“Madam, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”
— Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), at a town hall meeting on health care reform in August 2009.
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Is Karl Rove an Evil Genius?
Walter Shapiro: “There is no doubt, certainly, that Rove is influential. But, as I spent time speaking to insiders from both parties about him, I initially struggled to pin down the exact nature of his resurgent influence. The classic line on Rove has always been that his political instincts are unrivaled by any Republican since the heyday of his mentor, Lee Atwater. Yet, while Crossroads undoubtedly played an important role in the 2010 campaign by flooding the airwaves with ads for Republican Senate candidates, the only thing memorable about these ads was their omnipresence.”
Said GOP strategist Matthew Dowd: “The whole Rove brand as an evil genius is wrong. Karl is neither.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“I wouldn’t lie to the American people. I wouldn’t switch my positions for political reasons.”
— Newt Gingrich, quoted by the New York Times, in a not-so-veiled reference to GOP primary rival Mitt Romney.
Rubio Keeps Eye on 2016
Howard Kurtz says Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) insists he’s not interested in a vice presidential bid in 2012, noting that his party can’t solve its Hispanic problem just by drafting “a person whose name ends in a vowel.”
However, while his aides welcome the veep chatter “because it gives him a larger megaphone,” they want “to preserve his option of running for president in 2016 — which Rubio would forfeit if his ticket beat President Obama this time around.”
Americans Would Pick Obama Over Bush
A new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll finds President Obama would beat former President George W. Bush in a hypothetical election match up, 40% to 31%, with 27% picking neither.
Placing Blame for Supercommittee Failure
With the supercommittee’s inability to agree on a debt reduction package last week, John Avlon crunches the numbers and explains why Republicans deserve the most flak.
Political Ad of the Day
A bizarre web video from Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate Steve Welch (R) explores the possibility that Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and President Obama were “separated at birth.”
The spot’s highlights include a dramatic soundtrack, telegenic host, and fake experts in behavioral science, statistics, and body language.
Clinton Will Play “Major Role” Once Leaving Office
Bill Clinton told Newsmax about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s future career plans.
Said Clinton: “I think she wants — and she has said publicly — to continue a lot of the work that she’s done, she did as a private citizen, as first lady, as senator and as secretary of state. Around the world, she’s done an enormous amount of good in, you now, the so-called soft power areas, empowering women and girls, helping them, giving them access to capital, helping them make a living, promoting better healthcare practices.”
He added: “I think she will have a major role to play in the nongovernmental world. That’s what she plans to do, and I think she’ll do it well.”
Gingrich Holds Lead Nationally
A new Majority Opinion Research poll finds Newt Gingrich leading Mitt Romney, 32% to 23%, followed by Herman Cain at 14%, Ron Paul at 6%, Rick Perry 5%, Michele Bachmann 4%, Jon Huntsman 3%, “someone else” at 4%, and no opinion at 11%.
Frank Will Not Run Again
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) will not run for re-election for a 17th term. He’ll hold a press conference at 1 pm ET to discuss his decision.
A close adviser tells the Boston Globe that “the new district in which Frank would have had to run next year was a major factor in his decision. While it retained his Newton stronghold, it was revised to encompass more conservative towns while Frank also lost New Bedford, a blue-collar city where had invested a lot of time and become a leading figure in the region’s fisheries debate.”
Roll Call: “Some possible candidates for his newly redrawn seat include City Year
co-founder Alan Khazei, who recently dropped his Senate primary bid, and
former Chairwoman of the Brookline Board of Selectman Deborah Goldberg.”
Why the Gingrich Surge is Different
Charles Franklin notes that Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls is quite different than the surges experienced by Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain.
“His recognition levels have remained at the top of the field, along with Romney’s, at 80-90% with only the slightest of upward trends. This means none of the Gingrich favorability trend is due to new-found visibility, as it is for all the rest save Romney and (to a lesser degree) Paul. Rather Gingrich’s trends show that even as a well known figure public affect for him is uniquely variable.”
“While others rose and fell, since his nadir in early July Gingrich has slowly but steadily rebuilt his support among Republican voters. From his low of +10 Gingrich has now risen to just a shade under +40, a whisker ahead of Romney for best net favorability among the field. And for the mercurial Gingrich it is notable that this success was achieved through steady progress rather than a sudden bounce.”
Five Weeks to Go
With just 36 days until the Iowa caucuses, First Read sums up the state of the Republican presidential race:
“1) Mitt Romney remains the overall favorite — with his money, campaign staff, and poll position — but he hasn’t been able to pull away from the field, and he’s a TV ad away from being all-in in Iowa; 2) Newt Gingrich, fresh off from his New Hampshire Union Leader endorsement, has emerged as the latest Romney alternative, but the question is whether he can survive the next 36 days; (none of the OTHER anti-Romneys has lasted longer); 3) Rick Perry’s campaign appears stuck in neutral, though he did receive an endorsement from controversial Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio; 4) Ron Paul keeps on doing his thing, and is enlisting college students to help out his Iowa ground game; 5) Herman Cain is trying to bounce back from his foreign-policy stumbles and those sexual-harassment allegations; and 6) with all the twists and turns that we’ve seen so far, the next five weeks (and beyond) promise to be a wild ride.”
“Bottom line: We don’t know how Romney is denied the nomination, but we also don’t know how he gets there, yet.
Fed Gave Big Banks $13 Billion in Secret Funding
The Federal Reserve and the nation’s largest banks “fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates.”
“A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger. ”
Obama Sets Swing State Travel Record
When President Obama visits Pennsylvania this week to promote his jobs package, “he’ll log his 56th event in a presidential battleground state this year, putting him well ahead of President George W. Bush’s record-breaking swing-state travel in 2003,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mr. Obama’s extensive travels this year have opened the president to criticism from Republicans that he is intertwining campaigning and governing at a time when he has called for bipartisanship on intractable national problems. Most of the cost is typically born by taxpayers.”
It’s another sign the permanent campaign continues.
Mitt vs. Mitt
The DNC released a brutally tough ad further defining Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper. It’s running on cable and broadcast stations in Virginia, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pittsburgh and Wisconsin.
An extended web-only version of the ad is equally brutal.
Quote of the Day
“I don’t claim to be the perfect candidate. I just claim to be a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney.”
— Newt Gingrich, on the radio in South Carolina.
Romney Once Proposed Amnesty Too
Bloomberg reports that Mitt Romney, who claimed Newt Gingrich proposed “amnesty” for certain illegal immigrants, “took a nearly identical position in a 2006 Bloomberg interview, saying some foreigners who entered the U.S. illegally should be allowed to remain and gain legal status.”
Romney “told reporters and editors in Bloomberg News’s Washington bureau that the 11 million immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally ‘are not going to be rounded up and box-carred out.’ Law-abiding people who pay taxes, learn English and don’t rely on government benefits should be allowed to ‘get in line’ to apply for citizenship, he said.”
Said Romney: “We need to begin a process of registering those people, some being returned, and some beginning the process of applying for citizenship and establishing legal status.”
An Endorsement That Keeps Giving
While the yesterday’s endorsement of Newt Gingrich by the New Hampshire Union Leader made no mention of Mitt Romney and allowed that Gingrich was not perfect, publisher Joe McQuaid told Politico that they “would reprise their tradition of near-daily editorials that reiterate full-throated support for their favored candidate and equally robust opposition toward his challengers.”
Said McQuaid: “I think we will be sticking with our traditional approach.”
