“Some do it professionally. Some were entertainers. I looked down the debate stage, and half
of them were probably on Fox contracts at one point in their career.
You do that. You write some books. You go out and you sell some more.
You get a radio gig or a TV gig out of it or something. And it’s like,
you say to yourself, the barriers of entry to this game are pretty damn
low.”
— Jon Huntsman, quoted by the Huffington Post, on the “corrosive” Republican primary process.
Real gross domestic product rose at an annual rate of 2.7% in the third quarter, Marketwatch reports, up from an initial estimate of 2%.
It was the fastest pace since the end of last year.
Howard Kurtz notes President Obama will host Mitt Romney for lunch at the White House today — “a gracious move that makes the president appear bipartisan” — and that the failed GOP candidate faces a “stark choice” how he can handle it.
“He can attend the private lunch, slip into a waiting car, and say nothing to the media stakeout on the White House driveway, retreating into the cone of silence that has enveloped him since the night of Nov. 6. Or he can step up to the microphones, sketch out his vision of working with the administration, maybe do a television interview or two.”
“It’s not that Romney needs to do this to salvage his political career; that part of his life is over. It’s that he needs to recast how he is remembered as a 2012 candidate.”
The Week: Three reasons Obama’s lunch with Romney is a good idea.
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Remember those “weirdly over-familiar and widely mocked” e-mails from President Obama’s re-election campaign this year with subject lines such as “Join me for dinner?” or “It’s officially over”?
Josh Green finds they worked, and it was because of testing Obama’s digital team did – testing they refused to discuss during the campaign – to determine which subject lines were the most grabbing, how much they should ask people for, and even how messages should be formatted.
The testing found the best subject lines were the most casual and “Hey” was actually the most effective.
Also interesting was that people didn’t seem to unsubscribe no matter how many emails they were sent. “At the end, we had 18 or 20 writers going at this stuff for as many hours a day as they could stay awake. The data didn’t show any negative consequences to sending more.”
The vote count still isn’t 100 percent final, but Markos Moulitsas notes that President Obama could have lost every state he won by less than 5.4 percentage points — Florida, Ohio, and Virginia — and he still would’ve won the electoral vote 272 to 266.
He also notes Obama hit 48% in every battleground state while Mitt Romney managed it in just two of them.
Despite the bluster from both sides, Politico says the contours of a tax and spending deal are starting to take shape.
“Cut through the fog, and here’s what to expect: Taxes will go up just shy of $1.2 trillion — the middle ground of what President Barack Obama wants and what Republicans say they could stomach. Entitlement programs, mainly Medicare, will be cut by no less than $400 billion – and perhaps a lot more, to get Republicans to swallow those tax hikes. There will be at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and ‘war savings.’ And any final deal will come not by a group effort but in a private deal between two men: Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). The two men had what one insider described as a short, curt conversation Wednesday night — but the private lines of communications remain very much open.”
However Reuters reports Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will meet with Congressional leaders today “amid signs that the market-rattling uncertainty about the outcome could go down to the wire.”
Larry Sabato notes that in 2010 Republicans “probably threw away three seats when they nominated weak candidates in Colorado, Delaware and Nevada. Then, in the just-concluded election, they threw away, at a minimum, two more seats in Indiana and Missouri… So instead of having a tied Senate, or a tiny majority for one side or the other, Republicans are in the unenviable position of needing to levitate out of a deep hole they’ve dug for themselves.”
Despite a favorable Senate map in 2014 — Republicans only have to defend 13 seat while Democrats have to defend 20 — he concludes Republicans “will need a national wave, along the lines of what they had in November 2010… For a net six close races to tip to the GOP in two years, it will take more than good candidates and favorable geography; the atmospherics of 2014 will have to be clearly Republican.”
However, National Memo notes the GOP divide that cost Republicans seats in the last two elections is already emerging in the 2014 Senate race in West Virginia.
“Susan Rice is extraordinary. Couldn’t be prouder of the job that
she’s done.”
— President Obama, quoted by the New York Times, when asked
about his U.N. Ambassador’s frosty reception in Senate meetings this week.
David Frum: “Democrats have some inherent advantages in the impending fiscal
negotiations, but they are mercilessly exploiting one advantage they do
not deserve at all: their claim that they wish only to raise the top
rate of income tax to 1990s levels. That’s true for 2013. But in 2014,
the taxes in Obamacare bite. With those surtaxes, the top rate of tax
will rise beyond the Clinton levels to levels not seen since before the
tax reform of 1986. That’s a point that deserves repetition and
underscoring, again and again.”
Former Sen. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) is being vetted for a possible top national security post in the Obama administration, The Cable reports.
“Hagel was a harsh critic of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, especially his decision to invade and occupy Iraq, which he once called ‘an absolute replay of Vietnam.’ In the years since, he’s remained a strong critic of Republicans in Congress.”
“In just two quick meetings on Capitol Hill, Susan Rice may have blown up any goodwill she had with the very senators she’ll need for confirmation if she’s ever tapped as the next secretary of state,” Politico reports.
“Over the past two days, four key Republican senators have emerged from private meetings to blast the United Nations ambassador’s explanation about what happened during and after the deadly attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. It’s not clear what Rice said behind closed doors to anger all these senators, but it’s clear the meetings went badly and this was hardly a nominee-in-waiting charm offensive.”
Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R), who dropped his gubernatorial race this morning, suggests to the Roanoke Times he might run for the office as an independent.
Said Bolling: “I don’t have any current intention of doing that, but I’m not going to rule anything out at this point. Right now my focus is on working with the governor to get ready for the 2013 session of the General Assembly, and then once we get the session behind us, we’ll take a look at the political landscape and see how things are coming together. You know, I’m always assessing political options.”
GQ says it’s Mitt Romney.
“Was anyone inspired by Mitt Romney? Did anyone vote enthusiastically for Mitt Romney? Of course not. Voting for Romney is like hooking up with the last single person at the bar at 4 a.m. The only successful thing he did this year was embody every black stand-up comedian’s impression of a white person. Thank God the election’s over.”
After losing his seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 2010, Robert Thompson (D) won his seat back in the general election three weeks ago, WMUR reports.
The only problem is on Election Day he was moving into his new home in Florida and now considers himself a resident of Sunrise, FL. He’s now trying to figure out the best and quickest way to resign.
“There was a time not so long ago when the problems of the Democratic
Party revolved around being too liberal and too dependent on minorities.
Obama turned those problems into advantages and rode that strategy to
victory. But he was a charismatic African American president with a
billion dollars, no primary and a media that often felt morally
conflicted about being critical. How easy is that to replicate?”
— Romney strategist Stuart Stevens, writing in the Washington Post.
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tells the Huffington Post that President Obama supports efforts to reform the filibuster process in the U.S. Senate.
Said Pfeiffer: “The President has said many times that the American people are demanding action. They want to see progress, not partisan delay games. That hasn’t changed, and the President supports Senator Reid’s efforts to reform the filibuster process.”
Daily Beast: The coming filibuster war.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other top Republicans “shot down a proposal by a senior GOP lawmaker that the House agree to President Obama’s demand to extend current tax rates for the middle class,” The Hill reports.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), “a respected party strategist and former chairman of the House GOP campaign committee, became the most prominent House Republican to suggest that the GOP do what has long been unthinkable within the party: lock in the George W. Bush-era tax rates for income up to $250,000 without simultaneously extending them for top earners.”
Said Boehner: “We’re not going to grow the economy if we raise tax rates on the top two rates. It’ll hurt small businesses. It’ll hurt our economy. That’s why it’s not the right approach. We’ll willing to put revenue on the table as long as we’re not raising rates.”
President Obama and Mitt Romney will meet for a private lunch at the White House on Thursday, The Hill reports.
It will be the first meeting between the two since the election and will be closed to the press. Romney will also meet with his vice presidential candidate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Thursday.
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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