“One little lady got tired of the federal government telling her what to do. I’ve reached that point, Mr. Speaker, that I’m tired of giving in to the federal government.”
— Idaho state Rep. Brent Crane (R), quoted by the Idaho Statesman, botching a comparison of Rosa Parks’ arrest for violating a local law refusing to give up her seat on a bus to opposing a state-run health insurance exchange.
Nate Cohn says that too much weight is given to President Obama’s approval rate sinking below the 50% threshold in recent polls.
“Falling below that mark might give the impression that the president is ‘weaker’ politically, but it hardly warrants notice. After all, the president entered his reelection campaign with similar numbers and ultimately won by a convincing margin. A larger decline in Obama’s approval ratings, to the low forties, would augur poorly for Obama’s second-term agenda, but not what we’re seeing now. The president’s legislative initiatives, including a debt deal and immigration reform, depend on cultivating organic Republican support for compromise, not the president’s ability coerce Republicans with his popularity. Even at the height of his post-election bounce, Obama’s mid-fifties approval ratings didn’t force Republicans to accept a balanced approach to reduce the debt.”
“But lower approval ratings, and the desire to raise them, could make the White House more interested in the long sought ‘grand bargain’–perhaps the only event, other than noticeably improved economic conditions, that might send the president’s approval rating back into the mid-fifties, or higher.”
Charlie Cook argues that the GOP’s “arguably rigged House majority” — achieved through the power of redistricting — could be a curse disguised as a blessing.
“They clearly did everything they could to purge Democratic voters from their districts ahead of 2012, no matter whether those voters were white, black, Hispanic, left-handed, or right-minded–just as Democrats would have done had the roles been reversed. But in the process of quarantining Democrats, Republicans effectively purged millions of minority voters from their own districts, and that should raise a warning flag. By drawing themselves into safe, lily-white strongholds, have Republicans inadvertently boxed themselves into an alternate universe that bears little resemblance to the rest of the country?”
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Greg Sargent sums up in just two sentences why President Obama and Congress are stuck:
1. Obama can’t sell entitlement cuts to his base, or indeed Democrats in general, without Republicans agreeing to new revenues, and has offered them a straightforward compromise — one that would anger the base on both sides — based on the premise that total victory for the GOP is not an acceptable or realistic outcome.
2. Republican leaders can’t even begin to acknowledge that Obama has offered them a real compromise, because they can’t sell their base on the idea that the President is being flexible, let alone get them to seriously entertain accepting any compromise with him, because the base sees total victory over Obama as the only acceptable outcome.
In a moving video, Minnesota state Rep. Lynne Osterman (R) admits she made a “politically expedient” vote ten years ago. Now she’s trying to fix her mistake.
“The popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away from conservative ideas, as evidence by the last two presidential elections. That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012.”
— Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), quoted by NBC News.
The Cloakroom: Our political debates might be very different if lawmakers thought of other people’s children too.
President Obama “is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they have to consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways,” Bloomberg reports.
“In taking the step, Obama would be fulfilling a vow to act alone in the face of a Republican-run House of Representatives unwilling to pass measures limiting greenhouse gases. He’d expand a Nixon-era law that was intended to force agencies to assess the effect of projects on air, water and soil pollution.”
Party Time has discovered at least eight cross-country fundraisers taking place overt he next two months where the beneficiary isn’t just “Cory Booker” or “Newark Mayor Booker” — it’s his FEC-approved committee “Cory Booker for Senate.”
“At a recent gathering of House committee and subcommittee chairmen, Republican lawmakers were asked if they could name the legislative affairs staffer at the White House responsible for staying in contact with their panel,” the AP reports.
“Not a single one could.”
President Obama’s “wooing of congressional Republicans in the past week has spurred the party’s most conservative faction into girding to keep GOP lawmakers in line,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Conservative activists and organizations have begun warning Republican legislators that if they agree to raise taxes in any broad budget deal with the president, they should expect to face challengers from the party’s right wing in their next primary elections.”
Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), “a possible 2016 presidential contender, announced Friday that he now supports gay marriage rights – a ‘change of heart’ he arrived at after his son Will confided that he was gay,” Roll Call reports.
Portman announced his support in a Columbus Dispatch op-ed.
Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has an agreement with Crown Publishers for a book which will provide a “behind-the-scenes” account of the financial crisis, the AP reports.
The book is scheduled to be released in 2014. Financial terms were not disclosed.
“So he’s destroying this country, but yes he’s charming.”
— Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), talking about President Obama on the Laura Ingraham Show.
A federal grand jury in Miami is investigating Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), “examining his role in advocating for the business interests of a wealthy donor and friend,” the Washington Post reports.
“Menendez has intervened in matters affecting the financial interests of Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, seeking to apply pressure on the Dominican government to honor a contract with Melgen’s port-security company, documents and interviews show. Also, Menendez’s office has acknowledged he interceded with federal health-care officials after they said that Melgen had overbilled the U.S. government for care at his clinic.”
Politico: “Once as polarizing as a 1990s-era Hillary Clinton, she can still rouse the conservative base and create headline ripples, and has instincts for picking candidates in a primary battle that other Republicans follow. She is getting the most speaking time at CPAC when she takes the stage Saturday at the Gaylord National hotel in Maryland, and her speech is among the most anticipated.”
“But as a force within the party, Palin has gone from sixty to zero within the span of a single presidential cycle.”
“Indifference awaits Mitt Romney Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference as he delivers his first public speech since election night,” Politico reports.
“The base moved on four months ago, and most Republican activists don’t really care what their failed nominee thinks any more. The apathy that pervades the halls at the Maryland resort hosting the meeting is borne not so much from hostility as a desire to turn the page.”
“For more than three decades, the Republican Party brand has been deeply tied to a worldview in which the aggressive use of American power abroad is both a policy imperative and a political advantage,” the New York Times reports.
Now, a new generation of Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “is turning inward, questioning the approach that reached its fullest expression after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and signaling a willingness to pare back the military budgets that made it all possible.”
“That holds the potential to threaten two wings of a Republican national security establishment that have been warring for decades: the internationalists who held sway under the elder President George Bush and the neoconservatives who led the country to long and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under President George W. Bush.”
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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