Priorities USA Action, the pro-Obama super PAC, released a new television ad in Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Iowa today, Yahoo News reports.
The ad focuses on Mitt Romney’s effective tax rate features the now infamous picture of Romney and his Bain Capital colleagues with money stuffed into their suits.
Joe Klein: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a presidential election that was a pure referendum, and every presidential election I’ve covered involved a choice. There are good reasons for this.”
“The presidency is our most intimate office. The President lives in our homes for four years. The media spend considerable amounts of time, sometimes too much, telling us who these people are. And then in October we get to see two, occasionally three, men — only men, sadly, so far — on the stage and we decide which one we want to invite into our homes for the next four years. Barring a national disaster, issues are secondary — although an impression of how you might handle those issues is important.”
“Angus King, in my view, is like electoral comfort food. We know him as a little bit bland, a smart man and a thinker. Sending mac ‘n cheese down to Washington is not good enough.”
— Maine U.S. Senate candidate John Hinck (D), quoted by the Bangor Daily News at a Democratic primary forum, with a memorable attack on likely independent candidate Angus King.
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Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told New York magazine he urged President Obama not to press for health care reform in 2010 after Democrats lost their 60-seat majority.
Said Frank: “I think we paid a terrible price for healthcare. I would not have pushed it as hard. As a matter of fact, after Scott Brown won, I suggested going back. I would have started with financial reform, but certainly not healthcare.”
Frank said Obama made the same mistake Bill Clinton did in 1993 by underestimating the concerns of people who already had healthcare coverage.
Politicians from both major parties say South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s (R) new memoir, Can’t Is Not An Option, “is untruthful or twists many events,” the Columbia State reports.
“Members of Haley’s own Republican Party — including the speaker of the S.C. House and a former lieutenant governor — say allegations against them are ‘absolutely not true’ and ‘not true at all.’ Democrats, including Haley’s 2010 opponent in the governor’s race, describe the book as ‘fiction.'”
Said one Democratic lawmaker: “This lady just makes stuff up.”
Mitt Romney told ABC News he has put his longtime adviser Beth Myers in charge of the vice presidential vetting process.
Said Romney: “I have selected someone who has been an counselor of mine for a number of years, Beth Myers, she was my Chief of Staff when I was governor. I’ve asked her to be the person who oversees the process of the vice presidential selection and vetting an analysis and so she’s begun that process and is putting together the kinds of things you need to do to vet potential candidates.”
“I’m not going to be the vice president. I’m not.”
— Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
Mitt Romney last week declared that “all moms are working moms,” but the Boston Globe notes “he insisted as recently as January that women on welfare need to get jobs, even if they have young children.”
Said Romney: “Even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless,’ and I said ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving daycare to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.'”
Sheldon Adelson, the wealthy casino owner who backed Newt Gingrich’s presidential bid, has donated $5 million with his wife to a super PAC for House Republican candidates, National Journal reports.
“The financial infusion immediately makes the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is chaired by former GOP Sen. Norm Coleman, among the biggest players in the congressional landscape this year.”
First Read
reports that Mitt Romney “went well beyond his standard stump speech at
a closed-door fundraiser on Sunday evening, and offered some of the
most specific details to date about the policies he would pursue if
elected.”
“Romney went into a level of detail not usually seen by the
public in the speech, which was overheard by reporters on a sidewalk
below. One possibility floated by Romney included the elimination of the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Cabinet-level agency
once led by Romney’s father, George… Romney also went into greater
detail than he has on the campaign trail in describing how he would
maintain the progressive structure in the tax code after implementing
his 20 percent across-the-board tax cut.”
Texas Monthly: “Eight years ago, Dan Rather broadcast an explosive report on the Air National Guard service of President George W. Bush. It was supposed to be the legendary newsman’s finest hour. Instead, it blew up in his face, tarnishing his career forever and casting a dark cloud of doubt and suspicion over his reporting… Beyond the haze of elaborately revised fictions from both the political
left and the political right is a bizarre account that has remained,
until now, the great untold story of modern Texas politics. For 36
years, it made its way through the swamps of state government as it led
up to the collision between two powerful Texans on the national stage.”
Interestingly, Rather has a new autobiography out in a few weeks called Rather Outspoken.
President Obama’s re-election campaign “is dispatching workers across Arizona’s college campuses and Latino neighborhoods this spring, registering as many new voters as they can in an organized, three-month effort to determine whether they can put this unlikely state into play for Democrats this November,” the New York Times reports.
Mitt Romney is already offering top donors access to a special “Presidential Inaugural retreat,” planned on the assumption that he will be elected president this November, BuzzFeed reports.
The offer is “one of several goodies offered to those who contribute more than $50,000 to the joint fundraising committee known as ‘Romney Victory.'”
David Frum suggests President Obama could learn a few things from Robert Caro’s books on Lyndon Johnson.
“It’s hard not to detect in these pages an unspoken critique of Barack Obama. Yes, certainly, Obama shares Lyndon Johnson’s gift for driving opponents crazy, if it is a gift. But the use of power Caro so vividly describes is not something that comes naturally to our current president. The constant searching for opportunities; the shameless love-bombing of opponents; the endless wooing of supporters; the deft deployment of inducements and threats — these are the low arts that led to Johnson’s high success. You can see why a high-minded leader like Barack Obama would recoil from the Johnson style and embrace Kennedyesque rhetorical grandeur instead. Such presidents contribute great phrases to quotation books, but they tend not to add lasting laws to the statute books — or enduring change to the history books.”
The Seattle Times reports that the possibility of a congressional bid by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) in Washington state “horrifies” Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz, “who has repeatedly discouraged the idea.”
Said Pelz: “Dennis Kucinich has to decide what his legacy is going to be. Will he be remembered as a principled member of Congress or the narcissist who lost two Congressional races in two states the same year?”
Kucinich has until Washington’s May 18 filing deadline to make up his mind and establish residency in the state.
Meanwhile, the Cleveland Plain Dealer is polling his supporters about whether he should make the bid.
President Obama’s re-election campaign and the DNC raised a combined $53 million in March, the Obama camp announced in a video.
They raised $45 million in February and $29 million in January.
Alexander Burns: “The more interesting test of Obama’s fundraising potential may come in the April numbers, now that it’s unavoidably clear who the Republican nominee will be. High on the list of reasons why Democrats believe Obama’s fundraising has been solid, but not jaw-dropping, is that there hasn’t been a general election-like contrast with a Republican opponent, and financial supporters of both the grassroots and high-dollar variety haven’t felt the urgency they otherwise might.”
Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY) “was making calls Sunday night telling friends, supporters and some members of the New York delegation that he was dropping out of the race for the re-drawn 8th Congressional seat,” the New York Daily News reports.
Towns was facing a bruising primary fight against two Democratic challengers, City Councilman Charles Barron (D) and state Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries (D).
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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