A new Mason-Dixon poll in Florida finds Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) holds a 5-point lead over Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) in the U.S. Senate race, 47% to 42%.
Said pollster Brad Coker: “Anytime there’s an incumbent under 50 percent, that’s a warning sign that people are against you. The healthcare vote could be hurting Nelson.”
“The rigidity of those pledges is something I don’t like. The circumstances change and you can’t be wedded to some formula by Grover Norquist. It’s — who the hell is Grover Norquist, anyway?”
— Former President George H.W. Bush, in an interview in Parade, on Grover Norquist’s “no new tax” pledge.
As part of her defense in a criminal trial, a former aide to Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll (R) said she caught the lieutenant governor in “a compromising position” with a female aide shortly before being fired last year, the Miami Herald reports.
“The charges could prove explosive among social conservatives who form
the backbone of the Republican Party and have long admired Carroll.”
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The NewsHour put together a video of the ads shown in a half hour of television in Virginia.
“Some, as you can see, were on more than once. Some were funded by the presidential campaigns, while others came from outside groups or super PACs. The Senate contest received nearly as much air time as the White House race. All but one of the ads were entirely negative in tone.”
BuzzFeed has the audio of Condoleeza Rice’s “forceful, and surprisingly partisan, 13-minute address” that she gave to a gathering of big-money Republican donors that put her in the middle of veep speculation.
A new Gallup survey finds just 58% of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 29 say they are “definitely likely” to vote, down from 78% who said they were in October 2008.
Steve Kornacki notes that Mitt Romney’s explanation for leaving Bain Capital only makes sense in the context of when he made it: When Romney left to run the Olympics, there was no reason for him to think he would be running for public office any time soon. In fact, he fully expected to return to his old job.
“The point here isn’t that Romney was running Bain Capital and making all of its key decisions from 1999 to 2002. But the story he tells now absolves him of all responsibility for anything and everything Bain did in those years. This would be reasonable if Romney had forged a clear and total break with the company in 1999, but he didn’t. His statement to the ballot law commission 10 years ago was supported by just about all of his actions between 1999 and 2002: Until the final few months of his Olympic tenure, Romney’s break from Bain was supposed to temporary.”
Ezra Klein: “Hating on Congress is a beloved American tradition. Hence Mark Twain’s old joke, ‘Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.’ But the 112th Congress is no ordinary congress. It’s a very bad, no good, terrible Congress. It is, in fact, one of the very worst congresses we have ever had.”
First, it was kings and queens. Now, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) tells CNN that President Obama and other powerful Democrats are regularly phoning him to get help passing their legislation.
Said Brown: “I can name a litany of Democratic-sponsored bills that I’ve done that never would have passed hadn’t it been for me. And the president had called me, and vice president calls me, and Secretary Clinton calls asking for my vote all the time.”
But the Boston Globe reports Brown has spoken by phone with Clinton just twice during his Senate career and he’s spoken to President Obama by phone just once.
The Week looks at how Romney can get back on track.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) attempted to clarify his recent comment comparing the Internal Revenue Service to the Gastapo, the Nazi secret police, but instead reignited the controversy, the Kennebec Journal reports.
Said LePage: “What I am trying to say is the Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and, frankly, I would never want to see that repeated. Maybe the IRS is not quite as bad — yet.”
A reporter asked, “But they’re headed in that direction?”
LePage responded, “They’re headed in that direction.”
The governor was then asked if he thought the IRS was going to kill a lot of people like the Nazis and he responded, “Yeah.”
“I know a lot of people are saying, ‘When is he going to get back to work?’ Why should he get back to work to a Congress that does no work?”
— Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual (D), quoted by the Chicago Sun Times, reacting to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s (D-IL) medical leave from Congress.
Meanwhile, The Week has a guide to Jackson’s mysterious disappearance.
Mitt Romney’s campaign is out with another ad reacting to Obama campaign attacks on his tenure at Bain Capital.
Alex Burns: “The ad sticks with Romney’s strategy of not engaging the attacks against him in too much detail, and trying to make the negativity of Obama’s campaign a liability for the president.”
First Read: “But remember this little rule in politics: If someone is complaining about negative TV ads, that usually means they’re working…”
A Democratic-leaning super PAC unveiled a new website called VeepMistakes.com which features more than 1,300 pages of opposition research and scores of video clips of possible running mates for Mitt Romney, ABC News reports.
“Political prognosticators can only speculate who is on Romney’s short-list, but now we know who the Democrats are preparing to target. The super PAC is shining their spotlight on three of the mostly likely contenders: former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.”
Most interesting: “In addition to the written material, the super PAC, which was formed
primarily as a tracking and research organization, is making public
large amounts of video footage of the three vice presidential hopefuls.
American Bridge trackers have been following Pawlenty since May 2011,
Rubio since this February and Portman since May.”
Ben Smith notes that two weeks ago the Romney campaign was forced to rebut claims of a Washington Post article that Bain Capital was a “pioneer in outsourcing” by claiming Mitt Romney left the firm in February 1999, before much of the activity questioned in the article took place.
“The argument over the Washington Post story ran for a few weeks, with
Romney and his allies making arguments that depended centrally on his
date of departure. Today, the trap — set by Obama and his allies or
happened upon by reporters, or some combination — sprung: A Boston Globe story called into question that premise.”
“Romney now finds himself in a place he’s spent months avoiding:
Offering a complex, technical explanation of his role running a venture
capital firm and of why some documents showed his continued involvement
after he says he left.”
Mitt Romney’s claim that he played no part in decision-making related to Bain Capital after 1999 is false, according to Romney’s own sworn testimony in June 2002, the Huffington Post reports.
Romney’s sworn testimony appears to back up the SEC filings and contradict his personal disclosure forms submitted to Massachusetts officials in 2002, in which he said that he retired from Bain on Feb. 11, 1999.
Politico: “The problem for the Romney campaign, when it comes to the Bain issue, is that things are reaching the point where the facts don’t really matter. The bigger problem is that the Bain cloud now hanging over the former Massachusetts governor is growing daily, and the Romney campaign still hasn’t found a compelling way to respond to what’s becoming the driving narrative, fairly or unfairly, of the 2012 campaign.”
Drudge Report: “Late Thursday evening, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign launched a new fundraising drive, ‘Meet The VP’ — just as Romney himself has narrowed the field of candidates to a handful, sources reveal. And a surprise name is now near the top of the list: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice!”
“The timing of the announcement is now set for ‘coming weeks’.”
Mark Halperin: “Inconceivable”
In a possible sign he’s starting to get worried about the Obama campaign attacks on Bain Capital, Mitt Romney is hitting back hard with a new ad running in seven key swing states: Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, and New Hampshire.
Greg Sargent: “If this ad buy info is accurate — and if the ad is running for a significant amount of time — it may signal that the Romney camp has decided the onslaught against his business background may be working, or threatening to work, and now merits a serious escalation in engagement.”
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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