“If Romney wants to diminish Santorum the way Clinton did Brown, he’s going to have to beat him in Pennsylvania,” said Paul Begala, the Democratic strategist who was a top Clinton aide in 1992.”
— Paul Begala, quoted by Politico, looking ahead to the next GOP primary contests.
It’s not available online for non-subscribers, but the New Yorker runs a sneak peek excerpt from Robert Caro’s much-anticipated Passage to Power, the fourth in his spectacular series on Lyndon Johnson.
The book is out on May 1.
Walter Shapiro: “Despite Newt Gingrich’s best efforts, it looks like the world is going to have to save itself. A humiliating third-place finish in Saturday’s Louisiana primary should have extinguished the last embers of Gingrich’s wildfire dream of a second-ballot victory at the GOP Convention. Any Newtonian fantasy about stopping Mitt Romney in Tampa requires the former House speaker to continue to accumulate convention delegates. But Gingrich — after winning a combined 9 percent of the vote in Louisiana and the prior Illinois primary — is now in the goose-egg phase of his descent into irrelevance.”
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In an explosive resignation letter, a disabled veteran and aide to Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA) told the lawmaker that she’d “rather be at war in Afghanistan” than continue working for the congresswoman and accused a senior staff member of engaging in improper political activity on government time, Politico reports.
Brenda Cruz wrote that Richardson and the senior staffer “mistreated her during and after her pregnancy, forcing Cruz to conclude she had to leave the office for her own health and that of her child. More important to a sprawling House Ethics Committee investigation into Richardson, Cruz alleges the congresswoman used her staff for political purposes.”
Jim Romenesko reports 25 news employees of Gannett newspapers in Wisconsin signed petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R).
Green Bay Press-Gazette: “A number of the journalists told their editors they did not consider signing the petition a political act. They equated it to casting a ballot in an election. But we do not make that distinction.”
Rick Santorum is out with an eerie new ad attacking President Obama: “Imagine a small, American town two years from now if Obama is reelected.”
It’s the first of an eight part series from the Santorum campaign.
“Well, now, it’s becoming a big f-ing mess for the Democratic Party and the country as a whole.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), in a CNN interview, alluding to Vice President Joe Biden’s famous comment when President Obama signed his landmark health care law two years ago.
Here are the next contests in the Republican presidential primary race:
April 3: District of Columbia, Maryland and Wisconsin
April 24: Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island
The New York Times interviews Sandra Lee, girlfriend of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D):
Q. Chester Arthur was the last president to serve a full term as a single man. People without spouses don’t get elected president anymore. When are you two getting married?
A. That’s a loaded question. Andrew is focused on being governor. He’s not running for president. We’re happy in the relationship the way it is. Still, I can tell you that Andrew’s kids want us to get married. It’s very sweet.
“You know, this Republican primary at some points has been more of a
circus show and a clown show.”
— White House adviser David Plouffe, in a CNN interview.
A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll in California finds Mitt Romney leads Rick Santorum in the GOP presidential race, 42% to 23%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 12% and Ron Paul at 10%.
Key finding: There remains a palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Republican field. Half of GOP voters said they wished other candidates were running for president.
The California primary is on June 5.
The AP reports Rick Santorum “is the winner of the Louisiana Republican presidential primary, defeating GOP front-runner Mitt Romney in yet another conservative Southern state.”
“The Louisiana victory was unlikely to change the overall dynamics of the race. Santorum still dramatically lags Romney — the former Massachusetts governor — in the hunt for delegate to the GOP’s summertime nominating convention. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia was far behind in the Louisiana vote count.”
Politico: “While all of the candidates made stops here this week — including Newt
Gingrich, who stayed in Louisiana for a week — none stuck around to see
the votes get counted.”
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is recovering at Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, VA after undergoing heart transplant surgery today, NPR reports.
Associated Press: “Cheney suffered a heart attack in 2010, his fifth since the age of 37. He had bypass surgery in 1988, as well as two subsequent angioplasties to clear narrowed coronary arteries. In 2001, he had a special pacemaker implanted in his chest.”
The New York Times has a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a fundraising network “whose goal is to legalize same-sex marriage from coast to coast.”
“This emerging group of donors is not quite like any other fund-raising network that has supported gay-related issues over the past 40 years. They come from Hollywood, yes, but also from Wall Street and Washington and the corporate world; there are Republicans as well as Democrats; and perhaps most strikingly, longtime gay organizers said, there has been an influx of contributions from straight donors unlike anything they have seen before.”
“And don’t ever forget, Barack Obama is a great uniter of Republicans.”
— Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), in an interview on Bloomberg TV.
The Washington Post runs a must-read piece from David Maraniss, author of First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton and the forthcoming Barack Obama: The Story, on the similarities between the two presidents.
“They were born on August days 15 years apart, at opposite ends of the baby-boom generation, Bill Clinton in 1946 and Barack Obama in 1961. Both came into the world under circumstances that made it surpassingly unlikely either boy would grow up to be president of the United States. It is hard to imagine two places further from the centers of power than southwestern Arkansas or Hawaii. Neither state had produced a president before. But there was so much more working against them than geography.”
“William Jefferson Blythe III and Barack Hussein Obama II were the namesakes of fathers they did not know. Billy’s dad, a traveling salesman from Texas, was killed in a car crash before his son was born. Barry’s old man, a traveling student from western Kenya, also died in a car crash. His son was 21 then but had never lived with his father. Both boys’ mothers created myths about their fathers to ease the pain; in truth, the sons were almost certainly better off without them.”
Louisiana Republicans head to the polls today to make their choice for Republican presidential nominee. Nearly every public opinion survey shows Rick Santorum holding a solid lead over Mitt Romney.
Polls close at 9 pm ET.
A memo says former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D), who was head of brokerage MF Global as it failed and lost $1.6 billion in client money, gave “direct instructions” to transfer $200 million in customer funds to meet an overdraft in one of the firm’s bank accounts, Bloomberg reports.
“The money transferred came from a segregated customer account… Corzine testified that he never intended a misuse of customer funds at MF Global, and that he doesn’t know where client funds went.”
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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