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“My campaign headquarters last summer we shared with a dispensary. You could see the sign, it was like: ‘Marijuana, Jared Polis.’ Marijuana outperformed me by 10 points, so it was a great association for me.”
— Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), quoted by National Journal, on a medical marijuana dispensary in his home state of Colorado which legalized recreational use of marijuana in last year’s elections.
Michael Grunwald argues that President Obama should cave to Republicans and agree not to seek additional tax revenue — “not to appease the chattering classes, unify Washington or show the country he’s open to compromise. He should cave to ease pain, advance his agenda and improve the country in tangible ways.”
“Forget the dopey spats over White House tours and Easter-egg rolls. The sequester will cause real harm, so the President ought to at least try to replace it. And the pursuit of new revenue, while a reasonable goal, is not as important as his other goals–like avoiding short-term austerity that could derail the recovery, promoting long-term prosperity through targeted investments and tax reform, moving the budget in a fairer direction and preventing the GOP from taking more hostages in the future. He can’t possibly get a deal with everything he wants. But Republicans are so eager to avoid new taxes–and to make Obama look weak–that he might get a lot of what he wants if he gives them their top priority.”
Greg Sargent: “Which is worse, indefinite sequestration or a grand bargain that includes serious entitlement cuts?”
Roll Call: “As the end of the first quarter approaches, Georgia is shaping up to
be ground zero for the most congressional turnover in the 2014 cycle. No
other open Senate seat so far this cycle has produced as much jockeying
among the House delegation as in the Peach State, where as many as five
members could be poised to run statewide.”
Nancy Cook:
“The Republican National Committee may want to send a few extra copies
of the election postmortem it released this week over to Capitol Hill.
Judging by the budget blueprints put forth by congressional Republicans,
they didn’t get the memo.”
National Journal:
“No Americans are currently marked for death on the U.S. government’s
terrorist strike list, according to the chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee. The White House has wrapped its kill list in
secrecy and already the United States has killed four Americans in drone
strikes. Only one of them, senior al-Qaida operative Anwar al-Awlaki,
was the intended target, according to U.S. officials. The
others–including Awlaki’s teenage son–were collateral damage, killed
because they were too near a person being targeted.”
The New York Times reports the Senate “by a vote of 73-26 passed a spending measure that caps spending for programs within Congress’s annual discretion at $984 billion. The House is expected to pass the measure as soon as Thursday, eliminating any current threat of a government shutdown. The final Senate bill did ease the hit of the automatic cuts known as sequestration somewhat, especially those that could hurt vulnerable Democrats.”
Larry Grooms (R) conceded a spot in South Carolina’s special GOP primary runoff to Curtis Bostic (R).
But The State reports “opinions are split” on whether Bostic can make the mammoth jump from winning 13% of the vote Tuesday to defeating Mark Sanford (R), who captured 37%.
The Quincy Patriot Ledger reports Massachusetts sheriff Joseph McDonald (R) is defending a joke he made about President Obama during a breakfast for Republicans when he said the ghost of Abraham Lincoln visited Obama in his dreams and gave him advice on how to improve the country: “Go to the theater.”
Said McDonald: “It was absolutely in jest. It was a joke. It wasn’t a new joke by any means.”
He added that references to Lincoln’s assassination in a theater have been used to make fun of the sitting President’s job performance since the late 19th century.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said she plans to write a book to “tell the whole story” about her re-election bid against Todd Akin (D), the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Said McCaskill: “People are telling me not to do it. But it was just so interesting and I think people need to understand that some of the extreme elements in this country on both ends of the spectrum are not politically viable.”
Australian prime minister Julia Gillard was forced by senior figures of her Labor party to open up her job to a vote — known as a spill in Australian politics — but no one ultimately came forward to challenge her, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Said Gillard: ”The whole business is completely at an end, it has ended now.”
A new Public Religion Research Institute survey finds overwhelming support for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants from the most religious Americans.
CNN: “The strongest support for a pathway to citizenship came from Hispanic Catholics, Hispanics Protestants and black Protestants, according to the poll. More than 70 percent of people who identified with those groups supported the immigration change. Additionally, more than half of all Jewish Americans (67%), Mormons (63%), white Catholics (62%), white mainline Protestants (61%) and white evangelical Protestants (56%) supported the inclusive immigration policy.”
“A panel of White House advisers warned President Obama in a secret report that U.S. spy agencies were paying inadequate attention to China, the Middle East and other national security flash points because they had become too focused on military operations and drone strikes,” the Washington Post reports.
The panel was led by new Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and former senator David Boren (D-OK) and concluded that “the roles of the CIA, the National Security Agency and other spy services had been distorted by more than a decade of conflict.”
Stu Rothenberg: “The Republican Party continues to fracture more seriously than I expected following last year’s re-election of President Obama.”
“Instead of uniting the GOP’s various constituencies against the president’s agenda, Obama’s re-election seems to have encouraged Republicans to spend much of their time harping on their internal disagreements and fighting over how the party should be positioned for 2016 and beyond.”
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked if President Obama was counting on some rest and relaxation during his trip to Israel, the president quickly said, “It’s good to get away from Congress.”
David Hawkings: “The jape was caught on an open mic and appeared in no official transcripts, underscroring the perception that Obama is never more candid than when he’s lamenting his troubles back home in conversations abroad — and doing so with a foreign leader on the curious assumption that no one’s listening in.”
Roll Call: “The first vote-a-rama on a Senate budget resolution in four years offers each party a chance to force the other to cast politically treacherous votes, and both sides are lining up for the opportunity, which could begin as early as Friday.”
Just published: American Politics: A Very Short Introduction by Richard M. Valelly.
“For anyone wishing to understand the nuts and bolts of how our
political system works — and sometimes fails to work.”
President Obama is considering appointing Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx (D) for secretary of transportation, Bloomberg reports.
“Obama also is considering Deborah Hersman, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board, for the position… The president is considering candidates from within the transportation department as well.”
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.