Cheat Sheet
If she wants to keep health-care reform alive, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) must corral two groups of conservative Democrats reluctant to vote for the legislation. The bill, based on what President Obama presented Thursday at his health-care summit, is significantly different from the version the House passed in December. Pro-life and fiscally conservative Democrats are skeptical, especially as midterm elections draw near. About 40 House Democrats voted for the bill in part because it had the anti-abortion Stupak amendment, which was stripped from Obama’s version. Others have cost concerns. Of the 39 Democrats who voted against the bill late last year, 31 represent districts that voted for Sen. John McCain for president in 2008. “The concern among Democrats right now is that there are more yes votes reconsidering than no votes,” an analyst says. For Pelosi to push the bill through, several Democrats in trouble in the polls would have to put passing the health-care overhaul ahead of their own electoral survival.
President Obama and Senator John McCain reprised their rivalry at the health-care summit on Thursday. McCain called on Obama to “start over” and said Americans “want us to sit down together and do what’s best for all Americans.” Obama replied by saying, “We’re not campaigning anymore. The election is over.” McCain fired back, “I’m reminded of that every day.” McCain then went on to say how the bill was “produced behind closed doors.” When Obama tried to cut him off, McCain insisted, “Can I finish please?”
Samuel P. Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, is backing a number of candidates, but one politician he won’t be stumping for is the man who made him famous: Sen. John McCain. “I don’t owe him shit,” Wurzelbacher said in an interview with PA Public Radio reporter Scott Detrow. “He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.” As for President Obama, Wurzelbacher told a crowd in Harrisburg to lay off the personal attacks, saying that ties to the “birthers” would hurt the Tea Party cause. And in some ways, he actually kind of likes Obama: “I think his ideology is un-American, but he’s one of the more honest politicians. At least he told us what he wanted to do.” Wurzelbacher says that 200 politicians have asked for his official stamp of approval, but he’s taking his time. Wurzelbacher says he must have a 20-30 minute conversation in which he grills lawmakers to “make sure they’re straight.”
Earlier this month when Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called to end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, a strange thing happened: the GOP was silent. Despite the expected criticism from John McCain, Republicans had little else to say on the topic, and in today’s New York Times columnist Frank Rich writes, "The right’s noise machine was on mute." The proposed repeal also received little attention from TV networks, with Fox News sharing a brief, fair report and CNN attempting to gain more viewers by featuring old homophobic clichés. But why? Much of it had to do with Mullen's testimony, writes Rich. "As more gay people have come out—a process that accelerated once the modern gay rights movement emerged from the Stonewall riots of 1969—so more heterosexuals have learned that they have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers and co-workers. It is hard to deny our own fundamental rights to those we know, admire and love," writes Rich. But there’s also little political advantage to homophobia, with many independents trending closer to Democrats than Republicans on social issues.
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson recounts the high-pressure days in September 2008 when the entire financial system teetered on the edge of collapse in his new memoir, On the Brink, excerpted in The Wall Street Journal. Paulson recalls making the case to Congress for the Troubled Asset Relief Program when an aide passed a note saying John McCain was suspending his campaign in order to work on the crisis. Paulson thought it was crazy, and feared McCain’s gambit would send the economy into a tailspin. But it was McCain’s own campaign that faltered when he didn’t deliver at the meeting he had planned. Democrats set up their own political trap, with Obama saying a deal was almost ready when McCain sailed in to kill it. President Bush then asked McCain to speak, but, bizarrely, he demurred. The meeting devolved into chaos. Finally, Obama again asked for McCain’s thoughts. “As he spoke, I could see Obama chuckling,” Paulson says. “McCain's comments were anticlimactic, to say the least.” Congressional leaders began talking over each other. “It got so ridiculous that Vice President Cheney started laughing. Frankly, I'd never seen anything like it before... Finally, the president just stood up and said: ‘Well, I've clearly lost control of this meeting. It's over.’”
Sarah Palin is regularly receiving briefings on domestic and foreign policy from a regular group of advisers and installing a television studio in her Wasilla home to reach Fox News with ease, but to what end? No one knows whether she's preparing for a presidential run, a lucrative position as a media figure, or a party activist. This week she's raising her profile significantly, with paid speeches to the Salina, Kansas Chamber of Commerce on Friday and the national Tea Party convention in Nashville on Saturday, as well as a campaign appearance to boost Governor Rick Perry in Texas on Sunday. According to The New York Times, her closest aides include Jason Recher, a former McCain campaign aide who clashed with his colleagues in 2008 over their handling of Palin. Neoconservative Randy Scheunemann, a former adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, provides her with foreign policy briefings while Republican strategists Mary Matalin and Dana Perino offer her advice as well.
In 2008, John McCain was his party's nominee for president. In 2010, he's a target for right-wing attack, as the Republican, who has spent 23 years representing Arizona in the Senate, is facing the first legitimate challenge from his own party. Ex-congressman J.D. Hayworth, most recently a radio host, is carrying the Tea Party standard against the Republican Party standard-bearer in a match up that signals the growth of conservative activism in this election year. With 11 months to go, McCain holds a 53 to 31 point lead (although Hayworth says his campaign's polling has them closer). "This is not an idle threat that Mr. McCain faces, and the reason has more to do with his history with conservatives than just about anything else," pollster Scott Rasmussen told The Wall Street Journal.
Senator John McCain said Monday that he will vote against a second term for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. “Our country is still facing an economic crisis and while I appreciate the service that Chairman Bernanke has performed as Federal Reserve chairman, I believe that he must be held accountable for many of the decisions that contributed to our financial meltdown,” McCain said in a statement. Overall, Bernanke's chances of confirmation looked up on Monday, calming a formerly turbulent stock market. Timothy Geithner warned of a markets fallout if Bernanke isn't confirmed. "I think the markets would view that as a very troubling thing to the economy as a whole. But, as I said, I don't think they should be uncertain. I think they should be confident because we are very confident he will be reconfirmed."
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was neither happy nor surprised that the Supreme Court overturned the campaign-finance laws that the senator spent much of his later career championing. "I went over to observe the oral arguments," McCain said on Face the Nation Sunday. "It was clear that Justice Roberts, Alito and Scalia, by their very skeptical and even sarcastic comments, were very much opposed to it.” McCain said he didn’t think much could be done, and that reform was dead, but predicted a backlash when voters see how much corporate money will be funneled into elections. The former presidential candidate wryly noted that the justices were far removed from the realities of campaign fundraising. "I think that it was interesting that they have had no experience in the political arena," he said. "I was reminded of the story of Lyndon Johnson, when he was vice president, was told about President Kennedy's appointments of all these brilliant people, and he said, 'You know, I wish one of them had run for county sheriff.'"
In what might make for a tense family dinner, Cindy McCain has joined her daughter Meghan in support of gay marriage, posing in a poster for California's NOH8 Campaign. "In the year since we've started the NOH8 Campaign, we've been surprised at some of the different individuals who have approached us showing their support," said a statement from the campaign. "Few, though, have surprised us more than Cindy McCain." The campaign comes as Proposition Eight faces debate in a federal court. Cindy's husband John McCain frequently spoke out against gay marriage on the campaign trail in 2008.
She may have retired from office, but Sarah Palin is back in the political saddle, hitting the campaign trail for Republicans in Texas, Arizona, and Minnesota, according to a statement released on her Facebook page Wednesday. In characteristic fashion, she's promised to campaign "FOR the people and AGAINST politics as usual," although she will be supporting incumbents Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota and former running mate Sen. John McCain, who faces a right-wing challenge in Arizona. Palin will also help defend Texas Gov. Rick Perry against a primary challenge from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson. According to Politico writer Ben Smith, Palin's announcement suggests that "she isn't content to merely be a media figure with her new Fox News contract, but intends to be active in shaping the Republican Party."
Beef from the McCain campaign continues. After Sarah Palin criticized former McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt in her book Going Rogue, Schmidt is coming back saying that the campaign had to feed the vice-presidential candidate her lines. In the highly anticipated debate during the presidential campaign, Palin was instructed to ask Vice President Joe Biden if she could call him Joe, after repeatedly flubbing his name and referring to him as “O’Biden.” Schmidt claims that he wasn’t the only one who advised Palin to do so, and that he took over the debate prep after realizing it “was going to be a debacle of historic and epic proportions."
The GOP came calling, but Carney won't go. Early Wednesday Politico reported that, emboldened by their successful courtship of Alabama Democrat Parker Griffith, Republicans had reached out to another vulnerable Democratic representative, Pennsylvania's Chris Carney, in the hopes that he, too, will switch sides. John McCain, who like Carney was in the Navy, called the second-term congressman Wednesday, pitching him on the GOP; Carney's office confirmed that the call took place, but would not comment further. But Carney isn't interested; though "flattered" he said, "I appreciate the Republican Party's outreach, but I have no plans to change parties. ... I have enjoyed widespread Republican support throughout my district and will continue to work closely with Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike." Carney's district was won by McCain by 9 percentage points last year, and though he won reelection, his seat could still be taken by Republicans.
Sen. John McCain’s presumptive challenger in the Republican primary for his Arizona Senate seat hasn’t officially filed yet, but already the race is getting ugly. J.D. Hayworth, former congressman and talk-show host, had a complaint filed against him with the Federal Elections Commission by former McCain Chief of Staff and Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, who says that Hayworth has been illegally promoting his candidacy on his radio show. Woods wrote, "You can't use the public airwaves ... to explore your candidacy for public office ad nauseam, and I stress the nausea." Hayworth responded on Twitter that he was exercising his First Amendment rights, and then called Woods an “ambulance chaser” on his show. Then, a McCain-linked push poll revealed the sitting senator was 20 points ahead—and the lead jumped to 33 points when respondents were told that Hayworth never returned campaign donations he received from convicted felon Jack Abramoff. This month, Hayworth raised $110,000 at a fundraiser and has said he’ll wait till early 2010 to make a decision about running.
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty said he thinks Sarah Palin is “a political rock star,” even if she stole his thunder in ’08, when he was widely considered a shoo-in for John McCain’s VP nomination. In a new interview with Newsweek, Pawlenty opens up about the woman who eclipsed him—and who could steal his thunder for a 2012 presidential run, as well. “You guys are obsessed with Palin,” he told his interviewer, adding that he realized before the media did that he wouldn’t get McCain’s vice-presidential nod—and before McCain deigned to inform him. “[I realized it] when they didn’t take me out of the slot to speak in Denver outside the Democratic convention only days before ours was starting. I didn’t just fall off the rutabaga cart, so I figured it out.” But with the bulk of the GOP’s 2012 energy focused on scene-stealing Palin and the deep-pocketed Mitt Romney, Pawlenty admits, “There is a legitimate question about whether somebody who is basically unknown, isn't independently wealthy, isn’t famous, would have a chance.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tore into President Obama for abandoning his campaign pledge to cut down on the bitter partisanship in Washington on Fox News Sunday. McCain said the environment in the capital is more toxic than under the Clinton administration. "At least under Hillarycare, they tried to seriously negotiate with Republicans," McCain said. "There has been no effort that I know of—of serious across-the-table negotiations—such as I have engaged in with other administrations. And that was the commitment that the president made." The senator did not say blame should be split between Obama and the GOP. McCain was also asked about Sarah Palin wearing a campaign visor while on vacation. Palin said she blacked out McCain’s name on the hat so she could travel incognito, and he didn’t seem to take it as a snub, brushing off the “cap flap” by saying, “She is going to be a force in the Republican Party for a long time.”
Sarah Palin's fashion choices are still under scrutiny. While on vacation in Hawaii with her family, photographers spotted her wearing a McCain campaign visor, but with McCain's name blacked out with marker. On Wednesday, Palin pushed back against reports that by blacking out the name, she was disrespecting her former running mate. Palin told Politico she just wanted to "be incognito" while on vacation in order to shield her children and husband from the paparazzi. In a statement, she said, "I am so sorry if people took this silly incident the wrong way. I adore John McCain, support him 100 percent and will do everything I can to support his reelection."
According to one of John McCain's top advisers on Hispanic issues, Sarah Palin was so uninformed about Latino issues and Latin American policy that she had to pull out of a scheduled Univision interview at the last moment. Ana Navaros, a GOP consultant, told Univision anchor Jorge Ramos that Palin "did not feel comfortable speaking about issues regarding Hispanics and Latin America" when she was to be interviewed by Ramos alongside McCain last year. Another source says that the interview cancellation was a "near-crisis situation," as McCain staffers hoped that Ramos wouldn't say why Palin had decided not to appear. Navarro says that after the cancellation, she was asked to travel with the vice presidential candidate and "brief her on those issues." Ramos eventually did sit down with Palin in an interview where the former governor of Alaska admitted that she didn't know how many illegal immigrants were in Alaska. Palin aide Jason Rechner says that Navarro was there "not to prep on Hispanic issues... [but] to prep on John McCain's stance on Hispanic issues."
Just two years after he was the party’s nominee, could Republican voters kick John McCain to the curb? A new poll from Rasmussen Reports shows McCain leading potential challenger J.D. Hayworth by just two points, 45 to 43. Hayworth is a former U.S. congressman and a Phoenix-based talk-show host. He has expressed interest in the race but has not formally declared.
Public Policy Polling brings us the latest installment in pollsters' ongoing series: "Which crazy conspiracy theory do a majority of Republicans believe now?" The latest example is a question on whether President Obama's 2008 election victory, in which he defeated his Republican rival by well over 8 million votes, was legitimate or whether the entire operation was somehow rigged by ACORN. Astoundingly, a whopping 52 percent of Republicans polled said they believed ACORN "stole it" for Obama, versus 18 percent among independents who reported the same belief, and 26 percent of the overall population. The numbers come despite the fact that Obama's margin of victory closely tracked independent polling and despite a lack of evidence of any widespread voter fraud. According to PPP, the number of ACORN conspiracy theorists in the GOP is even higher than the number of "birthers," which they pegged at 42 percent of the party faithful in September.
