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Hours after the tragic elementary school shootings today in Connecticut, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that it was not the time to discuss gun control legislation, the Washington Post reports.
Said Carney: “I’m sure there will be rather a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I don’t think today is that day.”
Marc Ambinder: How to prevent more mass killings.
A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that 78% of Americans now think temperatures are rising and 80% say global warming will be a serious problem for the United States if nothing is done about it.
Key finding: The biggest change in the polling is among people who trust scientists only a little or not at all. Within that highly skeptical group, 61% now say temperatures have been rising over the past 100 years. That’s a substantial increase from 2009, when the poll found that only 47% of those with little or no trust in scientists believed the world was getting warmer.
McKay Coppins reports media organizations are preparing to file a formal complaint to Mitt Romney’s campaign contesting some of the “seemingly inflated charges” that were billed to them during the campaign.
“It is standard procedure for presidential campaigns to arrange and prepay for meals, bus travel, and charter flights, then bill the news outlets afterward for their share of the cost. In order to travel with the candidate, reporters and their editors must agree upfront to pay for the cost of the trips, as determined by the campaign. But many of the bills from the Romney campaign — which have continued to trickle in since Election Day — are much higher than during other campaigns.”
“The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I
had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be
considered a moderate Republican.”
— President Obama, in an interview with Univision.
A man wearing a Mitt Romney mask robbed a Virginia bank yesterday — the same bank hit by a robber in a Hillary Clinton mask two years ago, NBC Washington reports.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) told the Tennessean that if Senate Democrats carry out a dramatic maneuver to change one of the institution’s most revered traditions, the filibuster, it will be “the end of the United States Senate.”
Alexander says the Senate “will become just like the House,” where a simple majority vote wins every time and the chamber loses its historic function of acting as a brake on popular proposals to give them more judicious consideration.
Out next week for the Kindle: The End of the Line: Romney vs. Obama: The 34 days that Decided the Election by Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin.
Reuters reports that negotiations on averting the “fiscal cliff” are at an apparent impasse.
The AP notes that not getting a deal before December 31 “would immediately change the political dynamics, making
it easier for many lawmakers – especially Republicans – to agree to a
second-chance compromise in the new year.”
“This scenario strikes a good number of Washington insiders as
irresponsible and improbable – who knows how the markets will react? But
others argue it will be easier to round up the congressional votes
needed for a big compromise if the deadline passes and lawmakers rush
back to Washington next month under a starkly new political reality.”
Financial Times: “No deal” tax stance suggests many Republicans are willing to go over the fiscal cliff.
Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal that President Obama is pushing for a “civil war” within the Republican Party by not negotiating fairly to avoid the fiscal cliff.
Said Rove: “He apparently believes that Republicans, in a weakened state and defending an unpopular position, might buckle on a central GOP tenet, opposition to any increase in marginal rates. That might kick off a Republican civil war, resulting in divisive party primaries in 2014 that leave the president’s opposition even more weakened and produce more subpar candidates like this year’s Republican Senate candidates in Indiana and Missouri.”
Jonathan Chait: “The psychology on display here is familiar to anybody who has seen a petulant teenager, who assumes that any restriction that causes them to feel anger must have been intended to produce that emotion. Republicans are feeling humiliated and divided, so Obama’s goal must have been to humiliate and divide them.”
The Week: Is the conservative dream in its death throes?
ProPublica obtained Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS’ confidential 2010 application for tax-exempt stautus and finds that while the group told the IRS it would spend some money to influence elections, it said “any such activity will be limited in amount, and will not constitute the organization’s primary purpose.”
Jonathan Karl: “The President has not made a choice on his next nominee for Secretary of
State yet, but Governor Deval Patrick is already making plans to fill
presumptive SecState nominee John Kerry’s Senate seat. Knowledgeable
sources tell me Governor Patrick has already had a discussion with one
potential replacement for Senator Kerry: Vicki Kennedy. The sources
say the governor talked to Kennedy, the widow of Senator Ted Kennedy,
about the possibility of replacing Kerry in the Senate and that she did
not rule it out.”
“If Kerry is nominated and confirmed as Secretary of State,
Governor Patrick would appoint somebody to replace Kerry and, under
Massachusetts law, a special election would be held no later than 180
days (and no earlier than 160 days) after Kerry leaves the Senate.”
First Read: “To explain why U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice pulled out of consideration
for the secretary of state post, it’s important to remember this: A
president only gets a finite number of fights with Congress, especially
in the first year of a second term (which may be the last BIG year a
president can win fights with Congress). And appointing Rice as
secretary of state was going to be a fight, no doubt about it. So if
you’re a White House with a big upcoming agenda (resolving the
fiscal-cliff situation, passing comprehensive immigration reform, maybe
tackling energy or education) and if you’re split on the top choice on
the secretary of state (our reporting indicates that Rice was never the
clear-cut favorite), sometimes the path of least resistance is the smart
play.”
The Week: Should Obama have fought harder for Rice?
President Obama told ABC News that the federal government has better things to do than prosecute marijuana users in Colorado and Washington where voters chose to legalized in the last election.
Said Obama: “We’ve got bigger fish to fry. It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it’s legal.”
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) writes in the Wall Street Journal that birth control should be sold without prescription.
“As a conservative Republican, I believe that we have been stupid to let the Democrats demagogue the contraceptives issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control. It’s a disingenuous political argument they make. As an unapologetic pro-life Republican, I also believe that every adult (18 years old and over) who wants contraception should be able to purchase it.”
A new study finds that more than 60% of Pakistan’s cabinet and two thirds of its federal lawmakers paid no taxes last year, AFP reports.
“Pakistan has one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world, estimated at 9.2%. Only 260,000 out of 180 million citizens have paid tax consecutively for the last three years.”
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has confirmed his intention to run as a Senate candidate in the 2013 election in Australia “and will announce the formation of a WikiLeaks political party early next year.”
But since Assange is currently living in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, he could be unable to return to Australia if elected — in which case a nominee would fill the seat.
A new prehistoric lizard species has been named Obamadon Gracilis after President Obama, Sky News reports.
National Journal: “In the ongoing fiscal cliff chess match playing out on Capitol Hill, Democrats have a message for Republicans: checkmate.”
“Democrats look at the political landscape and see a win whether a deal gets cut now or after the country goes over the cliff. Worst-case scenario, they say, the House will approve legislation the Senate passed in July extending Bush-era tax cuts for everyone but the rich, an idea that Republican House Speaker John Boehner has flatly rejected.”
“If Boehner refuses to pass the Senate bill before the end of the year, Democrats say their hand only gets stronger in the new year when the Senate will have 55 Democrats and at least five Republicans who have signaled they could vote to extend the middle-class tax cuts.”
Philip Klein: “The time for Republicans to win the tax debate
was during the 2012 election. They lost. That doesn’t mean they need to
give away the store, but it does mean that they’ll have to make some
accommodation for reality.”
National Memo: 5 reasons Republicans are getting clobbered on the fiscal cliff.
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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— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
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