“During a C-SPAN debate Tuesday centered on whether or not bipartisanship is good for governing the country, Dallas and Brad Woodhouse — brothers and political operatives who work on opposite sides of the aisle — received a call from ‘somebody down south’ in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Huffington Post reports.
“You’re right I’m from down south!” the voice on the phone shot back.
Said Dallas: “Oh God, it’s mom.”
First Read: “It’s worth noting that Carson’s popularity may be more about his Fox News contract than his policy positions; in fact, two of the four Republicans with the highest popularity scores in our latest NBC News/ WSJ poll were regular personalities on the cable channel.”
“Kristian Denny Todd, the Democratic strategist and wife of Meet The Press moderator Chuck Todd, is working with former Sen. Jim Webb as he considers a 2016 presidential bid,” Politico reports.
“Todd previously served as the communications director for Webb’s 2006 Senate campaign in Virginia. She is not currently being paid by Webb’s office, according to spending reports for Webb’s political action committee.”
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“Republicans will continue to paint government as the enemy and the media will continue to highlight government failures, because they make for better copy than government success. That leaves the job to we Democrats.”
— Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), quoted by Politico.
Former Sen Scott Brown (R), who lost his bid to unseat Sen. Jean Shaheen (D-NH), is rejoining Fox News as a contributor, the Boston Herald reports.
“Brown’s decision to rejoin the cable news station is no surprise. The former senator left his Fox News gig and his job with the Boston law firm Nixon Peabody to campaign in New Hampshire, so he does need a job… The gig also keeps him in the public eye and on the radar should he decide that his political career isn’t over.”
A network insider tells Mike Allen: “There was agreement among the broadcast networks that this was overtly political. The White House has tried to make a comparison to a time that all the networks carried President Bush in prime time, also related to immigration [2006]. But that was a bipartisan announcement, and this is an overtly political move by the White House.”
Megyn Kelly embarrassingly mispronounced the name of Mike Huckabee’s Fox News show last night.
Glenn Beck told viewers of The Blaze that he has been suffering from debilitating health problems for the past five years which have included severe pain and seizures.
Said Beck: “I had begun to have a string of health issues that, quite honestly, has made me look crazy. And quite honestly, I have have felt crazy because of them.”
“Three months after the launch, former CNN President Jonathan Klein—whose niche digital television company, TAPP, is backing the channel—claims it’s already turning a profit,” Lloyd Grove reports.
Said Klein: “It’s going really well. She asked us from the very beginning never to talk about specific numbers, because for her she says it’s not about the numbers. It’s about the message and enabling her followers to all get together and talk freely. So I can’t give you numbers. I can tell you that she’s hit all our milestones and that she’s posting content constantly.”
“Yet while it’s impossible to know, absent hard figures, whether the Sarah Palin Channel is succeeding in attracting an audience, it’s significant that the channel’s Web traffic, expressed in terms of unique visitors, is a tiny fraction of The Blaze’s 15.3 million in September (the most recent available numbers from Media Trend). The Sarah Palin Channel, by contrast, had a barely measurable 36,000 visitors in September, according to Quantcast.”
Joe Klein: “It may be too much to ask that we journalists stop trying to do what we do worst — predicting the outcomes of races — and start doing what we should do best: hounding the candidates into specific answers on difficult questions. My sense this year has been that most politicians now assume that the vexing need to deal with journalists is pretty much over, unless they commit a mouth misdemeanor or something unseemly emerges about their past.”
USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page called the Obama White House not only “more restrictive” but also “more dangerous” to the press than any other in history, the Washington Post reports.
Before choosing Chuck Todd, NBC News president Deborah Turness held negotiations with Jon Stewart about hosting “Meet the Press,” three senior television sources tell New York magazine.
One source explained that NBC was prepared to offer Stewart virtually “anything” to bring him over.
New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said he has a firm rule for reporters who interview President Obama, the New York Times reports.
Said Baquet: “I don’t think the president gets to talk off the record to me or to news reporters. I don’t think that anything the president has to say should be off limits to the readers of The New York Times. I would not have a news reporter in that room.”
Former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney will join CNN as a political commentator, Politico reports.
He will start tonight as President Obama makes a prime-time statement about combating the Islamic State.
The Upshot notes the most frequent guest on the Sunday morning talk shows has been Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). The second most popular guest is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Brooking has released a new update to Vital Statistics on Congress. It used to be a must-read reference book and now it’s a fantastic website.
“I know that they portrayed me as an idiot, and I hated that, and I wanted to come on the show and counter some of that.”
— Sarah Palin, quoted by the Hollywood Reporter, on her Saturday Night Live appearance.
The Upshot: “The most frequent guest on Meet the Press, the venerable Sunday morning political talk show on NBC, isn’t John McCain or John Kerry. It’s the show’s new host, Chuck Todd. Mr. Todd has been a guest more often than anyone during the past 19 months.”
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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.