Presidential races

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicted the Democrats' healthcare reform law will be repealed, but not before the 2012 election.

"I think it will be repealed," said Gingrich, who is exploring a presidential run. "I think it will be repealed probably by March or April 2013."

He noted it was possible that the courts will strike down the law. "As a strategy, I wouldn't could count on that," he said at a Friday press conference to mark the upcoming one-year anniversary of healthcare reform legislation.

President Obama signed the bill into law on March 23, 2010. Both Republicans and Democrats have been marking the anniversary during the past few weeks — Democrats touting the law's benefits and Republicans' deriding it. 

Florida Rep. Allen West continues to expand his national profile.

The freshman Republican has cemented himself as one of the Tea Party's champions after decrying federal government spending during the campaign and following that up by voting against the latest short-term spending measure.

In the latest sign of his growing profile, West will be the keynote speaker at the Georgia Republican Party's Presidents' Day dinner on Monday at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta.

West, who defeated Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.) by eight points last cycle, was born in Atlanta and still has connections in the state. "I got relatives there, so I'm going back home," he told The Ballot Box.

He'll appear at the event with Rep. Tom Price (Ga.), Sen. Johnny Isakson (Ga.), Gov. Nathan Deal and other state GOP officials.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), who is not up for reelection next year, won't attend because he's on an overseas trip next week, according to his Senate office.

West has seen his political stock rise to the point that he's being mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick in 2012. "Allen West would certainly be someone you'd look at," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said last month when asked about possible VPs. 

Asked if he was getting speaking request from other state parties, West smiled. "A few," he said, before edging away.

--Updated at 4:11 p.m.

The nation's unemployment rate will be 7.7 percent in November of 2012, according to a projection by a group of economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. 

That number would mark the highest unemployment rate in a year with an incumbent president since November of 1976, when Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated President Ford. 

It's a perilous number for President Obama, whose reelection prospects next year will likely hinge on the state of the economy. Still, the projection on the unemployment rate is just below the number many strategists peg as the real danger sign for the president in 2012.

Pollster John Zogby puts it at 8 percent, arguing that if unemployment is above that number in November of 2012, it could spell doom for Obama's reelection prospects.  

The economists surveyed by the Journal predicted that the overall jobs picture will improve over the next year, with the U.S. adding an estimated 190,000 jobs a month, but that will still translate to just a slow decline in the unemployment rate.  

Bachmann erroneously touted New Hampshire as the site of the first battles of the American Revolutionary War.

A national group aimed at fostering bipartisan solutions in American politics is pushing President Obama to show some backbone and take on entitlement reform in the effort to bring down the deficit. 

No Labels, a group that bills itself as "Not left. Not Right. Forward," is highlighting a 2007 interview with Obama where he said, "Everything should be on the table" in addressing the deficit.  

In a news release Friday, the group calls on Obama to back up the pledge with action, joining the growing chorus of those who want more direct involvement from the president in the budget fight. 

"I think we should approach it the same way Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan did in 1983," Obama said in a 2007 interview with ABC News that the group pointed to Friday. "They came together." 

No Labels also singles out Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) for his refusal "to consider Social Security reform within the context of the long-term fiscal crisis debate." 

The Republican push to reform Nebraska's system of awarding presidential electoral votes by congressional district has stalled and is unlikely to pass this year.



The legislative purgatory for the bill is good news for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Neb.), who is facing a tough reelection campaign. The state's liberal-leaning 2nd congressional district went for President Obama in 2008 after his campaign invested heavily in the Omaha region, driving up Democratic turnout. That investment was unlikely to be made again had the state changed to a winner-take-all system.  



State Sen. Beau McCoy's (R) proposal to reform the current system came to a stalemate in the Government Committee, according to a top legislative aide. There was a general consensus among the eight lawmakers that the winner-take-all bill wouldn't pass so a vote should not be taken.

It's still possible to the bill could be pulled directly onto the floor of the unicameral body, but that type of maneuver is generally frowned upon in the technically non-partisan Legislature.



According to local reports, it was a Republican state senator, Paul Schumacher, who was the swing vote against advancing the legislation. His decision would indicate it's unlikely the bill would pass in 2012, when it would be even more controversial with Election Day closer.



Nelson had said he would have liked to veto the bill, just as he did twice while serving as governor.

"I think other states ought to consider doing it as well," he recently told The Ballot Box. "Whether they do or not is their choice."

Maine is the only other state to divide its Electoral College votes by congressional district.

Lawmakers in New Hampshire are set to debate a measure Wednesday that would require any candidate who wants their name on the state's presidential primary ballot to provide a birth certificate.

But backers of the proposal say it isn't aimed at President Obama. 

Republican state Rep. David Bates told the New Hampshire Union Leader on Tuesday that supporters are amending the bill so that it wouldn't go into effect until 2013, having no impact on next year's presidential election. 

Bates told the paper that without that amendment, the proposal "created the appearance that it was all centered on putting barriers in the way of President Obama." 

Having it take effect in 2013, said Bates, would "diffuse any perception that this was directed at President Obama and is purely a policy decision designed to ensure that candidates for president are qualified according to the requirements if the Constitution." 

Despite the change, the bill is still generating opposition, and the Republican majority in New Hampshire's legislature is opposed to the plan. State House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt (R) said in a statement that the bill is "unnecessary and detracts from important business, namely our economy." 

Bettencourt also worried that, if passed, the measure could "represent a threat to our first in the nation primary as it gives other states reason and desire to try to jump us in line."

New Hampshire isn't the only state mulling such a bill. Lawmakers in close to a dozen other states across the country have introduced similar proposals that would force candidates to provide proof that they were born in the U.S. in order to qualify for the presidential ballot.  

Questions over whether Obama was born in the United States were first raised during the 2008 presidential campaign. Obama was born in Hawaii.

Republicans are borrowing a page from the playbook Democrats used against former President George W. Bush and criticizing the Obama administration's handling of rising gas prices. The tactic could score the GOP political points if, as expected, the price of gas remains high for several months to come.

In the summer of 2008, as gas prices hit record highs, 49 percent of Americans believed the Bush administration was to blame for the country's energy problems, according to a Gallup survey taken at the time. That was up from 38 percent in 2006. Moreover, just 17 percent of Americans believed Bush was doing enough to lower the cost of fuel.

This perception came after then-presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spent months pounding the Bush administration over the price of gas and for subsidizing oil companies with tax breaks. 

Republicans are now the ones trying to capitalize on the public's perception that the president has some control over the price of gas.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) claimed that $4-per-gallon gas "brought my state to its knees" in 2008.

He cited Energy Secretary Steven Chu as saying, in December 2008, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."

"This administration's policies have been designed to drive up the cost of energy," Barbour said last week at a breakfast hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "In the name of reducing pollution; in the name of making very expensive alternative fuels more economically competitive."

The Senate Republican Communications Center picked up on that in a release Tuesday, noting Chu's quote and questioning Obama's "gas price goals."

--Updated at 12:17 p.m.

Republican challengers to Obama must balance conservative demands to slash subsidies with the popularity of price supports in Iowa.

"Tim Pawlenty has a much better chance than Donald Trump of being the Republican nominee," Alexander said.