“The thing I find most disheartening about this campaign is the difficulty of talking about positive ideas on a large scale because the news media can’t cover it and candidly, my opponents can’t comprehend it.”
— Newt Gingrich, quoted by NBC News, adding that “our political system is so methodically and deliberately stupid.”
Washington Post: “It happened more than a quarter century ago, at the start of a Romney family summer vacation. But the tale of Seamus, the Irish setter who got sick while riding 12 hours on the roof of Mitt Romney’s faux-wood-paneled station wagon, is ballooning into a narrative of epic proportions. It has come to characterize the candidate — and not in the favorable way Tagg Romney hoped for when he first talked in 2007 about his family’s annual road trips.”
Ross Douthat: “Either Romney will clear the 1,144 delegate threshold in May or early June, or else he’ll fall 50-100 delegates short and need to play a little inside baseball to win some of the uncommitted delegates. In either scenario, Santorum is not going to be the party’s standard-bearer, and neither is Jeb Bush or Chris Christie or Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee or anyone else besides the man who is actually winning, however slowly and grindingly and unexcitingly, the Republican nomination for president.”
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“The idea that the Republicans have to be organized before Labor Day or they will be out of the race I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of television, the internet, you know YouTube, all the things we now communicate with. A very exciting Republican Party that actually talked about ideas and actually had a fight over the platform based on real ideas, I think might be a more interesting party than one which nominates somebody who’s boring for five months.”
— Newt Gingrich, in ABC News interview on January 13, 2008, advocating a brokered convention.
Coming in May: Chris Christie: The Inside Story of His Rise to Power by Bob Ingle and Michael G. Symons.
Ron Paul “has sent discreet signals to Camp Romney” suggesting he might be willing to trade his support in the GOP presidential race, Alex Altman reports.
“Aides say if Paul can’t win the nomination, four legislative priorities would top the Texas Representative’s wish list: deep spending cuts that lead to a balanced budget; the restoration of civil liberties; a commitment to reclaim the legislative branch’s right to declare war, which it abdicated to the executive branch in recent decades; and reforms that shore up the U.S. monetary system, such an audit of the Federal Reserve or competing-currency legislation.”
Paul might also be enticed “by the prospect of serving as a presidential adviser, a Cabinet position for someone in his orbit or ‘perhaps a vice presidency.’ Not for himself, but rather his son. Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky and a Tea Party icon, is expected to launch his own White House bid in 2016. Being on the ticket now – or even being mentioned for it – would be a helpful step.”
Ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) “has chosen prime time to deliver his final goodbye before heading to prison,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
A spokesman says Blagojevich will begin speaking at precisely 5:02 p.m. from outside his home — which would enable evening news programs to lead with his speech.
BuzzFeed: “Mitt Romney could have assured himself victory months in advance in the now-crucial primary state of Illinois, but instead his Illinois campaign operation chose to allow Rick Santorum’s delegates to remain on the ballot despite a failure to meet signature requirements.”
“The decision produced a quiet storm of outrage among Romney’s allies in the state, who were bewildered by the decision to make a slam-dunk race competitive, and to grant an opening in the desperate scramble to reach the 1,144 delegates required for the Republican nomination.”
The National Enquirer reports that John Edwards has reportedly decided “to have another child with the woman who destroyed his marriage,” according to the Daily Mail.
“Rielle Hunter is reportedly hoping to become pregnant before Edwards’ trial in April, after which he could be sentenced to up to 30 years in jail.”
A new Wilson Perkins Allen survey in Texas shows Rick Santorum leading the Republican presidential race with 35%, followed by Mitt Romney at 27%, Newt Gingrich at 20% and Ron Paul at 8%.
The Texas primary is on May 29, and it is the second-biggest delegate prize behind California.
The New York Times reports that this week “new evidence emerged” that the ad boycott of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show “was costing Premiere Radio Networks — the show’s syndicator — money, though the total amounts are unclear.”
“This month, powered by online organizing tools, liberal activist groups and other critics of Mr. Limbaugh have successfully highlighted the host’s repeated attacks on a Georgetown University law student, Sandra Fluke, and persuaded companies to advertise elsewhere, at least temporarily.”
Bloomberg asked American voters whether Limbaugh should be fired after the uproar over his remarks, and by a 53% to 42% margin, they agreed.
Nonetheless, ABC News says Limbaugh used his show to declare the controversy all-but-over, claiming victory against Democrats and the “Obama media.”
A new Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania shows favorite son Rick Santorum with a big lead over his GOP presidential rivals at 36%, followed by Mitt Romney at 22%, Ron Paul at 12% and Newt Gingrich at 8%.
The Pennsylvania primary isn’t until April 24.
“I am not recommending prostitution to anyone, nor did I say I
engaged with prostitutes. I
took my wife. She was the only non-hooker on board.”
— Montana gubernatorial candidate Neil Livingstone (R), quoted by the AP, explaining one of the “spectacular list of exploits” included in his biography..
First Read: “What is his campaign about? He says he wants to ‘restore America’s greatness,’ but what does that mean? (Go back to the ’50s? The ’60s? The ’80s? The Bush years?) He says he’ll be able to turn around the economy, but what if it’s already slowly improving as the evidence currently suggests? And the campaign makes it clear that Romney is the inevitable nominee, but what happens if that inevitable nominee loses? Team Romney has had a message problem since this campaign began, and when you make your candidacy about electability and process, you’re going to pay a BIG price for losing to candidates. Why does Romney want to be president, an office he’s been running for the past six years? Has he really answered this basic question?”
A new Pew Research survey finds that 59% of American voters say that President Obama is likely to be re-elected if his opponent is Mitt Romney.
If the contest is between Obama and Rick Santorum, 68% anticipate an Obama victory.
The White House organized a conference call with “two senior administration officials” to preview an announcement by President Obama about a a China trade issue but told reporters that no one could be quoted by name.
However, the AP ignored the instructions — reporting the officials were U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and the deputy national security adviser Michael Froman — stating Obama promised his administration would be “the most transparent in American history.”
President Obama took British Prime Minister David Cameron to a NCAA basketball game in Ohio yesterday and is rewarded with the front-page of the Dayton Daily News and this headline: “The heartland is what it’s all about.”
The full quote from a half time interview: “Sometimes when we have foreign visitors, they’re only visiting the
coasts. They go to New York,
they go to Washington, they go to Los Angeles, but the heartland is what
it’s all about.”
“I’m not sure I’m going to listen to a value judgment of a guy who strapped his own dog on the top of a car and went hurling down the highway.”
— Santorum advisor John Brabender, quoted by National Journal, hitting back at Mitt Romney for saying Santorum was “at the desperate end of his campaign.”
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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