“I’d like to see him very badly run again. I think if he did decide to run, this third time, he’d win.”
— Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), in an interview with Yahoo News, on Mitt Romney.
“I’d like to see him very badly run again. I think if he did decide to run, this third time, he’d win.”
— Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), in an interview with Yahoo News, on Mitt Romney.
Ezra Klein: “Ryan doesn’t want to be team captain. He wants to be the guy preparing the legislation the next Republican president will sign into law. In recent years, he got halfway there: as chair of the House Budget Committee, he came up with broad budgets that included the basic agenda the next Republican president would follow… But now Ryan’s chair of the vastly more powerful House Ways and Means Committee… Combining the role Ryan has built in the party as Ideologist-in-Chief with the power of the House Ways and Means Committee almost instantly makes Ryan the most powerful Republican in the country when it comes to party’s policy direction, particularly on economic and domestic policy.”
“Given that, it makes sense that Ryan pulled himself out of the race early. If Ryan was running for president in 2016 — or if Republicans even thought he might run for president in 2016 — they would assume his work at Ways and Means was really preparatory work on behalf of Ryan 2016. Worse, his fellow potential candidates would have to distance themselves from Ryan’s ideas, as he would be a threat to them. But now Ryan can work to shape all their agendas simultaneously, and they will have to compete for his favor — they’ll want both his endorsement and, if they win, his help.”
A new CBS News poll finds President Obama’s overall job approval rating has risen seven points since last October, although it still remains below 50%. Forty-six percent of Americans now approve of the job the president is doing, while just as many disapprove. His approval rating is now at the level it was a year ago.
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Leslie Gelb: “Here’s why America’s failure to be represented at the Paris unity march was so profoundly disturbing. It wasn’t just because President Obama’s or Vice President Biden’s absence was a horrendous gaffe. More than this, it demonstrated beyond argument that the Obama team lacks the basic instincts and judgment necessary to conduct U.S. national security policy in the next two years. It’s simply too dangerous to let Mr. Obama continue as is—with his current team and his way of making decisions. America, its allies, and friends could be heading into one of the most dangerous periods since the height of the Cold War.”
“Before I continue, I have to tell you that I’ve never made such extreme and far-reaching proposals in all my years in this business. I’ve never proposed such a drastic overhaul. But if you think hard about how Mr. Obama and his team handled this weekend in Paris, I think you’ll see I’m not enjoying a foreign policy neurological breakdown.”
[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]Next to the bungled Obamacare rollout last year, this is the biggest mistake of Barack Obama’s presidency. [/speech_bubble]
Gov. Chris Christie “is preparing to take his first concrete steps toward a presidential bid by setting up a leadership political action committee as early as this month that could help pay for travel and provide a fund-raising vehicle for would-be donors,” the New York Times reports.
A new Pew Research survey finds that just 38% of Americans say they hope the U.S. will elect a female president in their lifetime while 57% say it doesn’t matter to them.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told BuzzFeed that Bill Clinton’s personal life would be “fair game” if Hillary Clinton runs for president.
Said Priebus: “Bill Clinton’s activities are fair game for Hillary Clinton to answer, absolutely. And if there are things that Bill Clinton has done that we don’t know about, politically or through business enterprise, that are questionable and/or illegal, then we ought to look into it and ask Hillary about it too, because the presumption is that she’s gonna benefit from the successes of Bill Clinton, so I think it’s fair game.”
He added: “I would say that the Monica Lewinsky stuff is a little stale and old, obviously. But if it turns out that there are things that are going on, and that we didn’t know about, he’s a public figure. He’s a former president. And they want to launch Hillary into the public eye. She deserves just as much scrutiny as anybody. And if Bill Clinton was up to things we find to be unscrupulous, I think that people ought to know about it.”
“In the span of a month, the nation’s biggest banks and investment firms have twice won passage of measures to weaken regulations intended to help lessen the risk of another financial crisis, setting their sights on narrow, arcane provisions and greasing their efforts with a surge of lobbying and campaign contributions,” the New York Times reports.
“The continuing assault on the 2010 Dodd-Frank law has achieved remarkable success, especially compared with the repeated failures of opponents of another 2010 law, the Affordable Care Act.”
Coming soon: Believer: My Forty Years in Politics by David Axelrod
First Read: “Romney and Bush (and maybe Christie) in the 2016 GOP field is very good news for Rand Paul and Scott Walker, because it divides up the GOP establishment vote and donor base and allows them to present themselves as the new generation of the Republican Party. And the more time Romney and Bush (and maybe Christie) spend attacking each other, is less time they spend attacking Paul or Walker.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “announced the hiring of a campaign manager for his likely 2016 presidential bid, part of an aggressive effort to build a national political team as the race for the White House heats up,” the Washington Post reports.
“The hiring of strategist Chip Englander, who recently guided a gubernatorial candidate to victory in Illinois, marks a clear step forward for the Kentucky Republican as he prepares to transform his cadre of loyalists into a full-scale campaign.”
Bloomberg: “To paraphrase the aspirational saying: If at first you aren’t elected president, run, run again. For the likes of Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry, those words appear to be something of an article of faith. Yes, each has already tried and failed to become commander-in-chief, but the hope of adding that ultimate line on a political résumé still springs eternal. A quick glance at history shows that such hopes are not misplaced: One-quarter of U.S. presidents lost a prior White House bid before they ended up winning.”
North Carolina state Rep. Paul Tine “changed his political party to unaffiliated last week, it represented one more blow for an endangered species at the legislature: the rural, moderate Democrat,” the Raleigh News & Observer reports.
When South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) “takes her second oath for the state’s highest office Wednesday, she will stand as a survivor of a sometimes turbulent first term, having outlasted many of her opponents and controversies,” the Columbia State reports.
“Powerful legislative leaders who fought the Lexington Republican’s priorities have left the General Assembly. Foes who took Haley to court and challenged her at the ballot box failed to knock her out of office. Scandals, including the worst data hacking of a state agency in U.S. history, did not cause lasting damage.”
“If Romney runs to the right of Jeb Bush, he’ll still be to the left of the rest of the party, so it may be a difficult spot to occupy. Look, I like Governor Romney, I like him personally, I think he is a good person, I think he was a great businessman. But you know that’s yesterday’s news.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), quoted by the Louisville Courier Journal.
“If Mitt Romney decides to mount a third presidential campaign, his pathway to the 2016 Republican nomination could be far more difficult than in 2012, when he faced a weaker field of candidates who at times seemed to be auditioning for a reality television show,” the Boston Globe reports.
The New York Times says that “interviews with more than two dozen Republican activists, elected officials and contributors around the country reveal little appetite for another Romney candidacy. Beyond his enthusiasts — a formidable constituency given that many are donors — opinions range from indifference to openly hostility.”
The Hill: “Republican lawmakers aren’t jumping on the Mitt Romney 2016 bandwagon.”
“It’s often said each senator wakes up, looks in the mirror and sees a future president staring back. But John Thune admits his ‘window’ for a White House run might have closed in 2012,” Politico reports.
Said Thune: “There are a lot of people on that track that I would be lumped in, I’m sure, with the ‘establishment-type candidates.’ Which is never a good thing. I’m not doing the things you need to do. And a lot of other people are.”
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) lavished praise on Sen. Mike Lee (R), his former general counsel, during an appearance on Matt K. Lewis’ podcast, several weeks after his father slammed the senator, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Said Huntsman: “Mike has every good intention and I say that because I worked with Mike. In fact, I don’t know too many people in the legislative branch who are as brilliant as Mike Lee. His understanding of the Constitution, his ability to legislate.”
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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