A new Triton Polling survey in Tennessee shows Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) trailing a generic “conservative” challenger by 5 points, 49.5% to 44.5%.
Meanwhile, Breitbart News reports that conservative Tennessee radio host Ralph Bristol says he’ll have a “major announcement” that will alter the political landscape tomorrow morning.
“The Democratic Party, it’s not dead like some people think it is.”
— Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), quoted by Politico.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) released his birth certificate amid questions about whether he is eligible to run for president, the Washington Post reports.
Dallas Morning News: “Born in Canada to an American mother, Ted Cruz became an instant U.S. citizen. But under Canadian law, he also became a citizen of that country the moment he was born. Unless the Texas Republican senator formally renounces that citizenship, he will remain a citizen of both countries, legal experts say.”
“The circumstances of Cruz’s birth have fueled a simmering debate over his eligibility to run for president. Knowingly or not, dual citizenship is an apparent if inconvenient truth for the tea party firebrand, who shows every sign he’s angling for the White House.”
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“A court in Egypt has ordered that former President Hosni Mubarak, who has been detained on a variety of charges since his ouster in 2011, should be set free, according to state media and security officials on Monday, but it remained possible that the authorities would find a way to keep him in detention and his release did not appear imminent,” the New York Times reports.
“The development threatened to inject a volatile new element into the standoff between the country’s military and the Islamist supporters of the deposed President Mohamed Morsi, as Egypt entered the sixth day of a state of emergency following a bloody crackdown by the military in which hundreds of people have been killed.”
New York Post: “Five years after Caroline Kennedy refused to release financial information during her bid to take over Hillary Clinton’s US Senate seat, newly filed documents reveal a personal fortune that could be as high as $500 million.”
Kennedy had to file disclosure documents for her nominated role as Ambassador to Japan.
First Read: “What’s interesting is that in talks with strategists on both sides of the aisle, there is universal head-scratching over her decision to engage this early. The long campaign didn’t help Clinton in 2007-2008. Short campaigns are always more helpful to well-known front-runners. (See: Booker, Cory.) But if you’re Clinton, you may be thinking that you need to make sure there is no room on your left for another Obama, and it could be why she’s willing to risk her bipartisan political standing so early. Then again, that’s fighting the last war.”
Billy Kenber: “As a Times of London journalist who is on loan to The Post for a few months, I find the extent of the cult of celebrity surrounding the Obamas striking. Throughout last week, the president looked like a man who, on a rare
excursion from the intensity of living in one of the most famous
buildings in the world, wanted nothing more than to be left alone for a
few days. And yet the crowds and the media were determined to ensure he
wasn’t.
“This summer scrutiny stands in contrast to the treatment of
politicians in Britain. Although the sex lives and private indiscretions
of MPs are considered fair game — for both the tabloid and broadsheet
press — vacations have remained more sacred territory.”
“As a woman, initially I was interested in Quinn. It became clear to me that, you know as a woman, you can’t just vote your vagina.”
— Actress Susan Sarandon, quoted by Politicker, endorsing Bill de Blasio (D) over Christine Quinn (D) in the New York mayoral race.
“Political allies of Vice President Joe Biden have concluded that he can win the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination–even if Hillary Clinton enters the contest–and are considering steps he could take to prepare for a potential candidacy,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“While Mr. Biden has made no decision about his future, people familiar with his thinking say, he hasn’t ruled out a bid for the White House. If he runs, that could set up a titanic battle between two of the party’s most prominent figures.”
“One step under discussion by Biden backers is to form a political action committee he would use to funnel money to other Democratic candidates, which could build goodwill for a possible White House bid.”
Attorneys for Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell (R) and his wife, Maureen, “will spend Monday locked in separate hours-long meetings trying to convince federal prosecutors that the first couple should not be charged in the gifts scandal that has dominated state politics,” the Washington Post reports.
“The meetings open a new, critical phase of the investigation, timed to help prosecutors decide over the next few weeks whether to file charges.”
The defense: “McDonnell’s side has conveyed to authorities that his wife often
purposely kept him in the dark about the largess she was accepting.”
Gallup: “President Obama’s job approval rating has shown a pattern of decline over the course of the summer months during his presidency. From June through August, his approval rating shows a noticeable dip each month, resulting in an average approval rating below 46% in August, the worst he has averaged in any month of the year.”
“Hillary Clinton’s lofty status as the apparent 2016 Democratic nominee-in-waiting has some allies concerned that the hype might be too much, too soon,” NBC News reports.
‘This seeming inevitability makes her more sensitive to attacks and risks amplifying any stumble, no matter how minor. And voters may react poorly to a candidate who appears to be waltzing to the nomination with minimal effort.”
Said one Democrat: “I think people close to her are more acutely aware than anybody else in the country that there’s no such thing as inevitability.”
A Twitter poster who called Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) an “idiot” and “retard Barbie” — and said Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) would demolish her in the governor’s election — got a thank-you from Abbott, the Dallas Morning News reports.
Former Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH) said he is seriously considering another run for the U.S. Senate, the New Hampshire Union Leader reports.
He lives in Florida but has a summer home in New Hampshire.
Said Smith: “I am giving it serious consideration, but I have not made a final decision. I have not.”
Andrew Sullivan: “I have been grappling for a while with the vexing question of the balance between the surveillance state and the threat of Jihadist terrorism. When the NSA leaks burst onto the scene, I was skeptical of many of the large claims made by civil libertarians and queasily sympathetic to a program that relied on meta-data alone, as long as it was transparent, had Congressional buy-in, did not accidentally expose innocent civilians to grotesque privacy loss, and was watched by a strong FISA court.”
“Since then, I’ve watched the debate closely and almost all the checks I supported have been proven illusory. The spying is vastly more extensive than anyone fully comprehended before; the FISA court has been revealed as toothless and crippled; and many civilians have had their privacy accidentally violated over 3000 times. The president, in defending the indefensible, has damaged himself and his core reputation for honesty and candor. These cumulative revelations have exposed this program as, at a minimum, dangerous to core liberties and vulnerable to rank abuse.”
“The GOP drive to defund Obamacare is leaking oil,” National Journal reports.
“From the leaders of the GOP establishment to usual tea-party allies, a growing number of Republicans are splitting with movement conservatives who are pushing to shut down the federal government if funding is not cut off for President Obama’s health care law at the end of September.”
“The growing concern is that the tea-party activists and a handful of senators, led by the troika of Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) are marching into battle without a plan for victory short of Obama reversing himself on his signature domestic achievement–an almost unimaginable outcome.”
As he toured Iowa, former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) told the Des Moines Register that he’ll reveal his intentions for the Massachusetts governor’s race “in a week to 10 days.”
He added that “it’s courteous to let others interested in the race know.”
You can now buy a drone on Amazon.
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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