Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) was booted off his own radio program for using racial slurs on-air, the Huffington Post reports.
“Walsh, who has hosted ‘The Joe Walsh Show’ on a conservative Chicago radio station since early 2013, took to Twitter to complain about being cut off by the station’s management. Walsh, by his own account, used several epithets during a discussion on the Redskins’ controversial name, including the n-word.”
“Hillary Clinton is known as a champion of women and girls, but one woman who says she was raped as a 12-year-old in Arkansas doesn’t think Hillary deserves that honor. This woman says Hillary smeared her and used dishonest tactics to successfully get her attacker off with a light sentence — even though, she claims, Clinton knew he was guilty,” the Daily Beast reports.
“The victim in the 1975 sexual abuse case that became Clinton’s first criminal defense assignment as a 27-year-old lawyer has only spoken to the media once since her attack, a contested, short interaction with a reporter in 2008, during Clinton’s last presidential campaign run. Now 52, she wants to speak out after hearing Clinton talk about her case on newly discovered audio recordings from the 1980s, unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon and made public this week.”
“Steve Scalise is known for giving his friends a little bit extra. In Louisiana, it’s called lagniappe,” Politico reports.
“Anytime anyone did a favor for the Louisiana Republican — whether they made a call for him, or spoke up on behalf of a bill he favored — they would find themselves on the receiving end of lagniappe (LAN-yap), or a small unexpected gift. Sometimes it was a praline — Scalise has a basket of them sitting, wrapped in plastic, on a coffee table next to the couch in his office in the Rayburn House Office Building. Other times it was a personalized note, T-shirt or flowers. On Wednesday night, the lawmakers who helped put him in a position to become the next House majority whip got an engraved red baseball bat.”
National Journal: Scalise’s route to the win showed his skill as a whip.
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“House conservatives fretted their failure to recruit Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) into this week’s Republican leadership race, but their misery might not last very long,” National Journal reports.
“Hensarling, the popular Texan who passed on the chance to challenge Rep. Kevin McCarthy in Thursday’s special election, appears poised to run for one of the top two leadership positions – either speaker or majority leader – in November, according to multiple sources close to the congressman.”
Said one GOP source: “He sounds like he’s ready to run in the fall.”
“She was the woman who was standing under the streetlight with her dress pulled all the way up over her knees, and now she says, ‘I’m a nun,’ when it comes to this spying!”
— Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D), in an interview with National Journal, saying Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is too close to the CIA to be objective.
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) is asking black voters to rescue him in his GOP Senate runoff with Chris McDaniel (R), the New York Times reports.
“It is a remarkable political science experiment, and it also may be the only path to victory left to Mr. Cochran. But after being narrowly edged out by Mr. McDaniel, 41, in the Republican primary earlier this month, Mr. Cochran, 76, needs to expand the number of voters who will show up for the runoff, which is open to any Mississippi resident who did not vote in the Democratic primary. The winner on Tuesday will face former Representative Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat, in November.”
“Republicans are challenging the president’s characterization of the surge in young immigrants from Central America across the southern border as an unforeseen crisis, accusing his administration of contributing to the influx and demanding that he deploy National Guard troops and other resources to secure the border,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
A new Gallup poll finds Americans’ approval of President Obama’s handling of immigration has dropped to 31%, with 65% disapproving.
Philip K. Howard, author of The Rule of Nobody and The Death of Common Sense, joins us for a great discussion about contradictory and often unnecessary laws which seem designed specifically to block responsibility and accountability.
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Charlie Cook: “There was a point when voters hit the mute button and stopped listening to George H.W. Bush and then to his son George W. Bush. We now seem to have reached that point with Obama. Voters have thrown up their hands and lost hope that things will get any better.”
“Republican members of the House elected Kevin McCarthy to be the next majority leader, sending a message of stability to their party in a time of unexpected unrest,” Roll Call reports.
National Journal: “Shortly after McCarthy’s victory, Republicans elected Rep. Steve Scalise to replace him as whip. Scalise was the front-runner throughout the three-man race between him, Rep. Peter Roskam, and Rep. Marlin Stutzman; the only question was whether Scalise could win an outright majority on the first ballot and avoid an unpredictable head-to-head contest with either Roskam or Stutzman.”
Four of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) appointees to the Port Authority “all face near-certain indictment and are being pressed to hand up Christie,” according to Esquire.
“The clearest, quickest road to Christie, both sources agree, runs through David Samson, a former Attorney General of New Jersey who’s 74 years old and reportedly suffers from Parkinson’s disease. So: Will Samson flip?”
Said one source: “They’ve got him cold. He got sloppy, arrogant, and greedy. Samson will want a deal. This way, he’d get one or two years. He’d have a future on the other side. He won’t want to die in jail.”
Prosecutors allege that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) “was at the center of an effort to illegally coordinate fundraising among conservative groups to help his campaign and those of Republican senators fend off recall elections during 2011 and ’12,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
“In the documents, prosecutors lay out what they call a ‘criminal scheme’ to bypass state election laws by Walker, his campaign and two top deputies — R.J. Johnson and Deborah Jordahl.”
“The governor and his close confidants helped raise money and control spending through 12 conservative groups during the recall elections… The documents include an email in which Walker tells Karl Rove…that Johnson would lead the coordination campaign.”
GOP pollster John McLaughlin put out a memo attempting to explain how he showed Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) with a huge lead in Virginia’s 7th congressional district over the ultimate GOP primary winner, David Brat (R).
In short, McLaughlin says many voter who don’t normally vote in GOP primaries turned out this year.
The Dallas County Commissioners Court declared that African-Americans “deserve reparations for slavery, even though most commissioners didn’t seem to know that they were doing so,” the Dallas Morning News reports.
“Republican party officials are putting together a new election year messaging campaign to reach women voters on issues including Obamacare, jobs and education as they seek to gain an advantage in the Nov. 4 congressional elections,” Reuters reports.
“The research identified the phrase ‘start over’ as a message that resonated with many women on Obamacare. The Republicans have been seeking to bridge the gap between loyal voters who want the healthcare law thrown out and those who favor retaining its consumer protections as part of a different reform environment.”
Norm Ornstein: “Does it matter whether the polarization, and the deep dysfunction that follows from it, is equal or not, including to the average voter? The answer is a resounding yes. If bad behavior–using the nation’s full faith and credit as a hostage to political demands, shutting down the government, attempting to undermine policies that have been lawfully enacted, blocking nominees not on the basis of their qualifications but to nullify the policies they would pursue, using filibusters as weapons of mass obstruction–is to be discouraged or abandoned, those who engage in it have to be held accountable.”
“Saying both sides are equally responsible, insisting on equivalence as the mantra of mainstream journalism, leaves the average voter at sea, unable to identify and vote against those perpetrating the problem.”
A new Suffolk poll in New Hampshire finds Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) leads challenger Scott Brown (R) by dougle-digits, 49% to 39%.
Key finding: “Brown’s popularity is a minus-11 (35% favorable vs. 46% unfavorable) in contrast to Shaheen’s plus-16 (52% favorable vs. 36% unfavorable).”
A new American Research Group poll finds Shaheen leads Brown 50% to 38%.
“I’m going to wait until the 2014 election is over, and then I’m going to see what I should do. I’ve never been in a less productive time in my life than I am right now, in the United States Senate.”
— Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), in an interview with Time, on his political future.
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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