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“I’m not focused on the politics. I’ve been in the office all but seven months. The last office I was elected to was student council. So this has been a bit of a whirlwind.”
— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), in an interview with ABC News, dismissing speculation that he’ll run for president.
Amazon is now streaming House of Cards.
“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure it never happens.”
— Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in a CBS News interview, vowing to thwart the implementation of Obamacare.
“After months of assailing each other’s integrity from afar and by proxy,” Ken Cuccinelli (R) and Terry McAuliffe (D) “traded direct attacks on stage Saturday in the opening debate of their heated race for Virginia governor,” the Washington Post reports.
“In a 90-minute face-off, the candidates cast their arguments in sharply personal terms, accusing each other of bullying, influence peddling and ‘flimflammery.'”
The Richmond Times Dispatch says the two “disagreed on just about every issue, including abortion, gay marriage, taxes, transportation and health care. The 90-minute debate was marked by rhetorical incursions launched by both men on what they perceived to be their opponent’s greatest weakness, all centered on a theme that the other guy cannot be trusted.”
“A select cohort of top Massachusetts Republicans met quietly last week to discuss the party’s prospects for 2014, hoping to organize a top-to-bottom-of-the-ticket strategy that could help the party grapple back to relevance,” the Boston Globe reports.
“But few decisions can be made until two of the figures involved in the meeting finalize their own political intentions.”
“Charles D. Baker, the 2010 GOP gubernatorial nominee, and former senator Scott Brown have not yet made clear whether either plans to run for governor next year. Several people in the meeting said they believe Baker plans to run, while Brown’s intentions are less obvious.”
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc “won a majority in Sunday’s upper house election, media exit polls showed, giving it control of both chambers of parliament and handing Mr. Abe a mandate to proceed with his ambitious plan for economic growth,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The strong showing was widely expected as Mr. Abe’s Cabinet enjoyed a near 60% approval rating going into the election on the back of support for his economic policy mix of monetary easing and fiscal spending steps. The focus now is on whether he will attempt to tackle reforms that are seen as necessary to further propel growth but are likely to be unpopular.”
“Oh, I think they’re terrible. But the consequences for the country are worse. Are we going to sit around — 11 million people? Do you know how some of these people are exploited? You know, pick up a guy on the corner and have him work all day, and then say, ‘To heck with you, I’m not paying you. Call the cops if you don’t like it.’ I mean, they have no protections of our law and our society. I’m no bleeding-heart liberal; you know that. But, my god, we need to resolve this issue.”
— Sen. John McCain, in an interview with Bloomberg, on the consequences for Republicans if the House kills the immigration bill.
Jonathan Bernstein: “The bottom line is that candidates just don’t matter all that much in presidential elections. Yes, a reputation for ideological extremism hurts, but it appears to hurt maybe 2 or 3 percentage points. Yes, George McGovern and Barry Goldwater had reputations for ideological extremism and were buried, but in both cases it was by a popular president during good times. Ronald Reagan wasn’t slowed much (although, still, some) by his conservative image. Don’t get me wrong: There’s no evidence for the opposite theory, that avoiding the squishy center (in either direction) will magically produce an avalanche of new voters who otherwise would have stayed home. Going moderate is better. It just isn’t all that much better.”
“The bottom line, however, is that Ted Cruz is unlikely to drop more than a couple points to the Democratic nominee. And that’s not likely to swing the election. Could it? Sure; even a small bump would have sunk the Republicans in 2000, for example. But most elections aren’t narrow enough for a couple of points to make a difference.”
Mike Allen: “Plans for the President’s unannounced appearance in the White House press room yesterday afternoon – for blunt, personal, unscripted comments on the Trayvon Martin verdict — reflected one of the theories his aides have about breaking through in this crazy media age: Surprise is a big deal. If the White House had announced a speech on race on Thursday (when he decided to give it), or even an hour before, there would have been a tsunami of vapid predicting and preening by the time he stood and delivered. Instead, the speech came as a total shock.”
“Obama had told aides the day before that he was ready to speak on the Florida case. In most White Houses, a presidential speech on race would be a complex decision emerging from fevered calculus and consultation. In this case, the President sat in the Oval Office and rattled off the exact thought bubble that he later expressed from the podium. The instant conclusion of his advisers: Just do it. As Obama spoke, he looked at ease — and relieved. He so often seems to be holding back what he really thinks. Yesterday, it was all out there.”
During a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room, President Obama that Americans should respect the George Zimmerman verdict, but white Americans should also understand the problems of racism, USA Today reports.
Said Obama: “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”
He added all Americans should do “soul-searching” in the wake of the verdict and the reactions to it.
Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Rob Gleason admitted on PCN that the state’s voter ID law limited President Obama’s margin of victory in last year’s presidential election.
Said Gleason: “Yeah, I think a little bit. We probably had a better election. Think about this, we cut Obama by five percent, which was big. A lot of people lost sight of that. He won, he beat McCain by 10 percent, he only beat Romney by five percent. I think that probably voter ID helped a bit in that.”
Greg Sargent: “It continues to be widely accepted that there is no chance comprehensive immigration reform could ever get through the House. But proponents of reform are not prepared to give up. And they are putting together a plan designed to win over individual House Republicans — one by one — by mobilizing constituencies within their districts to make an economic and moral case that reform is necessary not just to solve the immigration problem, but for the good of the economy and the country.”
“The idea is to identify major businesses — farmers, growers, tech
companies — in the districts of individual Republicans and get them to
make the case to their Members of Congress that immigration reform is
necessary for the good of the local economy. In other words, the idea is
to make this less about what major business groups such as the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce or big agricultural groups want and more about what
their individual members want of their own Representatives.”
Topic A notes a soldier who executed an “exploding fist bump” with President Obama last year is trying to make the video go viral.
Peggy Noonan: “The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office–that had been established–but to the office of the chief counsel.”
“That is a bombshell–such a big one that it managed to emerge in spite of an unfocused, frequently off-point congressional hearing in which some members seemed to have accidentally woken up in the middle of a committee room, some seemed unaware of the implications of what their investigators had uncovered, one pretended that the investigation should end if IRS workers couldn’t say the president had personally called and told them to harass his foes, and one seemed to be holding a filibuster on Pakistan.”
“Still, what landed was a bombshell. And Democrats know it. Which is why they are so desperate to make the investigation go away. They know, as Republicans do, that the chief counsel of the IRS is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire agency.”
A new Harper Polling survey in Wyoming finds Sen. Mike Enzi (R) crushing challenger Liz Cheney (R) in a Republican U.S. Senate primary, 55% to 21%.
Investigators looking into gifts to Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell (R) and his family “have asked questions about whether first lady Maureen McDonnell received cosmetic dental work for free,” the Washington Post reports.
“Free dental work would expand the number of gifts that the first family has received and add a new name to what has been a short list of benefactors. It also would fit a pattern of items given to Maureen McDonnell — including designer clothing and accessories — that appear to have been aimed at polishing her image as first lady.”
“I think that Hillary Clinton probably will be the candidate. If she doesn’t run, I think Biden will run.”
— David Axelrod, on Morning Joe, forecasting the 2016 Democratic presidential race.
A new Quinnipiac poll in Iowa finds voters like Gov. Terry Branstad (R): He has a 50% to 37% favorability rating and a 51% to 33% job approval, but they also say by 46% to 43% that he does not deserve another term.
Asked another way, 54% of voters say Branstad has been in office long enough, while 37% say he should seek another term.
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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