Mark Sanford premieres first campaign ad: We all make mistakes.
Check out this piece by Benjy Sarlin on why Marco Rubio’s weekend blow up over the leaked White House immigration proposal isn’t a setback but rather a necessary prerequisite for passing a bipartisan immigration reform bill.
As a policy matter, Rubio’s already signed on to what most people mean by ‘comprehensive immigration reform’, what the President supports. As a political matter, he’s got to find things to fight with the President about, to bring along base Republicans — even if they’re basically made up differences. It won’t be easy.
It must have happened before. But I can’t think of another example of politics quite as weirdly comic as that developing around immigration reform. At least in recent years, the normal model is that both sides profess optimism and good will about finding a compromise when, in fact, they are either far apart on policy or simply don’t want to agree at all — usually both.
But here it’s just the opposite. Both sides want a bill. They actually want the same bill — or at least they’ve both signed on to the same bill. But there’s the problem, a political problem. Establishment Republicans feel they must support the immigration bill the President supports. But they need to convince the base of their party that they fought him like crazy to get it passed. That’s a challenge. Read More
Former Sen. Scott Brown says he wasn’t drunk when he did those bizarre tweets. He just sat on his iPhone5.
Proposed Missouri law would make it a felony to propose new gun control laws.
This just keeps getting harder for Sen. Marco Rubio. Over the weekend, he slammed the President’s leaked draft immigration bill as “dead on arrival”. Now the hometown newspaper goes with front page headline noting that the two bills are more or less identical.
With last Friday’s deadline having passed, more than half of the states have declined to set up the insurance exchanges mandated under Obamacare.
We’ve posted copies of the official documents marking the final steps in Mississippi’s 148-year road to banning slavery. Read More