“I’m going to end on a note of gratitude — something I never thought that I would say. George W. Bush, thank you for not dying while you were in office.”
— Jon Stewart, on former Vice President Dick Cheney’s defense of torture during the Bush administration.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) “doesn’t believe governors have an advantage over senators when it comes to winning the 2016 GOP presidential nomination,” Roll Call reports.
Said Cruz: “It’s an advantage only if you think that the American people are looking for someone who is not standing up and leading on the great challenges of the day.”
“Jeb Bush, who’s seriously considering a 2016 presidential bid, has sprinted to the front of the Republican field in a new McClatchy-Marist Poll. Former GOP nominee Mitt Romney remains on top, with Bush, a former Florida governor, a close second. Take away Romney, and Bush leads the field.”
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A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 49% of Americans believe that the CIA “did in fact torture suspected terrorists; 38% think its actions did not amount to torture, with the rest unsure. Regardless, the public by a broad 59% to 31% also says the agency’s interrogation actions were justified.”
“One reason is that 53% think these interrogations produced important information that could not have been obtained any other way. Just 31% reject this claim, a focus of the recent debate.”
Des Moines Register: “The event is likely to live on almost as-is, despite some resistance — including from the governor.”
“Traditionally, the straw poll is held in Ames in the August before the caucus. It’s often viewed as a dress rehearsal for the caucuses a few months later, and as a means to help winnow a large field of candidates. But it has been under fire for years — for elevating long-shot candidates who appeal to only the most conservative evangelical voters; for driving away more mainstream GOP candidates and ruining efforts to attract all candidates to Iowa; for putting a financial squeeze on presidential hopefuls by requiring them to pay the party certain sums in order to participate; and for giving Iowa ‘two bites of the apple’ with two high-profile votes that draw extensive national media attention.”
George Tsunis, a major donor to President Obama’s re-election, told Newsday that his bid to become U.S. ambassador to Norway was “over” after it appeared his nomination would not get a vote in the Senate.
During his confirmation hearing, Tsunis admitted that he had never been to Norway and referred to the nation’s president, when in fact it has a king and prime minister. He also described one of the country’s major political parties as a “fringe element.”
Roll Call: “The hard right and the hard left ended up out in the cold last week — free to raise their fists and their profiles and make a ruckus, but ultimately powerless to stop the cromnibus.”
“The deal represents a return — at least for a week — to the fabled establishment Washington dealmaking of yore, warts and all, like it or loathe it. It’s a return that could put the ‘do nothing’ label back on the congressional shelf — with Republicans and the president eyeing deals next year on trade and taxes, in addition to keeping the government open for business after four years of serial shutdown and default dramas.”
“President Obama’s pick to serve as the next surgeon general was confirmed Monday evening more than a year and half after being nominated, the first of nearly a half dozen of the president’s picks set for confirmation this week as Democrats prepare to cede control of the U.S. Senate,” the Washington Post reports.
“Senators voted 51 to 43 to confirm Vivek Murthy, a Harvard and Yale-educated doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, whose nomination had been in limbo amid concerns about his experience, and opposition from the gun lobby.”
“Democrats would like some credit for the run of good economic news. Yet the better those reports are, the more divided the party has become over how — even whether — to take any,” the New York Times reports.
“In one camp are Democrats who argue that if they do not take some credit, they will continue to receive little. Others counter that boasting would backfire, infuriating millions of Americans who do not see the economy improving for them or their children.”
“Many, including President Obama, fall in the middle: still seeking to strike some balance, more than five years after the recovery officially began, between extolling progress and recognizing the pain that lingers.”
“Six years after candidate Barack Obama vowed to make working for government ‘cool again,’ federal hiring of young people is instead tailing off and many millennials are heading for the door,” the Washington Post reports.
“The share of the federal workforce under the age of 30 dropped to 7 percent this year, the lowest figure in nearly a decade, government figures show.”
Brendan Nyhan: “At election time, candidates seduce us with promises to bring America together, but inevitably fall short and end up leaving office with the country more polarized than when they arrived. After blaming them for their failure to unite us, we turn to the next crop of presidential aspirants and the cycle of hope and disappointment begins all over again.”
Harry Enten: “Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the White House first went off course in the cornfields of Iowa, and some liberal groups are hoping to use that staging ground to derail the Democrat in 2016. MoveOn.org, a left-leaning advocacy group and political action committee, is starting Run Warren Run, an effort to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren into the presidential campaign. Run Warren Run will hold its first rally in Iowa on Wednesday.”
“A memo to MoveOn: 2016 is not 2008; Clinton is in far better shape now than she was then. Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, would need Clinton to bleed support in Iowa to have a shot at winning, which is something that didn’t happen in 2008.”
The New Yorker looks at the how the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report, “even before it was released, came under attack from Republicans, including Dick Cheney, who, although he hadn’t read it, called it ‘full of crap.’ Senator Mitch McConnell, the incoming majority leader, castigated it as ‘ideologically motivated and distorted.'”
“There was a way to address the matter that might have avoided much of the partisan trivialization. In a White House meeting in early 2009, Greg Craig, President Obama’s White House Counsel, recommended the formation of an independent commission. Nearly every adviser in the room endorsed the idea, including such national-security hawks as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, and the President’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director at the time, also supported it. Obama, however, said that he didn’t want to seem to be taking punitive measures against his predecessor, apparently because he still hoped to reach bipartisan agreement on issues such as closing Guantánamo.”
First Read “On Friday, we compared Elizabeth Warren to Ted Cruz — after Warren had rallied many House Republicans (though ultimately not enough) to oppose the $1.1 trillion spending bill. But there is one BIG difference between the two: Warren’s activism hasn’t put her party at a disadvantage the way Cruz’s has. After Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) tried to re-litigate President Obama’s executive action on immigration, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took advantage of their protest, using the rare Saturday session to advance Obama’s nominees in the confirmation process.”
Sen. John Thune (R-SD) told The Hill that he isn’t ruling out a 2016 bid for the White House.
Said Thune: “The things I need to be doing right now I’m not doing and a lot of other people are. But you never close the door on anything, you never know what’s going to happen. But as of right now, no.”
“John Kasich watched the drama unfold in the Capitol last week with exasperation. The Republican governor of Ohio was upset with Democrats, but he was miffed at his own party, too — for engaging in the same old antics on government spending and the deficit, a matter with which Kasich became intimately familiar as a young congressman three decades ago,” Politico reports.
“Now Kasich is trying to do something about it, something that’s never been done in American history and is all but certain to fail again: He’s launching a national campaign to pass an amendment to the Constitution through the states, in this case to require a balanced federal budget. Success, though, may be almost beside the point: Worst case, Kasich is out there fighting for his cause, and raising his profile, ahead of a potential 2016 presidential candidacy.”
First Read: “After Jeb Bush’s news this weekend, we received a press release that supporters of Mitt Romney have created a Super PAC urging the 2012 GOP presidential nominee to make a run in ’16. This Super PAC sure feels like a response to Jeb, because if Jeb does get in, there won’t be as much pining for Romney, especially among the Republican Party’s wealthy donors. Here’s one more thing to consider: If Jeb is ultimately a “yes,” that probably also freezes out a bid by Marco Rubio, who’s a political disciple of Bush’s.”
Gallup: “Americans’ job approval rating for Congress averaged 15% in 2014, close to the record-low yearly average of 14% found last year. The highest yearly average was measured in 2001, at 56%. Yearly averages haven’t exceeded 20% in the past five years, as well as in six of the past seven years.”
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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