Former Vice President Dick Cheney tore into President Obama in a Playboy interview.
Said Cheney: “I look at Barack Obama and I see the worst president of my lifetime, without question. I used to have significant criticism of Jimmy Carter, but compared to Barack Obama and the damage he is doing to the nation — it’s a tragedy.”
He added: “The way Obama is functioning now, he’s crippling the capacity of future presidents to deal with future crises.”
Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) is resigning his seat in Congress, saying in a statement issued Tuesday that “constant questions over the last six weeks have proven a great distraction” and have made it “too difficult for me to serve the people of the 18th District,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
The Hill: “His sudden resignation marked a swift end to the political career of one of the Republican Party’s fastest-rising stars. The 33-year-old lawmaker from Peoria had been one of House Republicans’ top fundraisers, had served as a senior deputy whip and had won a spot on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.”
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) will seek re-election to her House seat and will not run for Senate, Roll Call reports.
“The Democratic National Committee chairwoman had been considering a bid for the potentially open seat, thanks to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio looking at a run for president… But, she said, she would instead seek re-election and continue in her dual post at the helm of the national party.”
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“More than two weeks after the shocking death of Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich, the new chairman of the Missouri Republican Party appears positioned to hang onto his office,” the Kansas City Star reports. “Despite a myriad of predictions that John Hancock would have to resign, he is moving ahead with the actual work of managing a party and preparing it for the 2016 elections.”
“In his final days, Schweich was said to be furious at Hancock for an alleged anti-Semetic whispering campaign last fall. In fact, among the final words he ever spoke centered on his frustration over what he believed to be Hancock’s role in undermining his candidacy based on Schweich’s faith.”
Associated Press: “Every adult citizen in Oregon who has interacted with the Driver and Motor Vehicle Services Division since 2013 but hasn’t registered to vote will receive a ballot in the mail at least 20 days before the next statewide election. The measure is expected to add about 300,000 voters to the rolls.”
“If she were to become a candidate she could go in either direction on these core questions.”
— Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, quoted by Bloomberg, on a Hillary Clinton presidential bid.
“Hillary Clinton has a growing team of strategists and advisers who are already building her all but certain presidential bid — but they have been and will be working strictly as unpaid volunteers until the campaign’s formal launch,” BuzzFeed reports.
“An undisclosed number of future staffers, including those in line to serve as top aides, have worked for free ahead of an expected spring announcement. Those future staffers, and subsequent hires, will be paid for work rendered after the formation of a campaign entity, sources close to Clinton confirmed.”
Charlie Cook: “The race for next year’s Republican presidential nomination is going to be fascinating on so many levels, but none more than the challenges facing former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.”
“On the one hand, more money is likely to be raised on behalf of Bush this quarter than has been for any non-incumbent in history. Numbers from $80 to $100 million have been bandied about, which would be more than Mitt Romney’s campaign (excluding allied groups) raised the entire 2011 calendar year. Furthermore, he is likely to have an all-star team of talent to help his cause, and he comes across as highly polished, even more presidential than any of his nomination rivals, as one might expect from someone who has been governor of one of the nation’s largest states, and a swing state at that.”
“On the other hand, Bush will be seeking the nomination of a party that clearly wants someone very conservative, arguably more conservative than he is.”
House Republicans “unveiled a proposed budget for 2016 that partly privatizes Medicare, turns Medicaid into block grants to the states, repeals the Affordable Care Act and reaches balance in 10 years, challenging Republicans in Congress to make good on their promises to deeply cut federal spending,” the New York Times reports.
“With the Senate now also in Republican hands, this year’s proposal is more politically salient than in years past, especially for Republican senators facing re-election in Democratic or swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois and New Hampshire, and for potential Republican presidential candidates.”
Politico: Republicans try end-run around spending caps
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R) said that even though he thinks the Affordable Care Act is bad policy, he hopes the Supreme Court will reject the case and uphold the law, the Casper Star Tribune reports.
Said Mead: “If on June 30, if that’s when the case comes down, and they say no more subsidies for federal exchanges … it is going to cause a lot of turmoil. Not just for the state, and for those people, but for the private sector as well.”
Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (D) has ruled out a Senate bid in 2016, the Huffington Post reports.
“Crist, who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Rick Scott (R) in last year’s gubernatorial race, was reportedly considering jumping in the race for Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R) seat. (Rubio is widely expected to run for the Republican presidential nomination, and is barred from seeking re-election in the Senate if he does so since Florida law prohibits individuals from appearing on a ballot twice.)”
First Read: “One, it could take weeks to determine who is prime minister (victory comes by a party leader cobbling together a governing coalition among all of Israel’s different parties). And two, it’s possible that Netanyahu could lose in the short-term today (coming in second) but still win in the end (by being the one able to form a government). In fact, that’s what happened in 2009.”
Polls close today at 4:00 pm ET.
“To the extent that Republicans on Capitol Hill are doing things, it is either putting out fires in their own camp or responding to incoming from President Obama.”
— White House press secretary Josh Earnest, in an interview with Politico.
“We need to put a price on carbon to accelerate these market trends. And in order to do that, we need to put a price on denial in politics.”
— Al Gore, quoted by the Chicago Tribune, referring to a federal cap-and-trade system that would penalize companies that exceeded their carbon-emission limits.
New York Times: “Who is the Republican front-runner for 2016? It is often hard to tell. But there is little debate about who is the biggest curiosity in the race: Mr. Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, who has been building the most unorthodox campaign for the Republican nomination, bringing his brand of libertarian conservatism to audiences that are more inclined to vote Democratic.”
“Being a political curiosity is far different from being politically credible, however. And Mr. Paul is facing a challenge that will be much more complex than attracting cameras and crowds: persuading voters to get behind him, not just hear him out. In trying to expand the Republican coalition, Mr. Paul is fighting political and demographic trends that are pushing more voters away from his party. His campaign, which he is expected to announce early next month, will be a test of whether the kind of Republican rebranding he is attempting can happen in the next year, or whether it will take until 2020 or beyond.”
Josh Marshall: “The relationship between the Clintons and the press and the political class generally is codependent, toxic and frankly ridiculous on both sides – with extreme self-protection and legalism on one hand and hyperbole, nonsense and wolf-crying penalties on the other. Like any perennial and bad relationship it is exhausting to watch and generally impossible to pick apart where one part ends and other starts. Which is a reaction to the other, which is first? I have no idea anymore. It hardly matters.”
Jonathan Ladd: “With the media feeding frenzy the past two weeks over Hillary Clinton maintaining a private e-mail account while she was secretary of state, the 1990s dysfunctional marriage between the Clintons and the DC press has come roaring back—no lessons learned or maturity built up on either side since Bill was president. On the Clinton side, there is a hostility and lack of openness to the press that is self-defeating. It provokes the negative coverage it intends to avoid. On the press side, the DC establishment media always seems to believe that the current scandal will be the one to bring down the Clintons, all evidence to the contrary.”
“Alarmed by the dismal voter turnout in this month’s Los Angeles city election, California lawmakers are considering a massive expansion of vote-by-mail balloting and legalizing pop-up polling stations at shopping malls to help increase the convenience and appeal of voting,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Opening polling stations weeks early and allowing teenagers to vote in primaries if they turn 18 by the general election, strategies already being used in Colorado and Oregon respectively, also are being debated.”
Despite the controversy over her use of private email while Secretary of State, a new CNN/ORC poll finds 57% of Americans say Hillary Clinton is someone they’d be proud to have as their president.
Overall, 51% in the poll call Clinton’s use of a personal email system rather than a government provided one a very or somewhat serious problem, 48% say it’s not too serious an issue or no problem at all. And the public is similarly split over whether Clinton did something wrong by using the personal system; 51% say she did, 47% that she did not.
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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