White House press secretary Jay Carney said that a report claiming that a replica Oval Office was being readied ahead of planned renovations in the West Wing were “false,” The Hill reports.
Said Carney: “Reports about a replica Oval Office are false, and no one is moving from the West Wing.”
The Cloakroom: 5 Republicans who should be scared of Karl Rove.
Marc Ambinder: “Politics without dirty deals is not politics. It’s something else.
It’s not something we’ve seen here; there are no historical antecedents
for it. Purely deliberative reasoning, shorn of self-interest, is an
academic exercise. Let it by all means by an aspirational ideal. Call
out cynicism where you see it, but don’t lump all cynicism and
opportunism together. Be wary of judging what is with what you think must be. If humanism on a grand scale is your goal, you aren’t going to get there without getting mud on your jersey.”
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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Harry Enten: “I’m not a big one for Schadenfreude but I confess to feeling a little frisson on hearing the news that Dick Morris was not getting his contract renewed by Fox News. It’s not that I wish Morris ill tidings; it’s that I want pundits to be held accountable for their incorrect forecasts… Morris’ [2012] performance earned him the title of ‘Worst Pundit of 2012’ by Pundit Tracker. That’s an impressive achievement considering all the competition. In mathematical terms, Morris was wrong 80% in his prognostications: if you had placed a dollar bet on each Morris prediction in a prediction market, you would have lost 70% of your money.”
Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield (R) told TMZ that teaching people how to protect themselves from HIV was an attempt to push the gay agenda “down everybody’s throats.”
Said Campfield: “You know, you could say the same thing about kids who are shooting heroin. We need to show them the best ways to shoot up. No, we don’t. Why do we have to hypersexualize little children? Why can’t we just let little kids be little kids for a while? Why do we have to have little kids be…?”
Daily Beast: “Don’t say gay” is back.
“It’s not a serious story, guys. It’s not a burp. It’s barely a fart.”
— California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), quoted by the Sacramento Bee, on Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) radio ad trying to lure California business to his state.
First Read asked top officials from the Obama and Romney campaigns about the “Oh, crap” moments of the 2012 presidential campaign.
“Eric Fehrnstrom of the Romney campaign answered Gingrich winning South Carolina; Beth Myers of the Romney camp said it was Romney’s three-state loss to Santorum (on Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri); Romney strategist Stuart Stevens said it was the close primary race in Michigan; Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said it was their worry that Romney might wrap up the nomination after the New Hampshire primary.”
Roll Call: “This time, the scale may be smaller but the game is the same — in the
president’s eyes, either congressional Republicans agree to more new tax
revenue or they will bear responsibility for the economic damage and
hundreds of thousands of lost jobs from the sequester taking effect.”
However, First Read notes the White House “is prepared to see Congress work the old-fashioned way:
The Senate passes a budget (with White House input), the House passes a
budget (maybe all of this done before the August recess at the latest),
and then the House and Senate actually negotiate a budget to send to the
president for his signature. So no more Boehner-Obama talks, no more
Biden-McConnell discussions.”
The latest National Journal Political insiders poll finds that 57% of Democrats chose “policy prescriptions” as the area in which Republicans need the most improvement, while Republicans were far more divided, picking messaging as the top problem at 33%.
President Obama will nominate the head of the outdoor retail chain REI to head up the Interior Department, NBC News reports.
“The choice of CEO Sally Jewell is unconventional one, as the post has been filled in the past by politicians from the West. For example, the last five secretaries have been governors of Idaho and Arizona, a senator and attorney general from Colorado, and a congressman from New Mexico.”
CNN reports there “are now at least five Republican senators who
would oppose a filibuster of former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be secretary of
defense, all but ensuring the embattled nominee will be confirmed in the
coming days.”
Daniel Larison: “We won’t know what the final confirmation vote tally will be, but by
my count there are at least 20 Republicans that will definitely vote
against Hagel and there are only two definite Republican yeas. Even if
all of the remaining Republicans voted to confirm, that would still mean
that nearly half of the Senators from Hagel’s own party are voting the
other way. It isn’t surprising when the president’s opposition votes in
large numbers against a nominee from the president’s party, but in this
case Republicans are going out of their way to repudiate one of their
own mostly because he is not enough of a jingoist and saber-rattler.
Hagel will almost certainly be confirmed, but along the way Senate
Republicans are confirming everyone else’s worst fears about their
foreign policy views.”
Former House members “are spending their leftover money to pay for everything from luxury cars to foundations that bear their names,” USA Today reports. “The practice is legal but raises questions among government watchdogs about whether these accounts are used as political slush funds.”
“Federal rules bar former lawmakers from using leftover campaign money for their personal use, but a review of new reports show their contributors’ dollars pay for a wide range of expenses. Of the 82 House members who were defeated or resigned from the last Congress, more than one in four had more than $100,000 remaining in their campaign accounts at the end of 2012.”
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) “is preparing to defend his Florida governorship with the most expensive reelection campaign in state history, drawing up plans for a battleship-sized political operation aimed at overcoming the Republican’s deep personal unpopularity,” Politico reports.
“The anticipated price tag, according to sources familiar with Scott’s plans: $100 million.”
“After years in which the Republicans’ answer to almost every question was to reduce spending and lower taxes, some of the party’s most influential voices are beginning to suggest that it is time to take a broader — and softer — focus,” the Washington Post reports.
“The latest to join that movement is House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who in a speech on Tuesday called for Republicans to ‘focus our attention really on what lies beyond the fiscal debates’ and to create ‘conditions for health, happiness and prosperity.'”
A new Gallup poll finds “at least two-thirds of Americans favor each of five specific measures designed to address immigration issues — ranging from 68% who would vote for increased government spending on security measures and enforcement at U.S. borders, to 85% who would vote for a requirement that employers verify the immigration status of all new hires. More than seven in 10 would vote for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants now living in this country.”
Meanwhile, a new ABC News-Washington Post poll finds public approval of President Obama’s handling of immigration has jumped
to a career high “buttressed
by majority support for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants
and, much more broadly, endorsement of stricter border control.”
“I say to all the late night guys, all of them have their shots with me, as long as they’re funny I don’t mind… If you’re going to be thin skinned about that stuff in this job then you’re not going to last long.”
— New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), in an interview on Extra, about fat jokes.
Sen. Robert Menendez’s (D-NJ) “decision last month to use his personal funds to reimburse a prominent political contributor $58,500 for two flights to the Dominican Republic came at a major cost,” National Journal reports.
“The repayment amounts to between 32 percent and 87 percent of the assets Menendez reported holding in bank accounts and stock, according to his latest financial disclosure form, which was filed last year.”
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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