“Since announcing his campaign in late June, Donald Trump has quickly leapt to the top of the Republican field, leading recent polls nationally, in Iowa and in New Hampshire. And now, for the first time in CNN/ORC polling, his gains among the Republican Party have boosted him enough to be competitive in the general election.”
“The poll finds Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton ahead of Trump by just 6 points… He trailed Clinton by 16 points in a July poll.”
National Journal notes a federal law “protects campaigns’ ability to talk to voters by guaranteeing them the ‘lowest unit rate’ on TV ads near election time. But those laws contain no such protections for super PACs, which are at the whims of market rates that go sky-high before elections.”
“Super PACs are ascendant in this presidential campaign, raising more money and sometimes taking on more prominent roles than the candidates they support. But despite their gaudy fundraising and spending figures, the dollars they pour into TV advertising will only buy a fraction of the actual time on TV that the official campaigns can get themselves.”
Roll Call: “More than a year out from Election Day 2016, Republican incumbents and GOP-aligned outside groups have shelled out at least $13.3 million to boost their re-election prospects and attack potential Democratic challengers in Senate contests across the map. That’s seven times more than the $1.9 million Republicans spent by this point last cycle — when the GOP was looking to win the Senate majority for the first time since 2006.”
You're reading the free version of Political Wire
Upgrade to a paid membership to unlock full access. The process is quick and easy. You can even use Apple Pay.
New York Times: “Despite the outsize attention on Iowa and New Hampshire in this presidential race, Nevada, with its mix of rural and urban areas, a population that is more than 15 percent Hispanic, and lingering economic problems, is arguably the best early-state indicator of how a candidate would fare in a general election campaign.”
“The state carries only six electoral votes, but its demographics reflect the political realities in other Western potential battlegrounds, such as Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.”
“He had a crazy policy of self deportation which was maniacal. It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote. He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Newsmax, calling Mitt Romney’s immigration proposals “mean-spirited” in November 2012.
After Missouri House Speaker John Diehl (R) was forced to resign following revelations that he exchanged sexually suggestive texts with a 19-year-old House intern, lawmakers suggested establishing an intern dress code, the Kansas City Star reports.
“The idea was greeted with disdain by Democrats and set off a firestorm on social media, with critics arguing that it was victim blaming that would do nothing to address the problem of sexual harassment.”
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s (R) housing secretary “will stay in the job despite calls for his ouster over remarks suggesting that mothers might deliberately poison their children with lead to obtain free housing,” the Baltimore Sun reports.
Secretary Kenneth Holt told an audience that the current law “could motivate a mother to put a fishing weight in a child’s mouth to elevate the level of lead in his bloodstream and qualify for free housing at the landlord’s expense until the child turned 18.”
Jonathan Chait: “It is tempting to treat the lack of specifics in the Republican health-care plans as a problem of details to be filled it. But it is not a side problem. It is the entire problem. They will not finance real insurance for the people who have gotten it under Obamacare, nor will they face up to the actual costs they’re willing to impose on people. The party is doctrinally opposed to every available method to make insurance available to people who can’t afford it. They have spent six years promising to come up with an alternative plan, and they haven’t done it, because they can’t.”
CNN: “When the 2016 White House race ignited, the glut of talented, experienced, charismatic, young-but-seasoned and authentically conservative candidates delighted grassroots Republican activists. It was the GOP’s deepest White House field in a generation.”
“But Donald Trump’s summer surge has stolen the spotlight from these challengers for the conservative crown and left candidates such as Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul struggling for traction.”
Daily Beast: All the electable Republicans are losing.
New York Times: “Partisanship has become the pre-eminent scapegoat for American political failure, an all-purpose explanation for Washington’s inability to act. Yet in rare circumstances, it can actually guarantee action. So, notwithstanding an acrimonious debate, polarization makes the United States’ acceptance of the Iran nuclear deal very likely.”
“That is because the mechanism for congressional consideration, agreed on by Republican leaders and the White House, reverses the typical legislative imperative. Instead of requiring an extraordinary majority to act, it requires one to stop action — which means partisanship is all President Obama needs to approve the deal.”
“I think the more he exposes himself, putting forward solutions that are unworkable, the charm begins to fade after a while when you realize there’s nothing behind the curtain.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by Politico, referring to Donald Trump as “the Almighty Oz” in the Republican field.
Washington Post: “The longer he floats atop the polls, the more Donald Trump has started to make people here feel a bit queasy, forcing them to contemplate whether his candidacy is really something they need to worry about. As Trump published his immigration proposals this week, Mexicans expressed growing concern about his bid for the Republican nomination.”
“The Mexican government has tried mostly to stay above the fray. Over the past few months, Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade and other top officials have gone on record with their displeasure about Trump’s comments. But they’ve also chosen not to engage Trump’s near-daily anti-Mexico barrages, in part because the candidate’s proposals change so often and also because officials don’t expect he’ll be president.”
Gov. Scott Walker (R) “took aim at the four senators who are competing against him for the GOP nomination, berating them for failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Walker: “You see, they told us during the last election that if we just elected a Republican Senate, the leadership out there would put a bill to repeal Obamacare on the desk of the president. It’s August, we’re still waiting for that measure. We need to have some leadership in Washington.”
“Bill Clinton was called the first black president because he crossed racial lines so easily, a distinction he lost when Barack Obama became the first actual black president. But for decades, some Americans claimed that the nation’s first black president was really Warren G. Harding,” the New York Times reports.
“It turns out that he wasn’t, really. At least that is the result of new DNA testing that according to scientists showed for the first time that Harding almost certainly had no recent ancestors with African blood, despite assertions that were spread far and wide a century ago in efforts to sabotage everything from his marriage to his political career.”
“It’s going to be very easy. You just watch.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by ABC News, on finding all the undocumented immigrants he wants to deport.
Nate Silver: “Personally, I give Clinton about an 85 percent chance of becoming the Democratic nominee. (The general election is a whole different story.) That’s a pinch higher than betting markets, which put her chances at 75 to 80 percent.”
“But wait — wasn’t Clinton ‘inevitable’ in 2008 too? Not to nearly the same extent. Her lead in the polls is considerably larger this time around, her edge in the endorsement race is much greater, and her opponents are weaker than Barack Obama and John Edwards were. If you set a lower threshold for ‘inevitability’ and included Clinton’s 2008 campaign in your equation, you’d probably also need to include winning campaigns like Romney in 2012 and Mondale in 1984, in which case the front-runners would be six-for-seven — an 86 percent success rate, which is about where I’d put Clinton’s chances now.”
“In fact, Gore is the only non-incumbent in the modern era to have swept all 50 states. (Two incumbents, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980, also lost some states.) More often, candidates similar to Clinton have lost Iowa or New Hampshire, along with a few other states, before consolidating their support and eventually winning fairly easily.”
Matt Latimer: “Regardless of whether Clinton survives her primary battle with an ever growing list of potential foes, Republicans ought to think hard about the reasons why Bush might be the easiest of the serious GOP contenders for the Clintons to beat. And it’s not just because they’ve done it before.”
“Think the Clintons have political baggage? Well, so do the Bushes. And Jeb is being crushed under the weight of it. So far, Bush evokes as much allure among the Republican rank-and-file as a Dixie Chicks concert on Earth Day. There’s a reason almost no one has commented on Jeb Bush’s performance in the first GOP debate. He wasn’t terrible. He wasn’t great. He was just, well, there. Mediocrity is apparently the plan.”
“Even if GOP elites are right—that Donald Trump isn’t ready for the big stage—they better make sure their chosen understudy isn’t going to fare far worse.”
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.