Ann Romney told CBS News that she and her husband back Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) in the 2016 presidential race.
Said Romney: “Mitt and I are always very, very partial to Paul Ryan,” while adding that “we don’t even know if he’s going to run.”
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Jeb Bush Doesn’t Agree with His Mother
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said “he’s undecided about running for president but didn’t appear to agree with his mother that enough members of their family have occupied the White House,” the AP reports.
Said Bush: “What can I tell you? All I can say is we all have mothers, right? She is totally liberated, and God bless her.”
Bush said he needs another year before making his decision.
Thune Warns About GOP Infighting
Sen. John Thune (R-SD) told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader that GOP infighting “could hurt Republicans at the ballot box, as well as impeding their legislative agendas once elected.”
Said Thune: “When Republicans end up going to war with Republicans, it often leads to Democrats getting elected.”
Nonetheless, Thune said he’s not going to discourage Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD) from challenging former South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds (R) in the 2014 U.S. Senate race.
Cruz Sees New Generation Leading Conservatives
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told a Republican fundraiser “to remain optimistic about the country’s future because a new generation of leaders — ‘the children of Reagan’ — have taken over to lead the fight for conservatives,” NBC News reports.
Said Cruz: “If you sit back and you list who are the brightest stars in the Republican Party, who are the most effective advocates for free-market principles, you come up with names like Marco Rubio, like Mike Lee, like Rand Paul, like Pat Toomey, like Scott Walker.”
He added: “You have to go back to World War II to see such a transformation of the
people leading the fight, leading the argument for conservative
principles, being an entirely new generation of leaders stepping forward.”
Voters See IRS Probe as Most Important
A new Quinnipiac poll finds that of the three controversies surround the White House — Benghazi, IRS targeting and seizing reporter phone records — 44% of voters see the IRS probe as the most important, with 24% citing Benghazi and 15% picking the AP records seizure.
But voters say 73% to22% that dealing with the economy and unemployment is a higher priority than investigating these three issues.
Quote of the Day
“We’ve got a politics that’s stuck right now. And the reason it’s stuck
is because people spend more time thinking about the next election than
they do thinking about the next generation.”
— President Obama, quoted by Reuters, at a fundraiser for House Democrats.
Brown Continues Solid Approval Ratings in California
A new Public Policy Institute of California poll finds 48% of voters approve of Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) job performance while just 36% disapprove
Georgia Democratic Party Chief Steps Down
Georgia Democratic Party Chairman Mike Barton said that he “would resign amid mounting legal problems and growing pushback from fellow Democrats who feared his leadership could complicate the party’s comeback bid,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
Berlon “had vowed to serve out the remaining two years of his four-year term after a trying month in which he was suspended by the State Bar of Georgia, reprimanded by Georgia’s top court and sued by a former client.”
Kirk’s Proposal Called ‘Elitist White Boy Solution’
Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) was highly critical of a proposal by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) for mass arrests of 18,000 Gangster Disciples, telling the Chicago Sun-Times that Kirk’s approach is “headline grabbing” and an “upper-middle-class, elitist white boy solution to a problem he knows nothing about.”
“One of Kirk’s top priorities is targeting gangs; he has been meeting with law enforcement officials to devise a plan to execute the mass arrests.”
Rob Lowe as JFK
Rob Lowe will play President John F. Kennedy in National Geographic’s telepic Killing Kennedy, Variety reports.
“Based on a book by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, Killing Kennedy centers on the assassination of JFK and will debut later this year, timed with the 50th anniversary of the prez’s death.”
Petraeus Lands at Private Equity Firm
David Petraeus, the former U.S. Army general who resigned last year as Central Intelligence Agency chief, is rebooting his career with KKR & Co., the giant private-equity firm, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Petraeus “instantly becomes one of the most recognizable faces at KKR. A former four-star general who led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Petraeus has traveled the world and knows military, economic and political leaders. Those connections could help KKR land deals in some foreign countries where the firm has less experience and better evaluate the risks and rewards of offbeat investments.”
Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
“I’ve never understood the allure of putting your name on a building that was built with taxpayers’ money.”
— Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), quoted by the Washington Post.
Why Palin Gets So Much Attention
Advertising executive Donny Deutsch to HuffPost Live:
“What I believe fascinated everybody about Sarah Palin, and I just know this as a marketer: she was the first woman in power that a lot of people felt was just physically attractive. And people didn’t know what to do with that. They never saw that before.”
Comey Picked as Next FBI Director
President Obama will tap former Justice Department official James Comey to become the next FBI Director, NPR reports.
“Comey, 52, has an extensive track record at the highest levels of federal law enforcement. He served as the deputy attorney general — the second in command at Justice — in the George W. Bush administration, and as the top federal prosecutor in Southern District of New York, where he filed charges against housewares maven Martha Stewart for lying about stock trades, among other notable cases. As a young prosecutor in Virginia, he pioneered an effort to remove guns from Richmond’s streets.”
New York Looks to Go Back to Old Voting Machines
The New York Times reports that less than three years and $95 million spent to deploy new voting machines in New York City, “election officials say the counting process with the machines is too cumbersome to use them for the mayoral primary this year, and then for the runoff that seems increasingly likely to follow as soon as two weeks later.”
“In a last-ditch effort to avoid an electoral embarrassment, the city is poised to go back in time: it is seeking to redeploy lever machines, a technology first put in place in the 1890s, for use this September at polling places across the five boroughs. The city’s fleet of lever machines was acquired in 1962 and has been preserved in two warehouses in Brooklyn, shielded from dust by plastic covers.”
Bachmann’s Greatest Fibs and Flubs
GOP Lawmaker Slams Party Over Abortion Legislation
Oklahoma State Rep. Doug Cox (R) wrote in the Oklahoman that the Republican party supports abortion laws that don’t work “in the real world.”
“As a practicing physician (who never has or will perform an abortion), I deal with the real world. In the real world, 15- and 16-year-olds get pregnant (sadly, 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds do also). In the real world, 62 percent of women ages 20 to 24 who give birth are unmarried. And in the world I work and live in, an unplanned pregnancy can throw up a real roadblock on a woman’s path to escaping the shackles of poverty.”
“Yet I cannot convince my Republican colleagues that one of the best ways to eliminate abortions is to ensure access to contraception.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“It’s freedom of speech. You folks should understand that better than I. It is the First Amendment, then there is the Second and I love ’em both. The minute we start stifling our speech, we might as well go home, roll up our sleeves and get our guns out.”
— Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), quoted by the Portland Press Herald, on being denied a request to speak to lawmakers.
