Bloomberg reports on how Democratic activists “have come to Texas on a mission as large as the state’s 261,000 square miles: to capitalize on the surge in Hispanic population and turn the Lone Star State into a two-party competitive one instead of the place where the Republican nominee has carried every presidential election since 1976.”
Brown Wouldn’t Be First from Massachusetts
As former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) mulls a possible U.S. Senate bid from New Hampshire, Smart Politics notes that 25% of the 63 U.S. Senators in the Granite State’s history were born in one of its bordering three states including 18% from Massachusetts, while nearly 40% were educated in the Bay State.
Obama Budget Hit from Both Sides
First Read notes the early word on President Obama’s budget — to be released on Wednesday — is that it “has been rejected by both the right and left: Boehner opposes the president’s call for new revenues to go along with these entitlement cuts, while the left is furious about the proposed reforms to Social Security and Medicare. The question is whether this anger from the left gives Republicans a second look.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Meet the Press: “This is somewhat encouraging. His overall budget’s not going to make it, but he has sort of made a step forward in the entitlement reform process that would allow a guy like me to begin to talk about flattening the tax code and generating more revenue.”
California Billionaire Targets Lynch in Massachusetts
Hedge fund executive Thomas Steyer is bombarding Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) “with theatrical attacks from the skies and from the streets. He has poured $400,000 into the Massachusetts race so far, bankrolling planes with banners, trucks with video screens, and canvassers who plan to knock on 300,000 doors statewide,” the Boston Globe reports.
Steyer has seized on Lynch’s primary campaign against Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) “as a test case of his ability to elevate the issue of climate change in the political discourse.”
“Last month, he burst onto the scene with a sharply worded threat to Lynch, warning him that if he did not change his mind and oppose the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline ‘by high noon on Friday,’ he would launch an aggressive campaign to defeat him in the April 30 primary.”
Donors Get Gold-Star Ambassador Gigs
USA Today:
“It’s a time-honored presidential tradition to reward political friends
and campaign contributors with plum ambassadorships to Caribbean
islands and glittering European capitals. The practice is getting fresh
attention as President Obama weighs second-term appointments for the
donors and fundraisers who help collect more than a $1 billion for his
re-election. In the 2012 campaign, 773 individuals and couples raised at
least $50,000 for Obama, who is expected to fill about 30 political
positions in his second term.”
Obama Consolidates Power in Second Term
President Obama “has begun his second term by consolidating his personal control of the White House, Democrats in
and outside the Administration say, reflecting a shift from his less centralized first term,” BuzzFeed reports.
“The shift has become clear in the new style of management under Obama’s new Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, who — unlike his predecessors — acts more as Obama’s enforcer than as a principal in his own right.”
“Once, McDonough’s predecessors, notably Rahm Emanuel, made strategic choices and served as the key liaisons to Congress. Now, Obama sets the strategy and priorities and makes the calls to Capitol Hill himself; and the chief of staff’s role has been handed to a trusted ally who shares the president’s vision.”
Margaret Thatcher Dies
Wall Street Journal: “Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who became one of the most influential global leaders of the postwar period, died Monday, three decades after her championing of free-market economics and individual choice transformed Britain’s economy and her vigorous foreign policy played a key role in the end of the Cold War.”
The Week has a great round up of coverage.
First Read: “It’s rare for a foreign to leader to be beloved by some many in the
United States, but Thatcher was — especially among conservatives. If
Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan are the founding fathers of modern
conservatism, then Margaret Thatcher is its founding mother. Thatcher
also set the template for tough-as-nails female world leaders.”
Why It’s Hard for Obama to Push His Agenda
“The days ahead could be decisive ones for the main pieces of President Obama’s second-term agenda: long-range deficit reduction, gun safety and changes to immigration law,” the New York Times reports.
“Members of both parties say Mr. Obama faces a conundrum with his legislative approach to a deeply polarized Congress. In the past, when he has stayed aloof from legislative action, Republicans and others have accused him of a lack of leadership; when he has gotten involved, they have complained that they could not support any bill so closely identified with Mr. Obama without risking the contempt of conservative voters.”
Politico: “The window for action on these issues will start to close as the 2014 midterm election cycle whips into full swing at the end of the year. After that, the next Congress figures to be colored by partisan posturing for the 2016 presidential election.”
The Boring Sequester
Jon Favreau: “From the outset, Washington never treated the sequester with the seriousness it deserves. And really, who would have expected otherwise? The word is a verb being used as a noun to describe $85 billion in defense and domestic discretionary cuts to the federal budget. I almost fell asleep just writing that sentence.”
“Much of the political press lost interest in covering the substance of
policy debates late last century, so it wasn’t too surprising that by
February, some reporters were bitterly tweeting about how particularly
boring they found this sequester business.”
Prospects for Gun Control Improve
“Prospects for a bipartisan deal to expand federal background checks for gun purchases are improving with the emergence of fresh Republican support,” the Washington Post reports.
“The possibility that after weeks of stalled negotiations senators might be on the cusp of a breakthrough comes as President Obama and his top surrogates will begin on Monday their most aggressive push yet to rally Americans around his gun-control agenda.”
Politico says Obama “finds out this week whether he scratches out a narrow victory on gun control — or ends up with nothing at all.”
But Roll Call notes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) may be in no hurry to push for a vote.
Immigration Bill Expected This Week
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said that a bipartisan group of eight senators is “on track” to introduce comprehensive immigration legislation by the end of this week, despite recent “kerfuffles” in its negotiations and competing items on the congressional agenda, Roll Call reports.
But the Washington Post reports that Republican members “expressed skepticism” about that timetable.
“The timetable is important because President Obama has called for a comprehensive immigration reform measure that could be approved by the Senate and House in time for him to sign it into law by the end of the year. Under the timetable eyed by the Senate group, whose proposal is expected to be the template for a potential deal, the legislation would be introduced in the Judiciary Committee this month for the amendment process.”
Politico has five things to watch in the immigration debate.
Newtown Families Speak Out
Families of the Newtown massacre victims were interviewed on 60 Minutes segment ahead of efforts to push for new gun control legislation in Washington, D.C.
The Republican Party is Broken
Jonathan Bernstein: “I think the emphasis on partisan polarization is misplaced. There’s nothing about strong partisanship that makes effective government in the U.S. impossible… Indeed: I suspect the game theorists might actually find that it should be easier for two well-organized parties to cut those deals, even if their ideal points are quite distant, than it would be to reach a deal between unstructured, factionalized parties, even if there are no extremists among them… And yet: dysfunction, crises, threats of shutdown and irrational outcomes no one claims to want.”
“My conclusion? It’s not partisanship. It’s not polarization. It’s not even extremism. It’s the Republican Party. The GOP is broken.”
Wonk Wire looks at a new paper on political dysfunction from Rick Hasen.
Bonus Quote of the Day
“Democrats don’t want to fight; they just want to get behind Hillary and go on from there.”
— James Carville, quoted by Maureen Dowd.
Most Politicians Survive Scandals
Scott Bassinger finds that of the more than 250 members of the House of
Representatives have been involved in various scandals since Watergate, roughly 40% did not “survive” their scandal.
“Incumbents who stood for
reelection
lost 5 percent of the general election vote share,
on average, but the electoral repercussions vary across types of
scandals
and could be magnified in the presence of a quality
challenger. A scandal-tainted incumbent defending his or her seat does
not necessarily fare better than an untainted
open-seat candidate, a finding that provides a justification for
stronger ethics
rules.”
Former Baucus Aides Cash In
New York Times: “To make their case as Congress prepares to debate a rewrite of the nation’s tax code, this diverse set of businesses has at least one strategy in common: they have retained firms that employ lobbyists who are former aides to Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which will have a crucial role in shaping any legislation.”
“No other lawmaker on Capitol Hill has such a sizable constellation of former aides working as tax lobbyists, representing blue-chip clients that include telecommunications businesses, oil companies, retailers and financial firms… At least 28 aides who have worked for Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, since he became the committee chairman in 2001 have lobbied on tax issues during the Obama administration — more than any other current member of Congress.”
How Texas Became Texas
Just published: Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas by Erica Grieder.
New York Times: “As a Texas-raised journalist, I can tell you two things with confidence about my native state. One, its economy has been humming nicely for years. Two, this appears to greatly offend a certain breed of Northern writer, several of whom have descended on the state in an attempt to rebut stories of a ‘Texas miracle.'”
The Senate as a Social Network
Chris Wilson: “To find out how united or divided both Republicans and Democrats are in the current senate, I started with a simple concept: For every member, I calculated which other senators voted the same way at least 75 percent of the time. In effect, this organizes the senate as a mini-Facebook of 100 users, in which any given pair of senators are friends if they meet this 75-percent threshold. When visualized, the picture looks like the final stages of cell division when a Paramecium reproduces, in which a formerly unified body has nearly split into two distinct creatures.”
