“I don’t claim to be the perfect candidate. I just claim to be a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney.”
— Newt Gingrich, on the radio in South Carolina.
Romney Once Proposed Amnesty Too
Bloomberg reports that Mitt Romney, who claimed Newt Gingrich proposed “amnesty” for certain illegal immigrants, “took a nearly identical position in a 2006 Bloomberg interview, saying some foreigners who entered the U.S. illegally should be allowed to remain and gain legal status.”
Romney “told reporters and editors in Bloomberg News’s Washington bureau that the 11 million immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally ‘are not going to be rounded up and box-carred out.’ Law-abiding people who pay taxes, learn English and don’t rely on government benefits should be allowed to ‘get in line’ to apply for citizenship, he said.”
Said Romney: “We need to begin a process of registering those people, some being returned, and some beginning the process of applying for citizenship and establishing legal status.”
An Endorsement That Keeps Giving
While the yesterday’s endorsement of Newt Gingrich by the New Hampshire Union Leader made no mention of Mitt Romney and allowed that Gingrich was not perfect, publisher Joe McQuaid told Politico that they “would reprise their tradition of near-daily editorials that reiterate full-throated support for their favored candidate and equally robust opposition toward his challengers.”
Said McQuaid: “I think we will be sticking with our traditional approach.”
Anti-Romney Effort in Iowa Stalls
“An apparent effort to craft a unified Republican caucus endorsement among several of Iowa’s social-conservative advocacy groups and evangelical pastors began last Monday, but its prospects already appear uncertain,” the Des Moines Register reports.
“A follow-up meeting initially scheduled for today has been postponed, with no indication of when it will be rescheduled, according to a meeting participant.”
Which Senate Election Records Will Be Broken in 2012?
The Hotline:
“Senate Democrats are clearly more exposed than Republicans this cycle,
but it’s easy to forget how historic some of these GOP pick-ups would
have to be. For instance, Republicans haven’t controlled both Nebraska
Senate seats since 1976, nor both in North Dakota since 1960, nor both
in Wisconsin since Joe McCarthydied in 1957. On the other hand, no
Democratic senator has been successfully re-elected in Missouri since
1980 or Pennsylvania since 1962. How many of these records will be
broken next year?”
Arizona’s Controversial Sheriff to Endorse Perry
NBC News has confirmed that Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, will endorse Rick Perry this week.
The Arizona sheriff is known as a vehement backer of tough immigration laws and was a vocal supporter of his own state’s controversial enforcement laws.
Will Newspaper Endorsement Boost Gingrich?
Nate Silver looks at Newt Gingrich’s endorsement by the New Hampshire Union Leader and notes that past candidates endorsed by the newspaper finished with an 11-percentage-point improvement from what they averaged in the polls when the endorsement was made.
“If you do take the results of the regression analysis to be tantamount
to a prediction, they imply that New Hampshire could be quite close,
with Mr. Romney finishing with 36 percent of the vote and Mr. Gingrich
at 30 percent. What I think is fair to say is that Mr. Gingrich would at
least have a shot at winning New Hampshire if he also wins Iowa, a
result that could be devastating to Mr. Romney’s campaign.”
Best Political Books of the Year
The Financial Times picks the best political books of the year:
Cables from Kabul by Sherard Cowper-Coles.
A Contest for Supremacy by Aaron L Friedberg.
That Used To be Us, by Thomas L Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum.
George F Kennan: An American Life, by John Lewis Gaddis.
DarkMarket: CyberThieves, CyberCops and You, by Misha Glenny.
The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe, by David Marquand.
Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia, by Thant Myint-U.
Can Intervention Work?, by Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus.
The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev, by Daniel Triesman.
Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, by Ezra F Vogel.
The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World, by Daniel Yergin.
New Perry Ad Features Super PAC Footage
Ben Smith: “The last shred of regulation preventing unlimited money from flowing into presidential campaigns is the requirement that campaigns not ‘coordinate’ their communications with Super PACs and the other independent groups pouring money into that race. Rick Perry’s campaign for president appears to be testing the limits of that regulation: In its Thanksgiving video, the campaign uses two clips from an slickly produced advertisement aired on Perry’s behalf by Make Us Great Again, a SuperPAC run by a longtime Perry associate, Mike Toomey.”
Gingrich Endorsed by Key New Hampshire Newspaper
The New Hampshire Union Leader endorses Newt Gingrich in the New Hampshire primary.
“America is at a crucial crossroads. It is not going to be enough to
merely replace Barack Obama next year. We are in critical need of the
innovative, forward-looking strategy and positive leadership that
Gingrich has shown he is capable of providing.”
“We sympathize with the many people we have heard from, both here and across the country, who remain unsure of their choice this close to the primary. It is understandable. Our nation is in peril, yet much of the attention has been focused on fluff, silliness and each candidate’s minor miscues. Truth be known, many in the liberal media are belittling the Republican candidates because they don’t want any of them to be taken as a serious challenger to their man, Obama.”
Will the Euro Collapse?
The Economist: “Even as the euro zone hurtles towards a crash, most people are
assuming that, in the end, European leaders will do whatever it takes to
save the single currency. That is because the consequences of the
euro’s destruction are so catastrophic that no sensible policymaker
could stand by and let it happen.”
A euro break-up would cause a global bust worse even than the one in 2008-09. The world’s most financially integrated region would be ripped apart by defaults, bank failures and the imposition of capital controls… The euro zone could shatter into different pieces, or a large block in the north and a fragmented south. Amid the recriminations and broken treaties after the failure of the European Union’s biggest economic project, wild currency swings between those in the core and those in the periphery would almost certainly bring the single market to a shuddering halt.”
“Yet the threat of a disaster does not always stop it from happening. The chances of the euro zone being smashed apart have risen alarmingly, thanks to financial panic, a rapidly weakening economic outlook and pigheaded brinkmanship. The odds of a safe landing are dwindling fast.”
Time to Embrace Simpson-Bowles
Tom Friedman says President Obama should admit “that he made a mistake in spurning his own deficit reduction commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, and is now adopting Simpson-Bowles — which already has Republican and Democratic support — as his long-term fiscal plan to be phased in after a near-term stimulus. If he did that, he would win politically and create a national consensus that would trump his opponents, right and left.”
“My gut says that if the president lays out such a plan — one that begins
with him taking all the political risks on himself and then demanding
the G.O.P. and his own party follow — he will be both defining himself
and the future in a way that would earn him so much centrist support and
respect that it would leave every possible Republican opponent in the
dust, no matter how obstructionist they are or want to be.”
Who Will Go Negative on Romney First?
Alex Castellanos: “Month after month, dollar after dollar, debate after debate, we’ve seen we’ve Mitt Romney at his best, yet failing to pull away from the field. Romney is still leaving the door open to those who have fallen to the ‘B’ tier. He is giving all his opponents the opportunity to get back into this contest. If Romney doesn’t energize his campaign soon, somebody might actually try to win this race besides him.”
“That might not be hard to do. His competitors are about 10 minutes away from figuring out it is in all their interest to go negative on Romney and drag him down to their level. If they test Romney and fail, nothing is lost. In fact, they’ll strengthen Romney and probably make him President. But if any candidate effectively cuts Romney, others will see blood in the water. The sharks will circle…”
“Somewhere Barack Obama is smiling. If they bring Mitt Romney down, it’s jump ball for the GOP.”
Johnson Threatens Third Party Bid
Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson — “left out of all but two of the seemingly endless Republican presidential debates” — tells the Santa Fe New Mexican that he’s seriously considering running for the Libertarian Party nomination for president.
Said Johnson: “I feel abandoned by the Republican Party. The Republican Party has left me by the wayside. If I’d have been included in 16 of the last debates we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
Gonzalez Will Not Run Again
Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-TX) said he won’t seek re-election, the San Antonio Express-News reports, “a decision that will end the congressional tenure of a Democratic family whose name has been synonymous with the city of San Antonio for more than half a century.”
“Gonzalez, who sued the state over a redistricting plan that carved downtown out of his central San Antonio congressional district, said it was not reapportionment, but the need to provide financial stability for his family that’s forcing him to seek a new career.”
Said Gonzalez: “I still find the job hugely rewarding, but the demands pull me somewhere else. I’ve been in Congress for 14 years and I want to do something else — what that is, I really don’t know. But financially, I would like to be productive and have the resources to make a better life.”
Notable Political Books of the Year
The New York Times lists its 100 notable books of the year and includes these five:
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard — “A deranged man shot James Garfield, but it was his incompetent doctors who killed him.”
George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis — “Gaddis has written a magisterial biography of the man who both invented the cold war policy of containment and was one of its most perspicacious critics.”
The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama — “What countries are capable of ‘getting to Denmark’? Fukuyama’s answer emphasizes the role of contingency.”
The Quest by Daniel Yergin — “This comprehensive study makes clear that energy policy is not on the right course anywhere.”
Why the West Rules — for Now — “A Stanford historian argues that we face an immediate choice — East-West cooperation or catastrophe.”
Different in Iowa This Time
Pollster Ann Selzer tells The Atlantic that GOP presidential candidates are approaching the Iowa caucuses very differently this campaign cycle.
Said Selzer: “What’s different is — and maybe this will change in the next month — [in past cycles] you had this feeling of candidates here, kind of a pulse of their supporters, lots of public events. You felt things happening. I haven’t felt that at all [this year]. You look at the number of candidate days here, it’s really small. The way that they’re campaigning is very different. We have all of these debates that have been very high-profile. It’s a different campaign.”
Third Party Effort Gains Steam
A bipartisan group known as Americans Elect “has raised $22 million and is likely to place a third presidential candidate on the ballot in every state next year,” the Washington Post reports.
“The goal is to provide an alternative to President Obama and the GOP nominee and break the tradition of a Democrat-vs.-Republican lineup.”
“The effort could represent a promising new chapter for political moderates, who see a wide-open middle in the political landscape as congressional gridlock and bitter partisan fights have driven down favorability ratings for both parties… The group is relying on an ambitious plan to hold a political convention
on the Internet that would treat registered voters like fans of ‘American Idol’, giving everyone a shot at picking a favorite candidate.”
