A new Bloomberg poll shows Hillary Clinton leading the Democratic presidential race with 55%, followed by Bernie Sanders at 30% and Martin O’Malley at 3%.
A new NBC News/Survey Monkey poll shows Clinton leading with 49%, followed by Sanders at 33% and O’Malley at 1%.
A new NBC News/Survey Monkey poll finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential race with 28%, followed by Ben Carson at 18%, Ted Cruz at 18%, Marco Rubio at 11% and Jeb Bush at 4%.
Trump and Carson were tied in the poll last month.
The New York Times reports Sen. Ted Cruz has created a “national prayer team” for his presidential campaign.
Cruz, who has aggressively courted the support of evangelicals, said the creation of the team would “establish a direct line of communication between our campaign and the thousands of Americans who are lifting us up before the Lord.”
“Group members will receive emails containing prayer requests and a short devotional every week, the campaign said. They will also be invited to take part in a 20-minute ‘prayer conference call’ each Tuesday.”
Politico: How Cruz is locking up the evangelical vote.
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NBC has started offering Republican presidential candidates free air time next week to match the 12 minutes given to Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live,” campaign sources tell CNNMoney.
Amy Walter: “While Bush is no longer the frontrunner in that camp, there’s also no evidence that Marco Rubio has overtaken him as the de-facto leader. The events that unfolded this weekend in Paris won’t make the establishment figure any more obvious. Neither Rubio nor Bush can claim expertise in the area of foreign policy (though Rubio can point to his tenure on Senate Foreign Relations Committee). And, neither is proposing solutions or options that are much different from the other. GOP voters remain wary of Bush and electing a ‘legacy’ candidate and Rubio remains virtually unknown and undefined. So, if voters are indeed looking for a ‘safer’ more traditional choice as a GOP nominee, there’s no obvious candidate for them to flock toward.”
“Meanwhile, Trump is simply doubling down on the rhetoric that has helped him attract his loyal following with calls to ‘bomb the sh$%’ out of ISIS and to potentially close down U.S. mosques that are seen as incubators of violent rhetoric.”
Donald Trump went on a Twitter rampage after learning that a GOP group affiliated with Gov. John Kasich “was planning to spend at least $2.5 million on an ad campaign aggressively targeting the real estate mogul, whose four-month stint atop the Republican primary polls has alarmed many in the party establishment,” Politico reports.
Said Trump: “I want to do negative ads on John Kasich, but he is so irrelevant to the race that I don’t want to waste my money.”
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Donald Trump leading the GOP field with 37%, followed by Ben Carson at 14%, Marco Rubio at 11%, Ted Cruz at 8%, Jeb Bush at 6% and Rand Paul at 5%.
“If there’s a rabid dog running around your neighborhood you’re probably not gonna assume something good about that dog, and you’re probably gonna put your children out of the way… At the same time, I love dogs, and I’m gonna call the humane society. Hopefully they can come and take this dog away and create a safe environment once again.”
— Ben Carson, quoted by CBS News, on the Syrian refugees.
John Kasich reversed course on his idea of a new government agency to spread Judeo-Christian values, the Columbus Dispatch reports.
Kasich said he instead would upgrade the existing Voice of America to “engage in the war of ideas’ against Islamic State. I don’t think you need a new agency, it’s really breathing life into something that kind of has become dormant. You don’t hear much about the Voice of America anymore.”
Nate Cohn: “The weakness of mainstream candidates in New Hampshire poses a big challenge for the party’s beleaguered establishment. If a candidate acceptable to the party can’t win New Hampshire or Iowa, the G.O.P. will face a bleak choice: undertake the daunting and expensive task of mounting a come-from-behind effort, or grudgingly acquiesce to a candidate it really doesn’t want, like Ted Cruz, but who may be better than someone it can never accept, like Mr. Trump.”
“The extent of the weakness of the establishment in New Hampshire is a striking departure from recent contests.”
The Guardian: “All the other known attackers… are of French and Belgian nationality with similar life stories of limited petty crime or drug taking, and radicalization in their late teens or early twenties. At least four are known to have spent time in Syria with Islamic State extremists.”
“As European citizens, there was no need to resort to subterfuge or risk Mediterranean sea crossings to reach their target. They could travel freely around the continent even when the authorities in their home countries were aware of their extreme views and foreign travels.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) told WAKR that most terrorist attacks in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks have been committed by “generally white males.”
Said Brown: “Since the beginning of the Bush administration when we were attacked, September 11th, we’ve not had any major terrorist attacks in this country. We’ve had individual crazy people, of normally, they look more like me than they look like Middle Easterners. They are generally white males, who have shot up people in movie theaters and schools. Those are terrorist attacks, they’re just different kinds of terrorists.”
A Center for Public Integrity study found that just three states — Alaska, California, and Connecticut — scored above a D+ when graded on a standard A-F scale for corruption, transparency, and accountability in state government. Most states received a D grade, but 11 of them failed completely.
Tennessee Rep. Glen Casasa (R) “believes the time has come for the National Guard to round up any Syrian refugees who have recently settled in the state and to stop any additional Syrian refugees from entering Tennessee,” the Tennessean reports.
Said Casasa: “I’m not worried about what a bureaucrat in D.C. or an unelected judge thinks. … We need to gather (Syrian refugees) up and politely take them back to the ICE center and say, ‘They’re not coming to Tennessee, they’re yours.’ “
Donald Trump told Yahoo News that he would increase surveillance of Muslims and consider a series of drastic measures to keep Americans safe.
Said Trump: “We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule. And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
He wouldn’t rule out requiring Muslims to carry a form of special identification: “We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely. We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
Donald Trump told Yahoo News that some of his GOP rivals who are not performing as well simply have the wrong mindset.
Said Trump: “A lot of people don’t like to win. They actually don’t know how to win and they don’t like to win because down deep inside they don’t want to win. It’s a deep, deep secret, but they don’t want to win and they don’t think they should be there. And we have some people that are very good and we have some people that shouldn’t be wasting a lot of time, including their own time.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey finds Donald Trump continues to dominate the GOP presidential race with 26%, followed by Ben Carson at 19%, Ted Cruz at 14% and Marco Rubio at 13%.
No one else in the GOP field even gets more than 5%. Jeb Bush reaches that mark followed by Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee at 4%.
First Read: “The past week suggests it probably can’t. In fact, it’s been about as bad of a week for American political leadership as we’ve seen since the government shutdown days of 2013.”
“Think about it: The House of Representatives is already voting on legislation — today — on additional certifications and background investigations for Syrian refugees. The question of whether to admit these refugees has turned into a huge political fight on the 2016 campaign trail and in state capitals across the country. President Obama has used two overseas news conferences to blast his critics at home. And Ted Cruz fired back at the president: ‘Mr. President, come back and insult me to my face.’ It’s been a mess.”
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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