I’m not sure House Republicans realized how large an error they made by kidnapping and then releasing the debt limit earlier this year. By admitting their bluff, they effectively confessed to having misled conservative members, and those members needed to be mollified.
That created a new problem: How could they appease conservatives while lacking the power to satisfy any of their substantive demands? So they offered up grandiose symbolism: A raincheck on the brinksmanship (the current fight over the sequester) and a promise to pass a budget that would wipe out the deficit in 10 years if enacted.
But it’s not clear that they counted their votes, or considered the budget math when they made that promise. Read More
This would be a candidacy really worth getting excited about. Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) says he’s considering a run for the US senate seat of retiring Sen. Frank Lautenberg.
Holt has represents his central New Jersey district since 1999. Prior to that he was the Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab at Princeton University.
Mayor Cory Booker and Rep. Frank Pallone have already signaled they intend to run.
It is ironic that the Hagel drama is playing out just as the national commentariat is debating whether Barack Obama’s national security policy truly differs from that of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
As the Hagel story has played out, we’ve focused on tactics and gambits than on just why there’s such intense opposition to this nomination — Cruz/McCarthy, Infofe, faux LGBT groups and the constant drumbeat about Iran and Israel from groups tied to Bill Kristol.
Many assume that what is behind all of this is Israel. But I don’t think that’s quite right. At least it’s not the core issue. And neither is Iran. Israel’s been the focus because it’s the most inflammatory and cross-cutting foreign policy driver of US politics. But it’s only part of the equation. Read More
To Democrats and those with a sense of history, Sen. Ted Cruz is a Latter-Day Joe McCarthy; to Senate traditionalists, he’s a jerk; to Tea Partiers and base Republicans, he’s a breath of fresh air.
But each verdict is consistent with and utterly secondary to a greater fact: Cruz is exactly the guy to keep the GOP tied to its losing 2012 ways basically forever. In political terms, he’s a Democrat’s dream Republican.
TPM Reader JJ comments on word that Rep. Rush Holt (D) of New Jersey may run for Frank Lautenberg’s senate seat …
I worked as an intern for Rep. Holt during the summer of 2010 and I can’t see him running for senate. He very well may. Everyone has some level of ambition. But Josh, honestly, that’s not part of this man’s nature. I love having him as my representative.
As I’ve said before, I doubt Marco Rubio can straddle the politics of immigration reform. That’s not a criticism of Rubio. It’s simply a recognition that a growing majority of the country is simply too far from the base of the Republican party to be straddled by any but the most able of political animals. Now, in response to a draft release of President Obama’s immigration reform plan leaked to USAToday, Rubio is out with a press release saying the plan would be “dead on arrival” if it came before Congress.
That news is considerably worse for Rubio than it is for Obama.
It will hard for Rubio not to end up being against what he claims to be for.
No mistake in the headline. In response to ‘Lincoln’, the state of Mississippi finally finalized ratifying the 13th Amendment banning human slavery.
Climate bill supporters tell Obama to act on his own and fast.
One day you’re a Tea Party darling with the ass-kickingest political ads of the 2010 cycle. Next you’re getting clipped for shoplifting beer from the local Wal-Mart in Hoover, Alabama.
Sen. Johanns (R-NE) to retire.
That state sure generates a lot of ex-Senators.