President Obama “has officially vetoed a bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, marking his third rejection of congressionally approved legislation during his six years in office,” NBC News reports.
“Congress could override the veto if two-thirds of both the House and the Senate vote to do so, but lawmakers aren’t expected to reach that threshold.”
“In an extraordinary sequence, Mitch McConnell offered Democrats Tuesday exactly what they have been asking for — ‘clean’ full-year funding for the Department of Homeland Security. And Harry Reid said no — or at least, not yet,” Roll Call reports.
“Majority Leader McConnell’s offer of passing a clean full-year Homeland Security bill through the Senate shorn of immigration provisions — which he said could happen very quickly with Democratic cooperation — was put on hold by Minority Leader Reid, who told reporters he was waiting to hear Speaker John A. Boehner agree to pass it through the House first.”
Said Reid: “We have to make sure that we get a bill to the president. Unless Boehner’s in on the deal, it won’t happen.”
“I would think, as we approach the 50th anniversary of Selma, that Republicans should be more sensitive about what they’re doing to this woman.”
— Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), quoted by Bloomberg, on the stalled nomination of Loretta Lynch as Attorney General.
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.
Former Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) “is among those being approached” about a potential U.S. Senate campaign in California, the Sacramento Bee reports.
“A distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution, he has over the decades repeatedly been mentioned as a likely GOP candidate for statewide office. He departed Congress after the once-a-decade process of redrawing district boundaries left him with few good options.”
“Gruesome killings by the Islamic State, terrorist attacks in Europe and tensions with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are reshaping the early Republican presidential race, creating anxiety among party voters and sending potential candidates scrambling to outmuscle one another on foreign policy,” the New York Times reports.
“Doubts that crept into the minds of conservatives about engagement abroad after George W. Bush’s presidency and the protracted war in Iraq are dissipating, and they are increasingly pressing for more action against the Islamic State.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) frequently says he’s waiting for “God’s calling” to run for president, so he was recently asked under public records laws to provide call “a copy/transcript of all communications with God, the Lord, Christ, Jesus or any other form of deity.”
Walker’s office responded that no such records exist.
A new Public Policy Polling national survey finds Scott Walker leads the Republican presidential field with 25%, followed by Ben Carson at 18%, Jeb Bush at 17% and Mike Huckabee at 10%.
No other potential candidate gets more than 5% of the vote.
Key finding: “Walker is climbing fast in the polling because of his appeal to the most conservative elements of the Republican electorate.”
Coming later this year: Killing the Messenger: Clintonland, Kochville, and the Battle for 2016 by David Brock.
New York Times: “Mr. Brock declined to comment… But one person involved in the production said it’s expected to be an outgrowth of a speech Mr. Brock gave at the Clinton School of Public Affairs in Little Rock., Ark., last year. That address was something of a matriculation for the former self-described ‘hit man’ whose work for conservative outlets in the 1990s produced some of the ugliest stories the Clinton White House had to contend with.”
Jeb Bush “plans to reward his biggest early financial backers with a mid-April meeting in Miami with his likely campaign team,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The confab is being organized for so-called bundlers who have ‘met or exceeded’ their fundraising targets, according to an email circulated by Mr. Bush’s finance team. Heather Larrison, who runs his fundraising effort, told a group in Washington last week that the event would take place on April 13… The timing of the session is bound to fuel speculation that Mr. Bush will officially announce his intent to run for president beforehand. The Bush team is scrambling to collect as much money as possible for a pair of political-action committees by March 31, the first-quarter fundraising deadline.”
The New York Times reports Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) “is quietly telling donors that he is committed to running for president, not re-election to the Senate.”
He’s expected to make a formal announcement in April.
Rick Klein: “This is the era of manufactured crises, as President Obama is fond of pointing out. It is also, apparently, the era of manufactured crises without exit strategies. Two months in the new year surely felt like plenty of time back when Republicans agreed to set a Department of Homeland Security funding deadline to force a showdown over immigration. But the end of February has come fast, with no change in the political dynamics or vote results or rhetoric. There’s been wide commentary on how Republicans knew they were given the keys to Capitol Hill on a provisional basis – that they needed to show they can govern, not just hold a majority. Well, here’s such a time.”
First Read: “Republicans claim that Senate Democrats are the ones obstructing things, because they are filibustering a DHS funding bill that contains riders rolling back President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Yet as we learned during the last government shutdown, the side that’s using government spending to demand changes to existing law or directives is going to be side that gets blamed if the government (or just part of it) shuts down.”
Morning Line: “By the way, this funding crisis probably isn’t the last one we’ll see this year. There are more within view — in coming months, the U.S. will again hit its debt ceiling and the Highway Trust Fund will go into the red if Congress doesn’t act.”
A new Elon Poll in North Carolina finds Hillary Clinton leading Jeb Bush in a possible presidential match up, 46% to 40%.
Bloomberg: “Eight days after joining the Treasury Department as an adviser, Antonio Weiss was the lead U.S. official listed at a meeting with Wall Street executives. It’s a role typically played by the undersecretary for domestic finance — the same post Weiss lost after Democratic senators stymied his nomination.”
“The sequence of events has raised questions about whether the administration is trying to circumvent the normal Senate confirmation process.”
“I’m still trying to decipher if this is God’s calling. You’ve got to be crazy to want to be president of the United States. You’ve got to be crazy. To look at what it does to a person and a family, you’ve got to be crazy. But you should only do it if you feel that God’s called you to get in there and make a difference.”
— Gov. Scott Walker (R), quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
“The scale of race-ethnic transformation in the United States is stunning,” according to the States of Change: Demographics and Democracy Project.
“In 1980, the population of the United States was 80 percent white. Today, that proportion has fallen to 63 percent, and by 2060, it is projected to be less than 44 percent. Hispanics were 6 percent in 1980, are 17 percent today, and should be 29 percent by 2060. Asians/Others were just 2 percent in 1980, are 8 percent today, and should be 15 percent by 2060. Blacks, however, should be stable at 12 percent to 13 percent over the time period.”
“Nothing captures the magnitude of these shifts better than the rise of majority-minority states.”
“Every single day Joe Biden says something that would end my career if I said it once.”
— Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), quoted by NH Journal.
Roll Call: “Just days from a shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has begun to pivot toward a new strategy to separate funding for the Department of Homeland Security from the GOP’s plan to roll back President Obama’s immigration actions.”
Jeb Bush’s “emerging sway among moderates might not seem like a big deal in a Republican Party dominated by conservatives — with most candidates seeming eager to run as far to the right as possible. But moderates play a much bigger role in the G.O.P. primary process than they do in Washington, and it would take a very strong conservative to defeat a candidate with a big advantage among moderates,” the New York Times reports.
“The relatively moderate half of the Republican Party is underrepresented in Washington because most moderate Republicans hail from blue states and therefore lose in general elections. It’s a different story in the primaries.”
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.