Wall Street Journal: “The economics team Mr. Obama built in his first term to deal with the financial crisis has mostly exited. As the White House retools advisers for the second term, it is assembling a cadre of budget experts from the Clinton administration. Ms. Burwell, Mr. Lew and Mr. Sperling joined Mr. Rubin in helping the Clinton administration erase annual deficits and build a budget surplus. Mr. Rubin, 74 years old, a centrist Democrat with a firm understanding of markets and Wall Street, was a big proponent of pushing for aggressive deficit-reduction… The Obama White House faces a political dynamic very similar to the one that the Clinton team faced in the 1990s — a House of Representative controlled by Republicans who oppose tax increases and are demanding large spending cuts.”
Quote of the Day
“Newt’s a prick… He’s a sore loser and if he had won he would have been a sore winner.”
— Fox News chief Roger Ailes, quoted in Roger Ailes: Off Camera, about Newt Gingrich.
More great quotes over at The Cloakroom.
White House Recalibrates Sequester Messaging
Politico:
“President Barack Obama hopes to spark a pitchfork revolt against
Republicans over sequester-induced budget cuts — but many Democrats fret
that he’s undermined that effort with an early strategy marred by hype,
poor planning and muddled messaging.”
Venezuela Takes Page From Cuban Playbook
“Shortly before announcing that Hugo Chávez died, Venezuela’s government resorted to one of the late president’s favorite ploys to try to unite his supporters: allege a conspiracy by the U.S. to destabilize the country,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Vice President Nicolás Maduro kicked out two U.S. military attachés for allegedly plotting against Venezuela and even suggested that Washington may have been behind Mr. Chávez’s cancer.”
Said Maduro: “Behind all of the plots are the enemies of the fatherland.”
“Maduro’s rhetoric is similar to the kinds of conspiracy theories that Mr. Chávez wove during his 14 years in power, and which Mr. Chávez seemed to have adopted from his political mentor, Fidel Castro, who has long rallied support among Cubans by portraying the U.S. as an implacable foe.”
Wonks vs. Pols in Battle for GOP Soul
Politico: “Almost daily, there is a fresh op-ed or magazine piece from the class of commentators and policy intellectuals urging Republicans to show a little intellectual leg and offer some daring and innovation beyond the old standbys of cutting income taxes and spending. It’s not that the eggheads are urging moderation — it’s more like relevance. The standard plea: The GOP will rebound only when it communicates to working-class and middle-class voters how its ideas will improve their lives.”
“But there is virtually no evidence that these impassioned appeals for change are being listened to by the audience that matters — Republican elected officials. With few exceptions, most of the GOP leadership in Washington is following a business-as-usual strategy.”
Jeb Bush’s Rocky Return to Politics
“As political re-entries go, Jeb Bush’s has been rocky,” the New York Times
reports.
“Mr. Bush quickly found himself backpedaling from [his opposition to a
path to citizenship for illegal immigrants] on Tuesday. In fact, he told
a series of interviewers that he could easily support granting
citizenship in the context of a comprehensive approach to immigration.”
First Read: “Here’s something to remember about Bush: He hasn’t run a race since 2002 (before Facebook, Twitter, and more partisan media). And the backlash he’s received in the past 24 hours could either convince him that he doesn’t have the stomach for a run, or it could steel him for what to expect over the next three and a half years.”
Ailes Says Biden is Dumb
Out this month: Roger Ailes: Off Camera by Zev Chafets.
Vanity Fair has an excerpt in which Ailes is quoted saying he has “a soft spot for Joe Biden. I like him. But he’s dumb as an ashtray.”
Obama Invites Republicans to Dinner
President Obama has invited a group of Republican senators to the
White House for dinner tonight, a source familiar with the
event confirmed to CNN.
Roll Call notes Obama “in recent days has called a handful of rank-and-file Republicans.”
First Read: “In other words, he’s going around the Republican leadership to build relationships to get things passed. You aren’t going to get Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn to vote for your initiatives, but perhaps it’s possible to get a Lindsey Graham or Lamar Alexander. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush went around leadership all the time to find Democrats they could work with. Obama, on the other hand, has always tried to work with the GOP leadership.”
Obama Approval Sinks
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds President Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 43% — down seven points in two weeks — and Americans blame him and his fellow Democrats almost as much as his Republican opponents for a fiscal mess.
Booker Will Wait to Make Announcement
Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) confirmed to BuzzFeed that he would not make his bid for U.S. Senate official until after the New Jersey gubernatorial race this fall.
“Although Booker has since started to campaign — he filed paperwork with the Federal Election Committee in January, and he is headed later this month to a fundraiser in Florida in support of his Senate bid — he has declined to say definitively that he will be a Senate candidate, despite a universal acknowledgement that his candidacy is all but certain.”
Markey Well Ahead in Massachusetts
A new Garin-Hart and Yang poll in Massachusetts finds Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) with a double-digit lead over Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) in the special Democratic U.S. Senate primary, 42% to 28%.
Boehner Pledges to Stick to Hastert Rule
Speaker John Boehner sought to assure his conference that the “Hastert rule” is still regular practice, Roll Call reports.
“Republicans breached the rule — under which the speaker only brings forward bills that enjoy support from the ‘majority of the majority’ — last week when a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act passed with a majority of Democratic votes. Of three major bills passed this session, two have passed in violation of the rule. The House passed the fiscal-cliff deal Jan. 1 despite the rule as well.”
Congress Starts Work on a Budget
“After two years of chaotic fiscal clashes, Congress on Wednesday will begin a more orderly process to get the nation’s finances in order – or at least to keep the government open,” the New York Times reports.
“The so-called regular order on the federal budget still holds little promise of resolving the long-term federal debt or partisan divide. But it will look more like a typical bit of Congressional business and less like a deadline-driven manufactured crisis.”
L.A. Mayor’s Race Headed to a Runoff
With all precincts reporting in the Los Angeles mayoral race, City Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel will face off in what is expected to be a bruising May 21 runoff, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Only 16% of the city’s 1.8 million registered voters cast ballots in the election.
Jon Stewart to Direct Serious Film
Jon Stewart announced that he would direct his first movie — called Rosewater, from a screenplay that he wrote — and take a 12 week leave from The Daily Show, the New York Times reports.
The movie is an adaptation of the 2011 book Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival, by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy.
Former GOP Lawmaker Slams Boehner
National Journal reports that disgraced former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) makes dramatic accusations against Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in his new memoir, Sideswiped.
Writes Ney: “If the Justice Department were ever to make John produce receipts for his addiction to golf just for the years from 1995 to 2004, he would be hard-pressed to comply. John got away with more than any other Member on the Hill.”
Hugo Chavez is Dead
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has died, CNN reports.
The announcement came hours after Vice President Nicolas Maduro met with the country’s top political and military leaders about Chavez’s worsening health condition and suggested someone may have deliberately infected Chavez with cancer.
Wall Street Journal: “Chavez led the country virtually as a one-man show for 14 years. Just months into his fourth term, his death plunges Venezuela into political uncertainty.”
Dealing with Bush
Samuel Goldman: “It takes a long time for political parties to recover from defeat. Since winning suggests that they’re doing something right, it takes even longer to recover from victory. Because it reassured Republicans that aggressive war, fiscal policies that favor the rich, and the ideologically-inspired transformation of beloved domestic programs were fundamentally popular, the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 was like a drug that relieves symptoms without treating the underlying disease. Conservative intellectuals must help the GOP break its dependence on these dangerous nostrums — and its continuing allegiance to the doctor who prescribed them.”
