Washington Post: “So, what happens if Hillary Clinton doesn’t run in 2016? It is hard to imagine the presidential field without a woman contender, and here’s one to keep your eye on: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Napolitano is quietly making it known that she is considering the race, and there is reason to take her seriously.”

“Still, running for the White House from the cabinet is not an easy thing to do. Not since then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover did it in 1928 has anyone successfully made the leap from the president’s cabinet to the Oval Office.”

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) tells the Wisconsin State Journal that he doesn’t favor switching the way Wisconsin apportions its Electoral College votes.

Said Ryan: “I’ve always kind of liked the idea of being targeted as a state. I’d hate to be a flyover state. I’d like to be in the hunt for being a targeted state. I think it’s good for us.”

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) “raised $13,000 in the last three months of 2012 and has just $233,000 in the bank, a sign that he may be leaning toward retirement at the end of his term,” The Hill reports.

“Levin, the chairman of the powerful Armed Services Committee, has not said publicly whether he’ll run in 2014. His office has said previously he’d make a decision early this year.”

The Boston Herald reports that Tagg Romney “is considering a run in the special Senate election now that Scott Brown has opted out.”

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe says former Gov. William Weld (R) will not run.

Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R) told the Richmond Times Dispatch about a meeting requested by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R), the man who outmaneuvered him for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

“Losing has liberated Bolling, loosening his image and his tongue. The loyal Republican who deferred to others defers no longer. Bolling is especially direct in expressing his distaste for the negative image the GOP projects and the just-say-no issues promoted by its new titular leader: Cuccinelli. This is an uncharacteristic role for Bolling — he is refusing to endorse Cuccinelli and will decide by mid-March on an independent candidacy that could sink Cuccinelli’s — and it is generating attention from an unlikely quarter.”

Said Bolling: “It’s like he’s written off trying to reach mainstream voters.”

Chris Wallace called out National Rifle Association CEO
Wayne LaPierre on Fox News Sunday for saying that President Obama’s children face the same threats to their security as other school children.

Said Wallace: “You really think that the president’s children are the same kind of target as every other school child in America? That’s ridiculous and you know it, sir.”

[Read more…]

Donald Trump ripped into Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) over his suggestion that Republicans needed to “stop being the stupid party,” The Hill reports.

Said Trump: “He was stupid for using that term. Because that term is so obnoxious, and so good for the other side, he should not have used that term. That term is going to be living now for a long time, and they’re going to have his face on television using it.”

The Cloakroom: The 10 dumbest things Republicans have said so far this year.

“Anybody on the Republican side even thinking or talking about running for president in 2016, I’ve said, needs to get their head examined. And the reason I say that is, we’ve lost two presidential elections in a row, we need to be winning the debate of ideas, then we’ll win elections.”

— Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, interviewed on Fox and Friends.