Gallup will no longer be conducting polls for USA Today, the Washington Post reports.
“It’s not clear at this point which side broke off the arrangement or what the reason was” but USA Today says it “is in the final stages of negotiating an arrangement with another polling organization.”
Stephen Colbert’s sister is going to run for Congress, BuzzFeed reports.
Elizabeth Colbert-Busch will run in the special election for appointed Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) old House seat.
She will file officially on Tuesday, the Washington Post notes.
A federal grand jury charged former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (D) with 21 counts of corruption, bribery, conspiracy, money laundering, wire fraud and filing false tax returns, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.
Nagin’s long-expected indictment arrived more than two and a half years after he left City Hall and relocated to Dallas.
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“Backing down from their hard-line stance, House Republicans said Friday that they would agree to lift the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit for three months, with a requirement that both chambers of Congress pass a budget in that time to clear the way for negotiations on long-term deficit reduction,” the New York Times reports.
But the Washington Post notes the strategy “faces an uncertain future with Democrats, who fear that dragging out the debt ceiling fight into the spring would inject new and harmful uncertainty into the economy.”
Mark Halperin: “Right now, the most important dynamic in the fiscal cliff fight is the advantages the Democrats have: the President is more popular than congressional Republicans; Democrats are more united than Republicans on strategy and tactics; and the President is about to have unmatchable platforms with the inauguration and State of the Union.”
Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) admitted to TPM that the “Hastert Rule” — which says Republicans will only bring legislation to the floor which is supported by a majority of the majority — may be inoperable in the House when it comes to crucial legislation like raising the debt ceiling.
Said Fleming: “I think the Republicans would have a real problem giving the president a clean debt ceiling, even… short term. Maybe some would do it, but I think to get a majority of the majority vote, I think it’s impossible.”
He added: “I think that the majority of the majority Hastert rule comes out of a time when we had a Republican president. When you have a Democrat president that’s a very hard thing to achieve sometimes — and not necessarily important.”
“If you had told me a year and a half ago that the White House would be devoting time writing on how Lord Vader could fix our economic woes, I would have just laughed loudly at you.”
— A White House staffer, quoted by Mother Jones, reacting to the online petitions received by the White House.
Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray (D) told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette that he will not run for governor in 2014, “citing the demands of campaigning, serving in elected office and his desire to spend more time with his wife and two young daughters.”
“Murray’s decision is expected to create a wide-pen field for the Democratic nomination for governor next year.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told the Houston Chronicle that Congress will not allow an impasse over raising the debt ceiling to result in the federal government defaulting on its spending obligations.
Said Cornyn: “We will raise the debt ceiling. We’re not going to default on our debt… I will tell you unequivocally, we’re not going to default.”
“Cornyn’s fellow Republicans, particularly in the House, have been trying to use the issue of the debt ceiling to force President Obama to agree to spending cuts.”
The Week: Why Republicans will raise the debt ceiling.
First Read has more on last night’s news that Obama for America is reorganizing as a tax exempt advocacy group called Organizing for Action.
“Organizing for Action will be set up as a 501c4 group, but we are told the group will have full disclosure of its donors (either monthly or quarterly); setting it up a 501c4 (as opposed to a Super PAC) makes it easier to legally coordinate with the White House. But the Obama folks are conceding a big point here: They can’t do the things they want to do (like the organizing, etc.) inside the Democratic Party. If this version of OFA is successful, we’re also told then don’t be surprised if this becomes Obama’s personal vehicle post-presidency, a la Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative.”
But as I note in The Cloakroom, if he’s not careful, the unprecedented move could end up derailing his agenda as much as advancing it.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), on of only two Native American members of Congress, said that the Washington Redskins should change its team name because it is racially offensive to the minority group, Roll Call reports.
Said Cole: “Come on. This is the 21st century. This is the capital of political correctness on the planet. It is very, very, very offensive. This isn’t like warriors or chiefs. It’s not a term of respect, and it’s needlessly offensive to a large part of our population. They just don’t happen to live around Washington, D.C.”
George Packer: “I hope Obama surprises us. I hope he throws out the kind of boilerplate that made last year’s convention speech one of the weaker ones in Charlotte. I hope that Obama the writer finds some vivid prose for the occasion; that Obama the thinker treats us like his intellectual equals, as he did in Philadelphia and Oslo; and that Obama the man allows himself the risk of deep feeling, as he did in Tucson and Newtown. Most of all, I hope Obama the politician is willing to say things that some people might not want to hear.”
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 49% of Americans hold a negative view of the Republican Party while 26% have a positive view. By comparison, the Democratic Party has a net positive rating, with 44% holding a favorable view of the party and 38% holding an unfavorable one.
First Read: “By the way, most of the recent negative movement for the GOP is among core Republicans. The GOP was already viewed very negatively by Democrats and indies; it couldn’t really get much worse with those two groups. So this latest shift for the GOP is due to the fact that a growing number of core Republicans were not happy with how the party handled the fiscal cliff.”
Susan Davis: “Unproductive and unpopular are two words most often used to describe the previous Congress, but a new description can be used for the new session: inexperienced.”
“Nearly two in five lawmakers in the U.S. House, 39%, have served for less than three years, according to data compiled by the non-partisan Cook Political Report. It’s the least experienced House since at least 1995, when an election wave swept the Republicans into power.”
With Republicans roundly criticized for being tone deaf to concerns of minority voters, John Avlon notes “it might surprise you to hear that Republicans are by far the more diverse party when it comes to statewide elected officials such as senators and governors. On this front, they leave Democrats in the dust. And that’s why the GOP actually has a greater depth of diversity on their potential presidential bench looking to 2016 and beyond.”
Byron York: “The purpose of the House Republican retreat, now going on in Williamsburg, Va., is to help GOP lawmakers come to terms with just how weak they are. Even though the party controls the House, the talk in some quarters at Williamsburg is of adopting a ‘minority mentality’ to oppose President Obama’s initiatives the way Republicans did when they were in an even weaker position in 2009. By doing so, the thinking goes, the GOP might be able to rebuild itself after last November’s devastating losses.”
“The problem is, if Republicans are asked what they can reasonably expect to accomplish in the next six months, after a variety of fights with the president, they don’t have an answer. What would constitute an achievable victory? They don’t really know.”
The Cloakroom: GOP retreat gets off to a rocky start.
“This is about tone. It’s about messaging and it’s about showing people what we’re for instead of what we’re against.”
— Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), quoted by the Washington Post, describing his message to House Republicans at their retreat.
A new New York Times/CBS News poll finds 51% of Americans approve of the way President Obama is doing is job with 41% disapproving.
“Mr. Obama’s job approval rating is similar to that of George W. Bush at the start of his second term, but much lower than the ratings of the previous two presidents who served eight years. (President Bill Clinton’s approval rate was 60 percent in January 1997 and Ronald Reagan’s was 62 percent in January 1985.) More than 8 in 10 Democrats approve of his job performance, 8 in 10 Republicans disapprove and independents are evenly divided.”
President Obama’s re-election campaign apparatus will relaunch this weekend as a tax-exempt group to support his second term legislative priorities, Politico reports.
The new organization will be separate from the DNC and will be headed by campaign manager Jim Messina.
Los Angeles Times: “If it is able to sustain the passion that propelled Obama twice into
the White House, the pro-Obama group may outstrip the role played by
traditional interest groups, from organized labor to the environmental
movement, and could form an independent power base outside the White
House and the Democratic Party.”
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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