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2016 Election Tag

Posted by Amy Miller on December 26, 2014 27 Comments
Greg Abbott won a decisive victory in Texas' recent gubernatorial election, but he'll have some big shoes to fill come January. Outgoing Governor Rick Perry may be stepping down from his post at the Texas capitol, but he's nowhere near close to making his exit from the national stage. In addition to forming a PAC, courting conservatives, and brushing up on his foreign policy credibility, he's taking time to detail the hard work and conservative policies that were passed under his watch that converged to create "The Texas Miracle." From Fox News:
"Governor Perry established in the national mind that Texas is the place for jobs and freedom where entrepreneurship thrives and the American dream is alive," said Cal Jillson, SMU political science professor and author of "Lone Star Tarnished." Indeed, Texas under Perry has outpaced any other state on the employment front, creating three out of 10 of all U.S. jobs. Forbes magazine recently named Texas as the leading state for economic climate and future job growth while Chief Executive Magazine readers have named Texas as the number one state to do business for 10 years running. Over 100 of America's top companies -- including AT&T, Fluor, Dell and ExxonMobil -- are based in Texas. Toyota, Apple, Charles Schwab and SpaceX are expanding operations in the state. Perry has crisscrossed the globe with missionary zeal, from Beijing to London, touting a flourishing Texas brand that looks a shade brighter against the national economy. Texas, in turn, is America's top exporting state averaging more than $1 billion in exports every working day. "I was always intrigued with economic development and an economic climate that frees people," Perry said. "It was innate, something I derived from watching people I admired like my father, and it wasn't something I read or studied in school."

Posted by Amy Miller on December 20, 2014 58 Comments
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) had some strong words for fellow senator Rand Paul (R-KY) over his libertarian take on the end of the Cuban trade embargo. So strong, in fact, that Paul decided to take the fight to the internet. During his Thursday night appearance on "The Kelly File," Rubio had this to say about Paul and his anti-embargo cohorts:
"Like many people that have been opining, he has no idea what he's talking about," Rubio said Thursday night on Fox News's "The Kelly File." Earlier on Thursday, Paul had voiced support for Obama's surprise move on Wednesday to open an embassy in Cuba as well as ease economic and travel restrictions. "The 50-year embargo just hasn't worked," Paul said. "If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working, and probably it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship." ... "Look, Venezuela's economy looks like Cuba's economy now," Rubio said. "You can't even buy toilet paper in Caracas. And there's no embargo on Venezuela. What Venezuela has in common with Cuba, is they both have adopted radical socialist governmental policies. "And I would expect that people would understand that if they just took a moment to analyze that, they would realize that the embargo is not what's hurting the Cuban people," Rubio added. "It's the lack of freedom and the lack of competent leaders."
Not to be outdone by a fellow prospective presidential contender, Paul took to Facebook for what many are now calling an ill-advised rant: paul-on-rubio The trolling continued on Twitter:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 18, 2014 32 Comments
Alison Lundergan Grimes was to be the Wendy Davis of Kentucky. And you know what? It worked. She was crushed by Mitch McConnell. Now Grimes is lashing out, trying to prevent Rand Paul from being able to run for both President and Senate on the same ballot. From ABC11, Grimes pledges legal challenge if Paul attempts simultaneous races:
Six weeks after she lost her own bid for the U-S Senate, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D-Kentucky) tells WHAS11 if U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) tries to appear on the same ballot for both Senate and President in 2016, she will challenge him in court. "The law is clear," Grimes said. "You can't be on the ballot twice for two offices." Kentucky Democrats are not cooperating as Paul considers mounting simultaneous campaigns for Senate and President. Democrats maintained control of the Kentucky House in last month's election, a roadblock to legislation favored by the Republican Senate to remove the prohibition. House Speaker Greg Stumbo (D-Prestonsburg) declined to consider a Senate bill to that effect earlier this year. Paul may challenge the law in court as the Republican Party of Kentucky also discusses whether to hold a presidential caucus rather than a primary, which would allow Paul to follow the letter of the law by not appearing on the primary ballot, twice.
Now, I understand, Grimes is just standing up for principles. Like when she wouldn't reveal, ahem, whether she voted for Obama:

Posted by Amy Miller on December 16, 2014 41 Comments
Jeb Bush broke the right wing internet this morning when he tweeted this: He also took to Facebook to detail his reasoning and offer an explanation of what actions he's taking as of right now:
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! Like many of you, our family was blessed with the opportunity to gather together over the recent Thanksgiving holiday. Columba and I are so proud of the wonderful adults our children have become, and we loved spending time with our three precious grandchildren. We shared good food and watched a whole lot of football. We also talked about the future of our nation. As a result of these conversations and thoughtful consideration of the kind of strong leadership I think America needs, I have decided to actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States. In January, I also plan to establish a Leadership PAC that will help me facilitate conversations with citizens across America to discuss the most critical challenges facing our exceptional nation. The PAC’s purpose will be to support leaders, ideas and policies that will expand opportunity and prosperity for all Americans. In the coming months, I hope to visit with many of you and have a conversation about restoring the promise of America. Best wishes to you and your families for a happy holiday season. I’ll be in touch soon. Onward, Jeb Bush

Posted by Amy Miller on December 14, 2014 10 Comments
The past few days may have been chock full of more strategy-derailing posturing and political theatre than we wanted or deserved, but hidden between the folds of intra-party fighting was a nugget of relevancy that we should dust off when we resume debates over who deserves to serve as our next post-cycle whipping boy Presidential candidate. Senator Marco Rubio (F-FL) took to the Senate floor for a palate cleanser on foreign policy, and it was impressive. The video below is 43 minutes long, but hit play and let it serve as background sound for your Sunday afternoon internet binge:

Posted by Mike LaChance on December 12, 2014 11 Comments
Democrats speak out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to campaign finance laws. They say they want big money out of American politics but they'll stop at nothing to raise big money to install Hillary Clinton as America's next president. Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon reports how that goal may have resulted in a violation of law:
Pro-Hillary PAC Accused of Illegal Activity in FEC Lawsuit An anti-Hillary Clinton PAC filed a lawsuit on Thursday to compel the Federal Election Commission to determine whether the pro-Clinton Super PAC Ready for Hillary is violating campaign finance laws. The Stop Hillary PAC originally filed a complaint with the FEC in January, claiming that Ready for Hillary may be illegally conducting authorized campaign activity on behalf of Hillary Clinton. According to the complaint, Ready for Hillary used an email list owned by Hillary Clinton’s Senate committee to send out fundraising letters. Ready for Hillary also allegedly sent out the solicitations using the email address [email protected]—a website that the complaint says is owned by Clinton’s authorized committee. The Ready for Hillary email stated “now is the time to get our support for Hillary organized and ready for 2016,” according to the lawsuit.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 04, 2014 30 Comments
One of Hillary's problems is the perception of inauthenticity, someone who will assume whatever persona she needs to assume at any given moment. Like when she assume a southern accent. So what do Hillary supporters at Stand With Hillary do to convince the public Hillary is authentic? Create the most inauthentic video ever created in the history of the human race (h/t @MichelleMalkin / Twitchy):

Posted by Amy Miller on November 14, 2014 7 Comments
The reality of campaign politics is that there is no standard for rhetoric. You punch low, you punch high, and you start punching before you have specific people you're tasked with punching. Some progressives, however, are jockeying for early bids to lead Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential campaign, and are using fellow Democrats' low blows against Republicans---and each other---to improve their chances. ABC News has received copies of e-mails from the "Mook Mafia," a list serv run by 34 year old Democrat operative Robby Mook, who many believe could be slated to lead Hillary's campaign team. via ABC News:
Copies of a cache of the emails obtained by ABC News, and revealed publicly for the first time, show Mook and Marshall demonstrating an aggressive tone in rallying their friends behind political causes, in exchanges that are often self-mocking and sometimes border on being profane. They include rallying cries to, in Mook’s words, “smite Republicans mafia-style,” and, to quote Marshall, “punish those voters.” Mook sometimes calls himself “Deacon” in the emails, while Marshall, now a senior White House aide, refers to himself as “Reverend” in many of the exchanges. ... The private emails were provided to ABC News by a Democrat on the listserv who has worked alongside Mook and Marshall on previous campaigns. The person who provided the emails is, like the vast majority of those on the listserv, supportive of Hillary Clinton, but does not support the idea of Mook or Marshall holding leadership roles in a second presidential bid. They were provided on the condition of anonymity. That the emails are emerging publicly reflects the ferocious intra-battle to populate the top positions of an expected Clinton campaign.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 12, 2014 16 Comments
2014 has been a great year for Republicans: we maintained the House, took back the Senate, made inroads with new voters and solidified the voting base, and sent the mainstream media spiraling. Good for us. Now it's time to get back to work. If this were a sane world, we'd be justified in resting on our laurels for the next few months; but this is politics, there are no laurels, and we're all still so hopped up on caffeine and victory that we might as well ride the lightning while its flashing. Especially since Democrats are. Groups like Battleground Texas may have suffered crushing defeat in the midterms, but they're not going to let the loss of fluff candidates like Wendy Davis derail their mission. Organizing for Action has a new video out, aimed at reaching the very demographics they lost ground with in 2014:
OFA is a movement of millions fighting for real, lasting change. This isn't for everyone — we're community organizers, and we're proud of it. If you’re someone who'd rather get involved than sit back, if you refuse to be cynical about what we can get done together, then you should be part of this. Let's go.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 09, 2014 12 Comments
When my friends and I first signed up for Facebook back in 2003, I don't think any of us had any idea how the platform would grow and monetize itself over the next decade. What was once the anti-MySpace is now arguably one of the most powerful tools political campaigns and marketing firms have on hand to help push their brands. Political advertising on Facebook ebbs and flows with the cycle, but Facebook has developed and implemented a new way to read user data that will help their team make Facebook ads even more (creepily) specific. "Sentiment analysis"---or, reading a user's feelings on a particular subject based on what they write---is desperately tricky to get right, but if Facebook can do it, everyone from marketing and political consultants to media outlets will be able to gauge reactions on hot button issues simply by looking at a "sentiment analysis." Experts predict that this type of digital strategy could end up outpacing TV and radio as the primary platforms for regional analysis. From Buzzfeed:
Facebook is on the cusp — and I suspect 2016 will be the year this becomes clear — of replacing television advertising as the place where American elections are fought and won. The vast new network of some 185 million Americans opens the possibility, for instance, of a congressional candidate gaining traction without the expense of television, and of an inexpensive new viral populism. The way people share will shape the outcome of the presidential election. Even during the 2014 midterms, which most Americans ignored, Facebook says it saw 43 million unique individuals engage in the political conversation. Now a rawly powerful video may reach far more voters in a few hours than a multimillion-dollar ad buy; and it will reach them from trusted sources — their friends — not via suspect, one-way channels.
Is this new big data push a substitute for traditional polling, though? Experts say no:

Posted by Amy Miller on October 20, 2014 8 Comments
Texas Democrats weren't happy when Governor Rick Perry headed overseas in spite of the first diagnosed cases of Ebola in the U.S. appearing in Texas. While this might have served as a valuable distraction from Wendy Davis's falling poll numbers, Perry's decision to maintain his international schedule is shaping up to put him ahead of the growing pack of candidates expected to seek the Republican presidential nomination. Even David Frum at The Atlantic has been forced to admit that Perry is building momentum both for his own campaign, and for America's foundering international reputation. In his article, Frum compares Perry's speeches overseas with those given during Obama's now-infamous "apology tour"---and emphasizes the crucial difference between the two statesmen:
Like Obama, Perry acknowledged faults and flaws in American democracy and European history. But he seemed to have Obama’s ‘fault on both sides’ argument very much in mind when he countered with these words: “The shortcomings of Western democracies, the systematic savagery of the enemy—to a certain way of thinking, it all gets mixed up as one: ‘They’ve got bad guys over there, we’ve got a few of our own—what’s the difference?’” Perry’s London speech focused on the threat from ISIS and the Middle East. In Warsaw, he would have spoken about another—nearer—challenge: from Vladimir Putin and a revanchist Russia. In his prepared, undelivered remarks, Perry paid due tribute to the fact that it is the president, not governors—not even Texas governors—who make America’s foreign policy. ... The list of Republican candidates for 2016 is long. Still, a Texas governor always belongs near the top of that list given the state’s lode of electoral votes and deep-pocketed donors.
You should really read the entire article; it's extraordinarily gracious considering Perry's history on the national stage. Conventional knowledge tells us that foreign policy is traditionally not the platform plank that gets voters to the polls; but that's not to say that Perry can't use the current crisis to his advantage.

Posted by Amy Miller on September 26, 2014 45 Comments
Will the third time be a charm for Mitt Romney? In a CNN poll run earlier this summer, 53% of Americans said that if the 2012 election were held today, they would vote for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. (Obama managed to pull in 44% of respondents.) This poll, coupled with a few teasers from interviews with Romney himself, have refueled rumors that Romney is quietly preparing himself for another run at the Presidency. Via Byron York of the Washington Examiner:
That belief is wrong. Romney is talking with advisers, consulting with his family, keeping a close eye on the emerging '16 Republican field, and carefully weighing the pluses and minuses of another run. That doesn't mean he will decide to do it, but it does mean that Mitt 2016 is a real possibility. ... A significant number of Romney's top financial supporters from 2012 have decided not to commit to any other 2016 candidate until they hear a definitive word from Romney. They believe they are doing it with the tacit approval of Romney himself. "Spencer Zwick has never said specifically to everyone to keep your powder dry," says the plugged-in supporter, referring to Romney's former finance chairman who remains very close to Romney. "But the body language, the intonation, and the nuance are absolutely there." So far, Romney's most dedicated supporters do not believe that his disavowals have been anywhere near definitive. They were particularly encouraged in late August, when Romney, in the middle of explaining to radio host Hugh Hewitt why he decided not to run in 2016, seemed -- at Hewitt's prodding -- to open the door just a bit by adding that "circumstances can change."

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 31, 2014 9 Comments
It's fun to think about how the media would drive itself crazy trying to choose sides between Joe and Hillary. On one hand, Hillary is a woman and the media's expected inheritor of the presidency. On the other hand, Biden is part of the Obama administration. Justin Sink of The Hill recently reported:
Biden fuels '16 talk with New Hampshire visit Vice President Biden will head to New Hampshire next week for an event on the economy that is certain to intensify speculation that he is readying a bid for the presidential nomination in 2016. Biden will be joined at the Wednesday event in Portsmouth by members of Congress, the White House said in a statement. The attendees at the event could include Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who is locked in a tough reelection fight against former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). Shaheen did not meet with Biden during his last trip to the state, a fact that was highlighted by the state's GOP.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 19, 2014 72 Comments
Texas Governor Rick Perry was booked today on charges of abuse of power, but before he went in to pose for the greatest mugshot in the history of mugshots, he took the time to speak at a pickup rally organized in support of the Governor and his fight against Texas democrats. The Washington Free Beacon has the video:
I’m here today because I did the right thing. I’m going to enter this courthouse with my head held high, and not only were the actions that I took not only lawful and legal, but right. And if I had to do so, I would veto funding for the integrity unit again. You think any governor, Democrat or Republican, would expect this important unit with jurisdiction over state officials, be led by someone who lives up to the high standard of conduct and personal integrity. And this issue is far bigger than me. It is about the rule of law, about the constitution that allows not just a governor but every citizen to speak their mind free of political interference or legal intimidation. [ cheers and applause ] This indictment is nothing but an attack on the constitutional powers of the governor. There are important fundamental issues at stake, and I will not allow this attack on our system of government to stand. I’m going to fight this injustice with every fiber of my being. and we will prevail. and we’ll prevail because we’re standing for the rule of law.
After Perry was booked, he went to Sandy's ice cream, as is the Texas way. Although these charges appear to be nothing more than a political power play, Governor Perry is playing a very smart long game by both hiring an excellent legal team, and welcoming the commentary from pundits on both sides of the aisle---almost all of whom believe that the indictment is nothing more than a transparent political play.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 18, 2014 12 Comments
Formed this year at the end of July, "Rick PAC," Rick Perry's Political Action Committee, is still going strong with their fundraising efforts ahead of the 2014 elections and 2016 presidential election cycle. I received this in my inbox this morning, and am taking it as proof positive that Rick Perry is beyond confident that he will not only beat Texas democrats' efforts to prosecute him for rightfully using his veto power, but that his reputation will remain untarnished when the dust settles. Screen Shot 2014-08-18 at 12.04.41 PM Officially registered as a Political Action Committee, Rick PAC can legally raise money to both support or oppose multiple federal candidates; this means that if he chooses to stay in the running for 2016, Perry will be able to use the money raised from his recent groundswell of support to make another run for the Presidency.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 08, 2014 27 Comments
Hillary didn't have to defend the child rapist. Once she took the case, she had to do everything ethical to provide the defense. But she didn't have to take the case. Hillary could have just said no. And she didn't have to cackle about getting the guy off easy. There's nothing funny about it. Nothing. It's Mitt's dog, haircut, and secret tape cubed. If the media wants it to be. It also goes to a core political issue, Hillary’s sisterhood questioned again as rape victim speaks out. This will be a big f-ing deal if and when Hillary runs. It already is. (video via Free Beacon) Added:  Some background on the MSNBC segment, noting Hillary's explanations are inconsistent with past statements and correcting errors, from the Free Beacon:
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