National Journal:
“Back in 2004, it was a given that a presidential candidate couldn’t
win the Democratic nomination — let alone the general election — while
supporting gay marriage. Less than decade later, Democrats understand
they have no chance at winning without supporting gay marriage.”
South Carolina Street Fight
John Avlon: “South Carolina politics is a full-contact spectator sport, and the 18-candidate special election on Tuesday is shaping up to be a scrum for the ages, with low blows and high expectations. This is an old-fashioned street fight in a state where the Tea Party, evangelicals, and the New South all intersect.”
Poll close at 7 pm ET and First Read notes “only about 30,000 voters are expected to participate in the special primary.”
How Republicans Kept the House With Less Votes
Bloomberg has an excellent series on the GOP’s lock on the House of Representatives.
“One big reason the Republicans have this edge: their district boundaries are drawn so carefully that the only votes that often matter come from fellow Republicans.”
“The 2010 elections, in which Republicans won the House majority and gained more than 700 state legislative seats across the nation, gave the party the upper-hand in the process of
redistricting, the once-a-decade redrawing of congressional seats. The
advantage helped them design safer partisan districts and maintain their
House majority in 2012 — even as they lost the presidential race by
about 5 million votes.”
Limbaugh Says GOP Doesn’t Need Changes
Rush Limbaugh dismissed the new RNC autopsy report that encouraged the party to modernize and argued instead that the party is not conservative enough, the Huffington Post reports.
Said Limbaugh: “The Republicans are just getting totally bamboozled right now. And they are entirely lacking in confidence. Which is what happens to every political party after an election in which they think they got shellacked.”
Paul Backs Immigration Reform
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “is endorsing a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants, a significant move for a favorite of tea party Republicans who are sometimes hostile to such an approach,” the AP reports.
In a speech to be delivered later this morning, the potential 2016 presidential candidate will say, “If you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you.”
DesJarlais Is No Pariah Despite Scandal
Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) “has been in political trouble since news reports revealed he pressured a former patient of his to get an abortion after they had an affair, details that emerged during divorce proceedings. Later, after he won reelection, reports showed he and his wife had agreed to have two abortions before their divorce,” National Journal reports.
“But unlike some other scandal-wracked politicians like Anthony Weiner, Eric Massa, or Eliot Spitzer, DesJarlais hasn’t become an outcast at all. Republican leaders haven’t punished him. He still holds positions on the Agriculture and, yes, the Oversight and Government Reform committees. Even more glaring: He’s getting fundraising assistance on Tuesday from six influential colleagues, including three committee chairmen (GOP Reps. Darrell Issa of California, John Kline of Minnesota, and Frank Lucas of Oklahoma) and two potential Senate candidates (Kline and Rep. Tom Price of Georgia).”
Americans Have Few Connections to Iraq War
A new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that just 12% of Americans said that they or someone they know was wounded in the Iraq war and only 6% said they know someone who was killed in the Iraq War.
While 52% of Americans said they at least know someone who served in combat in Iraq, 44% reported no personal connection at all to those who did the fighting and dying there.
Quote of the Day
“References were made to people who were too old and moss-covered and that we need now and fresh individuals and ideas and thoughts, and I agree with … every bit of those recommendations and comments.”
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quoted by Huffington Post, responding to Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) criticism of the Republican party.
The GOP’s Risky Fight Over Perez
“Senate Republicans have a thorny dilemma regarding President Barack Obama’s nomination of Thomas Perez as Labor secretary, especially now that the GOP apparatus has begun to redouble its efforts to reach out to minorities,” Roll Call reports.
“If Republicans block Perez, they risk undercutting the Republican National Committee’s brand-new diversity push and getting mired in fights over voting rights and immigration. But if they allow his nomination to go through, they risk blowback from their base.”
Bachmann Seeks Redemption at Home
After winning her re-election race by a single point, Roll Call reports Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) “now shuns the national spotlight for Saturday morning coffees in St. Cloud.”
“Fourteen months after dropping out of the White House race, Bachmann is attempting to recast her national profile into a local one. After a humbling year, the former state senator appears to be fortifying the roots that helped launch her quick ascent into the national consciousness and ultimately made her a contender for the GOP’s presidential nomination.”
Series of Car Bombs Kill 50 in Iraq
“A dozen car bombs and suicide blasts tore into Shi’ite districts in Baghdad and south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein,” Reuters reports.
Washington Post: “Haunted by the ghosts of its brutal past, Iraq is teetering between
progress and chaos, a country threatened by local and regional conflicts
that could drag it back into the sustained bloodshed its citizens know
so well.”
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Bonus Quote of the Day
“We’ve got a socialist in office right now — how’s that working for us?”
— Republican National Committeeman Henry Barbour (R), quoted by The Hill, while talking about the Republican Party’s need to improve its brand.
Colbert Steps Out of Character
Comedian Stephen Colbert is dropping his right-wing pundit act to help his sister’s congressional campaign in South Carolina, telling CNN he’s happy to make an exception for her.
Said Colbert: “She’s my sister, and I’m willing to, you know, break the jewel of my own creation to try to do something for her. I’m not worried what it would do to me or my show to try to help her as myself, not as my character, and to help her as myself.”
Officials Knew Iraq Had No Weapons of Mass Destruction
British and U.S. intelligence agencies “were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries,” according to the Guardian.
Quote of the Day
“I won, and he didn’t. We didn’t have to go through the hype and hoopla of press conferences. We just went out and did the heavy work of rebuilding the party coming off of massive losses in 2006 and 2008. So Reince is just being silly. And I understand that.”
— Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, quoted by the Washington Post, in an “increasingly ugly war of words” with current RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.
Support for Same-Sex Marriage Hits New High
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds support for gay marriage is now 58%, a new high, “marking a dramatic change in public attitudes on the subject across the past decade.”
“That number has grown sharply… from a low of 32 percent in a 2004 survey of registered voters, advancing to a narrow majority for the first time only two years ago, and now up again to a significant majority for the first time.”
Women Were Paid to Say They Had Sex with Menendez
Police in the Dominican Republic say they have determined that three women who said they had sex with Sen. Robert Menendez (R-NJ) for money were in fact paid to make false claims by an attorney in the Caribbean country, the AP reports.
