Just discovered this fascinating site, The Living Room Candidate, which contains the TV ads from presidential campaigns stretching back to 1952. Check out the one below from the 1952 Eisenhower campaign in which he criticized Democrats for too much debt and lousy economic conditions. Sound familiar?
The Center for Responsive Politics finds a bunch of SuperPACs obeying the letter of the law when it comes to transparency of donors in U.S. politics but doing whatever they can to ignore the spirit of the law. Notably, all but one of the SuperPACs fingered for exploiting a disclosure loophole are pushing Republican candidates. So a question to Republican candidates and donors: Why are so afraid about telling voters where the money is coming from? Continue reading In the US, SuperPACS find a way to skirt disclosure laws
Jan Crawford, the Chief Political and Legal Correspondent for CBS News, gets some great — and extremely rare — dish from inside the U.S. Supreme Court in the wake of the historic Obamacare decision of last week.
In her piece, she chronicles how Chief Justice John Roberts — widely seen as a conservative — flip-flopped on Obamacare, was heavily pressured by the other conservative justices, and than was abandoned by them. Continue reading CBS gets the back story on Chief Justice Roberts Obamacare switch
The Daily Beast‘s Lloyd Grove gets his hands on an 18-minute telephone call US President Barack Obama made to big Democratic donors. The call was placed while Obama was on Air Force One. In it, Obama warns that Romney and his SuperPAC allies are killing the Dems when it comes to fundraising:
“The majority on this call maxed out to my campaign last time. I really need you to do the same this time,” the president said in a highly unusual (and presumably legal) fundraising pitch from Air Force One on his way back to Washington from Colorado Springs, where he’d been assessing the terrible damage caused by uncontained wildfires. A special phone on the government aircraft is dedicated to political calls that are paid for by the campaign.
“I’m asking you to meet or exceed what you did in 2008,” the presidential pitchman continued, speaking to donors who were invited to dial in based on their contributions during the last election. “Because we’re going to have to deal with these super-PACs in a serious way. And if we don’t, frankly I think the political [scene] is going to be changed permanently. Because the special interests that are financing my opponent’s campaign are just going to consolidate themselves. They’re gonna run Congress and the White House.”
via Exclusive: President Obama Asks Campaign Donors to Send Him More Money – The Daily Beast.
This is the first election cycle in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that anyone could spend as much as they like — with little or no disclosure — attacking or supporting candidates or political parties in an election. Thus was born the SuperPAC (PAC standing for Political Action Committee) where billionaires can fund ad campaigns saying whatever they want and the candidates they are supporting are, by law, not allowed to tell them a thing.
And while campaigns controlled by the candidates themselves can certainly be vicious and aggressive in going after their opponents, SuperPACs, as we saw in the Republican primary can take it to a whole new level. Continue reading Want to see what unlimited money in politics gets you? Bring on the race-based attacks
I’ll be talking to Molly Ball tonight on my show, Daily Brief on Sun News Network, about her article just up today at The Atlantic. It starts this way:
Ron Paul is helping Mitt Romney. It’s been obvious for months. You’d think Paul’s followers would be outraged by this — but they’re not.
The Paul-Romney alliance means the race’s most ideologically pure fiscal conservative has effectively sold out to the least conservative, least consistent, most establishmentarian candidate in the field. Romney favors the basic concept of progressive taxation and a government’s right to compel citizens to purchase health insurance. It’s unthinkable that he would, if elected, end the Federal Reserve. Alone among the candidates, he insists that there be no cuts to any military spending. All these stances are anathema to Paul’s staunchly absolutist world view.
You’ll want to read the rest: Does the Romney-Ron Paul Pact Make Paul a Sellout? – Molly Ball – Politics – The Atlantic.
The pundits think Rick Santorum missed his chance and that Mitt Romney looked best at the Arizona Republican Primary Presidential debate. It’s the last debate before Super Tuesday and the primaries in Arizona and Michigan. Did you watch the debate? Who do you think won? Vote in the poll and, in the comment section here, tell us why you voted the way you did. Continue reading So who won that GOP debate? Take our poll
Whoops. Romney steps in it during interview with CNN anchor:
Mitt Romney: “I’m not concerned about the very poor; we have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling, and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”