“Jeb Bush faces a unique dilemma as he builds a Republican presidential campaign—whether to follow in the foreign-policy footsteps of his father or his brother,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“One early indication suggests he is leaning toward his father’s more pragmatic and restrained philosophy. The former Florida governor is considering naming Meghan O’Sullivan as his top foreign-policy aide; several people familiar with the deliberations describe her as the front-runner for the post.”
“Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show,” Entertainment Weekly reports.
“Ending months of speculation about his future with the Comedy Central series, Stewart informed his studio audience during Tuesday night’s taping that he is stepping down as host of the show after 16 years.”
Politico: “Stewart, who became the host of ‘The Daily Show’ in 1999, has had an immeasurable influence on American politics and satire.”
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) “rescinded an executive order that had been in place since 2007 giving state employees protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation or sexual identity — a move described as outrageous and deplorable by civil rights activists,” the Lawrence Journal-World reports.
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“With executions in Oklahoma on hold amid a constitutional review of its lethal injection formula, Republican legislators are pushing to make Oklahoma the first state in the nation to allow the use of nitrogen gas to execute death row inmates,” the AP reports.
“The main super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton is struggling in its early efforts to line up cash towards a fundraising goal of as much as $500 million,” Politico reports.
“The group, Priorities USA Action, is trying to secure 30 or more pledges of at least $1 million apiece to be unveiled publicly when the former Secretary of State officially enters the race, sources say. But so far it has received only about ten firm commitments, and it is encountering resistance from top donors who have given to other Clinton-linked vehicles, including ostensibly aligned super PACs and even the apolitical Clinton Foundation.”
BuzzFeed: How a Clinton insider fight turned public
“I’ll always tell Wisconsinites the truth, to the best of my ability, and I’ll never vote my reelection mind. I’m not afraid to justify my votes. I generally have a pretty good rationale for voting the way I do.”
— Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), quoted by The Hill.
Mother Jones: “At their most recent retreat in southern California two weeks ago, the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch and 450 of their donor-allies announced plans to spend $889 million over the next two years to influence state and federal elections and shape the national discourse. The money would go to bankrolling political activity, funding think tanks and academic research, and fueling grassroots organizing efforts around the country—all in support of the Kochs’ pro-business, free-market-centric ideology. That eye-popping, nine-figure goal made national headlines, but what wasn’t reported was that the Kochs and their allies were already well on their way to banking that huge amount of money.”
“Donors at the Palm Springs confab pledged $249 million toward funding the Koch brothers’ grand plan, according to two sources with knowledge of the fundraising haul.”
Jeb Bush unveiled a website containing 250,000 emails from his time as Florida governor, as well as the first chapter of his new e-book, which chronicles his emails with Floridians, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Writes Bush: “My staff estimated I spent 30 hours a week answering emails, either from my laptop or BlackBerry, often while on the road. The idea of this book, through the use of these emails, is to tell the story of a life of a governor. No day is like the one before it… The unexpected became the expected.”
First Read: “The conspicuous push for transparency is intended as a clear contrast to some of the questions that dogged both Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton in their own past runs, but Democrats are quick to point out that there’s a lot more where those emails came from; Bush has said that he received 550,000 emails on his private account and another 2.5 million on his public one.”
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) told Nashville Public Radio that he won’t run for president in 2016.
Said Corker: “I have no plans to pursue that. I’m very challenged with my current role as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. It’s involved me in things beyond what I ever anticipated… I haven’t thought of it by the way, in months and months and months, as I saw the field shaping up in a good way.”
A Federal Election Commission audit has found that former Rep. Quico Canseco (R-TX) “accepted $100,000 for his 2010 House bid from a family-owned business in Mexico, violating bans on foreign contributions,” the Houston Chronicle reports.
“Republican presidential hopefuls are sending an outsize portion of their campaign funds to lawmakers in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, as they attempt to win over influential figures ahead of the 2016 campaign, a new report finds,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
“It is not uncommon for politicians to use their PACs to give money to other candidates — leadership PACs, which most potential 2016 candidates have already launched, are structured primarily for that purpose. But giving such a high percentage of contributions to lawmakers in two small states offers a stark portrayal of the lengths to which contenders will go to curry favor with those voters.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) “seems well past posturing about a presidential run,” the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Said Rubio: “I think you do a lot in the Senate to further national security issues and foreign policy. But I really think that when it comes to foreign policy and the national security of this country, the election we’re going to have in November of 2016 will be the most important election we’ve had in probably half a century, if not longer. And it’s very difficult to set the tone simply from the Senate. You can be one of many voices, and influential voices in the Senate. But ultimately, only the presidency can set the true tenor and direction of our foreign policy and national security.”
First Read: “Bottom line: Republicans better start looking for options to run for Rubio’s Senate seat in ’16.”
A new Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania finds Sen. Pat Toomey (R) well ahead of likely challenger Joe Sestak (D) in the U.S. Senate race, 45% to 35%,
“Barack Obama misled Americans for his own political benefit when he claimed in the 2008 election to oppose same sex marriage for religious reasons, his former political strategist David Axelrod writes in a new book, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics,” according to Time.
“Axelrod writes that he knew Obama was in favor of same-sex marriages during the first presidential campaign, even Obama publicly said he only supported civil unions, not full marriages. Axelrod also admits to counseling Obama to conceal that position for political reasons.”
“The biggest beneficiaries of a noncompetitive 2016 primary for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic Senate candidates looking to reclaim their majority,” National Journal reports.
“Democrats head into 2016 with a deep roster of campaign talent that earned valuable experience on President Obama’s successful campaigns. But since there aren’t expected to be many credible candidates running against Clinton—in sharp contrast to the GOP’s deep field—skilled Democratic operatives have far fewer options when thinking about campaign employment. Many are expected to make their mark on a Senate race rather than fight for a prized job with Clinton’s campaign.”
“When you read the criminal complaint you get the impression it was this frenetic activity. But it was four times a year, not more than that. It wasn’t this out-of-control activity.”
— Former IMF President Dominique Strauss-Kahn, quoted by the Financial Times, on the sex parties he helped organize between 2008 and 2011.
Bloomberg: “So far, Bush has been content to let it all slide, refusing to take the bait from traps that Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and New York businessman Donald Trump have been laying for the past several months. But that’s a strategy in itself: Bush, speaking last week in Detroit, said he was hopeful that presidential candidates would focus on their own accomplishments, and not attack others. In a way, it’s a rose-garden approach, not dissimilar to the one currently being followed by Hillary Clinton. The calculus may be that attacking these rivals would bring him down to their level.”
“But there’s risk in delaying a response for too long… Bush’s return volley may be coming soon. He’s scheduled to address the CPAC conference later this month in Washington, a lion’s den of conservative activists who enjoy a vivid show from their candidates.”
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R), “the newly elected Republican who has often criticized public sector unions, took his first step toward curbing their power on Monday by announcing an executive order that would bar unions from requiring all state workers to pay the equivalent of dues,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Rauner, who faces a Democratic-controlled legislature with strong ties to labor, took the unilateral step saying that he believed those fees violate the United States Constitution.”
Chicago Tribune: “Anticipating a strong pushback from organized labor, Rauner filed a pre-emptive federal lawsuit in Chicago seeking to have his decision declared legal. But the move likely will spark additional court battles as unions quickly decried the effort as an illegal abuse of power. It’s also possible Democratic lawmakers could vote to overturn Rauner’s executive order.”
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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