After an article suggested he’s gearing up for a political comeback, former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) declined to comment when asked directly about his immediate political ambitions, the New York Times reports.
“He wants to return to politics, according to friends and former staff members… His refusal to address his political future only stirred further speculation.”
“People are not worried about the details as to when Mitt Romney left Bain Capital to save the Olympics or the details about his assets, which are managed by a blind trust for Pete’s sake.”
— Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), in an interview on Face the Nation.
President Obama told WAVY-TV that his re-election campaign will not apologize to Mitt Romney for saying he outsorced jobs while CEO of Bain Capital.
Said Obama: “No. We will not apologize. Mr Romney claims he’s Mr. fix-it for the economy because of his business experience, so I think voters entirely legitimately want to know what is exactly his business experience.”
“And as the head of a private equity firm his job was to maximize profits and help investors. There is nothing wrong with that. On the other hand that company also was investing in companies that were called by the Washington Post ‘the pioneers of out sourcing.’ Mr. Romney is now claiming he wasn’t there at the time except his filings with the SEC listing says he was the CEO, Chairman, and President of the company. As President of the United States, I’ve learned and we just talked about it, anything that happens on my watch is my responsibility. Harry Truman said ‘the buck stops with me’ and I think understandably people are going to be interested in are you in fact responsible for this company you say is one of your primary calling cards for your wanting to be President.”
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“I give him his own advice: stop whining.”
— Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), in an interview on ABC News, on Mitt Romney demanding an apology for the attacks on his tenure at Bain Capital.
Conservative columnist George Will slammed Mitt Romney on ABC News for failing to fully release information on his tax returns and offshore accounts, saying Romney “must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”
Said Will: “If something’s going to come out, get it out in a hurry. I do not know why, given that Mitt Romney knew the day that McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again that he didn’t get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest. The cost of not releasing the returns are clear. Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”
GOP strategist Matthew Dowd had a similar view: “There’s obviously something there, because if there was nothing there, he would say, ‘Have at it.’ So there’s obviously something there that compromises what he said in the past about something.”
Meanwhile, William Kristol told Fox News: “He should release the tax returns tomorrow. It’s crazy. You gotta release six, eight, 10 years of back tax returns. Take the hit for a day or two.”
Mitt Romney hasn’t invited Sarah Palin to the Republican convention and the Tea Party is livid, Newsweek reports.
“What galls the Tea Party activists is the sense that Romney represents a lost opportunity for their agenda of less government, flatter taxes, and constitutional restraint. Facing a vulnerable president saddled with a bad economy and a crisis in the public sector, they feel stuck with a guy served up by Republican elites who speaks conservatism with an establishment accent. Worse, in this view, Romney seems incapable, or unwilling, to even defend himself, as the Obama campaign machine highlights his offshore bank accounts and his career at Bain Capital.”
“I think there’s no doubt that I underestimated the degree to which in
this town politics trump problem solving. Washington
feels as broken as it did four years ago.”
— President Obama, in an interview with CBS News.
Romney adviser Ed Gillespie, seeking to explain discrepancies in the timeline when Mitt Romney actually left Bain Capital, said there “may have been a thought at the time that it could be part time, but it was not part time,” The Hill reports.
Said Gillespie: “He took a left of absence and in fact he ended up not going back at all, and retired retroactively to 1999 as a result.”
Former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) — who is sitting on a $4.5 million campaign war chest — “is mulling a bid for citywide office next year and ‘seriously considering’ a mayoral run,” the New York Post reports.
“Weiner, 47, has even spoken to former staffers about going back to work for him… And he wants to run soon because the public match on his campaign funds are due to expire after the 2013 election.”
“The buzz in political circles is that the sext-happy Weiner has a better shot at public advocate — a $165,000-a-year job viewed as a ‘cleansing’ post where he could put his character issues further behind him as he prepped for a 2017 mayoral run.”
The Huffington Post finds yet another document that contradicts Mitt Romney’s continued insistence that he ended his active role with Bain Capital in early 1999.
The corporate document filed with the state of Massachusetts in December 2002 — a month after Romney was elected governor — lists him as one of two managing members of Bain Capital Investors, LLC “authorized to execute, acknowledge, deliver and record any recordable instrument purporting to affect an interest in real property, whether to be recorded with a Registry of Deeds or with a District Office of the Land Court.”
Former President George W. Bush will unveil The 4% Solution: Unleashing the Economic Growth America Needs next week, which the New York Times calls “neither campaign template nor partisan screed. It is a wonky paean to free enterprise.”
“For the first time since leaving office three and a half years ago, Mr. Bush is advancing a variety of ideas about how to jump-start economic growth by restructuring taxes, expanding trade, encouraging innovation, fixing immigration and overhauling Social Security. He wrote the foreword for the book, a collection of essays from an array of economists, including five Nobel Prize winners, and he proposes a national goal of expanding the economy by 4 percent a year on a sustained basis.”
A new Mason-Dixon poll in Florida finds Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) positive name recognition also remains low, with 29% of voters viewing him favorably, 37% unfavorably, 30% neutral and 4% with no opinion.
“There is no whining in politics. Stop demanding an apology, release
your tax returns.”
— GOP strategist John Weaver, quoted by the AP, calling on Mitt Romney to disclose his tax returns.
“If you have things to hide, then maybe you’re doing things wrong. I think you ought to be willing to release everything to the American people.”
— Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R), quoted by the AP, calling on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns.
If you missed Mitt Romney’s network television interview blitz last night, a 60 second video compiles the highlights.
President Obama’s re-election campaign is up with a new ad featuring a soundtrack of Mitt Romney singing.
The ad is running in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
A new Mason-Dixon poll in Florida finds President Obama barely ahead of Mitt Romney in the key battleground state, 46% to 45%.
With Sen. Marco Rubio (R) as Romney’s running mate, the GOP ticket only gets a
slight uptick with Romney ahead by one point, 46% to 45%. However, among Hispanics, a demographic many thought Rubio would help bring
to the Republican ticket, the divide remains evenly split with 44% voting Republican and 43% leaning Democrat.
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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