“a whole new national political order.”
Got a Southern face to it:
"Demographic changes are turning red states blue; Southern Democrats, meet your future: No more Republican Lite" by Bob Moser | July 20, 2014
In late February, Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina formally announced her reelection bid. The moderate Democrat, a former bank executive who rode President Obama’s coattails to a narrow upset victory over Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole in 2008, was heading into a tough campaign against Thom Tillis, the speaker of the state House of Representatives. Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, had already dished out more than $3 million for ads attacking Hagan — a mere precursor of an ugly eight months to come. But on this day, at least, the senator figured to have the news cycle all to herself, with Tar Heel TV stations broadcasting the usual announcement fanfare of broad smiles and soundbite-worthy platitudes.
All went according to plan until pesky reporters started asking Hagan about her vote for the Affordable Care Act, and about her past echoing of Obama’s claim that “if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it.” She’d been asked such questions dozens of times, no doubt, but the senator still had no answer. As campaign staffers anxiously whisked her away from the podium and outside to her waiting car, reporters chased Hagan, repeating the Obamacare questions. Finally, she responded, somewhat mysteriously, “It wasn’t clear that insurance companies were selling substandard policies.” Cue the evening sound bite: the backside of Senator Hagan fleeing from journalists in her bright pink announcement-day dress, dodging questions about a seminal controversy. “Dodging,” along with its synonym “ducking,” would soon become the verb of choice for headlines about the Hagan campaign.
It was not, to say the least, what the senator’s strategists had in mind. But Hagan’s tentative attitude has become a common theme across the South this year. As the region has become the Republican Party’s national fortress, Southern Democrats have won Senate seats by playing down their ties to their party.This year, six Democrats — three incumbents and three challengers — are waging competitive campaigns. The results in North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi could determine whether Obama faces a hostile Senate for his last two years in the White House. (Republicans need to pick up six seats to gain control, and only about 15 are competitive nationally.)
The question is whether Democrats in these states are better served by following the region’s five-decade-long drift toward the GOP — or by betting that the climate is finally changing in their favor.
It’s a sign of things to come in states like North Carolina, where large influxes of Latino immigrants and “relocated Yankees,” both black and white, are tilting the demographic balance toward the Democrats and inspiring a new progressive movement. But despite Obama’s own surprising Southern breakthroughs — after Al Gore and John Kerry lost the entire region, he won three large Southern states in 2008 and two in 2012, falling just short in North Carolina — the region’s blue future is still a long-term proposition. Candidates like Hagan are stuck between the past, when Southern Democrats’ recipe for victory involved courting white moderates and conservatives, and a future in which they’ll be able to successfully campaign as full-throated, national-style Democrats. To win, Hagan and her compatriots must simultaneously woo independent-minded whites while persuading massive numbers of young voters and nonwhites, who lean left on both economic and social issues, to join them.
It’s an awkward proposition, to be sure. But the Democratic contenders have appeared hell-bent on making it look downright impossible.
A few months after Hagan fumbled her big day, Georgia Democrat Michelle Nunn — a lavishly funded first-time candidate who is the daughter of much-loved former Senator Sam Nunn — had her moment in the national spotlight, courtesy of MSNBC. But when Nunn, whom The Guardian newspaper has described as exerting “robot-like control” over her carefully scripted campaign, was asked by the friendly reporter about her stance on Obamacare, the script turned to mush. Pressed on whether she’d have voted for the Affordable Care Act, Nunn prevaricated, kvetched, and weaved, before finally offering that “it’s impossible to look back retrospectively.” In a subsequent interview with Politico, Nunn — who’s running in a state that is now more than 40 percent nonwhite and headed toward being “majority-minority” — even declined to say whether she’d support Harry Reid as Senate majority leader or whether Obama is doing a good job.
Nunn, like Hagan, is running a classic Southern Democratic campaign, in which the great goal is to come across as a milder version of a Republican. The same is true for incumbent senators Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and for Democratic challengers Travis Childers in Mississippi and Alison Lundergan Grimes, the young Kentucky secretary of state who’s waging a fierce battle to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The demographics in those four states aren’t trending Democratic the way North Carolina or Georgia are, but the candidates face the same dilemma: How do you sound like the future while running a campaign that’s rooted in the past?
Only Landrieu, who’s running a tight race for a fourth term in a state that is one-third African-American, has found an issue to run on — as opposed to spending all her time running away from sticky issues like Obamacare, which she has (mostly) defended without reservation. But Landrieu’s big selling point is hardly a traditional Democratic one. As the newly minted chair of the Senate Energy Committee, she’s cast herself as an ardent booster of the state’s oil and gas industries, championing the Keystone pipeline and distancing herself from Obama by loudly and frequently decrying the Obama EPA’s new greenhouse-gas regulations. “I’ve been in Washington a long time — some say too long, but I hope not,” Landrieu recently told the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation Convention. “My seniority is your clout.” An April TV spot narrated by the wonderfully named Louisiana shipbuilder Boysie Bollinger — a prominent Republican donor, no less — put a slightly different spin on the same theme: “Louisiana can’t afford to lose Mary Landrieu.”
Related: Cantoring Through Politics
Very brave of them to do that then.
Elsewhere in the South, the Democrats’ messages are comically muddled. Their races are competitive mostly because of the deep flaws in their Republican opponents. In Kentucky, Grimes has a shot because McConnell, a leader in the seismically unpopular Congress, has approval ratings that are as bad as Obama’s. The Republican seeking to unseat Hagan in North Carolina, Thom Tillis, has a similar problem: He’s the most prominent leader of a legislature whose right-wing policy making has made it more radioactive than Obama. Mississippi’s longtime Republican senator, Thad Cochran, narrowly survived a runoff in late June with Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel, and at 76, he’s shown his age on the campaign trail; asked at one point what he’d do after the election, Cochran replied, all too honestly, that he’d “take a nap.” Now the senator is fending off legal challenges as McDaniel and the Tea Party furiously claim voter fraud in the runoff. In Arkansas, pundits considered Democratic Senator Mark Pryor a likely loser against Representative Tom Cotton, a young war veteran and rising Tea Party star — until Cotton revealed himself to be an unwavering right-wing ideologue and a cold fish on the campaign trail. “I’m warm, dammit,” he insisted to a visiting national reporter in June.
But for Democrats, “I’m not that other guy you can’t stand” is hardly a campaign message that will motivate the base. That’s especially true in a midterm year, when it’s the most reliably Democratic voters — young people and minorities — who are likeliest to sit out election day. “They’re going to stay home again unless we make sure they understand why there’s something big at stake in 2014,” says Page Gleason, who runs the state’s new progressive voter-mobilization group, Pro-Georgia. Nunn, whose campaign ads don’t identify her as a Democrat, is doing them no favors.
If Democratic-leaning voters in Georgia voted in similar numbers to Republicans, the state would already be blue. But the Democrats’ old habit of running Republican Lite campaigns, while it’s given them a chance to win the occasional statewide election in a good year, has convinced much of what could be the base that there’s little reason to bother with voting. Statewide, more than 800,000 eligible nonwhites are nonvoters — more than 800,000 eligible nonwhites are nonvoters — much more than what it would have taken for Obama, who ran no campaign in the state, to carry Georgia in 2008.
“The old blue-dog model doesn’t work anymore,” says Ed Kilgore, a Georgia native and Democratic strategist who helped craft that model during his years with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. “The people you’re appealing to aren’t going to vote for any Democrat anymore. You just don’t go right on every conceivable issue.” But that is exactly what his old friend Nunn — aside from her progressive stances on abortion rights and gay marriage, which she doesn’t like to talk about — is doing. Her platform consists of reducing corporate tax rates, entitlement “reform” (read: cuts) and debt reduction, supporting the Keystone pipeline, and cheering for military strikes in Syria. It’s not exactly catnip for the state’s emerging majority.
The surest way to fire up young people and minorities in Georgia — and
North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana — would be for the Democratic
candidates to grit their teeth, take the plunge, and embrace Obama,
even just a little. There’s a reason, after all, why turnout in most
Southern states skyrocketed with the president topping the ticket. The
voting rate in North Carolina went from 51 percent in 2000 to 66 percent in 2008; in Georgia and Mississippi, turnout was even lower in 2000 and 2004 than in North Carolina, but rose to more than 60 percent in the Obama years. While the president might not exactly be beloved in a state like Georgia, his approval ratings there are exactly the same as his national average: 42 percent.
Nunn is running neck and neck for an open seat against two potential Republican challengers. (The GOP primary is Tuesday.) Surely a big late-October rally in Atlanta, with Obama embracing Nunn on a stage packed with homegrown civil-rights legends like Andrew Young and Representative John Lewis, would be exactly what Nunn, would need to push her over the top — and, very likely, keep Democrats in control of the Senate. Obama’s presence could also fire up conservative whites, but that would make a marginal difference: It’s those very voters who tend to show up for mid-term elections, and they’re already itching to cast one last anti-Obama vote in 2014.
No matter. Southern Democrats like Nunn are about as likely to welcome Obama as they are to make a public announcement that they’ve converted to French socialism. Southern Democrats have turned Obama-avoidance into a virtual art form — even Hagan, who wouldn’t have a Senate seat without the success of the Obama machine in 2008. In January, when the president visited Raleigh to announce a $140 million manufacturing initiative in the state, Hagan said she was too busy in Washington to make the trip. Hagan’s snub turned into one more public-relations fiasco when Obama pointedly brought up her absence and cheekily gave her the kind of endorsement that gives her campaign staff nightmares: “Your senator, Kay Hagan, couldn’t be here,” he said, “but I wanted to thank her publicly for the great work she’s been doing.” Most of the next day’s headlines read a lot like the one in the New York Daily News: “Sen. Kay Hagan avoids Obama during his North Carolina visit.”
What might happen if Democrats in the fast-evolving 21st-century South ran as honest-to-goodness, true-blue Democrats? Because the old Republican Lite habit dies hard — and because politicians of all stripes are timid by nature — we won’t find out this year. But it won’t be long. Perhaps in 2016, maybe in 2020, the mold will be broken: A new-style Southern Democrat will run in a state like Georgia or North Carolina or Texas and win with a full-throated progressive message. The demographics make it inevitable. And the result ultimately will be a whole new national political order. No longer will it be Southerners in Congress who are the stubborn impediments to progressive reform, as they’ve been for 150 years. And no longer will Republicans have a stranglehold on the region in presidential elections. The five largest Southern states — Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida — account for most of the region’s electoral votes. They’re also the states where conservative whites are losing their hegemony by the day. How will the GOP carry national elections without them?
By the next decade, if demographics are (and they usually are) destiny, it will be Southern Republicans who are dodging and ducking and triangulating, conjuring ways to hold on to their aging and shrinking white base while appropriating Democratic issues and rhetoric to woo the new progressive majority. If they need tactical advice, they can always hire Kay Hagan or Michelle Nunn as campaign consultants. Their species of Southern Democrat will be, by then, a fading relic of a strange, distant, and inexplicable past.
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I'm sorry I don't really give a crap which war-party letter is attached to the corporate-controlled candidate.
"Perdue wins Senate primary, will face Nunn" by Ashley Parker | New York Times July 23, 2014
WASHINGTON — After more than two months of intraparty fighting, David Perdue, a former chief executive of Dollar General, won Tuesday’s Republican runoff in Georgia to become his party’s Senate nominee, setting up one of the few contests where Democrats have hopes of taking a Republican-controlled seat in the midterm elections.
Perdue’s victory over Jack Kingston, an 11-term Georgia congressman, with just under 51 percent of the vote Tuesday upset both public polling predictions and conventional wisdom, which had Kingston slightly ahead, despite having finished second to Perdue in the May primary. In the general election, Perdue will face Democrat Michelle Nunn, a former chief executive of the Points of Lights volunteer group and the daughter of Sam Nunn, the former Georgia senator.
What this result tells you is the 'out$ider," such as he is, won by enough to deny a theft by the establishment candidate.
“David Perdue is a strong nominee who I’m confident will be the next US senator from Georgia,” said Eric Tanenblatt, Mitt Romney’s 2012 Georgia finance chairman, who has organized a Senate campaign fund to benefit the Republican nominee. “He will bring a unique perspective to Washington at a time when the American people are craving for leadership.”
Perdue finished first among seven contenders in the Republican primary in May — likely helped by his name recognition as the cousin of former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue — and ultimately emerged as the winner, following the nasty and negative nine-week runoff, even as Kingston seemed to gain momentum with several key endorsements. Kingston picked up 49 percent of the vote.
In the lead-up to the election, many Republicans said they thought either man would prove to be a formidable opponent to Nunn.
There had been concerns in the crowded primary, however, that one of the far-right candidates — Representatives Paul Broun or Phil Gingrey, for instance — would emerge as the nominee and would have been unable to handle the challenges of a general-election fight, in which candidates are typically forced to move toward the middle to attract independent voters.
A-ho.
According to the most recent Federal Election Commission financial disclosures, Perdue began the campaign with almost $800,000, though he most likely will have less as he heads into the general election. Nunn had nearly $3.7 million cash on hand at the end of the first quarter, and her campaign recently announced that she had raised nearly $3.5 million over the past three months, though her second-quarter financial filings are not yet available.
“Perdue has been writing himself checks and I assume he can still do that for the general,” said Jennifer E. Duffy, senior editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Democrats are likely to use Perdue’s business background, as well as his penchant for inartful comments, to liken him to Romney, who during his 2012 presidential bid earned a reputation for being an out-of-touch “vulture capitalist.”
How did that guy above call this, and WhoTF really cares? Sorry.
For example, Perdue was a chief executive for Pillowtex, a textile manufacturer that went bankrupt and ultimately closed in 2003, leaving 7,500 people unemployed, after Perdue had left the post.
Perdue also served as chief executive of Reebok Brand.
Nunn, who faced little opposition in her own primary, has so far managed to emerge largely unscathed, using the luxury of the protracted Republican fight to raise money and build a volunteer network.
I think she took some scratches above (yeah, I did read it!).
“The Nunn campaign has done a lot of work, so whoever wins will have to play catch-up,” Duffy said. “Now on the flip side, she’s going to have to start talking about issues and answering questions.’’
The race for the Senate seat, being vacated by Saxby Chambliss, a Republican, is also a place where the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s data-driven ground-game operation, known as the Bannock Street project, will be tested.
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Who cares about that stuff? Whose gonna be the next President of the United States?
"Elizabeth Warren, Mitt Romney backers won’t take no for an answer" by Matt Viser | Globe Staff July 22, 2014
WASHINGTON — Senator Elizabeth Warren and former governor Mitt Romney share little ground politically, but lately they have been repeating a common refrain: No.
Both insist — repeatedly — they have no intention of running for president in 2016. And given the half-century of failure of presidential aspirants from Massachusetts, perhaps that is the prudent course.
But those facts don’t matter to activists in both parties, who, hungering for alternatives to the current crop of potential 2016 candidates, are persistently trying to prod the reluctant contenders into the fray. With a widespread feeling that the current 2016 field is lacking, these supporters cite a longing for someone newer and more exciting (in the case of liberal Democrats and Warren) or someone older and more tested (in the case of establishment Republicans and Romney).
Some Republicans are unwilling to believe Romney’s repeated denials of interest, his insistence that his fizzled hopes in 2008 and his bitter defeat of 2012 were enough. To stand down, they will need to hear corroboration from his wife — the motivating force behind his past campaigns.
“Until Ann Romney looks me in the eye and says, ‘Jason, it’s not going to happen. Let’s stop doing that,’ I think there’s a remote possibility it might happen,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican and longtime Romney supporter.
“Mitt has said 100 times he’s not going to do it. I don’t think he could be any more clear,” he added. “But if there’s a void and a strong consensus we can win, I think he does it.”
The calls for Warren to run for the Democratic nomination reached a fevered pitch last week as she continued to campaign on behalf of Senate candidates around the country. After earlier trips to Minnesota, Oregon, Kentucky, and West Virginia, she arrived in Michigan to stump Thursday and then appear Friday before a lively bunch of liberal activists in Detroit.
See: Boston Globe's Netroots
I'll bet their water didn't get shut off.
“I’m going to give you the same answer I have given you many times,” she told the Globe in an interview. “There is no wiggle room. I am not running for president. No means no.”
Yet liberal Democrats and the media won’t drop the idea of a Warren presidential campaign, including a potential primary bid against Hillary Clinton. A new group aimed at drafting Warren for an underdog candidacy, called Ready for Warren, announced its formation last week. Following her trip to Detroit, the group released a gauzy online music video — complete with acoustic guitar strumming and scenes from the conference.
No, I don't think so.
That immediately triggered national news, even though Warren distanced herself from the organization, which lacks the deep-pocketed donors and longtime political advisers of a pro-Clinton outfit called Ready for Hillary.
You see what it is triggering with me?
CNN repeatedly played clips last Wednesday about Ready for Warren — and asked, with an image of Clinton and Warren staring at each other, “Could Elizabeth Warren defeat Hillary Clinton?”
The network brought out a string of pundits to comment on the prospect — as remote as it may be.
“I think she will be an extremely attractive candidate for Democratic voters in 2016,” Representative Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican who ran for president in 2012 as a hero of Tea Party voters, said on CNN. “If I was Mrs. Clinton, I would be extremely concerned with what I see.”
Wait until you see the book sales.
Warren is also now drawing scrutiny from well-funded Republican opposition research groups. America Rising PAC, which has been throwing mud at Clinton, is now adding Warren to its target list, digging into her background and sending video trackers to her events.
I don't went to get dirty.
“Don’t let the White House fall into Warren’s hands,” the group’s director, Tim Miller, wrote in a fund-raising e-mail to supporters last week. “Please help us stop her by contributing.”
Clinton has said she will make a decision by early 2015 on whether to run. If she opts against a bid, Democrats close to Warren say that she would almost certainly consider running, as would a long line of others, including Vice President Joe Biden.
“Elizabeth Warren, there’s no doubt right now, is considered a darling of the hard-core progressive left. It’s an important part of the party,” David Plouffe, a former senior White House adviser and top Democratic strategist, said in a recent interview. “Obviously Hillary Clinton right now would be the strongest front-runner . . . but if Hillary Clinton doesn’t run, I’m sure [Warren] will and should take a hard look.”
A Gallup poll released last Thursday found that only 38 percent of Americans had any opinion about Warren, positive or negative, compared with 91 percent for Clinton — reflecting the fact that she is still a relative unknown. Among those surveyed, 21 percent had a favorable view and 17 percent had an unfavorable view of Warren; 55 percent had a favorable view of Clinton, while 36 percent had an unfavorable view.
Massachusetts has long been a breeding ground for presidential candidates, offering a major contender, including two nominees, in every election since 2000. It is the only state to have four separate men win their party’s nomination in the last half century. But since John F. Kennedy’s victory in 1960, the other three party nominees — Michael Dukakis in 1988, John Kerry in 2004, and Romney in 2012 — have all lost.
“It’s a tribute to the quality of politics and politicians in Massachusetts that there is a focus on Elizabeth Warren or Mitt Romney,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat. “But Elizabeth has made it very clear that she has no intention to run.”
The reason for the interest in Romney is fueled largely by an early Republican field filled with candidates viewed as potentially flawed for one reason or another.
New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, is again trying to test the presidential waters. But he has been damaged by a scandal — and ongoing investigations — involving lane closures near the George Washington Bridge.
Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who is the son and brother of former presidents, has seemed uncertain about whether he has the stomach to endure a brutal presidential campaign. Other potential candidates who could win establishment support — including Louisiana’s governor, Bobby Jindal; Texas’ governor, Rick Perry; and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — have yet to catch hold. Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, has been trying to broaden his reach beyond libertarian and Tea Party activists.
I'm not excited by any of them.
Most in Romney’s inner circle consider the notion of a third presidential campaign absurd. A common political parlor game these days is guessing who among his allies is stoking rumors that he will consider joining the primary race.
His close advisers insist he is enjoying his perch as his party’s elder statesman and his more laid-back life (a few days ago, he was on a 13-mile hike in the Grand Canyon with his wife and members of his family).
“The speculation is wild,” said one former top adviser. “I just don’t get the impression that he’s even thinking about it. He’s just really happy. It’s not even fathomable in my mind.”
“I haven’t talked to him about it,” said another former adviser. “I’m not being coy. I talked to him recently and it didn’t come up. I sure don’t bring it up.”
Another longtime adviser said that while Romney is enjoying the renaissance in interest, he is not actively considering getting back into politics.
“If Jeb didn’t run, Christie fell apart, and the Midwestern governors didn’t run — and then Haley Barbour, Jeb Bush, and the pope came to him and said, ‘You have to run’ — could he be convinced?” the adviser said. “Maybe.”
And yet? A “Draft Mitt” group formed almost immediately after he lost the 2012 election, and now has 65,000 online signatures. One poll showed that he would win if there were another election between him and Obama. Another poll had him with a commanding lead over potential Republican presidential candidates in New Hampshire.
“The unavailable is always the most attractive, right?” Romney told reporters last month. “That goes in dating as well.”
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Related: Romney's Retreat
He IS going to RUN AGAIN, and not a moment too soon!!
Mitt! Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!
Let's BE WHAT WE ARE, AmeriKa! It's a CORPORATE GOVERNMENT! We need the quintessential corporate face on it, suit and all.
Besides, he is the only one who excites me!
This next guy does a little because he blasted the Fed once then stepped in s*** during the debate, although I think we have had enough of presidents from Texas, no?
"Perry will send National Guard troops to Mexico border" by Manny Fernandez | New York Times July 22, 2014
HOUSTON — Governor Rick Perry said Monday he would send 1,000 National Guard troops to the border with Mexico to bolster security as the Border Patrol faces an influx of Central American immigrants.
At a news conference in Austin, Perry said that the border had been overwhelmed in recent months by tens of thousands of unaccompanied children entering the country illegally and that criminals are exploiting the situation for human and drug trafficking.
The decision came after Perry spent the weekend in northern Iowa, his fourth visit in eight months to that key state for political primaries, as he contemplates a second run for president. Nearly two weeks ago, Perry, one of the most vocal critics of the Obama administration’s handling of the border crisis, met with President Obama in Dallas to discuss border security.
Tens of thousands of Central Americans fleeing violence in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have attempted to cross the state’s 1,200-mile border with Mexico in recent months.
The influx of illegal immigrants, many of them children and teenagers unaccompanied by any parent or guardian, has left federal officials scrambling to find emergency shelters to house them and to manage what Obama has called a humanitarian crisis.
Perry, state law enforcement officials, and ranchers in the area have said that Mexican drug cartels and other criminal organizations were benefiting from the diversion of resources and so more security was needed.
Still, the precise role the National Guard troops will play on the border is unclear. Previously, Perry has said he wanted any National Guard deployment to use helicopters and have “arrest powers to support Border Patrol operations.”
The deployment will likely be used by both Republicans and Democrats as a new rallying point in the debate over immigration. Democrats, including Texas lawmakers in the border region, immediately lined up in opposition to the deployment plan, calling it an attempt to score political points and to militarize the border.
“These military don’t need to be around families and children,” said Jennifer Saenz, a spokeswoman for state Senator Juan Hinojosa, a Democrat who represents the area....
Only if the U.S. is occupying a nation somewhere. Then it's okay.
The “surge operations,” which costs the state about $1.3 million per week and includes increased aircraft and maritime patrols, will continue at least until the end of the year....
I can see why Texans are angry.
Perry’s criticisms played a role in getting Obama to agree to meet with him in Dallas, coming after the governor turned down what he called “a quick handshake on the tarmac” with the president, requesting a more “substantive meeting.”
Perry won the draw at high noon on Main Street, 'eh?
Attempting to build support and momentum as he considers entering the 2016 Republican presidential race again after his disastrous campaign in 2012, Perry told a group of Iowa veterans on Sunday that if Obama failed to send troops to the border, Texas leaders would do so under their own authority.
He has been to Israel to seek approval. FYI.
“We’ve sent the message that if we don’t get the satisfaction that the federal government’s going to move and move quickly, then the state of Texas will in fact fill that void,” Perry said Sunday in the Iowa town of Clear Lake, according to the Des Moines Register.
In a separate development Monday, the White House said the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border is dropping significantly, the Associated Press reported.
See:
Patrick Compares Immigration Crisis to Holocaust
Preacher Patrick Cites Scripture Regarding Immigration Crisis
Treating Immigration With Kid Gloves
Immigration Crisis Meant to Advance North American Union
That is the ultimate goal, yeah. May not call it that, but....
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said a daily average of about 150 children were apprehended along the Rio Grande border in the first two weeks of July. He says that is down from an average of 355 per day in June.
The president also plans to meet Friday with the presidents of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, the three countries that are home to many of the children.
An upcoming post is in order then.
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Related: Paul Ryan calls for merging antipoverty programs
Don't forget him. Has he been to Israel yet?
Time to kiss this guy goodbye:
"McAllister changes course, will seek reelection" Associated Press July 01, 2014
BATON ROUGE, La. — The married representative who refused to leave office after he was seen kissing a female aide on grainy security footage changed course Monday, announcing that he would run for reelection despite the scandal and calls from the GOP leadership for his resignation.
Representative Vance McAllister said in April after the video was posted on the website of a Louisiana newspaper that he wouldn’t seek another term. But two months later, the freshman representative said he will be on the Nov. 4 ballot as a candidate for Louisiana’s Fifth District.
‘‘Without a doubt this decision comes after much thought and prayer,’’ McAllister said in a statement. ‘‘This district has been home to me and my family all of my life. I know the needs of this congressional district very well. I also know that this district needs a strong, conservative voice in Congress.’’
In an interview, McAllister said he received an outpouring of encouragement from people in the district urging him to run, but he said the strongest support came from his wife, Kelly. ‘‘She sees the work that goes into it every day, and she’s telling me that I really should,’’ he said. ‘‘She was a strong advocate and supporter of wanting me to really consider.’’
The congressman, who ran on a platform of faith and family, apologized for a ‘‘personal failure’’ after the security tape showed him kissing the married aide in his congressional office. She later resigned.
McAllister, who has held the congressional seat for less than year, said he won’t spend time discussing the video scandal during his campaign.
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Sexually-harrassing scum.
Related: GOP stays clear of congressman in video
GOP representative from Louisiana won’t seek reelection
Now for the other cheek:
"Hillary Clinton calls for return of bipartisanship" by Jim O’Sullivan | Globe Staff July 27, 2014
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on tour for a new memoir, “Hard Choices,” addressed the Ameriprise Financial conference at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center as a substitute for former president George W. Bush, who canceled his appearance after knee surgery.
Related: BRA Has $mall Cup
“The last time a Clinton replaced a Bush, things turned out pretty well,” Clinton quipped.
For who?
Much of her prepared remarks was devoted to American competitiveness with China and what she called the growing threat of Russia under Vladimir Putin.
She IS SCARY!
But Clinton also repeatedly jabbed at populist themes that another frequently mentioned potential presidential candidate, US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, often voices in her speeches....
See: The Disgusting Way the Clintons Earned Their Millions
Oh, she is di$gu$ting!
“We have the feeling growing in our country that the deck is stacked against the middle class, and those fighting to get into the middle class,” Clinton said, adding that the country is hobbled by “rising inequality, growth that hasn’t really picked up yet, and the feeling that many Americans now have that somehow the system seems rigged against them.”
Something your husband helped set up.
During a question-and-answer session with Ameriprise Financial chief executive James Cracchiolo, Clinton said right-leaning corporate leaders had helped fortify GOP congressional leadership in October 2013 to end a two-week government shutdown.
A va$t, right-wing conspiracy?
“People I knew, on boards, in executive suites, were calling Republicans they supported — they’re conservative, that’s where their political viewpoint rests — and saying, ‘What are you guys thinking?’ And it was the business community, Jim, that pulled us back from the brink.”
“Support those people. Support the people who are still able to make a deal,” she said.
Clinton has taken criticism for the paid speeches she has made since stepping down as the nation’s top diplomat in President Obama’s first term.
Six-figure sums when students are loaded to the eyeballs with tuition and loan debt.
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But they still love her, aaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!
"Hillary Clinton meets fans at Seekonk Sam’s Club" by Oliver Ortega | Globe Correspondent July 27, 2014
SEEKONK — Security was tight, with dozens of State Police, Seekonk police, and Secret Service agents restricting access to Clinton and checking the perimeter.
Out-of-touch, out-of-touch.
Several aisles were cordoned off so people could not cut in without being screened. The store’s café was closed and the space was used to give out wristbands, for which people either had to buy a book or bring their own for signing....
In its first week, “Hard Choices” sold 86,000 copies, though book sales had plunged to 10,000 by last week, according to Nielsen BookScan. A new book attacking Clinton, Ed Klein’s “Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas,” has outsold it for three weeks in a row....
The American people have ca$t their vote!
“I have so much respect for her,” said Diane Bergeron of Malden, who came to the store at 5 a.m. and left with a gleeful smile and a signed book clutched to her chest.
“She has my vote, and I’m going to campaign for her, which I never do, but I will for her,” said Lynn Vandenburgh of Plymouth.
Vandenburgh said she was exhausted and could barely remember the short chat she had with Clinton, but that having Clinton’s hand on top of hers for a few seconds made it “all worth it.”
This cult of personality worship stuff is not only disgusting, it is disturbing.
Until just before 4 p.m., when the event was scheduled to end, the line stretched from the back of the store to the parking lot. Store employees handed out water and snacks throughout the day....
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Leaves us with BIDEN:
"In Ohio, Biden urges infrastructure, job training" Associated Pres July 25, 2014
CINCINNATI — Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that more investment in infrastructure and job training is needed to increase economic opportunities in the nation’s cities.
Biden spoke at the National Urban League conference, where the theme is ‘‘One Nation Underemployed.’’
Biden said the keys to putting more people in better-paying jobs and spurring economic growth in cities are workforce training to meet today’s business needs and improving roads, bridges, and other transportation.
‘‘This is a new era,’’ Biden said. ‘‘We are better positioned than anybody in the world, but we need to invest in infrastructure and skilled job training.’’
President Obama’s $302 billion plan earlier this year to increase transportation spending and keep transit programs going for four years got a chilly reception from Republicans in Congress.
House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from a Cincinnati suburb, said in a statement Thursday that Biden should urge Democrats to work with House Republicans to help the economy by expanding energy output and cutting government red tape.
Sprinkling his speech with quotes from civil rights leaders such as the late Whitney Young and Martin Luther King Jr., Biden said gains for minorities, both economically and in civil rights, are ‘‘under siege.’’
He blasted voter ID and other plans he said would limit voting in the guise of preventing fraud and corruption that does not occur.
‘‘Name it for what it is — an attempt to repress minority voting,’’ Biden said Thursday.
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I wish he got me more excited.
