“Republicans are undermining our commander in chief while empowering the ayatollahs.”
— Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), quoted by The Hill, on the letter 47 GOP senators wrote to the Iranian leadership.
Hillary Clinton “will soon address the controversy over her use of a private email account at the State Department, and is likely to hold a press conference in New York in the next several days to answer reporters’ questions,” Politico reports.
“The pressure on Clinton has ratcheted up as critics, including some congressional Democrats, have called on her to publicly address the reports. That pressure only increased on Monday as a spokesman for President Obama told reporters that Clinton and the president had, in fact, exchanged emails using Clinton’s private email account during her tenure at Foggy Bottom from 2009 to 2013.”
“In our view, this letter has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy. It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history.”
— Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, quoted by the New York Times, on a letter sent by 47 Senate Republicans to scuttle nuclear talks with Iran.
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“Forty-seven Senate Republicans warned in an open letter to Iran’s leaders Monday that any agreement between the White House and Tehran on nuclear weapons could be quickly nullified or changed once President Barack Obama leaves office,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The letter, which was signed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and a number of top committee chairmen, said that unless approved by Congress, any agreement between world powers and Iran would be seen by GOP lawmakers as an executive agreement between Mr. Obama and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei. Such an agreement may not stay in effect under future administrations and could be modified by lawmakers in the future, they wrote.”
The senators noted that Mr. Obama will leave office in January 2017, while “most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades.”
Paul Waldman: “It’s safe to say that no president in modern times has had his legitimacy questioned by the opposition party as much as Barack Obama. But as his term in office enters its final phase, Republicans are embarking on an entirely new enterprise: They have decided that as long as he holds the office of the presidency, it’s no longer necessary to respect the office itself.”
Jonathan Chait has a great exit interview with White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer.
“The original premise of Obama’s first presidential campaign was that he could reason with Republicans—or else, by staking out obviously reasonable stances, force them to moderate or be exposed as extreme and unyielding. It took years for the White House to conclude that this was false… If you had to pinpoint the moment this worldview began to crystallize, it would probably be around the first debt-ceiling showdown, in 2011, when Obama tried repeatedly and desperately to cut a budget deal with House Speaker John Boehner only to realize, eventually, that Boehner did not have the power to negotiate. The administration has now decided that in many cases, even adversarial bargaining fails because the Republican leadership is not capable of planning tactically.”
Explained Pfeiffer: “You have to be careful not to presume a lot of strategy for this group. I’ve always believed that the fundamental, driving strategic ethos of the Republican House leadership has been, What do we do to get through the next caucus or conference without getting yelled at? We should never assume they have a long game. We used to spend a lot of time thinking that maybe Boehner is saying this to get himself some more room. And it’s like, no, that’s not actually the case. Usually he’s just saying it because he just said it or it’s the easiest thing to solve his immediate problem.”
Bill Clinton declined to weigh in on news that his wife exclusively used a private email account during her four-year tenure as secretary of State, The Hill reports.
When asked his wife has been treated fairly over the emails, Clinton said: “I’m not the one to judge that.”
He added: “I have an opinion, but I have a bias… That I shouldn’t be making news on this.”
“Now we’re going to go for the big enchilada, which is Hillary.”
— Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), quoted by the Baltimore Sun, reflecting on being the first female Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate in her own right.
Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) took at least 10 of his House staffers on a $10,053 taxpayer-funded trip to New York last September, where most of them had few official duties, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
David Leonhardt: “The Democratic Party is on the cusp of a primary-election campaign unlike any in memory. It does not have an incumbent president running for re-election. It does not even have a sitting vice president with an easy path to the nomination. Yet the party may conduct one of the least competitive nominating contests in modern political history.”
“The closest recent parallels to her are George W. Bush in 2000 or Bob Dole in 1996 — and yet both of them faced stronger rivals than Mrs. Clinton probably will.”
“It’s a frequent whisper among Republicans in Iowa and the nation’s capital: Don’t count Rick Perry out just yet,” the Texas Tribune reports.
“Dogged by the infamous ‘oops’ moment of his failed 2012 presidential campaign and by an indictment related to a 2013 veto, Perry has mostly been an afterthought in early national speculation on the 2016 presidential race… But on the ground in Iowa, which will kick off the 2016 primary season, Perry is taken seriously.”
Officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection have been ordered not to use the term “climate change” or “global warming” in any official communications, emails, or reports, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting reports.
“This unwritten policy went into effect after Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2011 and appointed Herschel Vinyard Jr. as the DEP’s director, according to former DEP employees. Gov. Scott, who won a second term in November, has repeatedly said he is not convinced that climate change is caused by human activity, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.”
Michael Brendan Dougherty: “The inevitable Bush-Clinton presidential campaign is gathering itself along the horizon. It will be a boring, substance-less grind that turns on just which candidate’s operation can direct slightly more of the public’s disgust over the worst parts of the last two decades at the other candidate.”
“They’ll both say they are for the middle-class families. They are friends of small business and the little guy. They want border security and a path to citizenship. They want to put the social safety net on a secure footing, but keep taxes low. They want a strong assertive foreign policy that confronts our enemies but not with the costs of the Iraq War. Perhaps they’ll venture that they want to make health care better and cheaper. It will be like the presidential campaign of 2000. But darker.”
Although Vice President Joe Biden has said he is seriously considering a run for president and has visited some early-primary states, National Journal says he’s not running.
“He’s doing nothing—nothing—to stand up an operation. No exploratory committee. No organizing in early states. No super PAC or allied nonprofit. Indeed, no ‘Ready for Joe’ bumper stickers are being printed and sent to field offices.”
“I don’t email. You can have every email I’ve ever sent. I’ve never sent one.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by The Hill, adding, “I don’t know what that makes me.”
“With the Department of Homeland Security standoff in the rearview mirror, Senate Republicans are going on offense with proposals that divide Democrats such as an Iran oversight bill and trade legislation,” The Hill reports.
“Senate Republicans are desperate to show they can govern after they largely wasted February haggling over a DHS funding bill without winning any of the concessions they hoped for on immigration. After battling among themselves for weeks, Republicans now want to put Democrats on the defensive by pushing issues that split Democratic centrists and liberals.”
Hillary Clinton’s “exclusive use of private email as secretary of state is testing relations between her emerging campaign and the Obama White House, and their responses could set the tone for how the two Democratic Party powerhouses interact during the next 20 months,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The contrasting reactions to the disclosure grew starker over the weekend when President Barack Obama answered questions on the matter, while Mrs. Clinton hasn’t.”
Politico has 5 questions about Clinton’s email.
Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state “was supposed to be a central argument for her forthcoming run for president. Her globe-trotting record as the nation’s chief diplomat, her role championing women’s empowerment and gay rights, and her experience on tough national security issues were all supposed to confer credentials that none of her possible GOP opponents would possess,” the Washington Post reports.
“But over the past two weeks, with back-to-back revelations that she was working with foreign countries that gave millions of dollars to her family’s charitable foundation and that she set up and exclusively used a private e-mail system, that argument has been put in peril.”
President Obama “will hold off on announcing the location for his future presidential library until after Chicago’s runoff election for mayor, two people familiar with the decision said, in a bid to avoid politicizing his legacy project,” the AP reports.
“Last year the Barack Obama Foundation, which is screening proposals for the library, said the president and first lady Michelle Obama would announce the winner by the end of March. But with the Chicago race still up in the air, the announcement is no longer expected until after the April 7 runoff, said the individuals, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the library.”
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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