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President Obama is just like Richard Nixon, at least according to cable news clips compiled by Now This News.
However, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, who testified before Congress about “the cancer” on the Nixon presidency, tells the Daily Beast, “No, not yet, it’s not even close to Watergate at this point.”
Nate Silver: “My rule of thumb is that a vast majority of alleged political scandals will have less electoral impact than the conventional wisdom initially holds… But the recent admission by the Internal Revenue Service that it targeted conservative organizations with terms like ‘Tea Party’ or ‘Patriot’ in their names when they applied for tax-exempt status could be an exception. It has the potential to harm Democrats’ performance in next year’s midterm elections, partly by motivating a strong turnout from the Republican base.”
The Week: Will scandals kill Obama’s second term agenda?
Just published: Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life by Donald Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld tells USA Today the title is a bit of a misnomer and that they are not actually all rules. He calls them “life lessons and pieces of wisdom I’ve gathered from others.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested President Obama was not being forthcoming in the controversy surrounding IRS targeting of conservative groups, Reuters reports.
Said McConnell: “I’m calling on the president to make available, completely and without restriction, everyone who can answer the questions we have as to what was going on at the IRS, who knew about it, and how high it went. No more stonewalling.”
Sarah Palin “has been offered a major syndicated TV talk show by reality show producer Mark Burnett but turned down the deal,” Newsmax reports.
The deal is “not completely dead” as “sticking points have been over location and money… Burnett has insisted that Palin do the show from either New York or Los Angeles, which would require her to move for a significant portion of the year from her residence in Alaska where she lives with husband Todd.”
“I want to get some stuff done — I don’t have a lot of time. I’ve got three and a half years left — and it goes by like that.”
— President Obama, quoted by USA Today, at a Democratic fundraiser.
Campaign posters for Anna Pierre tout that her mayoral bid in North Miami, FL was endorsed by Jesus Christ, WPLG-TV reports.
Explained Pierre: “It’s a spiritual endorsement. Why? Because everything I do I always get God involved.”
Pierre said she prayed leading up to registering for her candidacy and received three signs that Jesus was her endorser. But when asked about those signs, she said, “Well, I’m going to keep them private.”
Former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) tells the Associated Press he won’t run for governor of Pennsylvania next year but is mulling a U.S. Senate run in 2016.
Aides to Hillary Clinton tell Politico the former Secretary of State has a “default” policy of rejecting all Sunday political show interview requests.
Said one: “She has a standing refusal… She hates them. She would rather die than do them. The White House knows, so they would know not to even ask her.”
A new Rocky Mountain Poll in Arizona finds 55% of voters now favor legalizing same-sex marriage, while just 35% said they are opposed.
The Hill: “Senate Democrats frustrated with the GOP’s blocking of a string of
President Obama’s nominees are seriously weighing a controversial tactic
known as the ‘nuclear option.’ The option — which would involve
Democrats changing Senate rules through a majority vote to prevent the
GOP from using the 60-vote filibuster to block nominations — was raised
during a private meeting Wednesday involving about 25 Democratic
senators and a group of labor leaders.”
First Read: “While the president’s defiant tone on Benghazi probably would have been enough to quell things under normal circumstances, the times aren’t normal right now. The rule of three (toss in IRS and AP) means the president’s credibility is truly on the line right now with the public. No amount of denial or outrage will be as persuasive to the public right now and the president’s political foes know it. And that’s why you saw some senators yesterday going even further, hitting the White House on the implementation of health care or Mitch McConnell who attempted to use the IRS news to connect the dots and claim a concerted effort was taking place all over the government to target conservatives or limit freedoms. Many of these charges are baseless but the environment right now for the White House is a mess and they are in a position where it’ll be a lot easier for issues to stick to them. The Teflon is wearing off.”
Jill Lawrence wonders whether the drama “could be dramatic enough to move even the phlegmatic Obama
administration to action. Three concurrent scandals or controversies are
just too many. Could that mean we will be bidding farewell soon to
Attorney General Eric Holder?”
The Daily Mail has the 55 questions the IRS asked one tea party group including demands for names of all its donors and volunteers.
New Yorker: “If the three-strikes rule were in effect, President Obama would be heading for the dugout, bat in hand. First the alleged Benghazi cover-up, then the kerfuffle about the I.R.S. targeting conservative groups, and now the revelation that earlier this year the Justice Department secretly seized two months of phone records involving editors and reporters at the Associated Press.”
“Among the many questions that the phone-records story raises are these two very basic ones: What were they thinking? And who, precisely, were they?”
The Week: Why did the Obama administration spy on the Associated Press?
Jon Stewart skewered the IRS for targeting conservative groups and bashed President Obama for validating the “tinfoil behatted.”
The Week: “For all the grief Jon Stewart gives conservatives on The Daily Show, there are some nights he hands them a must-watch gift.”
“If he were a woman, they’d be calling him the weakest speaker in history.”
— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), quoted by the Huffington Post, on Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) hasn’t picked a new Lieutenant Governor — and it’s not yet clear he will — but he told WFLA-AM that former Rep. Allen West (R-FL) “would make a superb choice” and would be”a great Lieutenant Governor.”
“Scott has said he would wait until the end of the session before working on finding someone to replace Jennifer Carroll, who resigned earlier this year after being questioned about an indicted charity that ran internet cafes. Her resignation was soon followed by the passage of a law banning those businesses in Florida. ”
Sen. Mike Crapo’s (R-ID) former campaign manager “blames his friend for investing $250,000 from donors in a Las Vegas company amid the 2008 global financial crisis, part of a scheme intended to pay off within two months,” the AP reports.
“Crapo’s former manager, Jake Ball, said in a sworn affidavit Crapo gave him the latitude to seek higher returns for campaign cash, though Crapo said he had no knowledge of this investment until the money was gone.”
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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