How a Dedicated Group of Tea Party Activists Toppled Richard Lugar
By Sean Sullivan
Learning from the movement's stumbles in 2010, a grassroots collection laid the groundwork to defeat the six-term Indiana senator.
Richard Mourdock (left) and Richard Lugar at an April debate in Indianapolis. / Associated Press
The Tea Party, an unsteady movement that was beginning to resemble a wayward ship in 2012, found its north star in Indiana on Tuesday night.
State Treasurer Richard Mourdock defeated six-term Sen. Richard Lugar in the Republican primary, a victory owing to the incumbent's inept campaign, the outside groups that lashed him on the air, and a story about his out-of-state residency that would not go away. But well before those issues got a foothold, a grassroots-driven, local movement to unseat Lugar was well under way.
Sixteen months ago, a collection of Tea Party organizers met in the city of Tipton. Their goal was to address flaws in the movement that were exposed in 2010, when infighting and competing agendas largely driven by national groups and consultants hindered its ability to make lasting gains. What resulted was "Hoosiers for a Conservative Senate," a network of 60 Tea Party groups dedicated to retiring Lugar.
"We didn't have the unity [in 2010]. Once we built the foundation of unity, we went out and educated people about Lugar's voting record," said Monica Boyer, one of the group's cofounders.
The group endorsed Mourdock after a September straw poll showed that he was the preferred choice of conservative activists. National groups like the Tea Party Express that in 2010 were responsible for the rise of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and Joe Miller in Alaska had yet to enter fray in a major way. The national group FreedomWorks had met with Boyer's organization, but it didn't jump in with full force until Mourdock emerged as the consensus candidate.
"None of the outside groups were in here at that time," Boyer said. "We actually asked FreedomWorks to get involved."
"It was at that point that we knew, OK, this is real, they've made a decision, and they came to us; and they said, 'OK, we're ready, we want some support now,' " said FreedomWorks Vice President Russ Walker.
After it was clear that no other Republicans were going to get into the race, the influential antitax Club for Growth decided to endorse Mourdock and spent huge sums of cash on ads blasting Lugar. Around the same time, the Lugar campaign's ineffective response to stories about his residency began to receive more attention from voters. Mourdock's fundraising began to ramp up. The resulting concoction was toxic for Lugar.
Mourdock's competence as a candidate helped his cause. He hasn't yet committed the kind of gaffes we saw from O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, or Miller in 2010. Notably, he doesn't refer to himself as a Tea Party candidate, either. But that doesn't bother activists. "I don't want him to be painted in a corner," Boyer said. "I think that's what happened in the other states" like Nevada, where Angle ran.
Democrats are already moving to paint Mourdock into a very familiar corner. Anticipating a win on Tuesday afternoon, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee compared Mourdock to Ken Buck, the failed 2010 Senate nominee in Colorado.
While Mourdock has kept the Tea Party within arm's reach, Lugar thumbed his nose at the movement entirely.
"I've got to say, 'Get real,'" Lugar told a local Indiana TV station in 2011. "I hear Tea Party or other people talking about they were against START. I say, 'Well, now, hang on here.'"
Boyer said she met with Lugar for breakfast in 2010, but he wasn't receptive to her message.
"We told him of our grievances and he said to us, 'I vote this way because I feel it is best for Indiana,'" she said. "He just kept saying that over and over 'I know what is best.'"
Lugar's approach to the Right clashed dramatically with the strategies adopted by two of his colleagues who also faced conservative primary threats.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, faced a wave of tea party ire at the start of the cycle. After witnessing his colleague Robert Bennett fall victim to conservative challenger Mike Lee in 2010, Hatch extended an olive branch to the Right early and often, holding meetings with them and even hiring some organizers as paid staffers. He is now a heavy favorite over his Republican primary opponent.
Lugar's reluctance to go after Mourdock early in the contest went against the grain of another colleague's strategy. In 2010, when Sen. John McCain of Arizona ran against former Rep. J.D. Hayworth in the Republican primary, he quickly pivoted rightward. The onetime proponent of comprehensive immigration reform suddenly became a hard-liner who famously urged the government to "complete the danged fence" in one of 2010's most memorable TV ads.
National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman John Cornyn told reporters on Tuesday afternoon that all candidates must focus on "being prepared" and "making sure your constituents know who you are and know you are fighting the good fight." Although Cornyn did not comment directly on Lugar's campaign, his comments amounted to an implicit argument that a Lugar loss should be attributed to campaign missteps and the climate in the state. GOP campaign strategists privately advanced that view.
"After 2010 we knew that there were challenges for any incumbents running for reelection, and we saw some who handled that better than others in 2010 and 2012," Cornyn said. "So I think everybody knew it was coming."
It's not just incumbents who should take notice. Conservatives recruited a credible Senate contender in Texas in Ted Cruz, who stands a real chance of forcing a surprise GOP primary runoff in the open race against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. The open-seat race in Nebraska appears to be tightening, with Don Stenberg and Deb Fischer hoping to chase down front-running state Attorney General Jon Bruning. Even in Utah, where Hatch is in good shape, Dan Liljenquist has a fighting chance.
But most of these candidates owe much of their rise to national conservative groups. If the tea party is to have a lasting influence over Republican politics, it should look to Indiana as an example: Recruit a credible candidate and build a consensus before the army of national groups arrives.
"We have not gone away," Boyer added. "We are working behind the scenes, infiltrating the party."
Barack Obama is marking the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death with a campaign suggesting that his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, lacks the guts to have ordered the raid that killed the al-Qaida leader.
Infuriated Republicans have hit back by accusing the president of dividing America, calling the campaign "shameless" and accusing Obama of seeking "cheap" political advantage out of the daring raid in side Pakistan.
The Romney campaign has been particularly angered by a YouTube video in which former president Bill Clinton praises Obama's courage in ordering the Navy Seals' attack on Bin Laden's compound.
"Suppose the Navy Seals had gone in there and it hadn't been Bin Laden. Suppose they'd been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him, but he reasoned: I cannot in good conscience do nothing," said Clinton alongside images of New York firefighters cheering the news of the al-Qaida leader's death. "He took the harder and the more honourable path and the one that produced, in my opinion, the best result."
A question then appears on the screen: "Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?"
The advert reminds viewers that five years ago Romney said in an interview that "it's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person". Romney later retreated from that position.
The vice-president, Joe Biden, kicked off the questioning of what Romney would have done in a speech last week which praised Obama for taking the political risk to get Bin Laden.
"Does anybody doubt that had the mission failed, it would have written the beginning of the end of the president's first term?" he said. "On this gut issue, we know what President Obama did. We can't say for certain what Governor Romney would have done."
That message was pressed home on the weekend television talk shows. The former White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, was asked on Meet the Press on Sunday if Romney would have ordered the raid on Bin Laden's compound.
"I don't think it's clear that he would," he said. "Look, just a few years ago, President Obama – then a candidate – said in a speech that if we had actionable intelligence of a high-value target in Pakistan, we'd go in and get that high-value target. Mitt Romney said that was foolish. He wouldn't do such a thing. That he wouldn't move heaven and earth to get Osama bin Laden."
The attacks have angered the Republicans. Romney's campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, accused Obama of exploiting Bin Laden's death for political advantage.
"It's now sad to see the Obama campaign seek to use an event that unified our country to once again divide us, in order to try to distract voters' attention from the failures of his administration," she said.
Senator John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, called the video "a cheap political attack".
"This is the same president who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn't 'spike the ball' after the touchdown," he said. "And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get re-elected."
Some administration supporters have countered that if the operation had gone wrong, the Republicans would not shy away from attacking Obama as they have over his handling of relations with Pakistan and Iran.
Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for George Bush's 2004 election campaign which focused heavily on the 9/11 attacks, said it is legitimate for Obama to use Bin Laden's death in his campaign.
"It was a courageous political decision to launch the raid where Bin Laden was killed. The stakes were enormous," Schmidt told the AP. "Had it gone south, there would have been tremendous political ramifications for the president. It's a real event that happened on his watch, by his command."
The Obama campaign's attempts to exploit the anniversary to portray the president as tough on national security, in part to counter Republican charges that he has been weak in dealing with Iran and Pakistan, is in contrast to the president's relatively restrained public reaction at the time Bin Laden was killed.
The administration ensured that the anniversary would be addressed on the Sunday talk shows by putting on John Brennan, Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser. He called the killing of Bin Laden "a momentous day in US history" that had been a profound blow to al-Qaida.
Brennan said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center on Monday that Obama faced the decision over whether to get Bin Laden a year ago to the day and "he did not hesitate to act".
"The death of Bin Laden was our most strategic blow yet against al-Qaida. Credit for that success belongs to the courageous forces who carried out that mission, at extraordinary risk to their lives; to the many intelligence professionals who pieced together the clues that led to Bin Laden's hideout; and to President Obama, who gave the order to go in," he said.
Brennan also said on Monday that some of the documents found during the attack on bin Laden's compound will be posted online this week.
The documents included correspondence between bin Laden and affiliates, and his own handwritten diary.
Obama waded in on Sunday at a campaign fundraiser in Virginia where he mocked Romney's recently stated view that it is Moscow, not al-Qaida, that is the US's principal foe.
"Hillary [Clinton] and I – we've spent the last three and a half years cleaning up after other folks' messes. And by the way, we're starting to get them pretty cleaned up. The war in Iraq is over. We're transitioning in Afghanistan. We've got the strongest allies we've ever seen. And al-Qaida is on the ropes," the president said. "But when you've got the leading contender, the presumptive nominee, on the other side suddenly saying our number one enemy isn't al-Qaida, it's Russia – I don't make that up. I'm suddenly thinking maybe I didn't check the calendar this morning. I didn't know we were back in 1975."
California could decide the GOP nominee
Posted by Aaron Blakeat 10:44 AM ET, 03/15/2012TheWashingtonPost
California is not exactly the GOP’s idea of home turf.
But in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, it’s the most important state on the calendar. Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign stop at William Jewell College on Tuesday, in Liberty, Mo. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
California’s June 5 primary, despite being the second-to-last contest, is looking more and more like it may determine whether Mitt Romney can win the Republican nomination or whether the party goes to its August convention without a nominee.
“If Gingrich drops out and Santorum can go at Romney one on one, it could be competitive all the way to California, in which case California would pretty much decide the nomination,” said John Ryder, a Republican National Committeeman from Tennessee who is an expert on the delegate process.
Part of the reason is the state’s sheer size. Because states are given three delegates to the Republican National Convention for every congressional district they have, California has a whopping 172 delegates. That’s more than 15 percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination.
California is technically a winner-take-all state, but because basically all of its delegates are awarded by congressional district, there is the possibility that they get sliced up any number of ways.
That said, Romney is a strong early favorite in the state, leading every poll there this year and by 20 points in the most recent poll. What’s more, the state’s more moderate brand of Republicanism and highly urban population seem to play right into his hands.
California is still the Wild West at this point; none of the candidates have set up much of a campaign in the state. Romney and Newt Gingrich have been there to raise money, and but the June 5 primary is so far away and the state is so big — not to mention that the race could be over by then — that’s it’s hard to devote a lot of effort there right now.
“None of the candidates has infrastructure here except Romney — and that is left over from four years ago,” said California GOP consultant Matt Rexroad. ”Romney will probably look to focus on the areas of the state where he did well four years ago.”
Romney didn’t win the state four years ago, but he did have a respectable showing, trailing John McCain by 8 percent in the state’s Super Tuesday primary.
But even in his respectably showing, Romney won just four of the 53 congressional districts, and thus he won just 12 delegates, with the rest (158) going to McCain. It was McCain’s single biggest delegate haul and played a big role in icing the nomination for the Arizona senator.
It also proved that Romney doesn’t need to score a blowout to win nearly all of the state’s delegates. He just needs a consistent and significant victory.
Romney is hoping for a similar result, albeit much later in the process. But as long as his opponents are still in the race, it’s highly likely that the state will matter.
California’s primary is June 5 — before only Utah’s primary on June 26. We pretty much know Romney is going to sweep all 40 of Utah’s delegates — he will win the heavily Mormon state, which is winner-take-all — so assuming Romney still has competition in early June, we will know exactly how many delegates he needs on June 5 to win the nomination.
Other states will vote that day — most notably New Jersey — but California will account for most of the delegates at stake.
In addition, it appears diffcult (for now) that Romney will secure the nomination before California. He would need to win more than two-thirds of the delegates between now and June 5 to make that day’s contests moot.
“There is a growing likelihood it will matter,” said Ron Nehring, a former state GOP chairman. “My unscientific guesstimate is there is a 33 percent chance it will be needed to give someone the nomination.”
In other words, it’s time to start looking at California as a real potential battleground.
It may decide the Republican nominee.
Santorum Calls Romney a Weak Candidate for the G.O.P.
WASHINGTON – With two key Southern primaries on the horizon this week, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich sharpened their attacks against Mitt Romney on Sunday, as Mr. Santorum bluntly declared that his leading rival “can’t close the deal” and Newt Gingrich called Mr. Romney the party’s weakest front-runner since 1920.
While much of the attention is focused on Mr. Romney, the Republican contests in Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday could bring a new measure of clarity to the field. The tension between Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum is steadily increasing, but Mr. Gingrich has rejected suggestions that he leave the race if he fares poorly in the two primaries.
“I think we’re probably pulling ahead in both states right now,” Mr. Gingrich said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” He rejected the assertion that Mr. Santorum was the strongest conservative in the race, saying: “I think there’s a space for a visionary conservative with big solutions.”
Mr. Santorum, who swept to a commanding victory in the Kansas caucuses on Saturday, stopped short of joining his aides and supporters in calling for Mr. Gingrich to end his campaign. But he made clear that a two-man race with Mr. Romney was the party’s best chance to present a conservative alternative for Republicans.
“Speaker Gingrich can stay in as long as he wants, but I think the better opportunity to nominate a conservative is to give us an opportunity to go head-to-head with Gov. Romney,” Mr. Santorum said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.” “Hopefully that occurs sooner rather than later.”
The Republican presidential campaign has become a race to win 1,144 delegates needed to secure the party’s nomination. Mr. Romney holds a significant advantage over his rivals, but his advisers believe that he will not reach the delegate threshold for at least two more months.
While Mr. Romney and his aides have increasingly presented him as the all but certain Republican nominee, Mr. Santorum tried to slow that momentum. He argued Sunday that the race wasn’t simply “a mathematical formula.”
“He can’t close the deal,” Mr. Santorum said, saying that Mr. Romney spent considerable more money in Ohio and Michigan but only won “by the skin of his teeth.” He added, “We’ve been slowly clawing our way back into this race. We’re in a great position right now.”
Mr. Romney, who has struggled to win several Southern states, is looking ahead to the Illinois primary on March 20 as the place to make his stand in his fight with Mr. Santorum. But a new Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll released Saturday evening found that the two candidates are locked in a tight race.
The poll found Mr. Romney to be supported by 35 percent of likely Republican primary voters, compared with 31 percent for Mr. Santorum. The margin is within the poll’s 4-percentage-point margin of error.
The survey found Mr. Gingrich with 12 percent and Representative Ron Paul of Texas with 7 percent. Sixteen percent were undecided in the poll and 46 percent said they were stilling to change their minds, which raise the importance of the primaries in Mississippi, Alabama and Hawaii on Tuesday, along with the Missouri caucuses on Saturday.
In his television interview on Sunday, Mr. Gingrich stepped back from his spokesman’s assertion last week that he must win the Mississippi and Alabama primaries to keep his candidacy alive. He renewed his pledge to fight all the way to the Republican convention in August, calling Mr. Romney the weakest Republican front-runner since Leonard Wood in 1920, an Army general who was defeated by Warren G. Harding after 10 rounds of voting at the convention.
“Yes he’s the front-runner,” Mr. Gingrich said of Mr. Romney. “He’s not a very strong front-runner and almost all conservatives are opposed to him, which is the base of the party. I think we are as likely to see after the last primary in June a 60-day conversation about what’s going to happen, as we are to see Romney nominated.”
Mr. Romney made no public appearances on Sunday. His campaign added a last-minute stop in Mobile, Ala., on Monday morning, which advisers said was in recognition of the fluidity of the race and the potential that he could still win the state, which would be a significant boost to his candidacy.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in an interview Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week,” that the Republican race was Mr. Romney’s to lose.
“Mathematically this thing is about over,” Mr. Graham said, “but emotionally it’s not.”
Paul, Romney and Santorum see opportunity in Washington
By Mitchell Landsberg
March 3, 2012, 8:42 a.m.
Reporting from Spokane, Wash.—
Saturday’s Washington state Republican caucuses provide, in an admittedly limited way, a metaphor for the 2012 GOP primary campaign.
Mitt Romney’s campaign organization: steady as she goes. Rick Santorum’s: flying by the seat of the pants, but with a lot of passion. Ron Paul’s: a lot of the same faces from 2008, with some energetic new ones. Newt Gingrich: not really a factor, because he’s focusing on other states.
Each of the candidates campaigned in Washington in the lead-up to the caucuses, which are largely a speed bump on the way to Super Tuesday. But Paul is hoping for his first victory of the campaign, and Santorum sees Washington as a way to slow Romney’s momentum. For Romney, of course, a win here would contribute to the sense that he is the inevitable Republican nominee.
The state GOP expected between 40,000 and 60,000 voters to turn out for the caucuses, which are being held in a variety of schools, churches, community centers, libraries and, in at least a couple of instances, sports bars.
The caucus-goers represent a fairly tiny percentage of Washington’s 3.6 million voters, who register without party affiliation. (To vote at a GOP caucus, voters have to sign a statement vouching that they “consider yourself to be a Republican”—a requirement that, one might say, leaves a little wiggle room.)
At stake are Washington’s 43 delegates to the Republican National Convention. But technically speaking, they won’t be allocated until the state GOP meets at the end of May and early June. The caucuses will hold a straw poll, which will largely determine bragging rights, and then select delegates to the state convention. Those delegates will be pledged to specific candidates, but allowed to change their minds.
If that sounds slightly fuzzy, that’s because it is. Then again, Washington voters had gotten used to an even more complicated system in which the state held both a primary and caucuses. The primary was scrapped this year to save money.
mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com
If Being A Conservative Were Easy There Wouldn't Be Any Liberals
Andrew Breitbart, the noted conservative Internet publisher and author, has died. He was 43.
A statement posted on his website said that Breitbart died "unexpectedly from natural causes" this morning.
The Los Angeles Coroner's Office confirmed to ABC News Radio that Breitbart died shortly after midnight at UCLA Medical Center.
The following statement was posted on Breitbart's website today:
"With a terrible feeling of pain and loss we announce the passing of Andrew Breitbart. We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior.
Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile liberty he showed us how to love.
Andrew recently wrote a new conclusion to his book, Righteous Indignation:
'I love my job. I love fighting for what I believe in. I love having fun while doing it. I love reporting stories that the Complex refuses to report. I love fighting back, I love finding allies, and—famously—I enjoy making enemies.
Three years ago, I was mostly a behind-the-scenes guy who linked to stuff on a very popular website. I always wondered what it would be like to enter the public realm to fight for what I believe in. I've lost friends, perhaps dozens. But I've gained hundreds, thousands—who knows?—of allies. At the end of the day, I can look at myself in the mirror, and I sleep very well at night.'
Andrew is at rest, yet the happy warrior lives on, in each of us."
A conservative blogger and journalist, Breitbart helped launch the Huffington Post and was an editor at the Drudge Report.
He also founded his own news network, acting as the publisher of several news websites including Breitbart.com, Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Peace.
Big Government broke the ACORN child sex trafficking scandal and also, in 2011, the "Weinergate" photo scandal that led to the resignation of New York Rep. Anthony Weiner.
Breitbert was known for publishing controversial exposes and wrote a best-selling critique of celebrity culture, "Hollywood, Interrupted." His newest book "Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!" was on the New York Times bestseller list.
Ohio AG DeWine switches from Romney to Santorum
February 17, 2012|Julie Carr Smyth, Associated Press
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine switched his endorsement from Mitt Romney to Rick Santorum on Friday in a defection he said was driven by his belief the former Pennsylvania senator can win the Republican presidential race.
DeWine, a former senator who led John McCain’s Ohio presidential campaign in 2008, made the announcement in the company of Santorum at the Statehouse. He said he once felt Santorum could not overcome Romney’s financial advantage but has decided he was wrong.
“To be elected president, you have to do more than tear down your opponents,’’ DeWine said. “You have to give the American people a reason to vote for you, a reason to hope, a reason to believe that under your leadership, America will be better. Rick Santorum has done that. Sadly, Governor Romney has not.’’
DeWine had endorsed Romney in the Republican presidential race after his initial choice, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, withdrew.
The defection comes as a sting to Romney, though he still has some major names in Ohio Republican politics behind him heading into the March 6 primary. They include Sen. Rob Portman, Reps. Mike Turner and Jim Renacci, and the former senator and governor, George Voinovich.
Romney’s camp tried to wave off the development.
“Nothing has changed,’’ insisted John Sununu, a Romney adviser and former New Hampshire governor. “Attorneys general don’t have that much of an organization.’’
He attributed the switch to an ad a pro-Romney group ran criticizing Santorum’s vote in the Senate to give voting rights to felons once they complete their sentences or parole. DeWine also had cast a vote in favor of such rights.
“Mike DeWine was upset that issue was raised by the super PAC,’’ Sununu said.
DeWine said Friday he had never seen the ad and it didn’t impact his decision.
Ohio Democrats, through their spokesman Seth Bringman, issued a terse statement in response to DeWine’s decision: “As is true for countless Ohioans, the more Mike DeWine learned about Mitt Romney, the less he liked.’’
DeWine successfully pushed for Ohio to join 25 other states in a lawsuit to block President Barack Obama’s federal health care overhaul, claiming health insurance mandates are unconstitutional.
He served four terms in the House and two terms in the Senate before losing his re-election bid to Sherrod Brown in 2006. He won a close election for state attorney general in 2010.
Sununu was joined by Turner in a conference call aimed at countering Santorum’s latest piece of good news. Turner said Santorum, who has lacked money and organization for much of the race, won’t get on the ballot in all states and that raises questions about his “basic level of competence.’’
Obama's budget: Government still getting bigger
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press – 2/13/2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — Taking a pass on reining in government growth, President Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion election-year budget plan Monday, calling for stimulus-style spending on roads and schools and tax hikes on the wealthy to help pay the costs. The ideas landed with a thud on Capitol Hill.
Though the Pentagon and a number of Cabinet agencies would get squeezed, Obama would leave the spiraling growth of health care programs for the elderly and the poor largely unchecked. The plan claims $4 trillion in deficit savings over the coming decade, but most of it would be through tax increases Republicans oppose, lower war costs already in motion and budget cuts enacted last year in a debt pact with GOP lawmakers.
Many of the ideas in the White House plan for the 2013 budget year will be thrashed out during this year's election campaigns as the Republicans try to oust Obama from the White House and add Senate control to their command of the House.
"We can't just cut our way into growth," Obama said at a campaign-style rally at a community college in the vote-rich Northern Virginia suburbs. "We can cut back on the things that we don't need, but we also have to make sure that everyone is paying their fair share for the things that we do need."
Republicans were unimpressed.
"It seems like the president has decided again to campaign instead of govern and that he's just going to duck this country's fiscal problems," said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
By the administration's reckoning, the deficit would drop to $901 billion next year — still requiring the government to borrow 24 cents of every dollar it spends — and would settle in the $600 billion-plus range by 2015.The deficit for the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30, would hit $1.3 trillion, a near record and the fourth straight year of trillion-plus red ink.
Obama's budget blueprint reprises a long roster of prior proposals: raising taxes on couples making more than $250,000 a year; eliminating numerous tax breaks for oil and gas companies and approving a series of smaller tax and fee proposals. Similar proposals failed even when the Democrats controlled Congress.
The Pentagon would cut purchases of Navy ships and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters — and trim 100,000 troops from its rolls over coming years — while NASA would scrap two missions to Mars.
But there are spending increases, too: The Obama plan seeks $476 billion for transportation projects including roads, bridges and a much-criticized high-speed rail initiative. Grants for better performing schools would get a big increase under Obama's "Race to the Top" initiative, and there would be an $8 billion fund to train community college students for high-growth industries.
Republicans accused the president of yet again failing to do anything meaningful to reduce deficits that could threaten the country with a European-style debt crisis unless they are wrestled under control.
As a political document, the Obama plan blends a handful of jobs-boosting initiatives with poll-tested tax hikes on the rich, including higher taxes on dividends and income earned by hedge fund managers. That would allow Obama to draw a contrast with GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, whose personal fortune and relatively low tax rate would be an issue in the general election campaign.
Another contrast with Republicans will come on Medicare, the enormously popular health care programs for the elderly. Obama leaves the program mostly alone, while Republicans are on record in favor of gradually replacing the current system in which the government pays doctor and hospital bills with a voucher-like plan that would have government subsidize purchases of health insurance.
Nor does Obama tackle Social Security's fiscal imbalance. Payroll taxes paid into the program fall well short of what's needed to cover benefits; the shortfall is made up by tapping into a $2.7 trillion trust fund that's built up since the last overhaul of the program in the early 1980s.
Said Romney: "We can save Social Security and Medicare with a few commonsense reforms, and — unlike President Obama — I'm not afraid to put them on the table."
The president's tax proposals and most of his new jobs initiatives are likely to arrive as dead letters on Capitol Hill, where the immediate focus is on Obama's proposal to renew a 2 percentage point cut in Social Security payroll taxes and jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. House GOP leaders did an abrupt about-face on Monday and declared that they are willing to add to the deficit the $100 billion cost of renewing the payroll tax cut.
While Obama and Congress appear headed for deadlock over big-picture questions such as Medicare cuts and tax hikes, there's still the work of filling in the details of last summer's budget and debt pact, which set tight caps on annual appropriations bills funding the day-to-day operations of government.
Those caps are putting most agencies, except the Department of Veterans Affairs, in a pinch.
The Pentagon, which had grown used to budget increases well in excess of inflation until recently, would absorb its first outright budget cut since the post-Cold War "peace dividend" of the early 1990s, including cuts to major weapons systems, fewer combat ships and the reduction in troops.
On taxes, Obama proposes allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of this year for families making $250,000 or more per year.
Obama, as he has in the past, also proposed capping tax deductions taken by the wealthy and would also put in place a rule named for billionaire Warren Buffett that would seek to make sure that households making more than $1 million annually pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. The "Buffett Rule" would replace the alternative minimum tax, which was originally designed to ensure that wealthy families pay at least some tax.
Obama would also impose a new $61 billion tax over 10 years on big banks aimed at recovering the costs of the financial bailout and providing money to help homeowners facing foreclosure. The proposal also would raise $41 billion over 10 years by eliminating tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies.
The plan contains a host of other proposals whose budget impact would be modest but would be felt by almost everyone, among them an end to Saturday mail delivery. There's also a plan to raise $593 million by eliminating deductions for golf course conservation easement and a plan that would raise the one-way security fee on airline tickets to $7.50, up from fees that are now as low as $2.50 for a nonstop flight.
To spur job creation in the short term, Obama is proposing a $50 billion "upfront" investment for transportation, $30 billion to modernize at least 35,000 schools and $30 billion to help states hire teachers and police, rescue and fire department workers. Republicans in Congress, opposed to further stimulus spending, have blocked these proposals in the past.
The Obama budget seeks $360 billion in savings in Medicare and Medicaid mainly through reduced payments to health care providers, avoiding tougher measures, advocated by House Republicans and the deficit commissions, which supporters said were critical to the cause of restraining health care costs.
The projections in Obama's budget show that he is doing little to restrain the surge in these programs that is expected with the retirement of baby boomers. Obama's budget projects that Medicare spending will double over the coming decade from $478 billion this year to almost $1 trillion in 2022.
Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor and disabled, would more than double from $255 billion this year to $589 billion by 2022.
Santorum's surge means new strategy for Romney
By KASIE HUNT, Associated Press – 2/11/12
WASHINGTON (AP) — Staggered by Rick Santorum's surge, Mitt Romney is trying to reset his presidential campaign by defining himself as a strict conservative.
The former Massachusetts governor had focused on his business credentials and played down his ideology, four years after he failed in his attempt to win the GOP nomination by running as a social conservative.
"I was a severely conservative Republican governor," Romney told the Conservative Political Action Committee's annual gathering Friday. It was a speech that, advisers said, Romney viewed as an important chance to speak directly to the conservatives who rejected him in three contests last Tuesday.
He insisted that he is a conservative in both record and background, trying to convince the GOP's skeptical right flank that he is acceptable as the party's nominee.
"My path to conservatism came from my family, from my faith and from my life's work," Romney said.
He's working to gain trust from the activists who make up the GOP base and who drive the Republican primary contest. They view him skeptically because of his past shifts on a variety of issues, including his previous support for abortion rights.
Conservatives generally view Romney's chief rivals, Santorum and Newt Gingrich, as having views more in line with their own.
Romney's new message comes as he's trying to prove he can win over a broad spectrum of Republicans. He has yet to win a majority of GOP votes in any of the contests he's won so far. And he's looking to emerge strongly from Super Tuesday, March 6, when 10 states hold nominating contests.
In offering the defense, though, Romney drew attention to the problem he's faced throughout the primary contest.
"I've never heard anybody say, 'I'm severely conservative,'" conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said Friday.
Romney's conservative opposition remains divided — the former House speaker has won one state and the former Pennsylvania senator four. But Santorum is suddenly threatening Romney's dominance in states where his team had previously felt comfortable.
This past week, Santorum won contests in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado. While Romney's team decided not to compete in Missouri's nonbinding primary and acknowledged early that Minnesota might pose problems, they were much more optimistic about Colorado. Romney spent several days campaigning there ahead of the caucuses, but his team spent just $32,000 on TV ads in the state.
In a sign it's nervous about continued losses, Romney's team abruptly added campaign events in Maine, where results from the caucuses were to be announced Saturday. He also held a town hall in the state Friday night; it was the first event where he took questions from voters since he campaigned in South Carolina in January.
Romney's team is preparing an aggressive push against Santorum in Michigan, where Romney was born and where Romney is a household name and where his advisers had hoped for an easy victory. Romney's father, George, served as governor of Michigan and chairman of American Motor Corp. before mounting a failed bid for president in 1968.
Romney all but ignored Santorum ahead of this week's contests. Advisers say that will change, with Romney taking on Santorum's record on union issues during his time in the Senate from heavily unionized Pennsylvania.
Santorum joined a filibuster of a national right-to-work act and voted to defend legislation that sets pay for public sector workers. He defends that record as an issue of states' rights.
Romney has also planned a more aggressive campaign schedule in Michigan in the coming weeks. He will hold events in Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids on Wednesday and stay in the Midwest through the end of the week. He's likely to spend some time campaigning in Ohio, which holds its primary on March 6, Super Tuesday, and is the first Rust Belt state to hold a nominating contest.
Romney's big advantage is money. He and his allies, the super PAC Restore Our Future, have spent a combined $25 million on TV ads to date, helping to drive wins in New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada. That dwarfs the $7.1 million Gingrich and his allies have spent on airtime and the $2.5 million Santorum backers have shelled out.
Still, Romney is facing a crush of primaries and caucuses on March 6, when his financial edge will be tested. But he always could add to that himself. He hasn't said if he'll contribute any of his considerable personal fortune to the campaign. In 2008, he spent $45 million.
Santorum deals Romney a setback by winning Missouri
Rick Santorum waits backstage before a rally in Blaine, Minn. Tuesday. (Ben Garvin/Getty Images)
By Paul West
February 7, 2012, 7:14 p.m.
Rick Santorum dealt Mitt Romney a setback Tuesday night, winning the presidential primary in Missouri as Republicans in three states voted on a day that could produce a shift in the momentum of the 2012 race.
The former Pennsylvania senator’s victory in the non-binding “beauty contest” gave him bragging rights on a day when Romney had once been expected to gain a sweep.
Romney, still the favorite for the GOP nomination, had managed to put back-to-back successes together with wins in Florida and Nevada. Now he will have to regroup, with few opportunities to show strength until a pair of primaries that are still three weeks away.
Santorum, whose last victory came more than a month ago in Iowa’s leadoff caucuses, had his best showing since that day. Early returns from caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado also showed Santorum running well.
Rep. Ron Paul, the only candidate without a victory, has been targeting caucus states, including those voting Tuesday, Minnesota and Colorado. Delegates in both states will be apportioned later and Missouri’s primary has no connection to delegate selection.
Romney, who carried Minnesota and Colorado in 2008, scheduled a celebration with supporters in Denver. Sounding confident, he told Colorado voters earlier in the day that their state would have “a little something to say about who our nominee is going to be.”
Santorum chose to stage his election-night event in Missouri, the largest of the three states voting Tuesday and the second most populous to vote so far this year. One of his arguments to Republican voters is his ability to carry electoral battlegrounds, like his home state of Pennsylvania--and Missouri in the past has fit that mold.
In 2012, though, Colorado and Minnesota are more likely to be competitive in the general election, while Missouri has become reliably Republican.
In Colorado and Minnesota, voters were gathered at precinct caucuses, where a straw poll of attendees was conducted to reflect the presidential preferences of party activists.
Tuesday’s caucuses were conducted under the same process as those in Iowa, which took weeks to sort out. Romney initially was said to be the winner, but after state party officials checked ballots Santorum was given the victory eventually was declared the winner, defeating Romney by 34 votes out of more than 121,500 cast.
The Missouri primary provided Santorum with his clearest opportunity yet to go head-to-head with Romney as the conservative alternative, since Newt Gingrich failed to qualify for the statewide ballot. Gingrich and Santorum have competed to eliminate the other and become the ultimate choice of the party’s most ardent conservatives against Romney.
But their cause—stopping the front-runner—is likely to have a better chance of succeeding if both Santorum and Gingrich remain viable candidates, at least for now. Recent primary polling has indicated that if one of them were to drop out, at least a portion of his support would go to Romney, allowing the former Massachusetts governor to gain delegates more quickly than if the anti-Romney vote continued to be divided among several candidates.
Turnout in Missouri was reported to be low, and the candidates have spent little time campaigning there since the election is a “beauty-contest” with no bearing on delegates to the national convention. State law required the primary to take place, and in most parts of the state, the presidential contest was the only item on the ballot. But, because of its early timing, Republican National Committee rules would have penalized Missouri for using the primary to select delegates. As a result, the state party opted to pick them in a separate caucus process that starts next month.
Even before the primary season began, Romney strategists were concerned about the difficulty of maintaining momentum during February, a month in which relatively few states hold binding contests. The next round of primaries isn’t until Feb. 28, when Michigan and Arizona vote.
Facing possible setbacks Tuesday, the Romney camp moved to lower expectations and said the former Massachusetts governor is prepared to wage a “methodical, long-haul campaign,” with more money and organization than either Santorum or Gingrich.
A memo, sent out from the Boston headquarters as voting was under way in Missouri and soon to begin in the other states, argued that “there is no way for any nominee to win first place in every single contest” and “we expect our opponents to notch a few wins, too.”
“Romney is the only candidate prepared to compete in simultaneous campaigns across the country,” Rich Beeson, the Romney campaign’s political director, said in the memo. As for the others, “[e]ven ‘success’ in a few states will not mean collecting enough delegates to win the nomination.”
Gingrich, in a tacit acknowledgement that he did not expect to do well on Tuesday, spent the day campaigning in Ohio. The Midwest state is one of 11 that will vote on March 6, known as Super Tuesday.
The former House speaker, seeking to turn his candidacy around that day, needs a strong showing in Ohio—the largest Super Tuesday state and one of the biggest general-election battlegrounds—to bolster his argument that he still has a chance to become his party’s nominee.
Back in Texas, Rick Perry has relationships to repair
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry,
speaks to employees during a campaign stop at Granite State
Manufacturing, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2011 in Manchester, N.H. (AP
Photo/Jim Cole)
by Emily Ramshaw / KENS 5
Posted on January 22, 2012 at 11:36 AM
When Gov. Rick Perry suspended his presidential bid, he said it was because there was no “viable path forward.” But is there a viable path back?
In his five-month run for the White House, he called Turkey’s leaders “Islamic terrorists,” blasted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s fiscal strategy as “treasonous,” and slammed gays serving openly in the military, moves that made some moderate Republicans choke on their lunch.
He offended Tea Partiers and some of his social
conservative fans by saying opponents of in-state tuition for the
children of illegal immigrants were heartless.
And he alienated big business Republicans by going after so-called “vulture capitalists,” prompting Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host, to compare Perry to Fidel Castro.
Publicly, Perry’s supporters say no bridges have been
irreparably burned. Almost as soon as he pulled out of the race, his
advisers were spinning forward, suggesting Perry could run for
re-election in Texas in 2014, or take another stab at the presidency in
four years.
“The governor comes back in a strong position,” Ray
Sullivan, his spokesman, said in an interview at Perry’s campaign
headquarters on Friday, just hours after returning from South Carolina.
“To the extent that any issues need to be handled on the political side
here in Texas — and I’m not sure there will be any — I’m confident that
will be done quickly and effectively.”
But privately, some of Perry’s longstanding allies
expressed doubts that the slate can be wiped perfectly clean — at least
without some fence-mending.
“There are some people who have their noses out of
joint, but the real question is, which man returns?” said Bill Miller, a
political consultant based in Austin. “If it’s the presidential
candidate making mistakes and offending people, he’s going to have
trouble. If it’s the guy who embodies the old Rick Perry, with his ‘I
love ya, let’s get Texas going again’ attitude, it’s an easy landing.”
Friends and colleagues of the governor say the Rick
Perry now home in Texas is a humbled man, one who spent Friday, the day
after withdrawing from the race, making phone calls to thank supporters
and smooth over rough edges — a bitter pill for someone so unfamiliar
with losing. They say he is relieved to be done after a fifth-place
finish in first-test Iowa, a horrible finish in New Hampshire and an
uphill battle in South Carolina, and is looking forward to getting back
to work in the governor’s office.
“There have been a lot of hard feelings, not just that
the campaign didn’t go well, but how it didn’t go well,” said one Perry
adviser who was not authorized to speak on the record and asked not to
be named. “Perry has taken some steps to acknowledge how bad things
were. The outreach has been humble and gracious, in the financial
community and in the campaign community. He’s telling people he learned a
lot.”
But Texans learned something too — how their usually unflappable governor performs under national pressure.
They winced at the gaffes and unforced errors: When Perry misstated the voting age and the number of justices on the Supreme Court. When he said Texas teaches creationism in public schools. When he forgot the third agency he wanted to shutter during a presidential debate, prompting the “oops” heard around the cable news world.
And they cringed as Perry’s campaign rhetoric and candidate attacks grew more desperate.
There was the December “Strong” ad where Perry states,
“There’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in
the military” — which his advisers quietly called a blatant grasp at
Christian conservatives.
When he was under fire in a Republican debate, his
statement that those who opposed in-state tuition for the children of
illegal immigrants did not have “a heart” rankled the same
anti-immigration voters he was trying to court. And Perry’s allegation,
with his back against the wall in South Carolina, that firms like the
financial services company his opponent Mitt Romney founded were
“vulture capitalists” outraged some Republican business leaders, in
addition to the Republican pundit class.
JoAnn Fleming, chairwoman of the Texas Legislature’s Tea
Party Caucus Advisory Committee, said Perry has some explaining to do
back in Texas. She called his “vulture capitalism” comments the kind of
attack a liberal would make, and said that although Perry defended
Texas’ in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants on the
campaign trail, she and other Tea Party activists will be calling on him
to repeal it in the next legislative session.
News reports that Perry had begun drawing down his
pension to supplement his gubernatorial salary did not sit well with
small-government conservatives either, she said.
“He has some cleaning up of his own doorstep he needs to do,” Fleming said.
Gene Austin, the Republican-leaning chief executive of Convio,
an internet marketing and business management software company based in
Austin, said Perry’s “troublesome campaign” — and how “unprepared” he
was for the national stage — have even broader implications. He worries
that the Texas governor’s comments on the campaign trail could hinder,
at least in the short term, the intersection of big business and
workforce development in Texas.
“I think the damage is temporary; time heals all
wounds,” Austin said. “He’s a smart person, no doubt about it. But
‘vulture capitalism’ absolutely alienated the business community.”
Not everyone agrees with this assessment. Bill Hammond, president and CEO of the Texas Association of Business,
said in any hard-fought campaign, bombs get dropped in the heat of
battle. “But you compare that against a 10-year record of being one of
the best governors for creating jobs,” he said, “and we come down on the
side of Rick Perry.”
And state Sen. Dan Patrick,
a Houston Republican and Tea Party favorite, said Perry does not have
to ask for any forgiveness. “He stepped onto the big stage, he stumbled
early without question in the debates. But I thought he left the race
putting party and cause above his own desires,” Patrick said. “He comes
back determined to show that this presidential run has not impacted his
authority or his power or his passion to lead Texas.”
Political insiders say presidential cycles are vicious,
and that conservative voters know that. They say the people in Iowa,
South Carolina, or back home in Texas who took offense to Perry’s
campaign attacks were “finger in the wind” voters who are probably still
mad. Back home, they say, it all comes out in the wash.
“Texas is a sympathetic audience for him,” said Miller,
the political consultant. “He has drawn on supporters here for many
years — they know what he’s like, and know he gets more aggressive in
campaigns than he does otherwise.”
Republican insiders in Texas say the bulk of the
rebuilding Perry needs to do is with his longtime state-based staff,
some of whom felt they got big-footed by national consultants in a
rough-and-tumble campaign. Whether Perry simply finishes out his term as
governor, runs for re-election, or makes another national run — as his
advisers have suggested he could do — he will need them in his corner.
“There are a lot of bruised ribs,” said the Perry
adviser. “After the requisite period of time, I think you’ll see all the
familiar and competent faces.”
Mitt vs. the walking dead
By: Alexander Burns January 21, 2012 07:01 AM EST
CHARLESTON,
S.C. - They’ve been nuked on the airwaves, buried at the polls and had
their obituaries written by the national political class.
Yet as voting begins in the South Carolina primary, Mitt Romney’s
remaining opponents sound more determined than ever to make him wage a
long and potentially costly battle for the Republican presidential
nomination. Driven by a range of personal resentments and unlikely
strategies, the surviving anti-Romney candidates are following a path
blazed every four years by one set or another of proud underdogs:
pressing on with guerrilla-style campaigns that were never allowed much
hope of success.
It’s not that they don’t recognize that the odds are stacked against
them, or that they’re oblivious to Romney’s strengths. But for Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul,
the campaign has always been a desperate errand - a windmill-tilting
exercise in ignoring the overwhelming conventional wisdom that says that
they have no chance.
The result is now a race that forces Romney to keep battling opponents
he has vanquished - or thought he vanquished - at other points in the
race. And they can keep on fighting him as long as they have the will
and money to keep going.
“If Mitt wins South Carolina, then anyone that continues on is walking
dead,” said California-based GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, who worked for
Romney in 2008. “It was quite legitimate for all of them to go to South
Carolina and see if they could break out. Because if one of them could
win South Carolina, it would probably winnow the rest of the field out
and leave more of a singular conservative for voters to coalesce
behind.”
Here in the Palmetto State, Romney’s most fearsome back-from-the-grave
opponent is Gingrich, who is attempting to rebound from weak finishes in
Iowa and New Hampshire with a shock victory. He’s delivered an
aggressive message against the frontrunner and the super PAC Winning Our
Future has run a searing ad campaign attacking Romney’s business
background.
Gingrich capped his week with a bravura performance in Thursday night’s
debate in which he seemingly accomplished a political miracle - turning
an accusation by his ex-wife that he wanted an “open marriage” into a
thunderous applause line.
Even if Romney should lose here, he would still be the strongest
candidate by far for the Republican nomination, a reality his
challengers recognize. But Romney has also shown his vulnerable spots
over the last few days, fumbling the issue of when he’ll release his tax
returns and sounding flummoxed and defensive on the debate stage.
Should Romney’s week end with a loss in South Carolina, other candidates
hope it will trigger a larger reconsideration of Romney within the GOP,
sowing doubts about his abilities as a candidate and giving Gingrich
and Santorum a new chance to make their case.
As one die-hard Gingrich supporter put it: “It’s a sliver of an opening.”
Pouring endless time and energy into a sliver of a
political opportunity is not, however, a new experience for Romney’s
rivals. Gingrich, Santorum and their aides campaigned at the back of the
pack all summer and most of the fall, written off by the national press
as hapless afterthoughts. Paul has long been dismissed by many as a
symbolism-driven candidate - looking to make an impact for his causes
rather than seeking real viability.
All that has produced something of a culture of defiance in the
anti-Romney camps. Explained Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond: “We forgot
what it is to quit.”
What’s more, each of Romney’s opponents continues to view the campaign
against as something more than a flight of personal ambition. Paul wants
to gather delegates to show his swat at the Republican convention in
Tampa. For Santorum, there’s the sense that what has now been certified
as a win in Iowa, along with the endorsement of numerous conservative
faith leaders, give him the right to keep fighting on.
“Candidates keep going because someone is still going to emerge as the
alternative to the front-runner and because they have different
agendas,” said Eric Woolson, the former adviser to Michele Bachmann, who
ended her campaign after Iowa. “They either see themselves as emerging
as that alternative - Speaker Gingrich or Sen. Santorum. (Or)They are
well-financed and driven by a well-defined message and cause -
Congressman Paul.”
Sarah Huckabee, the Republican strategist and veteran of her father’s
(Mike Huckabee’s) 2008 campaign cautioned: “Romney is the guy to beat,
but that doesn’t make him the nominee.”
“A lot of the candidates in the race have very dedicated followers -
people who have poured their hearts, souls, time and money into their
campaigns,” she said. “If nothing else, they owe it to some of those
people to stay in the race and make sure issues that are so important to
them remain part of the conversation.”
Another factor sustains the GOP’s field of insurgents: distrust of
Romney remains strong among many conservatives, so a call hasn’t yet
gone out from the Republican rank-and-file for candidates to step aside
and allow the party to unite behind the nominee.
That sentiment seems to be building, however, and could snowball if
Romney wins South Carolina and Florida 10 days later. For now, many in
the party are content to watch the process unfold, with Gingrich and
Santorum and the rest carrying as long as they feel the urge to fight.
“I’m not quite sure why either Newt or Santorum will give up while they
are still landing jabs on Romney along the way,” said Florida-based
strategist Ana Navarro, a former Jon Huntsman supporter who’s now
unaligned. “Why should either of these two guys throw in the towel and
accept Romney, when there are still significant numbers of Republicans
looking for an alternative? Republicans are entering into an arranged
marriage with Romney, one lacking love and passion, because so many
voices are trying to convince us it’s for our own good.”
Explained Navarro: “Voters, candidates, staff who dislike Romney will
not be demoralized easily because their disdain for him fuels the fight
and keeps them going. It will be over if they run out of money or
opportunities to beat him.”
Another Republican operative who has worked
against Romney this cycle said there’s simply “no pressure being placed
on folks to drop out,” at least at this stage.
“Romney will withstand the weak attempts to knock him down a peg or two
and when it’s Ron Paul and Mitt, folks will go with Mitt in enough
numbers to give him the nod,” the strategist said, predicting of the
general election: “Most of the energy will go into the House, Senate and
state races, leaving Mitt with the high cost of buying or renting his
Astroturf support in the general.”
To some in the party, South Carolina looks like the cutoff point between
a legitimate, fair-play test of Romney’s strength and a possible
sour-grapes effort by Gingrich or another candidate to wound the
inevitable GOP nominee. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on NBC’s
“Meet the Press” last weekend that his state would be the “last stand
for many candidates,” previewing what could be a larger push to unify
the party following another Romney victory.
“If Romney wins South Carolina, I think the game’s over,” Graham said.
“You’ll see those candidates coalescing together really around one
option.”
Call that the Fred Thompson-Rudy Giuliani approach: both candidates
fought the 2008 primary up through one major contest in which each was
favored to do well, and then dropped out upon losing.
Two other candidates pressed on last cycle past tough early losses:
Romney, who won Michigan and Nevada before withdrawing from the campaign
at the Conservative Political Action Conference in early February, and
Huckabee, who stayed in the race until McCain mathematically clinched
the GOP nomination in March.
From the shape of the race so far, there may be as many Huckabees as
Romneys in 2012 - candidates who, out of a sense of obligation to their
supporters or from a faint hope of coming back or from simple dislike
for the front-runner, just keep going.
“Even after South Carolina, my dad went on to win five or six other
states. It was never that my dad was against McCain, but he was for the
people that had been supporting him and believed in him as the best
candidate,” recalled Sarah Huckabee. “I don’t think any of [the 2012
candidates] have an easy path ahead and it will be very hard to take the
nomination away from Romney, but there is still time and room for
another candidate to emerge.”
For the most part, national Republicans are confident they know which
way the race is going, however many undead opponents Romney must fight
to lock it down.
“The remaining candidates each have to find their own path to wrap up
their campaigns. What’s readily apparent is that only Romney has the
support, campaign and resources to win the Republican nomination,” said
Minnesota consultant Brian McClung, a former senior aide to Pawlenty
during his time in office. “For the candidates other than Romney, it’s
likely a combination of both enjoying the spotlight and being blinded by
it.”
Stephen Colbert, Herman Cain set rally in South Carolina to build excitement for 'non-candidacies'
Comic says a vote for Cain in primary 'will be a strong message to me that voters want me to run'
Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images; Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
Faux campaigner Stephen Colbert said Herman Cain is 'a man who shares my values.
He may be running a fake candidacy, but Stephen Colbert is having a very real rally in South Carolina — co-hosted by Herman Cain.
The Comedy Central personality announced on his show Wednesday that he
would unite with the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO for the "Rock Me Like a
Herman Cain!" rally to get voters — and fans — excited for the comedian
and Cain's "non-candidacies".
"There will be speeches, there will be cheerleaders, there will be a
marching band and a gospel band — this is going to be even better than
my rally in D.C.," Colbert said on the show, referring to a rally he
held in Washington last year.
The faux-conservative has hinted he wants to run for President — a joke
that has had a very real effect on polling in South Carolina — and also
started a Super PAC, which raises money mostly as a joke but has shown
the holes in campaign financing laws.
Cain suspended his campaign before the first primary after allegations
of sexual misconduct, while Colbert started his campaign too late to
make the ballot.
He has encouraged people to vote for Cain as a proxy candidate instead.
"There is one candidate out there who has not run a single negative ad.
Herman Cain," the comedian said in an ad funded by his Super PAC. "A
man who shares my values. That's why I've said a vote for Herman Cain in
this Saturday's primary will be a strong message to me that voters want
me to run."
Colbert’s support of Cain adds another layer to the joke — which Cain's
spokespeople insist he's in on, his spokeswoman told Fox News.
"On Stephen Colbert's endorsement of himself as Herman Cain, I find it
very clever and humorous, as it should be," Cain said on Fox411. "Anyone
who finds what Mr. Colbert is doing offensive should simply lighten up.
To be perfectly clear, I will not be assuming Stephen Colbert's
identity. We are very different when it comes to the color of our —
hair.
Obama administration denies any role in killing of Iranian nuclear scientist
By Associated Press,
Updated: Wednesday, January 11, 3:56 PM
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration denied any role in Wednesday’s
killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the latest in a series of
events that have exacerbated tensions with Iran.
The assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was the latest in a year
that has already seen new U.S. economic sanctions, threats to bar
American ships from the Persian Gulf, an Iranian death sentence to a
jailed U.S. citizen and an escalation in Tehran’s uranium enrichment
program.
Iranian reports said two assailants on a motorcycle
attached a magnetic bomb to Roshan’s car of, killing him and his driver.
Roshan was a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium
enrichment facility in central Iran, and the slaying suggested a
widening covert effort to set back the Islamic republic’s atomic
program.
But US officials said they had nothing to do with it.
“I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind
of act of violence inside Iran,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton told reporters. “We believe there has to be an understanding
between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a
way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for
nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community and be a
productive member of it.”
Earlier, State Department spokeswoman
Victoria Nuland wouldn’t answer a question about whether Washington was
involved in the killing — or if the administration viewed Roshan as an
innocent victim. “I’m not going to speak to who may or may not have done
this,” she told reporters.
The attack also came one day after
Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a
parliamentary committee that 2012 would be critical for Iran — in part
because of “things that happen to it unnaturally.”
And other Israeli officials, hinted at covert campaigns against Iran without directly admitting involvement.
“Many bad things have been happening to Iran in the recent period,”
said Mickey Segal, a former director of the Israeli military’s Iranian
intelligence department. “Iran is in a situation where pressure on it is
mounting, and the latest assassination joins the pressure that the
Iranian regime is facing.”
Iranian authorities blamed Israel.
One
former official said the magnetic-bomb attack does bear the hallmarks
of an Israeli hit. Current and former U.S. officials say Washington
prefers proxies like Israel to carry out operations inside Iran, and
that up until two years ago, the U.S. and Israel coordinated actions
against Iran closely. But the officials say the White House halted such
cooperation after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took power.
The officials, past and present, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive strategic negotiations.
In
the event that a military intervention might be needed to halt Iran’s
progress toward nuclear weapons capability, they said counterterrorist
officials had considered allowing Israel to use the U.S.-Afghan Shindand
Airbase, in western Afghanistan, to launch an air strike against
Iranian weapons facilities
The attack in Tehran bore a strong
resemblance to earlier killings of scientists working on the Iranian
nuclear program — which Iran has blamed on Israel’s Mossad, the CIA and
Britain’s spy agency. They point to at least three slayings since early
2010 and the release of a malicious computer virus known at Stuxnet in
2010 that temporarily disrupted controls of some centrifuges — a key
component in nuclear fuel production. But all three countries have
denied the Iranian accusations.
The U.S. and its allies are
pressuring Iran to halt uranium enrichment, fearful that Iran is trying
to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists the program is for peaceful
purposes only and geared toward generating electricity and producing
medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.
Natanz is Iran’s
main enrichment site, but officials claimed earlier this week that they
are expanding some operations to an underground site south of Tehran
with more advanced equipment.
Clinton condemned Iran in a
statement Tuesday for enriching uranium at the underground Fordo bunker
to a level that can be upgraded more quickly for use in a nuclear weapon
than the main stockpile. She said Tehran was demonstrating a “blatant
disregard for its responsibilities” and that “’’there is no plausible
justification” for its decision to increase enrichment to 20 percent —
higher than the 3.5 percent being made at Iran’s main plant.
Speaking
beside Qatar’s visiting prime minister, Clinton expanded her criticism
of Iran on Wednesday and expressed concern about a series of
“provocative and dangerous” threats by Iranian officials to close off
the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the world to the oil-rich waters of
the Persian Gulf.
“This is an international waterway,” she told
reporters in Washington. “The United States and others are committed to
keeping it open. It’s part of the lifeline that keeps oil and gas moving
around the world.”
She said the U.S. and its partners were making it clear to Tehran that such threats were unacceptable.
Washington
and Tehran also are at odds over an Iranian court’s death sentence
Monday for Amir Hekmati, a 28-year-old former U.S. military translator
who was born in Arizona and raised in Michigan. Iran says he is a CIA
spy; the Obama administration flatly rejects the accusations.
It
is the first time Iran has handed down a death sentence to a U.S.
citizen since the Islamic Revolution 33 years ago. Hekmati’s family says
he was in Iran visiting his grandmothers.
Prime Minister Sheik
Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabr Al Thani of Qatar, a country with deep
economic ties to Iran and which exports its natural gas to the rest of
the world through the Strait of Hormuz, urged more negotiations among
Tehran, Washington and the rest of the international community.
“We need to find a way to live together, a peaceful way,” he said. “For
us, it’s very important that we don’t trigger any military tension in
the region.”
Israel preparing for nuclear Iran: report
(AFP)
– 1/9/12
LONDON — Israel is preparing for Iran to become a nuclear power and
has accepted it may happen within a year, the London Times reported on
Monday citing an Israeli security report.
The Institute for
National Security Studies (INSS) think-tank prepared scenarios for the
day after an Iranian nuclear weapons test at the request of former
Israeli ambassadors, intelligence officials and ex-military chiefs, the
paper reported.
Israel has so far maintained it will do all within
its power to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities, but has
shifted its position following recent United Nations' reports, according
to the Times.
The UN atomic agency said Monday that Iran is now
enriching uranium at a new site in a hard-to-bomb mountain bunker, in a
move set to stoke Western suspicions further that Tehran wants nuclear
weapons.
INSS specialists including a former head of Israel's
National Security Council and two former members of the prime minister's
office conducted the simulation study in Tel Aviv last week.
If Iran does test a nuclear weapon, INSS predicts a profound shift in the Middle East power balance.
According
to extracts of the report seen by the British publication, experts
believe the US would propose a defence pact with Israel, but would urge
it not to retaliate.
Russia would seek an alliance with the US to
prevent nuclear proliferation in the region, although Saudi Arabia would
likely pursue its own nuclear programme, the report concluded based on
current policies.
INSS specialists believe that an Iranian test in
January 2013 would follow increasingly provocative demands by President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime, including the redrawing of its Iraqi
borders and action against the vessels of the US Fifth Fleet.
"The
simulation showed that Iran will not forgo nuclear weapons, but will
attempt to use them to reach an agreement with the major powers that
will improve its position," said a passage of the report published by
the Times.
"The simulation showed that (the Israeli military
option), or the threat of using it, would also be relevant following an
Iranian nuclear test," it added.
Israel condemned intelligence chief Meir Dagan last June after he speculated that Iran may obtain nuclear weaponry.
Conclusions from the simulation have been sent to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Times reported.
Iran,
which insists its nuclear programme is for exclusively peaceful
purposes, has repeatedly said it will not abandon uranium enrichment
despite four rounds of UN Security Council resolutions calling on Tehran
to desist.
While nuclear energy plants need fuel enriched to 3.5
percent, Iran says the 20-percent enriched uranium is necessary for its
Tehran research reactor to make isotopes to treat cancers.
Palin: ‘It’s not too late’ to run for president
By Andrew Jones Tuesday, December 20, 2011
If you still had desires of seeing Sarah Palin run for president in 2012, Monday evening may have reinvigorated those hopes.
On the Fox Business Network’s Follow The Money, host Eric Bolling was tempted by his viewers to ask the former Alaska governor the top question on their minds.
“Can you please ask the Governor to run for president?” he mentioned.
“Look, it’s not too late. It’s not too late. Any chance we can see you
making a play, even after Iowa or New Hampshire? There is still plenty
of time, Governor.”
“You know, it’s not too late for folks to jump in and I don’t know,” she replied. “Who knows what will happen in the future?”
“After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I
will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United
States,” she wrote in a letter to her supporters.
Back in September, Palin’s PAC was still asking donors for money if she were to run, even though she told her family months earlier that she wouldn’t be running.
THE CONTENT OF THIS WEBSITE DOES NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE OPINION OF THE OWNER ... At least that's what my lawyer told me, but he was drinking pretty heavily at the time so...
COPYRIGHT HARDIN REPUBLIC, LLC 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. All Rights Reserved.
