Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin (R) is likely to announce this week that he’ll challenge Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in a GOP primary, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports.
The Daily Caller reports Bevin “has hinted at a possible run for months.”
The Week: Can McConnell survive a Tea Party challenge?
Speaker John Boehner insisted to CBS News that he had no position on immigration reform: “It’s not about me. It’s not about what I want. What I’ve committed to, when I became speaker was to a more open and fair process. And as difficult as this issue is, me taking a hard position for or against some of these issues will make it harder for us to get a bill… If I come out and say I’m for this and I’m for that, all I’m doing is making my job harder.”
First Read: “It’s striking that the man who’s second in line to the presidency — House Speaker John Boehner — said
yesterday that he won’t take a personal position on immigration, especially over whether there should be a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants… These are Boehner’s most explicit comments yet that he sees his job not to shape his GOP caucus but rather let his GOP caucus shape him. It’s a stunning admission from the man who, like it or not, is the current leader of the Republican Party.”
Steve Kornacki: “If the polls are right and Chris Christie wins a lopsided reelection victory this fall, it will put the New Jersey governor in position to seek the presidency in 2016… What’s not getting much attention is the flip-side: the severe consequences that winning a second term as governor could have for Christie’s ability to raise money for a national campaign – and the possibility that he might be compelled to resign his office during his second term if he’s going to seek the White House.”
“This is the result of two federal rules, one from the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board dating back nearly two decades and the other from the SEC in 2011, that drastically curb the ability of employees of Wall Street firms to donate to governors seeking federal office and of the uniquely broad appointment powers that come with the New Jersey governorship. Put together, they have the potential to prevent Christie from raising millions of dollars from a cash-rich sector – the financial services industry – that has been particularly enthusiastic about him.”
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David Hawkings notes that in the past four years the median years of service in the U.S. Senate “has plummeted from 11 to six, because so many newcomers have replaced Senate icons.”
In the House, 46% of House members have completed fewer than three terms, “a generally accepted benchmark for being labeled a ‘junior member.'”
National Journal: “Once the province of actual and aspiring congressional leaders, who used them to dish out money to win friends and forge alliances, leadership PACs are now commonplace all the way to the back benches of Capitol Hill. It’s symptomatic of the constant money chase that consumes so much of modern lawmakers’ time and energy.”
“Of the new senators elected last November, only one, Maine’s Angus King, doesn’t have one yet. Overall, 94 of the 100 current senators have created such PACs… Roughly two-thirds of House members have them, as well.”
The Senate’s agreement “to approve President Obama’s nominees and avoid the ‘nuclear option‘ will expire later this week after senators are expected to vote in two new members to the National Labor Relations Board. That’s the last part of the deal that expedited seven of Obama’s picks, with the president agreeing to choose two NLRB nominees to satisfy Republicans,” Politico reports.
“But there’s already a queue forming of new Obama nominees, and Republicans aren’t about to lay down and let this group go through.”
Hillary Clinton “may or may not run for president in 2016, but the conservative effort to derail her potential candidacy is already underway,” CNN reports.
“The organizers behind Stop Hillary PAC, a political action committee quietly incorporated in May, are stepping into public view this week as they ramp up their efforts to harangue Clinton as she mulls over her political future.”
“When I worked at the White House the first time, 20 years ago, I was so young that people would make fun of me. Now the young staffers say, ‘Wow, you were here in ’90s? That is so West Wing.”
— Biden chief of staff Bruce Reed, quoted by the Idaho Statesman.
“With major battles looming in the fall over the federal budget and the debt ceiling, President Obama is trying to regain the initiative, embarking on a campaign-style tour of the Midwest this week to lay out his agenda for reinvigorating the nation’s economy,” the New York Times reports.
Obama’s offensive will begin in Illinois “with what his aides are saying will be a major address on economic policy at Knox College. Officials declined to provide details of the president’s message, but said he would set his terms for what they expect will be another bruising battle with a Republican-controlled House over the nation’s fiscal policies.”
“With the field for next year’s Democratic primary nomination for governor becoming clearer, so too is the realization that the battle between incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn and challenger Bill Daley will be fought more along personal rather than ideological lines,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
“Quinn already has signaled a willingness to portray Daley, the son and brother of former Chicago mayors, as a candidate of wealth and entitlement. And Daley, already accusing Quinn of failing to govern, is ready to link the governor’s leadership style to his imprisoned predecessor, Rod Blagojevich. All this with more than eight months before the March 18 primary day.”
Politico: “With the House sliced and diced into districts that leave most incumbents insulated from any serious reelection challenge — and a host of prized Senate recruits from both parties deciding they’d rather just stay home — control of Congress could be decided next year by the fewest number of states and congressional districts in a decade or more.”
“The parties out of power are in a critical window over the next several months to expand the map or risk ceding seats that should be within reach. They’re confident they’ll pull it off: Check back in the new year and the landscape will look a lot different, they say.”
“We should not be judged on how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal. We’ve got more laws than the administration could ever enforce.”
— Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in an interview on Face the Nation.
Jonathan Chait: “The Republican Party has spent 30 years careering ever more deeply into ideological extremism, but one of the novel developments of the Obama years is its embrace of procedural extremism. The Republican fringe has evolved from being politically shrewd proponents of radical policy changes to a gang of saboteurs who would rather stop government from functioning at all. In this sense, their historical precedents are not so much the Gingrich revolutionaries, or even their tea-party selves of a few years ago; the movement is more like the radical left of the sixties, had it occupied a position of power in Congress. And so the terms we traditionally use to scold bad Congresses–partisanship, obstruction, gridlock–don’t come close to describing this situation. The hard right’s extremism has bent back upon itself, leaving an inscrutable void of paranoia and formless rage and twisting the Republican Party into a band of anarchists.”
“And the worst is not behind us.”
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia opened a speech with a reference to the Holocaust, which he said happened to occur in a society that was, at the time, “the most advanced country in the world,” the Aspen Times reports.
“One of the many mistakes that Germany made in the 1930s was that judges began to interpret the law in ways that reflected ‘the spirit of the age.; When judges accept this sort of moral authority, as Scalia claims they’re doing now in the U.S., they get themselves and society into trouble.”
“I’m not focused on the politics. I’ve been in the office all but seven months. The last office I was elected to was student council. So this has been a bit of a whirlwind.”
— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), in an interview with ABC News, dismissing speculation that he’ll run for president.
Amazon is now streaming House of Cards.
“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure it never happens.”
— Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in a CBS News interview, vowing to thwart the implementation of Obamacare.
“After months of assailing each other’s integrity from afar and by proxy,” Ken Cuccinelli (R) and Terry McAuliffe (D) “traded direct attacks on stage Saturday in the opening debate of their heated race for Virginia governor,” the Washington Post reports.
“In a 90-minute face-off, the candidates cast their arguments in sharply personal terms, accusing each other of bullying, influence peddling and ‘flimflammery.'”
The Richmond Times Dispatch says the two “disagreed on just about every issue, including abortion, gay marriage, taxes, transportation and health care. The 90-minute debate was marked by rhetorical incursions launched by both men on what they perceived to be their opponent’s greatest weakness, all centered on a theme that the other guy cannot be trusted.”
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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