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Just out: The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat by Vali Nasr.
The author, who was a senior adviser to Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, sheds light “on the heated infighting within the Obama administration, particularly between the White House and the State Department,” the New York Times reports.
Warner Jones, digital program manager on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, told Campaigns and Elections that it would have taken Romney’s campaign an extra two years to match the digital infrastructure assembled by President Obama’s reelection effort.
“Romney’s digital team was a fraction of the incumbent’s–32 people compared to some 200 working for Obama’s digital operation. Moreover, almost half of the Romney digital operation was done by outside consultants–only 17 were in house.”
Tennessee State Sen. Jon Lundberg (R) sponsored and passed a resolution to honor himself, WSMV-TV reports.
Explained Lundberg: “I think it’s important for us as a state to say, ‘Hey, great job on creating jobs and moving the ball forward.'”
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Nate Silver models the Senate vote on gun background checks and finds that four senators that were projected by the model to be nay votes actually voted yes: Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Pat Toomey (R-PA), John McCain (R-AZ) and Susan Collins (R-ME).
The most unlikely no vote — excluding Sen. Harry Reid who voted nay for procedural reasons — was Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), who is not running for re-election until 2018. The model suggested there was a 87% chance she would vote in favor of the amendment.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) claimed the University of Maine is trying to trick people into thinking that windmills are working, the Bangor Daily News reports.
Said LePage: “Guess what, if it’s not blowing wind outside and they have somebody visiting the campus, they have a little electric motor that turns the blades. I’m serious. They have an electric motor so they can show people that wind power works. Unbelievable. And that’s the government that you have here in the state of Maine,”
A university spokesman says that when there’s no wind the turbines don’t spin at all.
Ron Brownstein: “On the one hand, the defeat showed how difficult it is for gun control advocates to reach the 60 vote threshold required to break a filibuster in an institution whose two-Senator per state apportionment magnifies the impact of small, heavily rural states where guns are interwoven into the culture.”
“On the other, the vote suggested that, after years in which gun control has been sublimated as a political issue, support for expanding background checks and possibly further steps has again become a political norm in almost all of the blue-leaning states that underpin the recent Democratic advantage in the race for the White House.”
Oklahoma House Co-Majority Leader Dennis Johnson (R) argued in favor of a bill repealing a ban on “loss-leader” selling by saying that service and not price are the key to success, the Tulsa World reports.
A small businessman himself, he says on video that some customers “try to Jew me down.” He then immediately apologized, laughing that “Jews run good small businesses, too.”
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) told Roll Call that, about a decade ago, he met the man who was arrested on charges of sending him a ricin-laced letter.
Said Wicker: “I have indeed met the gentleman before. He’s an entertainer. He’s an Elvis impersonator. He entertained at a party my wife and I helped give for a young couple that were getting married.”
He added, “My impression is that since that time he’s had mental issues and perhaps is not as stable as he was back then.”
The Week has a good backgrounder on the case and what we know.
Derek Willis notes there are a number of ways to identify House members vulnerable in their re-election bids, “but one of the best is to look at who has received the most money from their colleagues in the run-up to the March 31 closing date.”
“By that standard, Timothy H. Bishop and Sean Patrick Maloney, Democrats of New York; Ron Barber, Democrat of Arizona; and Rodney Davis, Republican of Illinois, lead the pack, which is dominated by freshman Democrats.”
The Mississippi man arrested for sending letters laced with Ricin to President Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) included the identical phrase, “to see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance” and were signed, “I am KC and I approve this message,” the Clarion Ledger reports.
The phrases were also used on his Facebook page and a website “in which he details his discovery of human body parts while doing janitorial work at North Mississippi Medical Center and the numerous times he was arrested in his quest to get someone to investigate his allegations.”
The New York Times says the gun control bill that was defeated in the Senate yesterday “never really had a chance.”
“In the nearly 10 years since the expiration of the assault weapons ban, even modest gun safety legislation has proved impossible to advance on Capitol Hill, where the momentum has been in the other direction, with lawmakers pushing various expansions of gun rights. The 68 votes last week to allow the debate on gun legislation to proceed was a mirage, a temporary triumph granted by senators willing to allow shooting victims and their survivors the vote they sought with absolutely no intention of supporting the final legislation and crossing the gun lobby or constituents who see gun rights as a defining issue.”
“I sent him some caribou jerky from Alaska to help keep up his strength on the Senate floor.”
— Sarah Palin, writing in Time, on Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
Sen. Joe Machin (D-WV) told the Wall Street Journal that enough senators could be persuaded to revive and pass the gun background check measure defeated yesterday. He claimed that 70 lawmakers would have supported his amendment with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) if the NRA hadn’t warned lawmakers that it would include their votes in its influential rankings.
Said Machin: “If they hadn’t scored it, we’d have gotten 70 votes. They made a big mistake.”
Roll Call: Where does Obama go from here?
Missouri State Senator Brian Nieves (R) sent an email to his distribution list and received this reply from a constituent: “Take me off your mailing list. Freak.”
Not very friendly, but the Riverfront Times reports Nieves fired off “a series of lengthy, angry, incredibly bizarre” e-mails in response.
An example: “Wow. Your communications are so thought provoking, well written, and intelligent. Perhaps you secretly want to be on my distribution list because every time you send me a message, your email is recaptured and put on my distribution list. I’m tiring of taking you off every time you email me AGAIN so unless you are in love with me or have some other sort of sick obsession with me (sorry, I’m straight as an arrow) you should probably stop emailing me so that you don’t keep getting put back on the list. Should I type these instructions slower? Are you having a hard time understanding? BTW – I archive ALL questionable emails like yours in case there’s ever any doubt about who got ugly first. Go back to the grade school playground where people you can successfully bully and out smart are playing cuz junior… You are way out of your league with me.”
“I will guarantee you that you will see the most vicious education
campaign ads that you’ve ever seen in your life next year, because I am
going to be the next Scott Walker in this country, because I am
challenging the status quo.”
— Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), quoted by the Bangor Daily News, committing to running for re-election.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “continues to seize on the bungled taping of his Louisville campaign headquarters,” Politico
writes.
“The Senate Minority Leader will go on the air Thursday with a
new commercial that links last week’s brouhaha to the Democratic
president’s desire to oust him.”
Though he spent much of the last few years fighting low approval rates, a new Quinnipiac poll in Ohio finds 52% of voters now approve of Gov. John Kasich (R) and he holds solid leads two potential
Democratic challengers.
Kasich tops up Ed Fitzgerald, 46% to 37%, and beats Richard Cordray (D), 45% to 38%.
Despite a very bad day for former Gov. Mark Sanford (R) yesterday — including the NRCC pulling the plug on financial support of his special election campaign — John Avlon says he may still pull off a victory.
“What we have here is a competitive congressional race in a district that hasn’t elected a Democrat to Congress since the early years of the Reagan era. That itself is invigorating, and Colbert Busch has already proved herself a capable, engaging candidate with a will to win. But even without the NRCC, counting Sanford out is a sucker’s bet. Win or lose, he’ll be due in court to answer the charges May 7–either as the incoming congressman or on the heels of his first electoral defeat.”
The Cook Political Report calls the race a Toss Up.
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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