Republican strategist Steve Schmidt told Meet the Press that his party is not very friendly to women.
Said Schmidt: “It’s one of the problems we have structurally in the Republican Party… Any company, any organization in today’s day and age that doesn’t give equal opportunity to women, that doesn’t advance women to the table, is going to be an organization that has difficulty competing.”
Ashley Judd (D) has told key advisers that she is planning to announce her candidacy for U.S. Senate against Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Huffington Post reports.
“Judd told one close ally that she plans to announce her run for the Democratic nomination for the 2014 race ‘around Derby’ — meaning in early May when the Kentucky Derby brings national attention to Louisville and the Bluegrass State.”
Man, you guys are crack addicts. You really are obsessed with all this politics… okay, heroin addict. Is that better?”
— Jeb Bush, in a Meet the Press interview, when asked if he’s considering a 2016 presidential bid.
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House Republican can no longer “count on their members to support them on procedural votes,” The Hill reports.
“Sixteen Republicans defected Wednesday in a vote on the rule governing consideration of a government-funding bill meant to prevent a government shutdown. The defections could have caused the rule to fail since most Democrats voted also voted against it.”
“Even more striking? Seven of the Republicans who voted against the rule then voted for the funding bill.”
“Votes on rules are supposed to be party-line and serve as tests of a caucus’s unity. So it was disconcerting for leaders to see so many Republicans vote against the rule they had crafted. Worse, from a leadership perspective, is that some Republicans say they plan on doing it again if they feel leaders are limiting them from offering controversial amendments on the floor.”
John Aravosis reports that voucher schools in Louisiana and Indiana are using a U.S. History textbook in their eighth grade classes that teaches that the “hippies” of the 1960s were draft dodgers who were rude, didn’t bathe, and worshipped Satan.
New York City Council speaker Christine Quinn (D) “declared her candidacy for mayor on Sunday with a glossy biographical video and a walking tour of the city, a signal that her campaign hopes to attract voters with her outsize, off-the-cuff personality — or at least a carefully curated version of it,” the New York Times reports.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) says the Bush family name “will not drag down his political ambitions as he left open the possibility of running for president in 2016,” The Hill reports.
Said Bush: “I don’t think there’s any Bush baggage at all. I love my brother. I’m proud of his accomplishments. I love my dad. I’m proud to be a Bush and if I run for president it’s not because of something in my DNA that compels me to do it.”
He added: “It would be that it’s the right the thing to do for my family, that the conditions are right and that I have something to offer.”
“We need Ted Kennedy. It’s hard for a guy like me to say, but Ted would reach across the aisle and say ‘for the good of the country’ we need to solve this problem. You need some people stepping up like that.”
— Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R), quoted by Yahoo News, on finding a solution to the sequester.
U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who lost out in a bruising bid for the job of secretary of state, “has emerged as far and away the front-runner to succeed Thomas Donilon as President Obama’s national security adviser later this year,” the Washington Post reports.
“The job would place her at the nexus of foreign-policy decision making and allow her to rival the influence of Secretary of State John F. Kerry in shaping the president’s foreign policy.”
“The appointment would mark a dramatic twist of fortune for Rice, whose prospects to become the country’s top diplomat fizzled last year after a round of television appearances in which she provided what turned out to be a flawed account of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.”
Peggy Noonan spoke with two senators who dined with President Obama on Wednesday night. One was “heartened and impressed by the meeting while retaining his skepticism” while the other “was more optimistic and left the meeting moved.”
“Each independently mentioned one aspect of the conversation that troubled them both: The president, while friendly and forthcoming, seemed to withdraw somewhat when talk turned to continuing the process.”
“Both senators said that near the end of the two-hour, 20-minute dinner, a senator or senators pressed the president: This has been a good discussion, it’s promising, but we need a plan, a process, so that whatever momentum comes from this talk isn’t squandered. The Republicans fear that members of the Senate from both parties will not be able to come to serious agreement unless the president is actively involved and puts the prestige of his office behind it.”
“He has such a passion for painting, it’s amazing. He’s going to go down in the history books as a great artist.”
— Artist Bonnie Flood, quoted by Fox 5 Atlanta, on teaching former President George W. Bush how to paint.
“The Illinois Republican Party’s central committee backed off an attempt to fire party chairman Pat Brady on Saturday, amid concern that ousting him because of his support for gay marriage could damage GOP efforts to appeal to more moderate voters,” the AP reports.
“Final preparations were underway Saturday in Michelangelo’s splendid Sistine Chapel for the conclave of prelates who will elect a new pope to head the Roman Catholic Church,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Journalists were given a look inside the famed chapel where the red-hatted cardinals, the ‘princes’ of the church, will begin their secret proceedings Tuesday to try to settle on a new leader from within their ranks.”
“At the back of the frescoed interior sat the pair of stoves that will be the 115 cardinals’ only form of communication with the outside world. Ballots will be burned in one stove and special coloring chemicals in the other, their fumes mixing in a combined duct to create black smoke to signal an inconclusive vote and white puffs to show a new pope has been elected.”
George Will reads Saving Justice: Watergate, the Saturday Night Massacre, and Other Adventures of a Solicitor General by the late Robert Bork and notes it’s “an antidote to today’s tendency to think that things in Washington have never been worse.”
“Watergate now seems as distant as the Punic Wars. Nixon, born 100 years ago in January, is remembered for large diplomatic, as well as criminal, deeds. Agnew is deservedly forgotten. Bork deserves to be remembered by a grateful nation for the services he rendered in preventing disarray in the Justice Department at a moment of unprecedented assault on the rule of law, and for facilitating the removal of a president during Washington days that were darker than most people today can imagine. His book confirms the axiom that our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times.”
Scott Romney, brother of Mitt Romney, is looking at running for retiring Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-MI) seat, Roll Call reports.
“This is the first step that the president has made to really reach out and do like other presidents in the past — develop relationships and build trust. If they continue to do that, that’s how you set up to get something done.”
— Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), quoted by National Journal, on dinner with President Obama earlier this week.
After Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called him a “wacko bird“, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Mike Huckabee, “You know, I think he’s just on the wrong side of history, and on the wrong side of this argument, really.”
He added that he respected McCain’s service and record, but that that experience didn’t mean his colleague was always right: “I treat Sen. McCain with respect. I don’t think I always get the same in return.”
An aide to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) defended the senator’s criticism of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and his filibuster this week, BuzzFeed reports.
Said the aide: “Senator McCain is obviously well aware of the politics of this — he just doesn’t care. He’s doing what he thinks is right. Unlike many of these guys, he’s actually been involved in a few national security debates over the years. He knows that jumping on the Rand Paul black helicopters crazytrain isn’t good for our Party or our country, no matter what Twitter says.”
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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