Daily Archives
33 posts · Tuesday
A federal district court has ended a consent decree in place since 1981 against the Republican National Committee against so-called “ballot security” measures which seemed aimed at suppressing minority voter turnout.
Rick Hasen: “With the consent decree gone, the RNC will for the first time in 35 years be free to begin anew efforts to spur purges of voter rolls and take potentially suppressive ballot security measures in the name of preventing voter fraud.”
Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ) told her fellow Arizona Republican House colleagues that she plans to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Roll Call reports.
Arizona Republic: “But McSally can expect opposition from some on the right, including a political-action committee aligned with the conservative Club for Growth, which warned recently that it would oppose her candidacy.”
Ron Brownstein: “Congressional Republicans spent last weekend huddling with President Trump at Camp David to frame their legislative agenda in 2018. But they have already placed the bets most likely to determine their fate in November’s midterm election, as a series of dramatic events late last week demonstrated.”
“The first has been to align more closely with Trump even as questions have mounted about both his basic fitness for the presidency and the potential legal exposure that he and his inner circle might face in the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller. The second has been to pursue a policy agenda, on issues from taxes to health care to the environment, aimed almost entirely at the preferences of their party’s conservative base, with strikingly few concessions to any voices or interests beyond their core coalition.”
Kansas state Rep. Jim Alford (R) used racist logic to explain why he believes marijuana should remain illegal, the Garden City Telegram reports.
Said Alford: “Marijuana is an entry drug into the higher drugs. What you really need to do is go back in the ’30s, when they outlawed all types of drugs in Kansas, across the United States. What was the reason why they did that?… I hate to say it, was that the African Americans, they were basically users and they basically responded the worst off to those drugs just because of their character makeup, their genetics and that.”
“A bipartisan effort to stabilize the U.S. health-insurance markets collapsed last month after anti-abortion groups appealed directly to Vice President Mike Pence at the 11th hour,” the Daily Beast reports.
“Amid opposition from conservatives in the House of Representatives, a group of pro-life activists met with Pence to lobby the Trump administration against supporting a health-insurance market-stabilization bill on the grounds that it does not contain sufficient language on abortion restrictions.”
Author Michael Wolff said people in the White House believe that if special counsel Robert Mueller looks into President Trump’s finances in the Russia probe, the president is “sunk,” The Hill reports.
Said Wolff: “People don’t think in the White House — don’t think that he colluded with Russia. They do think that if the investigation goes near his finances, he’s sunk.”
Gayle King said that she thinks her friend, Oprah Winfrey, is “intrigued” by the idea of running for president in 2020, The Hill reports.
Said King: “I absolutely don’t think that her position has changed. I do think she’s intrigued by the idea. I do think that. I also know that after years of watching the Oprah show, you always have the right to change your mind.”
Former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka wrote in The Hill that he was instructed to cooperate with Fire and Fury author Michael Wolff while working at the White House, but ultimately declined because he had a “gut feeling” the book would be biased against Trump.
Although Gorka did not say who told him to cooperate, Wolff has said that multiple high-level White House officials – including Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway – helped him get interviews.
Stephen Wolf: “On Dec. 20, the Census Bureau released its population estimates for 2017 for every state, detailing how many residents each state has gained or lost since the 2010 census. The firm Election Data Services has used these estimates to project how many congressional seats each state might gain or lose in the 2020 round of reapportionment, which assigns each state its share of the House’s 435 districts based on its population.”
James Hohmann: “A Manchurian Candidate who was secretly trying to alienate Hispanics would be hard pressed to do as much damage to the Republican brand as President Trump.”
“The administration announced Monday that it will terminate the provisional residency permits of about 200,000 Salvadorans who have lived in the United States since at least 2001, leaving them to face deportation. Trump previously ended what is known as Temporary Protected Status for Nicaraguans and Haitians, and he’s expected to cut off Hondurans later this year.”
“This is part of a strategic, full-court press to make America less hospitable to immigrants, both legal and illegal.”
Key takeaway: “Trump’s nativism may cost Republicans Senate seats this year in Arizona and Nevada, as well as several House seats across the Sunbelt.”
Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) “is running for Ohio governor, joining an already crowded field in the Democratic primary,” the Dayton Daily News reports.
David Brooks: “Let me start with three inconvenient observations, based on dozens of conversations around Washington over the past year: First, people who go into the White House to have a meeting with President Trump usually leave pleasantly surprised. They find that Trump is not the raving madman they expected from his tweetstorms or the media coverage. They generally say that he is affable, if repetitive. He runs a normal, good meeting and seems well-informed enough to get by. Second, people who work in the Trump administration have wildly divergent views about their boss. Some think he is a deranged child, as Michael Wolff reported. But some think he is merely a distraction they can work around. Some think he is strange, but not impossible.”
“Third, the White House is getting more professional. Imagine if Trump didn’t tweet. The craziness of the past weeks would be out of the way, and we’d see a White House that is briskly pursuing its goals: the shift in our Pakistan policy, the shift in our offshore drilling policy, the fruition of our ISIS policy, the nomination for judgeships and the formation of policies on infrastructure, DACA, North Korea and trade.”
Politico: “Two potential candidates for New York governor against incumbent Andrew Cuomo have dropped out in the past week. No candidate against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has gotten beyond the whisper phase. There’s still no challenger to the state attorney general or comptroller. In President Donald Trump’s home state, the New York Republican Party is on the verge of disaster. It has so far come up dry in its efforts to put together a top-tier 2018 statewide ticket — a budding failure with implications that could ripple beyond state borders.”
“She launched a rocket tonight. I want her to run for president. I don’t think she had any intention of declaring. But now she doesn’t have a choice.”
— Actress Meryl Streep, quoted by the Washington Post, on Oprah Winfrey’s speech at the Golden Globe awards.
Politico: “Congressional Republicans and White House officials are increasingly skeptical that they’ll reach a long-term budget agreement with Democrats in the next 11 days, accusing progressives of slow-walking a spending deal until they get what they want on immigration. Party leaders from both sides of the aisle have been quietly working to raise stiff spending caps to avert a government shutdown before Jan. 19, when federal agency funding runs dry.”
“But Republicans claim Democrats won’t back a long-term spending plan until Congress agrees to shield hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation.”
[alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]Without a deal, the federal government shuts down in 10 days. [/alert]
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.