Daily Archives
30 posts · Tuesday
“As a member of the Republican Party and an elected Republican, there’s no circumstance under which having a Democrat would be better… That said, anybody who violates the moral code of ethics and decency should not be serving in the United States Senate.”
— Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), quoted by the Marietta Daily Journal, on Roy Moore’s (R) troubled candidacy in Alabama.
From the Texas Tribune:
Early in her tenure in the state Senate, Wendy Davis remembers having a conversation at a political event with an older man who happened to be a recently elected, first-term House member. Unaware she was a fellow lawmaker, he reached forward, as though to pat her arm, and instead reached between her arm and breast and cupped her breast.
“It wasn’t an accidental brushing,” the former state senator said. “It was a purposeful touching of my breast.”
Davis told her colleagues in the House about the incident and “as a consequence of that, he had a challenge getting anything passed,” she said.
Finally, he apologized. But Davis, the Fort Worth Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2014 after serving in the state senate for six years, acknowledged that her position gave her a form of recourse not available to other women working in the Capitol.
First Read: “Did the Russian government use WikiLeaks to disseminate the hacked DNC and Podesta emails? If the answer is yes – and the U.S. intelligence community say it is… then Trump Jr.’s correspondence with the organization appears to be one degree of separation from Russia.”
“Remember, the U.S. intel community said Russia intended to discredit the election results if Clinton had won – exactly what WikiLeaks was instructing Trump Jr to do.”
“Also remember that Trump mentioned ‘WikiLeaks’ 145 times during the final month of the 2016 campaign.”
The Atlantic: “Feminists saved the 42nd president of the United States in the 1990s. They were on the wrong side of history; is it finally time to make things right?”
James Hohmann: “A victory by Democratic candidate Doug Jones would narrow the GOP’s margin of control in the Senate from 52-48 to 51-49. This would make every single Republican ‘the deciding vote’ on every bill, which anyone who has ever had an attack ad run against them in a race for Congress will tell you is not a great spot to be in. (Just ask the Democratic senators who voted for Obamacare…)”
“Mike Pence has already cast five tiebreaking votes in 2017. That’s more than any other vice president during their first year of office in U.S. history.”
Earlier for members: Republicans Lose Either Way In Alabama
Cook Political Report: “It’s hard to know whether Moore can or will win the special election. What we do know is that there is so much uncertainty surrounding the vote that moving the race to the Toss Up is the best way to describe where this race is today.”
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) told the Birmingham News that he is sticking with Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations, arguing that the conservative agenda is “vastly more important” than the claims against Moore.
Said Brooks: “Who will vote in America’s best interests on Supreme Court justices, deficit and debt, economic growth, border security, national defense, and the like? Socialist Democrat Doug Jones will vote wrong. Roy Moore will vote right. Hence, I will vote for Roy Moore.”
He added: “I do believe this, there are millions of people in America who would lie in a heartbeat if it meant adding another Democrat to the Senate.”
CNN: “Be extra careful of the male lawmakers who sleep in their offices — they can be trouble. Avoid finding yourself alone with a congressman or senator in elevators, late-night meetings or events where alcohol is flowing. And think twice before speaking out about sexual harassment from a boss — it could cost you your career.”
Coming in January: Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff.
Mike Allen: “My conversations with the West Wing show there’s already a frenzy inside to figure out who told Wolff what. Wolff tells me key players have been barraging him with calls, trying to figure out what his sources said about them: ‘It’s the fundamental dynamic of this White House — people divided against each other.'”
New York Times: “Publicly, Mr. McConnell, appearing at a news conference in Louisville, said he was ‘looking at’ drafting a write-in candidate for the Dec. 12 special election. Privately, Mr. McConnell was doing more than merely looking. One idea being discussed, first brought up by two different White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, would be for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to run as either a write-in candidate or to be appointed to what was his seat should Mr. Moore win and be immediately removed from office.”
“Mr. McConnell is supportive of the idea and discussed it on Monday in a telephone call with Vice President Mike Pence that was chiefly about the Republican tax overhaul proposal… Mr. Sessions remains popular among Alabama Republicans, but his relationship with Mr. Trump has frayed since he recused himself from the investigation of the role that Russia played in last year’s presidential campaign.”
Playbook: “Expulsion takes a while. It’s tricky. The Senate hasn’t expelled a member in more than a century. But is there an argument to be made that Republicans would be better off electing Moore, expelling him and getting Alabama’s Republican governor to appoint another GOP senator? That way two Republicans don’t split the vote. And Republicans get to actually take action to expel someone whose behavior they say they find abhorrent.”
“If the Senate has to expel Moore, it could tear the party apart even further and embolden Steve Bannon in his war against incumbents. And it could look like the Senate is subverting the will of the voters.”
“By the way, remember: November was supposed to be all about tax reform. Republicans don’t want to be talking about whether their Senate candidate in Alabama had an unusual interest in high school girls.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “has a well-documented history of showing little tolerance for sex scandals that he fears could tarnish the image of the Senate and his party,” the New York Times reports.
“He was a major force behind the effort to push out Larry E. Craig, the Idaho Republican arrested at the Minneapolis airport in 2007 in an undercover sex sting. And he was the chairman of the ethics committee when Senator Bob Packwood, the powerful Oregon Republican, resigned in 1995 under threat of expulsion after he was accused of sexual harassment.”
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.
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— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
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— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
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— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
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— 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.