Democratic campaign treasurer Kinde Durkee is expected to plead guilty to stealing millions from the accounts she controlled for her California political clients, including Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), the Sacramento Bee reports.
“Feinstein, who says millions are missing from her re-election account, wrote a $5 million check to her campaign account to make up for the losses. The senior senator is one of several politicians who have filed lawsuits to recoup some of the allegedly stolen money.”
Newt Gingrich “is cutting back his campaign schedule, will lay off about a third of his cash-strapped campaign’s full-time staff, and has replaced his manager as part of what aides are calling a ‘big-choice convention’ strategy,” Politico reports.
James Carville told CNN a Supreme Court ruling invalidating President Obama’s health care law may not be such a bad thing — at least politically.
Said Carville: “I think this will be the best thing that has ever happened to the Democratic Party.”
He added: “Then the Republican Party will own the healthcare system for the foreseeable future. And I really believe that. That is not spin.”
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James Carville was spotted in a Barnes & Noble store flipping through The Republican Brain.
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Jeff Greenfield compares Newt Gingrich to the Black Knight of Monty Python and the Holy Grail fame.
“As his limbs are progressively hacked off, the knight declares ’tis but a scratch! Then: ‘a flesh wound!’ And finally: ‘Alright, we’ll call it a draw.’ With barely a tenth of the delegates so far allocated, victories in two of 26 contests, and polling at 13 percent in Gallup’s latest survey of GOP voters, Gingrich’s rationale for remaining in the race is, to put it mildly, elusive.”
Meanwhile, a new CNN/Opinion Research poll finds 61% of Republican voters want Gingrich to exit the race.
A new Pew Research Center poll shows that 55% of people were entirely unaware of a Mitt Romney aide’s Etch-A-Sketch comments last week.
The Fix: “The numbers serve as a reminder — for the umpteenth time — that simply because 100 percent of people who do politics for a living (the Fix included) are closely following a story, it’s no guarantee that the story is penetrating nearly as broadly among the general public.”
A new Marquette Law School poll in Wisconsin finds Gov. Scott Walker (R) is locked in a very tight recall race with two potential Democratic challengers, Tom Barrett (D) and Kathleen Falk (D).
Walker edges Barrett, 47% to 45%, and leads Falk 49% to 45%.
Said pollster Charles Franklin: “I don’t think you need the poll to know this is going to be a very close race.”
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“I promise you, there will be huge scandals, because there’s too much money washing around, too much of it we don’t know who’s behind it and too much corruption associated with that kind of money. There will be major scandals.”
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quoted Reuters, on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that lifted limits on political fundraising by corporations, unions and other non-campaign groups.
In a potentially shocking development, Boston Mayor Tom Menino (D) told WBZ-TV that he’s not taking sides in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, potentially signalling his support for Sen. Scott Brown (R) over Elizabeth Warren (D).
Said Menino: “When you vote, it’s a secret ballot.”
When pressed, he added: “I’m not with anybody at this time. At this time, I’m still not involved in the campaign.”
A new Marquette Law School poll in Wisconsin shows Mitt Romney leading Rick Santorum in the Republican presidential race, 39% to 31%, with Ron Paul at 11% and Newt Gingrich at 5%.
The Wisconsin primary is April 3.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) came to President Obama’s defense saying that Mitt Romney’s recent criticism of the president was inappropriate while Obama was abroad, National Journal reports.
Said Boehner: “Clearly while the president is overseas, he’s at a conference, and while the president is overseas I think it’s appropriate that people not be critical of him or our country.”
“This was a train wreck for the Obama administration. This law looks like
it’s going to be struck down. All of the
predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem
with this law were wrong.”
— Jeffrey Toobin, in an interview on CNN, on the tough questions by the Supreme Court over the health insurance mandate.
Toobin, author of The Nine, is considered a leading authority on the current court.
“With the fate of President Obama’s health care law hanging in the balance at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, a lawyer for the administration faced a barrage of skeptical questions from four of the court’s more conservative justices,” the New York Times reports.
Wall Street Journal: “The most worrisome remarks for the plaintiffs–the side arguing against the Obama health law–came from Justice Kennedy, who wavered over the claim that when it came to health care, a bright line could be drawn between those engaged in commerce by buying insurance and whose wholly outside the market by declining to do so.”
SCOTUSblog: “If Justice Anthony M. Kennedy can locate a limiting principle in the federal government’s defense of the new individual health insurance mandate, or can think of one on his own, the mandate may well survive. If he does, he may take Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and a majority along with him. But if he does not, the mandate is gone.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Nebraska finds Democrats are actually in a much worse position with Bob Kerrey (D) as their U.S. Senate candidate than they would have been with Sen. Ben Nelson (D), and that Jon Bruning (R) is now a strong favorite in the general election.
Bruning leads Kerry by a stunning 17 points, 54% to 37%.
Key finding: “Kerrey’s campaign rollout has not been a success. In October his favorability rating in the state was a +5 spread at 39/34. Since then it’s dropped 20 points on the margin to -15 at 36/51.”
Mitt Romney tells the Weekly Standard that he’d eliminate some federal agencies if he’s elected president, but he won’t say which ones.
Said Romney: “One of the things I found in a short campaign against Ted Kennedy was that when I said, for instance, that I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, that was used to suggest I don’t care about education. So I think it’s important for me to point out that I anticipate that there will be departments and agencies that will either be eliminated or combined with other agencies… but I’m not going to give you a list right now.”
Jonathan Chait summarizes: “One of the things I have found in previous elections is that announcing my plans makes people want to vote against me!”
National Journal notes that if Mitt Romney “ends up falling just short of the votes he would need to win the nomination, he can turn to an unlikely, if somewhat ironic, source of untapped delegates: The members of the Republican National Committee — the closest thing Republicans have to super delegates.”
There are still 81 RNC members who have not yet said how they will vote when the gavel comes down in Tampa, including the entire delegations of Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington state.
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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.