“Ben Carson is overhauling his campaign operation, adjusting his tone and doubling down on old-fashioned retail politics to help revive his flailing presidential bid,” CNN reports.
“The campaign is also trying to rev up its policy shop by bringing in more experts and releasing new policy proposals.”
Said campaign chairman Robert Dees: “We’ve had a policy engine that was idling. We’re going to allow the people of America to really see what Ben Carson really believes about certain things.”
New York Times: “Al Qaeda’s branch in Somalia released a recruitment video on Friday that criticized racism and anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States and contained footage of the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announcing his proposal to bar Muslims from entering the country. The video, released by the militant group Shabab, appeared to be the first time that Mr. Trump was featured in jihadist recruitment material.”
This is a fascinating analysis of how Donald Trump talks differently than other candidates.
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Rick Perlstein: “Now the sins of Emanuel are finally catching up with him. Lucky for him, however, the compounding police-shooting scandal has erased from the news a peccadillo from this past November: the mayor’s press team was eavesdropping and recording reporters while they interviewed aldermen critical of the mayor. A spokesman responded to the press by saying that their only intent was also ‘to make sure reporters have what you need, which is exactly what you have here.’ That made no sense. But then so much of the legend of Rahm Emanuel’s brilliant career makes little sense. The bigger question, perhaps, is what this says about a political party and the political press that bought the legend in the first place.”
New York Times: “When survey respondents were offered a small cash reward — a dollar or two — for producing a correct answer about the unemployment rate and other economic conditions, they were more likely to be accurate and less likely to produce an answer that fit their partisan biases.”
“In other words, when money was added to the equation, questions about the economy became less like asking people which football team they thought was best, and more like asking them to place a wager. Even a little bit of cash gets people to think harder about the situation and answer more objectively.”
Indiana state Rep. Jim Tomes (R) “has proposed a bill that would make it a crime for transgender people to use public bathrooms and locker rooms that do not conform to their gender at birth,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
“The issue is particularly charged in Indiana, where tensions have run high since spring when lawmakers faced backlash for a religious objections law that critics said would sanction discrimination against gay people on religious grounds.”
“President Obama will press ahead with a set of executive actions on guns next week despite growing concerns in the U.S. over terrorism that have dampened some Americans’ enthusiasm for tighter firearms restrictions, according to several individuals briefed on the matter,” the Washington Post reports.
“One of the main proposals Obama is poised to adopt–expanding new background-check requirements for buyers who purchase weapons from high-volume gun dealers -enjoys overwhelming public support: a Quinnipiac University poll in December found 89 percent supported background checks at gun shows and for online sales.”
Wall Street Journal: “But even as he gets set to act, Mr. Obama has only limited levers he can pull without Congress, and any unilateral action will face hurdles similar to those it has encountered during earlier attempts to tighten access to guns.”
New York Times: “Jeb Bush and his supporters still have a pile of money to spend, remnants of $100 million raised when he seemed early last year to be a sure bet. They have an expansive ground operation in New Hampshire. And allies have just begun a new ad campaign in Iowa. But nothing they have tried so far has lifted Mr. Bush’s terrible poll numbers. And with just four weeks remaining until voting begins, Mr. Bush needs to do something to save his candidacy.”
“It may be too late: Other campaigns appear to have counted him out altogether. But, in extensive interviews over the past week, aides to Mr. Bush and important allies described a long-shot plan to pull off what seems all but impossible: winning the Republican nomination for president.”
A New York Times profile of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) notes that his “ballooning place in the conservative imagination is about more than his anticipated promotion.”
“He is increasingly seen as an avatar of Democratic craftiness and frustrated conservative aspirations: a wily tactician who has routinely defanged his Republican adversaries with ease, first as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and more recently as a lead negotiator on the issue of immigration reform.”
“A string of allied ‘super PACs’ supporting the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz is planning a $1 million television, digital and radio advertising buy in the early voting states, with the heaviest spending in Iowa,” the New York Times reports.
Politico reports another super PAC backing Cruz will spend $4 million on television ads.
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Friday reported a tremendous fourth-quarter fundraising haul, saying it pulled in $37 million in funds supporting her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination,” The Hill reports.
“That brings her total funds from 2015 to $112 million, smashing through the goal her campaign set of raising $100 million.”
New York Times: “In a sign that the Clinton operation is also looking past the nominating contest, the campaign said that while it was only soliciting donations for the primaries, it had also raised $1 million in donations to be used in the general election.”
Donald Trump said that President Obama’s concerns about the environment were infringing on his rights to use aerosol hairspray, the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “You can’t use hairspray because hairspray is going to affect the ozone.”
However, aerosol sprays were actually phased out in the United States in the 1990s, years before Obama was president.
“It’s not a political strategy he’s pursuing, it’s a short-term public relations strategy. Every day, he figures out some way to dominate the news. But in the general election, not only is Bill Clinton still popular with a lot of swing voters, they don’t think it’s fair to run against the spouse. This is not a legitimate general election issue. It’s simply a tactic of Donald’s to dominate the news.”
— GOP lobbyist Charlie Black, quoted by Politico, on Donald Trump attacking Bill Clinton’s personal indiscretions.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds the percentage of Republicans among those likely to vote in the 2016 election lags Democrats by 9 percentage points, compared with a 6-point deficit in the year leading up to Barack Obama’s 2012 victory.
Key finding: “While the American electorate has become more diverse the last three years, the party’s support among Hispanic likely voters and younger likely voters has shrunk significantly.”
Politico: “All presidents back away from some of their most dramatic campaign promises. But seven years into Obama’s presidency, the revolving door shuttling officials out of his administration is spinning at a rapid clip, and Obama has seen his campaign promise founder against the deeply ingrained culture of selling government expertise in Washington.”
The Ohio Secretary of State has rejected Martin O’Malley’s petition to be placed on the Democratic presidential primary ballot, according to Ballot Access News.
He needed 1,000 signatures and submitted 1,175. He has been told that only 772 signatures are valid.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) “captivated the political world for a good portion of 2015 with will-she-or-won’t-she suspense over a potential presidential run,” Politico reports.
“By June, even her most ardent supporters conceded she was out, and much of the spotlight trained on the freshman Massachusetts senator shifted as the White House race heated up without her. But with her influence on the rise, Warren and her allies racked up victories all year, winning fights over executive branch nominees, fending off regulatory rollbacks for banks and prodding financial regulators to take a harder line with the firms they oversee.”
The ghostwriter of Donald Trump’s 2000 book The America We Deserve said he’s not voting for the billionaire real estate mogul, BuzzFeed reports.
Said Dave Shiflett: “I’ll tell you what really bugs me about him, where it really ripped it with me and Trump was the stuff he said about McCain. McCain suffered severely, and I had a son who did two tours in Middle East during the last war and we had kids from here who went over there and some of them got hurt. They ain’t gonna be the same.”
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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