Will Newt be able to do tonight in Tampa to Brian Williams what he did to Juan and John last week in the run-up to the South Carolina primary?
Williams — Brian, that is — ranks as the king of the evening news anchors, as smooth and seemingly seasoned and confident as they come, and he’s moderating tonight’s GOP debate in Tampa at the University of South Florida. The supporting cast features the Tampa Bay Times’s political reporter Adam Smith and the National Journal’s Beth Reinhard.
I just listened to an interview with ABC’s Brian Ross on Washington’s WMAL about his interview with New Gingrich’s second ex-wife, Marianne, scheduled to air tonight on "Nightline." It doesn’t sound like it warrants the Matt Drudge siren of yesterday, like there’s anything in it that we didn’t already know about Newt’s chaotic private and public lives.
Especially if we read in the summer of 2010 John Richardson’s long (eight pages in the online version) and mesmerizing Esquire story on Gingrich. Romney and his aides must have missed it.
If the biggest shocker in the Brian Ross interview is that Newt asked Marianne, to whom he had been married for 18 years, for an “open marriage,” that’s there in the year-and-a-half-old piece. In Richardson’s words: “He asked her to just tolerate the affair [with current wife Callista Bisek], an offer she refused.” Also, there is Newt calling Marianne to ask for a divorce shortly after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, having installed Callista, 23 years his junior and a congressional aide, in their Washington apartment and in their bed.
The New York Times’s lead story, posted on its website Thursday night, " 'Bundlers’ for Obama Have Active Ties to Lobbying,' " makes the important point that “Despite a pledge not to take money from lobbyists, President Obama has relied on prominent supporters who are active in the lobbying industry to raise millions of dollars for his reelection bid.” Eric Lichtblau reports that “at least 15” of Obama’s bundlers, while not registered as lobbyists, seem to perform very much like lobbyists, sometimes working for consulting firms, sometimes for private companies. The loophole-ridden rules on lobbying allow them to avoid registration, he writes, and also to raise money for the president, host fundraisers and even push policies at White House meetings.
Republicans are screaming for a special counsel; reporters/commentators from CBS to Fox News are aggressively questioning Attorney General Eric Holder's truthfulness in testimony last May to Congress about when he first knew about Operation Fast and Furious. (Holder answered the question posed by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., about when he first knew about Fast and Furious, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about [it] for the first time over the last few weeks.”) Justice Department documents seem to indicate that he would have known about it in July 2010.
For Holder, this must seem like déjà vu all over again — here’s how.
When a commercial break ended during Thursday’s Ames, Iowa, Republican debate, the seven men were back behind their podiums awaiting more questions from Fox News moderator Bret Baier. Oops, one of the presidential hopefuls was missing— Michele Bachmann, the only woman.
In the seconds it took for her to resume her place, I was probably not alone in wondering if she was frantically medicating one of the debilitating migraines we read about recently.
Nope, we soon learned that during every commercial break of the two-hour debate, Bachmann was having her makeup refreshed.
I’ve always seen similarities between Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton: the white fluffy hair, the out-there philandering, the lack of discipline, the big appetites, the lies, the hypocrisy — and, yes, the brilliance: the off-the-charts IQ, the love of history and ideas, the hyper-articulateness.
During the Fox News-sponsored Republican debate last night in Ames, Iowa, when former Speaker Gingrich blasted Chris Wallace, it brought me back to a day five years ago when former President Clinton set the stage for attacking the Fox News anchorman.
Wallace was left a sputtering puddle by Clinton; he did better in his tense exchange with Gingrich, but still, I think, came out the loser.
Among the Tea Party Republican freshmen from Illinois, 8th district Rep. Joe Walsh, of suburban Chicago, is among the most self-righteous and cantankerous. Bookers for cable shout-shows love him.
He’ll be in particular demand today, because he’s poised to vote against yesterday’s debt-ceiling dealing. "This isn't even as strong as the Boehner plan," he complained.
It’s useful to remember this morning how Joe Walsh has managed his own finances.
A couple of weeks ago, in a videotaped tirade against President Obama and wasteful government spending, he said, among other things: “Quit lying to the American people ... Show some leadership for a change ... You don’t like ultimatums? Tough ... You’re either in over your head … or are hell-bent in turning us into some European, big-government wasteland. ... I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money.”
Math has never been my strong suit, but even for me, the crisis gripping the nation and the world is easy to understand. The Republicans, who control the House, are holding raising the $14.3 trillion debtcceiling by Aug. 2 hostage to cuts in government programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, of equal amounts to the increase, and accomplished with no increase in taxes. The Democrats, for the most part, are willing to go along, except they’d like tax increases on the rich to alleviate some of the cuts to programs that affect their constituencies.
And Democrats are mindful of President Obama’s bottom line that whatever bill comes to his desk for his signature must increase the borrowing limit enough to free him from having to worry about its rearing its alarming head until after he’s reelected in November 2012. The Republicans, on the other hand, want to hurt Obama’s chances at a second term, so they want a stopgap plan, cuts in lots of programs, no taxes, but designed so the president will have to revisit the debt-ceiling issue before the 2012 presidential election.
You know that a contender for president is being taken seriously by the establishment media when the New York Times Magazine profiles him — the Matt Bai profile of Jon Huntsman Jr. is coming this Sunday.
Huntsman, 51, will announce Tuesday that he is a candidate for president.
Mitt Romney, 64, already announced, cannot be relishing the prospect.
President Obama spoke Wednesday to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network’s 20th Annual Keepers of the Dream Awards gathering in New York.
Obama addressed an increasingly critical fact of American life — that the price of a gallon of gasoline is pushing $4. (In Chicago, where I live, and where Obama still keeps a house, even “regular” has topped the $4 mark.) The president knows that the unemployment rate might creep down toward 8 percent and make his reelection likely, but rising gas prices can trump all that and make him a one-termer.
So President Obama told his audience, "I don’t pump gas now, but I remember what it was like pumping gas.”
Well, that was fuel for Limbaugh’s Thursday morning radio rant.
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