“It would ruin my life.”

— Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D), quoted by Politico, saying he hasn’t decided whether he will run for president in 2016.

Liz Cheney (R) will drop her U.S. Senate primary challenge against Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), sources are telling news outlets including the Casper Star-Tribune.

Cheney made the decision after “a recent incident involving a close member of Cheney’s immediate family prompted her to reconsider the race, among other factors,” Politico reports.

Said Cheney: “Serious health issues have recently arisen in our family, and under the circumstances, I have decided to discontinue my campaign. My children and their futures were the motivation for our campaign and their health and well-being will always be my overriding priority.”

“Early last summer in her Georgian-style home near Washington’s Embassy Row, Hillary Clinton met with a handful aides for a detailed presentation on preparing for a 2016 presidential campaign,” Politico reports.

“The meeting was organized by Minyon Moore, a longtime Clinton intimate also at Dewey Square who has informally become the potential candidate’s political eyes and ears of late. Clinton listened closely but said little and made no commitments, according to people familiar with the nearly hourlong gathering. It appears to have been the only formal 2016-related presentation Clinton has been given from anyone outside her immediate circle.”

“Publicly, Clinton insists she’s many months away from a decision about her political future. But a shadow campaign on her behalf has nevertheless been steadily building for the better part of a year — a quiet, intensifying, improvisational effort to lay the groundwork for another White House bid.”

The Week: The best proof yet that Hillary Clinton is running for president.

“Congress comes back to session this week with leaders of both parties planning a war of words in 2014 — dueling agendas that promise little substantive legislation but lots of messages aimed at establishing clear contrasts for voters heading toward the midterm election,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“After they dispatch a few must-pass fiscal measures early in the year, legislators seem unlikely to put together major accomplishments. Rather, the Republican-led House and the Democratic-controlled Senate will essentially become something like sound stages for the advertising wars that will unfold in the handful of states and districts that could decide partisan control of the next Congress.”

“The agendas reflect a basic reality of the modern Congress — much of what lawmakers do does not include actually making laws.”

Wall Street Journal: “Members of Congress returning to work this week are plunging immediately into policy battles that will shape their campaigns for the November elections.”

“As House Republicans return to Washington for the new year, their leaders must decide how ambitious the party will be in the 10 months before their majority faces voters in November,” The Hill reports.

“The smart money is on a cautious election-year strategy, favoring targeted, politically safe legislation over more contentious drives to reform the tax code, overhaul immigration policy and advance a long-awaited conservative alternative to the new healthcare law.”

David Drucker: “Republican campaign strategists view the troubled Obamacare as unqualified electoral gold.”

Roll Call: “As Democrats look this cycle to hold their Senate majority and pick up seats in the House, the party is staring down an unpredictable political atmosphere with a president whose job approval starts 2014 underwater. But even as Republicans tether Democrats to Obama on policy, the president remains a vital fundraising asset for the party’s effort to hold its ground in the midterm elections.”

“Billionaires, super PACs and nonprofits are gearing up for another round of intraparty fighting that will shape the direction of their respective parties for years to come,” Politico reports.

“On the Republican side, the business wing of the GOP establishment has declared war on elements of the party’s base — convinced that the religious right’s focus on social issues is costing swing votes and that tea partiers are playing a dangerous game of chicken with the U.S. economy. Those conservative activists, on the other hand, are determined to rid their party of the moderates and compromisers who they say are empowering President Barack Obama and standing in the way of meaningful conservative reform.”

“Democrats — less prone recently to pitched battles about the direction of the party in the age of Obama — are also showing early signs of a growing split over the future of the party.”

The presidential caucus system established by the Idaho Republican Party in 2012 to give the state more say in the selection of a presidential candidate was killed by the Republican State Central Committee, the Idaho State Journal reports.

Josh Putnam: “Idaho Republicans are now without a specific means of allocating delegates in 2016. The presumption — the intent — is that Republicans in the Gem state will simply revert to their later primary election. That may be the eventual course of action, but as a part of the transition to caucuses in 2012, the Idaho state legislature permanently removed the presidential primary line from the May primary ballot.”

“I don’t know. I wish I could go back and turn back the clock and take another try.”

— Mitt Romney, in an interview on Fox News, when asked if he felt he would have won the 2012 presidential election if President Obama had not lied about Americans being able to keep their health insurance.