Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 189
Navigating the Nonsense
President Obama and the First Lady dined at the White House with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week, NBC News reports.
A White House spokesman characterized the get-together as a “private dinner” but declined to offer further details about what was discussed.
“Listen, I don’t think our platform is the issue. I think a lot of times it’s some of these biologically stupid things that people say, you know, that I believe caused a lot of the problems.”
— RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, in an interview with Radio Iowa.
Mark Blumenthal takes an extensive look at why Gallup’s polling was so wrong during the 2012 presidential election.
South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) signed into law a bill that would allow teachers to carry guns in the classroom, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports.
“Hotly debated this legislative session, it was pitched as a way for small schools without nearby law enforcement to protect themselves against shooters or other dangers. They also emphasized the local choice — no school would be forced to implement a sentinels program.”
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel arrived in the Afghan capital “to take stock of America’s winding-down war in Afghanistan, one of the thorniest issues the new Pentagon chief will confront,” the Washington Post reports.
“The trip, which was not announced in advance due to security concerns, comes at a delicate time. U.S. officials continue to debate the role and mission the United States should aspire to have in Afghanistan in the long run — a process that has become knottier as Karzai has sought to rein in the authority of American troops in recent weeks.”
The latest jobs report shows 236,000 were created last month — significantly more than the consensus forecast.
The unemployment rate dropped to 7.7%, the lowest it’s been since December 2008.
Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) announced on Twitter that he won’t run against Sen. Al Franken (D-FL) or for any political office in 2014.
Jeb Bush suggests to Michael Gerson that if he were writing his book, Immigration Wars, today instead of last year, he would probably have advocated a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Said Bush: “The book was written last year in a certain environment. The goal was to persuade people against immigration reform to be for it. Since that time, eight of 100 senators have moved, and not much in the House… When we were working on this, Marco Rubio wasn’t for a path to citizenship.”
A new Quinnipiac poll finds support for same-sex marriage is inching up and now stands at 47% to 43%, including 54% to 38% among Catholic voters.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “Catholic voters are leading American voters toward support for same-sex marriage. Among all voters, there is almost no gender gap, but a big age gap. Voters 18 to 34 years old support same sex marriage 62% to 30%; voters 35 to 54 years old are divided 48% to 45% and voters over 55 are opposed 50% to 39%.”
“It’s always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone.”
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quoted by the Huffington Post, referring to “Rand Paul, Cruz, Amash, whoever.”
National Journal reports Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “had lined up the tacit approval of the GOP leadership” for his filibuster earlier this week of John Brennan’s nomination to be CIA Director.
“For a politician who earned his stripes as a political outsider, Paul’s filibuster performance and planning demonstrated his aptitude at the inside D.C. game.”
Meanwhile, RNC Chair Reince Priebus told the Des Moines Register, “I think it was completely awesome. I was excited about it myself. I couldn’t go to bed. I’m still excited about it.”
Political scientists are going to have a lot of egg on their faces when a single dinner party ends all this polarization.
— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 6, 2013
A new UMass Lowell/Boston Herald poll in Massachusetts finds Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) remains largely unknown by most voters despite a 36-year career in Congress.
Markey led all his prospective GOP opponents — Daniel Winslow (R), Gabriel Gomez (R) and Michael Sullivan (R) — by double digits in the poll, but he did not crack the 50% mark against any of the little-known Republicans.
In the Democratic primary, Markey is way ahead of Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), 50% to 21%.
“The public gets its information from the media, and the media is a shell of what it was before.”
— New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, quoted by the New York Times.
Police say a man in Lexington, KY stole $274,000 in campaign-contribution checks intended for the Democratic Governors Association, the Jessamine Journal reports.
Bill Clinton writes in the Washington Post that as the president who signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law, he has come to believe that the act is contrary to freedom, equality and justice.
“When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that ‘enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination.’ Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned.”
Andrew Sullivan: “He knew it then of course too. But it’s churlish to cavil. If we can forgive Ken Mehlman, we can surely forgive Bill Clinton. And welcome him to the civil rights cause of our time.”
The Week: 4 signs than DOMA is doomed.
“An Italian court sentenced ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to one year in jail over the publication by his family’s newspaper of a transcript of a leaked wiretap connected to a banking scandal in 2006,” Reuters reports.
“However, judicial sources said the charges will expire in mid-September, before an appeal trial can be completed, because of the statute of limitations. So no matter what happens in the appeal, it is unlikely that Berlusconi would serve time in jail.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) acknowledged to Politico that he was “seriously” considering running for president in 2016.
Said Paul: “I think our party needs something new, fresh and different. What we’ve been running — nothing against the candidates necessarily — but we have a good, solid niche in all the solidly red states throughout the middle of the country.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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