Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that he was ordered to never acknowledge the existence of the drone program, the Washington Examiner reports.
Said Gibbs: “One of the first things they told me was, you are not even to acknowledge the drone program, you are not even to discuss that it exists.”
Ryan Lizza has a must-read profile of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA):
“In the next few years, a new field of Republican Presidential candidates will emerge to sort out some of these issues. Until then, House Republicans, who have moved sharply to the right since January, 2011, are the face of their party. They will also determine the destiny of President Obama’s second term, which features an ambitious agenda including taxes, immigration, and gun control. The Speaker of the House, John Boehner, has often shown a willingness to compromise, but for more than two years he has been stymied by a small and unruly group of right-wingers, led by his deputy, Eric Cantor.”
“Cantor is the House Majority Leader, which means that he is responsible for the mundane business of managing the schedule, the House floor, and committees, where legislation is generally written. He has used his position to transform himself into the Party’s chief political strategist. Cantor is frequently talked about as a future Speaker; he could even be a future President, some of his aides say. Since the election, as Republicans have confronted Obama in a series of budgetary battles–another will unfold this week–few have tried as hard as Cantor to reposition and redefine the defeated party.”
Treasury secretary nominee Jack Lew’s original employment contract at Citigroup included a bonus guarantee if he left the bank for a “high level position with the United States government or regulatory body,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Roll Call reports Lew’s nomination is up for a vote in the Senate Finance Committee this week.
The BBC caught scam call center workers on hidden cameras as they laughed at the people they were tricking.
The BBC caught scam call center workers on hidden cameras as they laughed at the people they were tricking. One worker bragged about making $250k from victims. The disturbing truth? Scammers don’t pick phone numbers at random. They buy your data from brokers.
Once your data is out there, it’s not just calls. It’s phishing, impersonation, and identity theft. That’s why I recommend Incogni: They delete your info from the web, monitor and follow up automatically, and continue to erase data as new risks appear. Try Incogni here and get 55% off your subscription with code POLITICALWIRE.
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“The Republicans’ message on the sequester couldn’t be clearer: They don’t have a unified one,” Politico reports.
“There seem to be three distinct camps: Most congressional Republicans appear willing to let the sequester happen since they can’t replace it in time. Others want the cuts to be even deeper. And still others wish that House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama would just get in the same room and negotiate a deal, even if it includes the tax hikes that most Republicans abhor.”
First Read: “So here’s the GOP’s muddled message: First, these cuts could cost jobs
and money; second, the Obama administration is trying to scare the
American people about these cuts; and third, these cuts could cost jobs
and money. What’s happening here: Congressional GOPers are split.”
Roll Call: “The seemingly inevitable sequester cuts that will slash $85 billion from the federal budget on Friday reflect not only Washington’s political paralysis but a bitter lobbying failure for K Street interests across the board.”
“A steady drumbeat of press briefings and messaging events is reaching a crescendo as the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments Wednesday in a case that questions whether a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is still needed,” Roll Call reports.
New York Times: “All sides seem to agree that the Voting Rights Act did a lot to make
elections fairer. But is there evidence today that the law is still
needed?”
“The University of Texas will change its colors to maroon and white before Texas goes purple, much less blue.”
— Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), quoted by the Wall Street Journal, dismissing predictions that Texas could become a swing state soon.
“Already looking past the current budget impasse gripping the capital, congressional leaders are quietly considering a deal to avert a government shutdown next month–but at the cost of prolonging across-the-board spending cuts,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Senior aides to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have begun discussing a bill being prepared by House Republicans to fund government operations through September. Republicans want the bill to extend operating funds at the lower levels set to kick in Friday and to give more flexibility to the Pentagon to manage its cuts.”
“The current funding bill expires March 27, and without an extension or replacement, a partial government shutdown would ensue.”
Irin Carmon: “I have no idea if Ashley Judd would win if she runs against Mitch McConnell, a prospect looking likelier by the day. I would bet, however, that a lot of Republican men are going to make themselves look like misogynist bullies in the process. For Democrats, a Judd candidacy might be a win-win — if not in Kentucky, then on the national stage.”
Politico: “Among the Democratic governors who descended on Washington this weekend for the National Governors Association winter meeting, the only difference of opinion when it came to Secretary Clinton was whether she would clear the 2016 field entirely or merely loom colossus-like over the race until, and upon entering, the campaign.”
Romney strategist Stuart Stevens: “In the Democratic dark days after the 2004 election, few realized that the Democratic Party was only one candidate and one presidential election away from a revival that now is touted as dominance. So it can be with Republicans.”
“For 2016, the Democrats seem headed toward a fight between Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Both launched their careers in the 1970s; what will their slogan be, “Another Century of Service”?”
“On our side, we have Paul Ryan, Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Susana Martinez and more. Who has the best opportunity to win that generational battle?”
“Topless protesters targeted Italy’s former premier Silvio Berlusconi as he went to vote in the country’s election,” the Daily Mail reports.
“But the demonstrators, who had ‘Basta Berlusconi’, meaning ‘Enough of Berlusconi’, written on their bodies, were grabbed by police officers and dragged away before they could reach him.”
Speaker John Boehner’s “decision to wait on the Senate before taking up a sequester replacement bill may be more tied to his own difficulties getting the votes for one than to a calculated political messaging strategy,” Roll Call reports.
Marc Ambinder: Three reasons Obama isn’t leading on the sequester.
Washinton Post: “In the long partisan conflict over government spending, the sequester is where the rubber meets the road. Obama is betting Americans will be outraged by the abrupt and substantial cuts to a wide range of government services, from law enforcement to food safety to public schools. And he is hoping they will rise up to demand what he calls a ‘balanced approach’ to deficit reduction that replaces some cuts with higher taxes.”
“But if voters react with a shrug, congressional Republicans will have won a major victory in their campaign to shrink the size of government. Instead of cancelling the sequester, the GOP will likely push for more.”
Los Angeles Times: “Because the effects will unspool over time, this latest budget showdown may last longer than those of the past.”
A bipartisan group of senators is “on the verge of a deal that would expand background checks to all private firearms sales with limited exemptions, but significant disagreements remain on the issue of keeping records of private gun sales, according to aides familiar with the talks,” the Washington Post reports.
“Governors of both parties said on Saturday that they knew federal budget cuts were coming, and they pleaded with President Obama and Congress to give them more discretion over the use of federal money so they could minimize the pain for their citizens,” the New York Times reports.
“The governors, arriving here for the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, said that the automatic across-the-board cuts in federal spending that are scheduled to begin at the end of the week, were creating havoc, threatening jobs and sapping economic growth in their states.”
“Contrary to the overwhelming weight of legal opinion and even the counsel of some of her own advisors,” Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) “has refused to publicly rule out a run for reelection in 2014, despite Arizona’s voter-passed term-limits law,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“As the next in line, then-Secretary of State Brewer became governor when Democrat Janet Napolitano left office in January 2009 to join Obama’s Cabinet. Brewer won reelection in 2010 and suggests she might be eligible to run again because her first term was less than four years.”
“For all the obvious reasons, I thought politics was forever over for me.”
— Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), quoted by the Washington Post, on his attempted comeback.
President Obama’s political team “is fanning out across the country in pursuit of an ambitious goal: raising $50 million to convert his re-election campaign into a powerhouse national advocacy network, a sum that would rank the new group as one of Washington’s biggest lobbying operations,” the New York Times reports.
“But the rebooted campaign, known as Organizing for Action, has plunged the president and his aides into a campaign finance limbo with few clear rules, ample potential for influence-peddling, and no real precedent in national politics.”
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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