A new Quinnipiac poll in Virginia finds a close race for governor with Terry McAuliffe (D) just edging Ken Cuccinelli (R), 40% to 39%.
With Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling running as an independent, the race stays tight with McAuliffe and Cuccinelli tied at 34% and Bolling at 13%.
A PPP poll yesterday found McAuliffe with a solid lead.
“Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress confidently predicted that the re-election of the president would break the partisan ‘fever’ they claimed had enveloped Washington and the Republican Party,” NBC News reports.
“But the weeks since the election have found Republicans as dogged as ever in their resistance to Obama, whose initiatives – including gun control, immigration reform and efforts to boost renewable energy – still face an uncertain path forward, particularly in an unruly House of Representatives still controlled by a Republican majority. And Republicans are signaling a willingness to go to great lengths to bend coming battles in their favor.”
Politico: “After four-plus years of embittered partisan combat, he views his GOP
bargaining partners with more than a little contempt, and he momentarily
vanquished enemies who just can’t say ‘yes’ to him.”
“Unfortunately when the Republican party needs to be a big tent party it seems to me we are doing everything we can to become a pup tent party.”
— Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R), quoted by WTVR-TV.
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A new Public Policy Polling survey in Virginia finds Terry McAuliffe (D) leading Ken Cuccinelli (R) in the gubernatorial race, 46% to 41%.
If Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling is thrown into the mix as an independent he gets 15%, with McAuliffe’s lead expanding over Cuccinelli to 40% to 32%.
Out next week: King: A Filmed Record… From Montgomery to Memphis.
A new Fairleigh Dickinson poll in New Jersey finds Gov. Chris Christie (R) absolutely crushing three potential Democratic challengers.
Christie leads Steven Sweeney (R), 65% to 19%, beats Dick Codey (D), 59% to 26%, and tops Barbara Buono (D), 64% to 21%.
“His jobs package is a hurricane. I guess he prayed a lot and got lucky that a storm came.”
— New Jersey Senate president Stephen Sweeney (D), quoted by the Newark Star Ledger, on Gov. Chris Christie (R) and Hurricane Sandy before saying, “I shouldn’t say that. I apologize for saying that.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that Congress only has a 9% favorability rating with 85% of voters viewing it unfavorably.
Key finding: That’s less popular than cockroaches, traffic jams, root canals and even Nickelback.
The Republican Main Street Partnership, a group that has promoted moderate GOP lawmakers and policies, will remove the word “Republican” from its name, Yahoo News reports.
The organization’s board of directors voted to scrap party identification from its title and be known simply as “The Main Street Partnership.”
“1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms! It doesn’t matter how many lemmings (mindless followers) you
get out on the street begging for them to have their guns taken! We will
not relinquish them! Do you understand?”
— Radio host Alex Jones, in an unreal interview with Piers Morgan.
Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) announced that he will not seek a 2014 rematch with incumbent Gov. John Kasich (R), the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.
“Strickland, who lost a close re-election bid to Kasich in 2010, had been weighing another run for months, hinting strongly at last summer’s Democratic National Convention that he was interested. His statement did not indicate why he decided not to run again, and his spokesman did not immediately return telephone calls.”
The federal government “may default on its debt as soon as Feb. 15, half a month earlier than widely expected, according to a new analysis adding urgency to the debate over how to raise the federal debt ceiling,” the Washington Post reports.
“The government hit the $16.4 trillion statutory debt limit on Dec. 31
, but the Treasury Department is able to undertake a number of
accounting schemes to delay when the government runs into funding
problems.”
Paul Waldman: “If it is going to happen, history tells us we should be on the lookout starting about a year from now, since Year Six of a two-term presidency has been a fruitful time for scandal. Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky came to light in January 1998, at the start of Clinton’s sixth year in office. Iran-Contra was revealed in November 1986, in the sixth year of Reagan’s presidency. The Watergate break-in occurred in 1972 while Richard Nixon was running for re-election, but the revelations played out slowly enough that he didn’t resign until his sixth year in office, in August 1974.”
A new Rasmussen survey finds views of the Tea Party movement are at their lowest point ever, with just 8% saying they are members of the Tea Party, down from a high of 24% in April 2010 just after passage of the national health care law.
A senior White House official acknowledged to BuzzFeed that Congress’ “limited bandwidth” will be a challenge for President Obama’s second term agenda “in the short term in the aftermath of the deal — something that is especially damaging to efforts on gun control as emotions grow cooler each day after the shooting.”
Meanwhile, The Hill notes Vice President Biden will hold meetings this week with the National Rifle Association and other gun groups.
Charlie Cook: “For many years, I have been fixated on independent voters as the political equivalent of the holy grail. But now I believe voters who describe themselves as moderates are certainly just as important–and perhaps more important–than those who call themselves independents.”
Key point: “Mitt Romney won the independent vote 50 to 45 percent, yet lost the election by almost 4 percentage points. For many avid election-watchers, if all that we knew was that Romney would carry the independent vote by 5 points, many of us would have bet on Obama losing the election.”
Actor Charlie Sheen called out Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa “claiming he was flat-out lying when he said he spent only 3 minutes with the actor in Cabo,” TMZ reports.
Instead, he says the Mayor “hung with him for hours, chatting it up and drinking with a bunch of hot chicks.”
First Read on the death of Richard Ben Cramer:
“We believe there’s just one book every aspiring political journalist and operative ought to read if they want to know whether or not they are serious about this profession: it is What It Takes. It’s basically the unofficial textbook of Washington. If you haven’t read it, then you don’t get it.”
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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