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“Republicans have shifted their strategy on Obamacare,” The Hill reports.
“Weeks ago, many Republicans said Obamacare — including Speaker John Boehner (OH) — was too broken to fix. But now, the GOP is drafting legislation that aims to do just that.”
“The GOP wants to rebuild its political capital and public credibility by solving Obamacare’s implementation problems. This pivot comes after Republicans took major hits in polls following the government shutdown.”
“Business leaders are plotting to take down Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) as part of a broader effort to punish lawmakers over the government shutdown,” The Hill reports.
Prominent Michigan donors are requesting financial backing for Amash’s primary challenger, Brian Ellis (R), arguing that Amash “and others have effectively nullified the Republican majority in the U.S. House.”
Former Rep. Bob Dold (R-IL) “wants to get back to Congress — to take on his own party,” The Hill reports.
“Dold is attempting a comeback against former Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), who he lost to by less than 2,500 votes in a heavily Democratic suburban Chicago district last fall. The self-described moderate hoping to win his rematch by painting himself as the more bipartisan of the two — and the one more willing to take on members of his conference.”
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“President Obama likes to say he will never again be running for office, but every Democrat knows he will be
on the ballot figuratively in 2014, and 2016, as well. Right now they are rightly nervous about that prospect,” Dan Balz reports.
“A president famous for his unflappability, he is now struggling to square assurances that he is on top of the problems confronting his administration with assertions that he was unaware of the problems as they were developing.”
“After several days of optimistic reports that negotiations with Iran were on track to produce the first agreement in a decade to freeze its nuclear program, the talks hit a snag on Saturday with a French objection that the proposed deal did not do enough to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions,” the New York Times reports.
“Even as American diplomats made a final push for an agreement late Saturday, the marathon talks laid bare the challenge of drafting a deal that would satisfy both the Iranians and a group of major powers with their own interests and agendas.”
Marc Ambinder: “The ideal Republican strategy is not terribly convoluted. Find and nominate the most acceptable conservative. Find the swing states where demographic composition of the electorate has been volatile and where there is room among those demographic groups to grow the GOP’s share. Put the two together.”
“I would add: If I were Machiavellian, I would urge Republicans to do everything they can to suppress the Democratic vote. I am not Machiavellian, and plenty of Republicans are already doing this.”
President Obama’s anger, “described by a White House that has repeatedly sought to show that the president was unaware of the extent of the website’s problems, has lit a fire under the West Wing staff,” the New York Times reports.
“Senior aides are racing to make sure the website is fixed by the end of the month as they confront the political fallout from presidential promises, now broken, that all Americans who liked their existing health care plans could keep them… Inside the White House, there is anxiety that if the health care problems are not righted, they could imperil the rest of Mr. Obama’s presidency, especially as criticism grows that the president misled consumers about the plan.”
Michael Tomasky: “The Obamacare website situation is bad–but it’s not a make-or-break moment for this presidency. It’s just another round of the media’s trumped-up crises.”
Dan Amira: “For religious conservatives, howling over the so-called ‘war on Christmas’ has become an annual holiday tradition almost as enjoyable as Christmas itself. On Tuesday, Sarah Palin seeks to capitalize on the phenomenon with the release of her newest book, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas.”
“The book is part tribute to the joys of Christmas, part how-to guide for oppressed Christians looking for ways to fight back against whiny and litigious secularists, and part manifesto on the general superiority of Christianity over atheism. Palin, throughout, appears incapable of fathoming why a business catering to people from all walks of life may prefer to use inclusive holiday-season language in promotional items, or why a non-Christian may not appreciate a government institution expressing a preference for Christianity over other religions.”
Hawaii’s state House, “turning back furious — if futile — pleas for delay, voted late Friday to grant marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples,” the Honolulu Star Advertiser reports.
“The 30-19 vote sends the bill to the state Senate, which is inclined to agree to the House version Tuesday and transmit the bill to Gov. Neil Abercrombie for his signature.”
New York Times: “Hawaii is poised to be among 16 states to approve gay marriage, along with Illinois and shortly after Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island. But the step in Hawaii has special resonance because the contemporary battle over same-sex marriage was born here two decades ago.”
The Virginia attorney general race “remained a nail-biter heading into the weekend, as a rapt band of election officials and observers pored over updates to Election Day numbers,” Politico reports.
“Local authorities have until Nov. 12 to correct, complete and turn in their tallies to the state in the contest between state Sens. Mark Obenshain (R) and Mark Herring (D), which was too close to call on Tuesday as Democrats won the other two statewide offices on the ballot.”
Richmond Times Dispatch: “Uncounted absentee and provisional votes could tip attorney general race”
“The signs are mounting. Scott Brown travels almost weekly to New Hampshire. Last month he formed a political action committee there to raise funds; this week he attacked the state’s Democratic senator on his favorite target: national health care,” the Boston Globe reports.
“Now national Republicans are pushing the former Massachusetts senator to declare his candidacy for the US Senate from New Hampshire. And they insist, despite mixed signals from Brown, that he is seriously weighing such a run.”
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In the mail: The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) traveled with President Obama to New Orleans on Air Force One but she didn’t attend his speech about boosting exports, the New Orleans Times Picayune reports.
Landrieu in up for re-election next year.
Roll Call has obtained an internal GOP playbook “on how to best score political points against Obamacare, the White House and Democrats in general.”
The memo is a manual for House Republicans on how to highlight the recent issues with the health care law and how to best “communicate in your district about the disastrous Obamacare rollout.”
Michael Kinsley has a very funny review of Double Down: Game Change 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.
“There is actually no vomit in the scene the authors describe as ‘vomitous’ It’s just their way of writing vividly. They’re not snobs. They actually have a weakness for colorful vernacular, with a special fondness for a particular bodily function. And it’s not the usual one. The many references to excrement — people serving it to one another on a bun, people burying one another in it and so on — are . . . are . . . help me, I need a word here. Well, they’re vomitous. This may be the first political book ever with more excrement than sex.”
“The court is currently comprised of four active judges appointed by Republican presidents and four active judges appointed by Democrat presidents. There is no reason to upset the current makeup of the court, particularly when the reason for doing so appears to be ideologically driven.”
— Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), quoted by the Washington Post, defending a filibuster of any nominees to the court.
A new Pew Research survey finds President Obama’s overall job rating stands at 41%, down 14 points since last December while 53% now disapprove of the way he is handling his job as president.
The latest Gallup tracking poll finds Obama’s approval rate at 43% to 50%.
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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