“It is not accurate to say that a hotly contested convention is
necessarily bad. I am not saying it is necessarily good,
but I don’t think it is accurate to say it is necessarily bad. Let’s
just see.”
— Haley Barbour, in an interview with ABC News.
A new WXYZ/Detroit Free Press poll in Michigan finds Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential primary by three points, 37% to 34%, followed by Ron Paul at 10% and Newt Gingrich at 7%. Another 12% are either undecided or refused to answer.
Said pollster Bernie Porn: “Among GOP voters, Santorum leads Romney by 41%. Among Independent voters, Romney leads Santorum by 30%.”
President Obama’s re-election campaign says they will compete hard in Arizona and a new Public Policy Polling survey suggests they should.
Obama is now tied with Mitt Romney in Arizona at 47%, a dramatic improvement from November when he trailed by 7 points. He leads Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich each by 4 points, 46% to 42% and 48% to 44% respectively. The only Republican he actually runs behind is Rick Santorum, although only by a single point at 47% to 46%.
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“While Republicans promote themselves as the friendliest party for Wall Street, stock investors do better when Democrats occupy the White House,” Bloomberg reports.
In fact, since John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, $1,000 invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the S&P 500 “only when Democrats are in the White House would have been worth $10,920 at the close of trading yesterday. That’s more than nine times the dollar return an investor would have realized from following a similar strategy during Republican administrations.”
“The Democratic edge is so large that the party comes out ahead even without counting Bill Clinton (the Democrat with the biggest S&P 500 gain) and George W. Bush (the Republican with the worst market record). A hypothetical $1,000 investment under Democrats excluding Clinton was worth $3,539 versus $3,296 invested under Republicans except Bush.”
Rick Santorum’s aides tell Byron York it’s unfair that reporters are asking questions about aspects of Santorum’s faith and not asking similar questions about Mitt Romney’s.
“Of course, Santorum has spoken more publicly about the details of his religious beliefs than Romney has, and that is why some of the questions are popping up now… But specifically religious questioning of Romney is as rare as specific Romney statements about Mormon beliefs. Given the current grilling of Santorum, that is a source of growing frustration to Santorum’s advisers.”
Asked one aide: “Why is Mormonism off limits? I’m not saying it’s a seminal issue in the campaign, but we’re having to spend days answering questions about Rick’s faith, which he has been open about.”
A new Rasmussen survey in Oklahoma finds Rick Santorum with a big lead over Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential race with 43%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 22%, Mitt Romney at 18%, and Ron Paul at 7%.
The Oklahoma primary is on March 6.
John Avlon notes that for all the entertainment of the GOP presidential debates “there is a civic cost to the
radioactive rhetoric that gets thrown out to excite the conservative crowds.”
“It’s not just that the most irresponsible candidates can play to the base and get a boost in the polls, while more sober-minded candidates like Jon Huntsman fail to get attention. The real damage is to the process of running for president itself. Because when low blows get rewarded, the incentive to try to emulate Lincoln — holding yourself to a higher standard — is diminished. And one barometer of this atmospheric shift is in the increasingly overheated rhetoric by candidates attacking the current president. This serial disrespect ends up unintentionally diminishing the office of president itself.”
The New York Times notes that Newt Gingrich, “more than any other candidate, has seen his fortunes ebb and flow with debates, and there is a consensus in his team that his big loss in Florida’s Republican presidential primary last month was in no small part because of debates in which he strained to look above the fray. According to one top aide, Mr. Gingrich’s two daughters had advised him to strike a presidential pose, but that was not the Newt Gingrich voters craved.”
A National Journal analysis of January’s campaign-disclosure filings reveals that 25% of all the money raised by Super PACs came from just five donors.
As a Georgia lawmakers weigh a ban on most women getting abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, Democratic lawmakers protested the move by introducing a bill that would drastically limit vasectomies, the Augusta Chronicle reports.
The bill calls for no more vasectomies that leave “thousands of children… deprived of birth.”
Said state Rep. Yasmin Neal (D): “Women’s reproductive rights are always debated. No one ever talks about the male side of the issue. We just want them to know how it feels just this once… It’s about fairness and showing how preposterous the abortion bill is.”
The Hill
provides a behind-the-scenes look at how House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor (R-VA) successfully navigated the STOCK Act, the bill that would
apply insider trading laws to members of Congress, through the House
with bipartisan support.
“Cantor…wanted to study, expand and build
support for an insider-trading bill that would garner support from a
large majority of House GOP legislators. In doing so, the majority
leader read Throw Them All Out, the book by Peter Schweizer that served
as the basis for the ’60 Minutes’ report… As the House deliberated,
the Democrat-led Senate pounced. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) bypassed committee action and quickly passed the chamber’s
version of the STOCK Act. “
“Cantor, who is not shy in mixing it
up with Democrats, refrained from responding to the attacks and worked
to win over skeptical House Republicans. From late December until its
passage in February, Cantor met with scores of members, talked with the
counsels on six of the committees with jurisdiction and briefed the
conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) and the entire House GOP
conference… In an unanticipated twist as the measure neared
consideration on the House floor, Cantor praised Walz and Slaughter in a
press release. He also called Walz for help to pass the insider-trading
bill.”
Mitt Romney enlisted Donald Trump for a robo-call in Michigan which is highly critical of Rick Santorum, ABC News reports.
Says Trump on the call: “This is Donald Trump and I have to tell you that I’m tired of Rick Santorum pretending that he’s some kind of DC outsider.”
He notes Santorum is a “career politician” who has “never had a job in the private sector” and also accuses Santorum of working as a lobbyist.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) told the Texas Tribune that he is leaning toward running for re-election in 2014 and possibly another stab at the White House two years after that.
“There are no term limits in Texas… If he does run, Perry could wind up serving a total of 18 years in
the governor’s office and he would complicate the plans of a host of
other statewide elected officials.”
Noam Scheiber has a memo from the early days of the Obama administration in which chief economist Christy Romer argued that a more substantial economic stimulus was needed. However, top economic adviser Larry Summers thought it politically impractical and made sure the larger recommendation was never shown to the president.
“When Romer showed Summers her $1.7-to-$1.8 trillion figure late the
week before the memo was due, he dismissed it as impractical. So Romer
spent the next day or two coming up with a reasonable compromise: $1.2
trillion. In a revised document that she sent Summers over the weekend,
she included the $1.2 trillion figure, along with two more limited
options: about $600 billion and about $850 billion.
At first, Summers gave her every indication that all three figures
would appear in the memo he was sending the president-elect. But with
less than twenty-four hours before the memo needed to be in Obama’s
hands, Summers informed her that he was inclined to strike the $1.2
trillion figure.”
At tonight’s GOP presidential debate, Howard Kurtz says Rick Santorum will be questioned about his recent statements reviving the culture wars.
“When Santorum takes the stage Wednesday night, the glare of the spotlight will be unusually harsh. Despite complaints from his campaign about distorted media coverage, he is the one who has raised every one of these issues, along with birth control, in recent days. Reporters weren’t peppering him with questions about home schooling or amniocentesis. He’s the guy who put these subjects in play.”
Bottom line: “He didn’t wade into these controversies by accident. His team must believe these hot-button positions will build support among very conservative and evangelical primary voters — and win their hearts in a way that Romney cannot. The trick is to avoid alienating more moderate voters in the process. Wednesday’s debate will provide a classic test.”
Buddy Roemer will end his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and announce he’ll seek to run as an independent candidate.
Said Roemer in a statement: “I have decided to take my campaign directly to the American people by declaring my candidacy for Americans Elect. Also, after many discussions with The Reform Party, I am excited to announce my intentions of seeking their nomination.”
“All along I have felt that Mitt Romney would probably be the strongest general election challenger to the president. I’m not sure that’s true any longer. I think Rick Santorum may emerge as the stronger general election candidate.”
— Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D), quoted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French presidential hopeful whose political career was ruined last year after he was accused of attempted rape in New York, is suspected “of complicity in activities related to prostitution in
Paris and Washington, where two businessmen are accused of paying for
orgies in 2010 and 2011,” the New York Times reports.
His lawyer offered a unique defense: “He could easily not have known, because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you’re not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman.”
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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