Gallup: “For the first time in three years, more states can be considered Democratic than Republican, based on residents’ 2017 self-reported party preferences. Nineteen states, up from 14 in 2016, were solidly Democratic or leaned Democratic, while 16 states, down from 21 in 2016, were solidly Republican or leaned that way.”
Lawfare:”At the end of the day, the most important aspect of the #memo is probably not its contents but the fact that it was written and released at all. Its preparation and public dissemination represent a profound betrayal of the central premise of the intelligence oversight system. That system subjects the intelligence community to detailed congressional oversight, in which the agencies turn over their most sensitive secrets to their overseers in exchange for both a secure environment in which oversight can take place and a promise that overseers will not abuse their access for partisan political purposes. In other words, they receive legitimation when they act in accordance with law and policy.”
”Nunes, the Republican congressional leadership and Trump violated the core of that bargain over the course of the past few weeks. They revealed highly sensitive secrets by way of scoring partisan political points and delegitimizing what appears to have been lawful and appropriate intelligence community activity.”
New York Times: “After weeks of buildup, the three-and-a-half-page document about alleged F.B.I. abuses during the 2016 presidential campaign made public on Friday was broadly greeted with criticism, including by some Republicans. They said it cherry-picked information, made false assertions and was overly focused on an obscure, low-level Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.”
“It didn’t live up to the hype.”
“But the campaign, captured in the hashtag #releasethememo, which was trending on Twitter for days, may have a far more significant impact than the memo’s contents… What began as an ember more than two weeks ago was fanned into a blaze by conservative media titans, presidential tweets and Republican lawmakers urging people to use social media to pressure Congress to make the memo’s contents public.”
Walter Shapiro: “Ever since Watergate, the standard for any scandal is whether there is a smoking gun left next to a corpse. In the case of the Nunes memo, we lack a body and the gun is a child’s toy pistol.”
“House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes hinted Friday that there would be additional memos released regarding the committee’s investigation into alleged abuse of FISA warrants — and the next one may look at the State Department,” CNN reports.
“Mitt Romney hasn’t even officially announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate, yet Republican leadership is already seeing stars,” The Atlantic reports.
“According to a Republican donor with direct knowledge, Senate GOP leaders have expressed an early interest in having Romney succeed Colorado Senator Cory Gardner as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.”
K.T. McFarland withdrew herself from consideration to be the U.S. ambassador to Singapore, a step for which President Trump blamed Democrats who “chose to play politics rather than move forward with a qualified nominee,” Politico reports.
Andrew Sullivan: “It triggers a deep and visceral response: a defense of the tribe before all other considerations. That means, in its modern manifestation, that the tribe comes before the country as a whole, before any neutral institutions that get in its way, before reason and empiricism, and before the rule of law. It means loyalty to the tribe — and its current chief — is enforced relentlessly. And this, it seems to me, is the underlying reason why the investigation into Russian interference in the last election is now under such attack and in such trouble. In a tribalized society, there can be no legitimacy for an independent inquiry, indifferent to tribal politics. In this fray, no one is allowed to be above it.”
“On the face of it, of course, no one even faintly patriotic should object to investigating how a foreign power tried to manipulate American democracy, as our intelligence agencies have reported. And yet one party is quite obviously doing all it can to undermine such a project — even when it is led by a Republican of previously unimpeachable integrity, Robert Mueller. Tribalism does not spare the FBI; it cannot tolerate an independent Department of Justice; it sees even a Republican like Mueller as suspect; and it sees members of another tribe as incapable of performing their jobs without bias.”
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) “is not interested in going to the U.S. Senate, despite urging from President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,” the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports.
“The Washington Post reported Thursday night that McConnell met with Bryant this week and asked the governor to appoint himself in the event that Sen. Thad Cochran stepped down in the coming months. Sources close to Bryant told the Clarion Ledger after the Post report was published that Bryant is not interested in such a scenario. The sources did confirm the conversation with McConnell and also said the president had talked to Bryant about the same thing.”
“The same sources said Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves (R) would be the leading candidate if Cochran steps down.”
Jonathan Chait: “Amid all the lies Donald Trump has told about the Russia scandal, there is one underlying truth: The intelligence community truly fears him and considers him unfit for the presidency. This is not because the intelligence community is traitorous, or left wing, or (as Donald Trump Jr. sneeringly put it) wine-spritzer-drinking elites. It is because the IC had early access to a wide array of terrifying intelligence linking Trump and his orbit to Russia. People who spend their lives protecting their country from foreign threats saw in Trump a candidate who had at some level been compromised by one of them.”
“Trump and his allies have viewed the causality the other way around. Because the IC distrusts Trump, its investigation of Trump’s connections to Russia is therefore illegitimate. Since his election, Trump has seized upon news of the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia as evidence that the investigators cannot be trusted. If they were unbiased, he reasons, they wouldn’t have been investigating Trump in the first place.”
“The newly released memo by Republican staff follows the tracks of this reasoning.”
BuzzFeed News: “Ted Cruz’s micro-level attention to delegate math in 2016 kept him alive longer in the race for the Republican presidential nomination and prompted eventual winner Donald Trump to stew over what he called a ‘crooked deal’ and ‘rigged system.'”
“The kind of insider politicking that Cruz mastered at state caucuses and conventions now appears to be the target of a rule change the Republican National Committee is exploring. Under a proposal discussed this week during the party’s winter meetings, states that hold primaries for rank-and-file voters — rather than those less accessible contests — could receive extra delegates to the national convention.”
“President Trump approved release of a GOP memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI, intensifying a fight between the White House and Republican lawmakers, on one side, and the nation’s top law enforcement agency over whether the origins of a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election were tainted by political bias,” the Washington Post reports.
The memo is available here.
When asked if the memo made him more likely to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or if he still had confidence in Rosenstein, Axios reports Trump responded: “You figure that one out.”
Earlier for members: The Constitutional Crisis Is Here
According to the Russian news agency Sputnik, the sentencing of alleged Russian hacker Vladimir Drinkman, who pleaded guilty to his role in the largest data hack scheme ever prosecuted in the United States, has been once again rescheduled indefinitely.
“The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s.”
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), in a statement.
A billboard in St. Paul, Minnesota, funded by “The Good Lord Above,” is sending former Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) the answer she was seeking.
“I have no confidence whatsoever in what’s going to come out of the House. Nunes seems to be part of the Trump team.”
— Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, quoted by Time.
“Newly obtained documents show the extensive involvement that family members of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, especially his son, Benjamin Jr., play in official business, despite strong warnings from agency lawyers,” CNN reports.
The black unemployment rate, which President Trump claimed credit for reducing to a record low, jumped last month by the most in almost six years, Bloomberg reports.
“The Labor Department’s monthly employment report released Friday showed that joblessness among black Americans rose to a nine-month high of 7.7 percent in January from 6.8 percent in December, which was the lowest in data back to 1972. The 0.9 percentage-point rise was the most since June 2012.”
Nate Cohn: “The Democratic advantage on the generic congressional ballot, which asks people whether they’ll vote for Democrats or Republicans for Congress, has dwindled since the heart of the tax debate in December. Then, nearly all surveys put Republicans behind by double digits. Now, poll averages put the Democratic lead at only around six or seven percentage points.”
“The question isn’t really whether Republican standing has improved recently. It has. The question is whether anyone should care: Is it just one of many blips and bumps along the road, or does it say something meaningful about the midterm elections?”
“The short answer: Check back in a month. The shift hasn’t lasted long enough to merit a reassessment of the national political environment. But there are reasons to think it could.”
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.