio from a list of five leading GOP contenders — including Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush — as the most formidable GOP hopeful due to his biography and political skill.”
“I’m gonna get people jobs and I’m going to protect people. And that’s why whenever there’s a tragedy, everything goes up, my numbers go way up because we have no strength in this country. We have weak, sad politicians.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by CNN.
“Openly welcoming a preordained veto, Republicans drove legislation to Senate passage Thursday aimed at crippling two of their favorite targets: President Barack Obama’s health care law and Planned Parenthood,” the AP reports.
“With a House rubber stamp expected in days, the bill would be the first to reach Obama’s desk demolishing his 2010 health care overhaul, one of his proudest domestic achievements, and halting federal payments to Planned Parenthood. Congress has voted dozens of times to repeal or weaken the health law and several times against Planned Parenthood’s funding, but until now Democrats thwarted Republicans from shipping the legislation to the White House.”
“After struggling for weeks to articulate his views on foreign policy, presidential candidate Ben Carson didn’t take any chances when addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The retired neurosurgeon read his 30-minute speech from notes, looking down at his lectern and not at the audience. He repeatedly botched the pronunciation of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, making it sound instead like the chickpea dish hummus — all while impugning President Obama’s understanding of the Middle East… He kept speaking through the few moments of applause and spoke – as many reporters present noted on Twitter – as if he were a nervous adolescent delivering a middle-school book report.”
“If Marco Rubio is the establishment candidate, look at how far we’ve come. This is someone who ran as an outsider, who ran as a conservative, someone who was a Jim DeMint–endorsed, Club for Growth–endorsed candidate who forced a sitting governor to switch parties.”
— Wesley Goodman, former head of the Conservative Action Project, quoted by National Review.
After yet another mass shooting, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called the NRA the “quasi-militant wing of the Republican Party,” Politico reports.
Said Reid: “Those who choose to do the NRA’s bidding will be held accountable by our constituents. Something has to be done. We must take a stand. The American people are desperately looking for help, some help, any help. It will never be possible to prevent every shooting. We know that. But we have a responsibility to try. There are certain things we can do.”
Wonk Wire: Reaction to mass shootings: Republicans pray, Democrats call for action
Gov. Chris Christie slammed Sen. Marco Rubio in an interview with Yahoo News for having “no experience governing.”
Said Christie: “He’s had five years in the United States Senate, and for a good amount of that time he’s been running for president. So I don’t know.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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