“If Picasso were alive today, he could get a lot of artistic fulfillment just by drawing congressional districts.”
— Former Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), quoted by Roll Call.
Ayotte Slightly Ahead in New Hampshire
A new WMUR poll in New Hampshire finds Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) with a small edge over potential challenger Gov. Maggie Hassan (D), 45% to 43%.
McGinty Will Run for U.S. Senate
Katie McGinty (D) will resign her position as chief of staff to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) in preparation to run for the U.S. Senate, National Journal reports.
“McGinty’s entrance would be a major victory for Democrats in Washington, who have scoured Pennsylvania looking for a top-tier candidate in what should be a politically-crucial Senate battleground in 2016. Party leaders are wary about the only Democrat in the race, former Rep. Joe Sestak, concerned that his unwillingness to listen to strategic advice could cost them a winnable race against the well-entrenched Toomey.”
How Badly Would An Indie Trump Bid Hurt the GOP?
The Washington Post/ABC poll finds a three-way race would result in Hillary Clinton getting 46%, Jeb Bush getting 30%, and Donald Trump 20% among registered voters.
The Latest on Wonk Wire
Why Trump Could Be for Real
Rick Klein: “We can only speculate about what kinds of props or insults Donald Trump is bringing with him to the Texas-Mexico border today. But the new ABC News/Washington Post poll out Thursday suggests the extent to which he may not need them. Roughly half of Republicans in the poll oppose a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants – and Trump gets support from a third of those voters. Think about that: In a 16-person field, the idea that any candidate could get 34 percent of that large a slice of potential voters suggests an extraordinarily powerful issue.”
“That’s a much tougher sell in the general election, of course. But it’s a useful reminder that Trump isn’t operating in a political vacuum, or that his support is manufactured or meaningless. It also suggests that if Trump could go a news cycle or three without being, well, Donald Trump-ish, he could settle into a campaign trajectory that could last.”
Wonk Wire: Why Trump matters
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Trump Has Been Invited on The Daily Show
Donald Trump told The Hill that Jon Stewart is “begging” him to appear on the final episode of The Daily Show.
Said Trump: “They have invited me. I like Jon Stewart — I think he’s good. They’re begging me to go on.”
He added: “I would do it… the problem is it looks like pandering. It looks so false and so phony if I do it.”
Trump Threatens Third Party Run
Donald Trump told The Hill that the chances that he will launch a third-party White House run will “absolutely” increase if Republicans are unfair to him during the 2016 primary season.
Said Trump: “The RNC has not been supportive. They were always supportive when I was a contributor. I was their fair-haired boy. The RNC has been, I think, very foolish.”
Pressed on whether he would run as a third-party candidate, Trump said that “so many people want me to, if I don’t win.”
First Read: “So the RNC has a choice to make: Does it bite its tongue and hold back on future criticism? Or does it let him go? It isn’t an easy decision. On the one hand, the threat is credible — Trump has enough money (to get on the ballot) and enough name ID to affect a D-vs.-R presidential contest. On the other hand, he’s held the GOP and its candidates hostage. And when you’re dealing with a hostage-taker, sometimes the best approach is taking him out.”
Anthony Weiner Gets a New Job
New York Post: “A top ‘crisis’ public-relations firm with ties to Hillary Clinton has hired the last person in the world that most people would call on to dispense advice on dealing with a scandal: disgraced, penis-texting former Congressman Anthony Weiner.”
“The man who destroyed his own promising political career by botching a 2011 sext-message imbroglio with bald-faced lies — and who then ruined his comeback by running one of the most disastrous mayoral campaigns of all time — will now get paid to dispense advice to high-paying clients of the MWW p.r. firm… About the only thing that makes sense about this is that one of the company’s clients is Ball Park Franks.”
Bush Blasts Lobbyists But Was Once One Himself
Jeb Bush complained about “swarms of lobbyists” who hold sway over Washington, but he has accepted campaign donations from lobbyists, turned to some for advice and was once registered as a lobbyist himself, the AP reports.
A Small Senate Battlefield
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “First, Democrats have a plausible but narrow path to a minimal majority, requiring a net gain of four seats if a Democratic vice president is also elected, or five seats if the GOP wins the White House. But as we note below, Democrats need to win the lion’s share of the small number of truly competitive seats on this cycle’s map.”
“Second, because the route to a Democratic majority is fraught with peril and obstacles aplenty, the Republicans are still more likely to keep the majority than the Democrats are to win it, though it would be a considerable surprise if the GOP’s 54-46 seat margin wasn’t reduced by at least a seat or two. Not losing any net seats probably requires the Republican nominee to not only win the presidency, but capture more than 300 electoral votes in doing so — something no Republican has done since George H.W. Bush in 1988.”
Trump’s Nativist Appeal Is an American Tradition
Jeff Greenfield: “Are there sound reasons for questioning comprehensive immigration reform? Of course… But those are not the arguments that Trump and his supporters are offering. They’re embracing the same arguments that were once aired at the Irish and German Catholics; at the Chinese; at the Italians and Poles and Jews: They’re going to undermine our culture; they’re disproportionately criminal or they’re carrying diseases; they threaten our way of life.”
“In this sense, Trump’s screeds on immigration fit perfectly with his birther arguments four years ago. There’s simply no way of knowing whether his GOP rivals will succeed in pushing Trump and his arguments to the margins, or whether the broader Republican primary electorate will reject the messenger, if not the message. What’s clear is that the rise to the presidency of Barack Obama—seen by many Republicans and conservatives as a source of patriotic pride—is still seen by others as proof that an ‘un-American’ occupies the highest office in the land.”
Maddow Says Trump is a ‘Gift from God’
Rachel Maddow on Late Night with Seth Meyers: “I love the idea that this is a stunt, and I love the idea that he’s just a celebrity and that this isn’t actually a political campaign, but it turns out that Republican voters want Donald Trump more than they want any of the 40 other people running.”
If You Vote Against Him
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) joked to National Journal that he could send cufflinks emblazoned with his initials (think about it) to the 70 Republicans who voted against one of his signature pieces of legislation.
Texas Denies Birth Certificates to Immigrant Children
Texas health officials “asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit by immigrant parents who were denied birth certificates for their U.S.-born children because local authorities refused to recognize as valid certain forms of identification,” the AP reports.
“Although the parents are not U.S. citizens, their children are, because the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantees the right of citizenship to anyone born on American soil. Without a birth certificate, it can be difficult for parents to access medical care, travel, school enrollment and other benefits available to U.S. citizens.”
Trump Will Lose But He May Help Clinton Win
Rick Wilson: “Donald Trump is not running a real campaign. He is working the phones, stirring the pot and using the media ecosystem to its fullest. Soon, the bolder members of the field will follow Rick Perry, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush in making harder and more decisive strokes against him. Unlike Trump, they’ll use real oppo, tested and targeted messages—ads built not just to cut, but to kill. They’ll break his operational tempo, get inside his OODA loop and turn his circus into a crispy ruin. It’s what real campaigns do.”
“Trump will lose, and Trump supporters will wake up with a combination I call ‘herpes and a hangover.’ They may have had fun the night before, but they’ll regret the hangover for a day. However, if Trump’s games in this campaign lead to the election of Hillary Clinton, they’ll regret the herpes a lot longer.”
GOP Candidates Struggle to Deal with Trump
New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s role as principal bomb-thrower, initially an annoyance for his Republican rivals, is now presenting them with their first real challenge in the primary campaign as they seek to develop a strategy for dealing with the bombastic real estate mogul who stands at the top of recent polls.”
“Some of the candidates have bluntly criticized Mr. Trump, which could endear them to donors who find his language destructive and help them break into the news cycle… Others have resorted to different tactics to remind voters that they are running.”
“Mr. Trump’s wrath tends to be directed toward those who take the hardest swing at him. But some of the candidates have done the work over the last two years to stay in the developer’s good graces.”
