“Prominent evangelical leader Franklin Graham has quit the Republican Party because the omnibus spending bill passed last week in Congress will continue to fund Planned Parenthood,” Politico reports.
Graham, who declared himself an independent in a Facebook post, said, “I have no hope in the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or Tea Party to do what is best for America. Unless more godly men and women get in this process and change this wicked system, our country is in for trouble.”
“I really deplore the tone of his campaign, the inflammatory rhetoric that he is using to divide people, and his going after groups of people with hateful, incendiary rhetoric. Nothing really surprises me anymore. I don’t know that he has any boundaries at all. His bigotry, his bluster, his bullying have become his campaign. And he has to keep sort of upping the stakes and going even further.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by the Des Moines Register, on Donald Trump.
Sen. Bernie Sanders said he’s got a “very good feeling about Iowa,” the Des Moines Register reports.
Said Sanders: “Since we began this campaign we have spoken to over 31,000 people in the state of Iowa. So keep it a secret, don’t tell anybody. But I think we’re going to win here and we’re going to make history.”
Gov. Chris Christie had Sen. Marco Rubio “in his sights, knocking him for missing U.S. Senate votes and lampooning him for the time he has spent, or not spent, in New Hampshire,” the New Hampshire Union Leader reports.
Said Christie: “I think that Marco Rubio, who has spent the same amount of time in New Hampshire as Jim Gilmore, should tell the people of New Hampshire that he’s really not serious about wanting to get your vote and your support.”
“Donald Trump will ring in the new year with Fox News,” Politico reports.
“Trump will be live from Florida during the 11 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, helping hosts Kimberly Guilfoyle and Eric Bolling count down to 2016.”
Bloomberg: “According to people in Rubio’s orbit, the campaign views the well-funded Cruz as its primary long-term threat and wants to halt his recent momentum. Rubio’s advisers think he has an equally good shot of winning over conservatives, given the near equal popularity the two senators enjoy among Republican voters (favorable-to-unfavorable ratings of 58-18 for Cruz; 55-18 for Rubio, according to a recent poll).”
“But less than six weeks before the first votes of the race will be cast, Rubio has a light footprint in Iowa and New Hampshire compared to some of his chief competitors in each state. Eschewing the kind of labor-intensive retail campaigning that voters in those early-voting states traditionally demand, Rubio is waging a gamble by running a more national- and media-driven campaign. He has also placed a premium on landing wealthy donors, with notable successes.”
Sen. Ted Cruz predicted to the National Review that the GOP presidential race “will boil down to the familiar dynamic of an establishment favorite squaring off against a conservative challenger after they claim victories in New Hampshire and Iowa, respectively.”
Said Cruz: “I believe I will be that conservative candidate. I don’t know who the moderate candidate will be.”
“Cruz’s confidence owes to his campaign, an Obama-style grassroots-heavy operation that prioritizes direct voter contact and ground organization. So certain of his operational superiority has the senator become that he dons his strategist cap gleefully and discusses the most granular details of his polling enterprise and outreach program. Moreover, he mocks the approach taken by Rubio’s campaign, which is famously allergic to process stories and defiantly dependent on media buys… And yet Cruz clearly believes Rubio is best positioned to consolidate the other lane of the race.”
Wonk Wire: GOP wants a conservative
Dave Shiflett, the ghostwriter for Donald Trump’s first “campaign book” in 2000, The America We Deserve, writes in the Wall Street Journal “of the man who would be king.”
“Mr. Trump and I made a pretty good team. He needed words, I needed money, and together we explored what he would do if he became president. I have long considered the resulting book my first published work of fiction.”
Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly will moderate the January 28 Republican presidential debate along with colleagues Chris Wallace and Bret Baier, The Hill reports.
“The trio will return to moderating after handling the first GOP debate of the cycle in August, after which front-runner Donald Trump feuded with Kelly and the network for months, claiming unfair treatment.”
A Morning Consult analysis looks at the fact that Donald Trump generally has done better in online polls than in phone surveys.
Los Angeles Times: “The firm conducted an experiment aimed at understanding why that happens and which polls are more accurate — online surveys that have tended to show Trump with support of nearly four-in-10 GOP voters or the telephone surveys that have typically shown him with the backing of one-third or fewer. Their results suggest that the higher figure probably provides the more accurate measure.”
“Some significant number of Trump supporters, especially those with college educations, are ‘less likely to say that they support him when they’re talking to a live human’ than when they are in the ‘anonymous environment’ of an online survey.”
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R), who unsuccessfully sought the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, says he’s getting “a lot” of encouragement to launch another White House bid from Republicans concerned about the prospect of Donald Trump as the 2016 GOP nominee, USA Today reports.
Said Huntsman: “I always want to help my country where I can, but you don’t want to embark on a suicide mission. I’m not ready for a third-party run until we have a complete collapse of the Republican Party that I can still believe in.”
David Frum: “Something has changed in American politics since the Great Recession. The old slogans ring hollow. The insurgent candidates are less absurd, the orthodox candidates more vulnerable. The GOP donor elite planned a dynastic restoration in 2016. Instead, it triggered an internal class war.”
“The puzzle for the monied leaders of the Republican Party is: What now? And what next after that? None of the options facing the GOP elite is entirely congenial. But there appear to be four paths the elite could follow, for this campaign season and beyond. They lead the party in very different directions.”
“She was favored to win and she got schlonged.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Politico, pointing out that Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination in 2008.
Nate Cohn: “Usually, it would be pretty hard to win the nomination without an early victory. But this year, there’s a good case for why it might be easier: The candidates favored in Iowa and New Hampshire might be such flawed candidates that they would not necessarily block Mr. Rubio.”
“Those candidates, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, will face protracted resistance from the party’s elite and many of its voters. The opposition they face will not evaporate, even if one of them wins in Iowa and New Hampshire. Opposition could even grow in a desperate, last-ditch effort to stop them — assuming such an effort still seems possible.”
A new AIF poll in New Hampshire finds Donald Trump ahead in the GOP presidential race with 24%, followed by Ted Cruz at 16%, Marco Rubio at 14%, Chris Christie at 13% and Jeb Bush at 9%.
A new AIF poll in South Carolina finds Donald Trump and Ted Cruz tied in the GOP presidential race at 27%, followed by Marco Rubio at 12%, Ben Carson at 11% and Jeb Bush at 7%.
A new Quinnipiac poll finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential field nationally with 28%, followed by Ted Cruz at 24%, Marco Rubio at 12%, Ben Carson at 10% and Chris Christie at 6%.
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.