CNN: “Four years after his first presidential campaign was crushed by the weight of his debate gaffe and stump speech mishaps, the governor who spent 14 years presiding over Texas is launching his second bid for the Republican nomination on Thursday.”
“He’s ditched the signature cowboy boots and added black-rimmed glasses. He’s spent the intervening years recovering from health problems and boning up on policy. Now, Perry will ask GOP primary voters for a second chance.”
Alan Abramowitz: “The 2012 election saw the highest levels of party loyalty and straight-ticket voting since the American National Election Studies began tracking American voting patterns in 1952. Over 90% of Democrats and Republicans, including voters who claimed to be independents but indicated that they leaned toward one party or the other, supported their party’s presidential candidate. Close to 90% supported their party’s House and Senate candidates as well, and 83% cast a straight-party ballot for president, House, and Senate.”
“These exceptionally high levels of party loyalty and straight-ticket voting combined with increasing reluctance to openly identify oneself as a party supporter reflect a fundamental change in the way Americans relate to the Democratic and Republican parties — the rise of negative partisanship. A growing number of Americans have been voting against the opposing party rather than for their own party.”
Washington Post: “A once-sleepy Democratic presidential primary contest is fast coming alive as Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers fall and a diverse array of long-shot opponents step forward to challenge her. The recent developments mark a dramatic evolution in the 2016 sweepstakes, which until now has been shaped by the large assortment of hopefuls on the Republican side, where there is no front-runner.”
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Rush Limbaugh “thinks Republicans should reject Caitlyn Jenner, even if she agrees with them politically,” Politico reports.
Limbaugh said on his radio show that liberals are trying to “redefine normalcy” in an effort to stigmatize conservatives… Under this system, “conservatives and Republicans are the new weirdos, the new kooks and that is part of the political objective here in normalizing all of this really marginal behavior.”
A new Fox News poll shows Jeb Bush and Scott Walker leading the GOP presidential field with 12% each and 14 others ranging from 1% to 11% support.
Politico notes “the size of the presidential field is more than a punchline— it’s shaping the contours of the Republican nominating contest: forcing candidates to carve out narrower niches, making national polls relevant, and making it harder for activists and donors to commit.”
A new New York Times/CBS News poll finds Americans “are broadly concerned about inequality of wealth and income despite an economy that has improved by most measures, a sentiment that is already driving the 2016 presidential contest.”
“The poll found that a strong majority say that wealth should be more evenly divided and that it is a problem that should be addressed urgently. Nearly six in 10 Americans said government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, but they split sharply along partisan lines. Only one-third of Republicans supported a more active government role, versus eight in 10 of Democrats.”
“In a presidential campaign turning largely on stagnant incomes and national security, Lincoln Chafee announced his bid for the White House on Wednesday with an unusual policy stance: He called for adoption of the metric system,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Chafee: “Here’s a bold embrace of internationalism: let’s join the rest of the world and go metric.”
Hillary Clinton plans to call for an early voting period of at least 20 days in every state, the Washington Post reports.
“Clinton will call for that standard in remarks Thursday in Texas about voting rights… She will also criticize what her campaign calls deliberate restrictions on voting in several states, including Texas.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) “is benefiting from pockets of discontent in Jeb Bush’s sprawling money network, winning over donors who believe the 44-year-old freshman senator from Florida offers a more compelling persona and sharper generational contrast against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton,” the Washington Post reports.
“Rubio is working to seize the moment by making an all-out push to lock down financial backers in the coming month — hopscotching the country in a nonstop series of fundraisers that are limiting his presence on the campaign trail. While he faces stiff competition in the money race from Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in particular, Rubio’s in-person courting sessions are starting to pay off. Longtime Bush loyalists and other big-money players on the right have emerged from the meetings raving about his abilities, according to people familiar with private gatherings he has had around the country.”
Rep. Frank Guinta’s (R-NH) mother contradicted his claim that $355,000 given to his 2010 campaign was his own money, the New Hampshire Union Leader reports.
“There is no evidence to support the ‘family pot defense,’ a theory he put forward claiming legal title to money in an account held solely in his parents’ names, according to FEC documents. The documents detail a $1 million fund belonging to his parents he could tap to help pay for expenses — including his mayoral campaign in Manchester, credit card bills and mortgages. But federal investigators said he had no legal right to the money. For years, Guinta has maintained the money did not belong to his parents. His mother, Virginia Guinta, told the FEC that she understood the funds were loans that would be repaid.”
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A new CNN/ORC poll finds former President George W. Bush has more favorable ratings than President Obama.
“Bush is seen in a favorable light by 52 percent of those surveyed, compared with 43 percent who still view the 43rd president unfavorably. Americans are split on Obama, with 49 percent responding favorably and unfavorably. The last time Bush polled in positive territory was in early April 2005, close to three months into his second term.”
“Democrats allied with Hillary Clinton are mounting a nationwide legal battle 17 months before the 2016 presidential election, seeking to roll back Republican-enacted restrictions on voter access that Democrats say could, if unchallenged, prove decisive in a close campaign,” the New York Times reports.
“The Democrats began last month with lawsuits filed in Ohio and Wisconsin, presidential battleground states whose governors are likely to run for the Republican nomination themselves. Now, they are most likely going to attack a host of measures. They include voter identification requirements that Democrats consider onerous, time restrictions imposed on early voting that they say could make it difficult to cast ballots the weekend before Election Day, and rules that could nullify ballots cast in the wrong precinct.”
Said Walker: “I mean, I think for most people who are concerned about that, it’s in the initial months where they’re most concerned about it.”
He added: “I’m prepared to sign it either way that they send it to us.”
Greg Sargent reports that it’s “increasingly looking like Republicans won’t have any contingency plan in place if the Supreme Court guts subsidies for millions in three dozen federal exchange states.”
“New HHS numbers illustrate that the stakes have only grown higher: Some 6.4 million people are now at risk of losing subsidies nationally. The Kaiser Family Foundation has created a nifty new table that allows us to break down the situation by state. It shows that the greatest numbers of people who stand to lose subsidies live in states that are key presidential battlegrounds and home to some of the most contested Senate races of the cycle.”
Wonk Wire: Most Americans not paying attention to pivotal Obamacare lawsuit
Politico: “Marco Rubio finally sold his money-pit of a home in Tallahassee on Tuesday, freeing the presidential candidate from a nagging financial liability and allowing him to distance himself from his scandal-plagued co-owner, former Rep. David Rivera.”
“Bill Clinton’s foundation set up a fundraising arm in Sweden that collected $26 million in donations at the same time that country was lobbying Hillary Clinton’s State Department to forgo sanctions that threatened its thriving business with Iran,” the Washington Times reports.
“The Swedish entity, called the William J. Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse, was never disclosed to or cleared by State Department ethics officials, even though one of its largest sources of donations was a Swedish government-sanctioned lottery.”
First Read: “It’s another Foundation story that doesn’t quite reveal a smoking gun, but – again – there’s just a whiff of shadiness and something that feels weird about the whole deal.”
First Read: “One of us talked to Lindsey Graham yesterday about his 2016 pitch, and one big takeaway was just how much he’s trying to claim the mantle of truth-teller within the GOP. On immigration, Iraq and fixing congressional gridlock, Graham wants to be the guy who’s not afraid to take on his party, who speaks truth to power and who’s happy to lay out unpopular solutions — polls be damned. It’s McCain 3.0 – a recipe that worked for the 2008 GOP nominee, by the way, in part because he was accessible to the press and acceptable to the chunk of the GOP that believes the direction – or at least the tone – of the party is off track.”
“But Graham isn’t the only player in the 2016 field who’s vying for the Truth Teller spot. John Kasich and Chris Christie are also positioning themselves as the candidate who’s willing to be honest with the GOP base about its problems. (Even Ted Cruz is perhaps serving that role specifically within the conservative movement.) Right now, none of these candidates is brushing the top tier, but one of them is almost sure to pop at some point in the race. And if they do, the person it will hurt most is Jeb Bush.”
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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