“It weakens the entire Republican Party, the Republican majority. It’s the continuing dumbing-down of the Republican Party and we are going to be seen more and more as a bunch of extremists that can’t even get a majority of our own people to support policies that we’re putting forward.”
— Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH), quoted by Roll Call, on the failure of House Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” to avoid the fiscal cliff.
Now that House Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” for addressing the fiscal cliff “has crashed and burned, the top U.S. Republican appears to have two remaining options — wash his hands of the entire matter or negotiate a compromise with Democrats that could abandon scores of his fellow Republicans,” Reuters reports.
“The Republican rank and file and Democrats may face an equally stark choice: work together for a change, or plunge together off the cliff.”
Washington Post: “Following the latest breakdown in negotiations, Democrats said Boehner
should return to the bargaining table with Obama — or just let House
Democrats and 25 or so Republicans vote for a Senate-approved plan to
extend tax cuts for the middle class. But Republicans said the well has
been so poisoned that restarting bipartisan talks would be more
difficult than ever.”
Wonk Wire: Low expectations for a fiscal cliff deal.
House Republicans “scuttled a vote on a backup plan they had pushed as a way to partially avert steep tax increases and spending cuts next year, sending lawmakers home for Christmas as Washington lurched toward the fiscal cliff,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The sudden turn of events left efforts to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff in disarray with no clear path forward.”
Politico: “After a full day of heavy arm-twisting, House Republican leaders were unable to cobble together enough support from 217 of their 241 members for Boehner’s (R-OH) ‘Plan B’ proposal, even after Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) assured its passage. Democrats vowed not to support the measure.”
New York Times: “The decision was a major setback for the speaker, who was pushing his
so-called Plan B to prevent lower tax rates from expiring on most
Americans. It came after the House had narrowly approved a plan to
suspend planned Pentagon cuts.”
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Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) is launching a political comeback that may begin within days, CNN reports.
Sanford is planning to run for the Congressional seat he held almost a decade ago which is being vacated by Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC), who was just appointed to a U.S. Senate seat.
A new Gallup poll shows President Obama’s approval rating at 56%, his highest mark on that question since October 2009, with just 37% disapproving of his job performance.
“The timing of the increase in Obama’s ratings could reflect a broad-based public reaction to the Newtown shootings, similar to the ‘rally around the flag’ effect often seen at the start of wars and other threats to national security, in which Americans rally behind their leader. It could also reflect the impact of the president’s specific actions after the tragedy, including his attendance and speech at a Newtown prayer service Sunday night, and his appointment on Wednesday of a national task force to recommend steps that can be taken to reduce gun violence in the future.”
Great reading if you’re traveling over the holidays: The End of the Line: The 34 Days That Decided the Election by Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin.
A new Pew Research survey finds the public’s attitudes toward gun control have shown only modest change in the wake of last week’s deadly shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Currently, 49% say it is more important to control gun ownership, while 42% say it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns.
Opinion was evenly divided in July, following a shooting at a Colorado movie theater. At that time, 47% said it was more important to control gun ownership, while 46% said it was more important to protect gun rights.
The Sunlight Foundation notes that 51% of the members of the new Congress that convenes next month have received funding from the National Rifle Association’s political action committee at some point in their political careers. And 47% received money from the NRA in the most recent race in which they ran.
Bloomberg: NRA protections racket in Congress.
Arizona Republican Party chairman Tom Morrissey insists he’s not a “birther” but still says he does not believe the President Obama’s birth certificate is authentic, the Phoenix New Times reports.
Said Morrissey: “In my opinion, what I have seen from the president, produced as a birth certificate, does not convince me that it is a real document.”
Former New York Gov. Eilot Spitzer (D) talked to Fishbowl DC about his gig as host of a Current TV show.
Said Spitzer: “Nobody’s watching, but I’m having a great time. I don’t mean to be facetious, but I am really enjoying myself. It’s like having a cocktail party with friends every night.”
He added: “Somebody needs to buy the network.”
A new study in the American Political Science Review suggests the average voter doesn’t have the ability “to make an accurate judgement of the performance of their politicians, showing that voter biases appear to be deep-seated and broad.”
The researchers found that voters “are susceptible to these biases even when given financial incentives to behave otherwise and when the information necessary to avoid these biases was readily available.”
As a result, the findings suggest “that incumbents who associate themselves with good news for which they bear no responsibility, implement policies that generate good news close to elections at the expense of overall voter welfare, and use rhetoric that encourages people to focus on how they feel in the here and now, ignoring the long-term, could benefit at the ballot box.”
Bloomberg: “In the Obama-Boehner relationship, there’s been a golf summit (they played as a team), a birthday gift of Tuscan red wine (Obama’s to Boehner), congratulatory post-election telephone calls (Boehner to Obama) and sporadic one-on-one meetings at the White House.”
“Still, at a personal level, where trust resides, they remain largely strangers. The two men who hold the keys to delivering a deficit-reduction compromise to avert more than $600 billion in tax and spending increases in January are more familiar with each other as partisan foils than policy-making partners, according to people close to both who declined to be named because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about the interactions between the two leaders.”
Newt Gingrich told the Huffington Post that Mitt Romney was a bad presidential candidate and he blamed the Republican party “for fostering a corrosive culture that produced Romney as its candidate.”
Said Gingrich: “I think either Rick Perry or I would have probably done better.”
He said the Obama campaign was “begging for Romney,” growing more and more confident of their chances against the former Massachusetts governor as the Republican primary progressed.
But he said Romney “was mainly the byproduct of a consultant-dominated GOP culture whose risk-averse mindset shielded candidates and stunted their ability to respond dynamically to different points of view.”
“We are exactly where our first president George Washington warned us not to go, where members of Congress would put the interest of their party or political faction, as Washington described it, higher than the interest of our country.”
— Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), in an interview with ABC News.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) will not challenge New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (D) in next year’s gubernatorial race and will instead run for U.S. Senate in 2014, NBC 4 New York reports.
Two sources tell BuzzFeed the Obama administration “convinced him to run for Senate” instead of governor.
Wall Street Journal: “The U.S. economy expanded at an even faster pace than previously estimated in the third quarter, but the gains could be an outlier for the year as fiscal cliff worries and superstorm Sandy will likely slow growth in the final months of 2012.”
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) said schools should consider arming “someone” in their building to defend students against a gunman, the Columbus Dispatch reports.
Stressing that it is a decision to be made by local school districts, DeWine said that “if I was on a school board … I would seriously consider having someone in that school, who may be an ex-police officer, someone who has significant training, someone who had access to a gun in school.”
A new WBUR poll in Massachusetts finds defeated Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) is in a strong position should there be a special election to fill Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) seat next year with a favorability rate of 58% to 28%.
Said pollster Steve Koczela: “We matched him up theoretically against (U.S. Reps.) Ed Markey, Mike Capuano, Steve Lynch and (former U.S. Rep.) Marty Meehan, and in each one of those cases, he led by between 17 and 19 points.”
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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