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Larry Grooms (R) conceded a spot in South Carolina’s special GOP primary runoff to Curtis Bostic (R).
But The State reports “opinions are split” on whether Bostic can make the mammoth jump from winning 13% of the vote Tuesday to defeating Mark Sanford (R), who captured 37%.
The Quincy Patriot Ledger reports Massachusetts sheriff Joseph McDonald (R) is defending a joke he made about President Obama during a breakfast for Republicans when he said the ghost of Abraham Lincoln visited Obama in his dreams and gave him advice on how to improve the country: “Go to the theater.”
Said McDonald: “It was absolutely in jest. It was a joke. It wasn’t a new joke by any means.”
He added that references to Lincoln’s assassination in a theater have been used to make fun of the sitting President’s job performance since the late 19th century.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said she plans to write a book to “tell the whole story” about her re-election bid against Todd Akin (D), the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Said McCaskill: “People are telling me not to do it. But it was just so interesting and I think people need to understand that some of the extreme elements in this country on both ends of the spectrum are not politically viable.”
You already know the problem: the same story can look completely different depending on where you read it — and some barely show up at all because algorithms decide what you see.
My goal for Political Wire is to help you get outside those filters — to understand not just what happened, but how it’s being covered and who might be missing it. That’s why I use and recommend Ground News.
It’s an app and website that brings together global news from across the political spectrum, showing each source’s bias, factuality, and ownership.
What I find especially useful is the Blindspot Feed. It highlights stories getting heavy coverage on one side but little on the other — a quick way to see what your usual news diet may be missing.
For a limited time, get 40% off a Ground News Vantage subscription at www.groundnews.com/political.
Australian prime minister Julia Gillard was forced by senior figures of her Labor party to open up her job to a vote — known as a spill in Australian politics — but no one ultimately came forward to challenge her, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Said Gillard: ”The whole business is completely at an end, it has ended now.”
A new Public Religion Research Institute survey finds overwhelming support for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants from the most religious Americans.
CNN: “The strongest support for a pathway to citizenship came from Hispanic Catholics, Hispanics Protestants and black Protestants, according to the poll. More than 70 percent of people who identified with those groups supported the immigration change. Additionally, more than half of all Jewish Americans (67%), Mormons (63%), white Catholics (62%), white mainline Protestants (61%) and white evangelical Protestants (56%) supported the inclusive immigration policy.”
“A panel of White House advisers warned President Obama in a secret report that U.S. spy agencies were paying inadequate attention to China, the Middle East and other national security flash points because they had become too focused on military operations and drone strikes,” the Washington Post reports.
The panel was led by new Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and former senator David Boren (D-OK) and concluded that “the roles of the CIA, the National Security Agency and other spy services had been distorted by more than a decade of conflict.”
Stu Rothenberg: “The Republican Party continues to fracture more seriously than I expected following last year’s re-election of President Obama.”
“Instead of uniting the GOP’s various constituencies against the president’s agenda, Obama’s re-election seems to have encouraged Republicans to spend much of their time harping on their internal disagreements and fighting over how the party should be positioned for 2016 and beyond.”
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked if President Obama was counting on some rest and relaxation during his trip to Israel, the president quickly said, “It’s good to get away from Congress.”
David Hawkings: “The jape was caught on an open mic and appeared in no official transcripts, underscroring the perception that Obama is never more candid than when he’s lamenting his troubles back home in conversations abroad — and doing so with a foreign leader on the curious assumption that no one’s listening in.”
Roll Call: “The first vote-a-rama on a Senate budget resolution in four years offers each party a chance to force the other to cast politically treacherous votes, and both sides are lining up for the opportunity, which could begin as early as Friday.”
Just published: American Politics: A Very Short Introduction by Richard M. Valelly.
“For anyone wishing to understand the nuts and bolts of how our
political system works — and sometimes fails to work.”
President Obama is considering appointing Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx (D) for secretary of transportation, Bloomberg reports.
“Obama also is considering Deborah Hersman, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board, for the position… The president is considering candidates from within the transportation department as well.”
A new Pew Research survey the rise in support for same-sex marriage over the past decade is among the largest changes in opinion on any policy issue over this time period.
The survey finds that “much of the shift is attributable to the arrival of a large cohort of young adults – the Millennial generation – who are far more open to gay rights than previous generations. Equally important, however, is that 14% of all Americans – and 28% of gay marriage supporters – say they have changed their minds on this issue, often because they have a family member or friend who is gay.”
“My views haven’t changed. I don’t know why it’s hard for everybody to grasp this. It’s not just the question of a path to citizenship or a path to legalization. I’ve been supportive of both. We have to change our laws so that it’s easier for someone to come legally rather than illegally. That’s the point that people haven’t quite grasped. I don’t view that as flip-flopping at all.”
— Jeb Bush, quoted by Businssweek, explaining his views on immigration.
Wonk Wire: Federal spending as a percentage of GDP has actually been falling since President Obama took office.
Seth Masket: “The Democrats’ shift from being the party of white supremacy to the party of civil rights was pretty much a singular act in American political history. Parties rarely pull off a major shift on a hot-button issue (that’s what killed the Whigs in the 1850s), and indeed it was a very costly shift for the Democrats, breaking their electoral lock on the southern states and ultimately ending their four-decade run of controlling the House of Representatives. To be sure, parties do evolve slowly on some issues, but the parties are much better defined by consistency than change.”
A new Gallup poll
finds that public support for new federal spending to create jobs is, as Greg Sargent puts it,
“simply overwhelming.”
Key findings: 72% support federal spending “to put people to work on urgent infrastructure
repairs” and
72% support a “federal jobs creation law that would spend
government money for a program designed to create more than 1 million
new jobs.”
After comparing his past statements to his current ones, Steve Benen gives the award to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
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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