MANCHESTER, N.H. — A malfunctioning Marco Rubio crashed as he was overloaded by attacks last night from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who tried to portray the Florida U.S. senator as a Washington robot pre-programmed by political consultants during a high-stakes Republican debate.
“See, Marco — Marco — the thing is this,” Christie said, “when you’re president of the United States … the memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it doesn’t solve one problem for one person.”
Rubio’s glitchy debate performance could be a game-changer just as independents make up their minds two days before the crucial first-in-the-nation primary. The first-term senator’s rivals have raised concerns he’s too inexperienced — just like, they say, President Obama was — and isn’t ready for prime time.
Four different times — often word-for-word and at awkward non-sequiturs — Rubio claimed Obama intentionally wants to make America like the rest of the world.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A prominent Democratic donor worried about the party’s chances of winning the presidency emailed dozens of fans of Vice President Joe Biden on Friday, urging them to remain prepared to donate if Biden jumps into the race.
The donor, Bill Bartmann, cited new polling showing Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont nearly tied with the Hillary Clinton, eroding the 30-point lead the former secretary of state held at the end of last year. Bartmann and other party insiders are concerned that Sanders, a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist, is too far to the left to win against a Republican in the Nov. 8 presidential election.
“We cannot afford to lose the White House,” Bartmann wrote in the email, seen by Reuters.
The email drew a string of affirmative responses, also seen by Reuters.
Biden announced in October that he would not seek the presidency, despite support from a group of backers under the name “Draft Biden 2016.” But whispers have continued among some donors who hope that Biden could be convinced to run after all should Clinton’s campaign prove fruitless.
“My sitting on the sidelines has a lot to do with my disappointment that the vice president decided not to get in the race,” Patrick Baskette, one of the recipients of Bartmann’s email, told Reuters. Baskette, a public affairs consultant in Tampa, Florida, was a special assistant to Biden during his time as a senator.
Hillary Clinton at her caucus night rally in Des Moines. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
By John Whitesides
DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) – Hillary Clinton’s struggle in Iowa to fend off underdog Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, reignited questions about her ability to close the deal with Democratic voters and turned up the pressure on her high-profile White House campaign.
The Democratic presidential front-runner, whose campaign ran off the rails in Iowa in 2008 against Barack Obama, was dealt another setback on Monday in the Midwestern state that begins the 2016 race for the presidency.
The former secretary of state, Clinton, 68, was pushed to a virtual tie with Sanders, a 74-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont.
Next up is New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Feb. 9. Sanders has been leading in opinion polls there and has an advantage because it neighbors his home state. A Clinton loss would start to set off alarm bells with her supporters.
“She has had every possible structural and organizational advantage and Sanders fought her to a draw,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.
“This is almost a moment by moment rerun of 2008,” Schnur said. “The difference is her competition is not as tough this time.”
Clinton insisted at her post-caucus rally that she was the candidate who could unify her party and prevail against a Republican challenger in the Nov. 8 election but the sense of disappointment was palpable.
Her subdued, six-minute speech contrasted with the ebullient tone of Sanders’ 16-minute speech.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a leading voice on trade, immigration and executive powers, is urging Americans to choose their next president carefully because 2016 “is the last chance for the American people to take back control of their government.”
In a sober interview with Secrets, the Republican warned that liberal special interests, Wall Street moguls, and international media conglomerates are fast turning the United States into just another member of the European Union and that the effort is being led by a Democratic president eager to go his own way with executive orders.
“This election is different because we have pell mell erosion of law, the constitutional order, where President Obama has pushed an agenda that eviscerates the immigration legal system, and pushed this trade agreement that will commence decades of transferring American economic power to an ever-expanding international commission. It’s just not going to stop” unless voters take action, he warned.
JANUARY 29, 2016, 8:16 PM LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 2016, 11:51 PM
BY HERB JACKSON
WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT |
THE RECORD
After all the ads, direct mail, handshakes, polls and speeches, the first votes in the 2016 presidential selection process will finally be cast on Monday in Iowa.
And they will be cast in a process that would seem very foreign to New Jersey voters, one that’s much more public, more time-consuming and more collaborative.
In primaries like New Jersey’s, voting is largely a solitary thing. The voter goes behind a curtain at a polling place between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on Election Day or fills in a mail-in ballot days earlier at home.
In Iowa, caucuses are a group event, and everything starts at the same time, 7 p.m. Central Standard Time, in 1,681 precincts around the state.
Iowa Republicans use secret paper ballots, but they do it in a room filled with their neighbors and friends after hearing speeches about the candidates. After the presidential vote is over, the caucus can continue for hours more, as the precinct debates party policies and picks representatives for a county convention that will happen later.
“Who you’re voting for for president is usually the easy part,” said Judd Saul of Cedar Falls, a self-described “Teavangelist” who leads a group called Patriots for Christ. “The tricky part is when we get in there and start discussing what the platform is going to be, what planks people want the precinct to submit to the Republican Party platform.”
Democrats in Iowa don’t even use the secret ballot: They require people to separate into different parts of the room to show which candidates they are supporting. Horse trading can begin if a candidate’s support is less than 15 percent, a possibility for Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who polls show has support in the single digits while Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders battle for the lead.
DES MOINES — The presidential race hurtled over the weekend toward a watershed moment: voting that will start to reveal the true depth of Americans’ desire to cast aside traditional politicians and Washington-style compromise and embrace disruptive outsiders appealing to their passions.
After a year of countless and often conflicting polls, more than 250,000 Iowans are expected to attend caucuses on a relatively mild Monday night and render judgment on insurgent candidates who would bar Muslims from the country (Donald J. Trump), oppose concessions to Democrats (Senator Ted Cruz of Texas) and pursue a high-tax, big-government agenda (Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont). Voters are poised to bring order to the race, or reorder politics, as in no other recent election.
Money, experience and endorsements — advantages that usually turn candidates like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, into inevitable nominees — will be tested against the potent messages of rivals promising upheaval.
The intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging” to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.
The determination was first reported by Fox News, hours before the State Department formally announced Friday that seven email chains, found in 22 documents, will be withheld “in full” because they, in fact, contain “Top Secret” information.
The State Department, when first contacted by Fox News about withholding such emails Friday morning, did not dispute the reporting – but did not comment in detail. After a version of this report was first published, the Obama administration confirmed to the Associated Press that the seven email chains would be withheld. The department has since confirmed those details publicly.
The decision to withhold the documents in full, and not provide even a partial release with redactions, further undercuts claims by the State Department and the Clinton campaign that none of the intelligence in the emails was classified when it hit Clinton’s personal server.
Fox News is told the emails include intelligence from “special access programs,” or SAP, which is considered beyond “Top Secret.” A Jan. 14 letter, first reported by Fox News, from intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough III notified senior intelligence and foreign relations committee leaders that “several dozen emails containing classified information” were determined to be “at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, AND TOP SECRET/SAP levels.”
Six months after it began, the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server shows no signs of slowing down.
Former FBI officials said the length of the probe is not unusual and speculated that a decision on whether to file charges against Clinton or her top aides could come later this year, during the heat of the general election campaign.
“I don’t know that there’s any magical cutoff date,” said Ron Hosko, the FBI’s former assistant director of the criminal investigative division and a 30-year veteran of the bureau.
For Democrats, the extended investigation has become a source of some anxiety, with Republicans gleefully raising the prospect of the Democratic presidential front-runner being indicted.
“It does give pause to Democrats who are concerned that there may be another shoe to drop down the road,” said Andrew Smith, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire.
The government has been examining the former secretary of State’s private email server since last July, when the inspector general for the intelligence community issued a security referral noting that classified information could have been mishandled.
That referral came months after Clinton acknowledged that she had exclusively used a personal email address housed on a private server during her tenure as secretary.
The scrutiny of her email practices has mounted since then, with more than 1,300 emails that passed through her server found to contain information that has since been classified, some at the highest levels.
Hillary lags among men, again. Is it misogyny, or her brand of feminism? The story too hot for the New York Times
CAMILLE PAGLIA
During her two presidential campaigns, Hillary Clinton has consistently drawn greater support from women than men. Is this gender lag due to retrograde misogyny, or does Hillary project an uneasiness or ambivalence about men that complicates her appeal to a broader electorate?
As a career woman, Hillary is rooted in second-wave feminism, which began with Betty Friedan’s co-founding of the National Organization for Women in 1967, while Hillary was in college. Friedan sought to draw men into the women’s movement and to ally with mainstream wives and mothers. But after a series of ideological struggles, she lost her leadership role and was eventually eclipsed in media attention by the more telegenic Gloria Steinem, who famously said, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
Hillary has unfortunately adopted the Steinem brand of blame-men-first feminism, which defines women as perpetual victims requiring government protections. Hillary’s sometimes impatient or patronizing tone about men, which can perhaps be traced to key aspects of her personal history, may prove costly to her current campaign.
The real estate mogul refuses to budge on his debate boycott while his campaign accuses Megyn Kelly of being ‘totally obsessed’ with Trump.
By NICK GASS
01/27/16 06:37 AM EST
After Donald Trump declared Tuesday night that he would boycott Fox News’ Thursday primetime debate, the Republican poll leader is publicly refusing to blink, with his campaign manager accusing moderator Megyn Kelly of being out to get Trump.
“You know, what we know is Megyn Kelly is totally obsessed with Mr. Trump,” Corey Lewandowski told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “She’s on show after show about why the media shouldn’t be having him on television.”
And Trump himself took to Twitter to — indirectly — call Kelly a nasty name that he’s broken out before.
“I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct. Instead I will only call her a lightweight reporter!” the real estate mogul tweeted early Wednesday.
Trump’s decision to once again wage war on Fox and Kelly so close to the Iowa caucuses is either a shrewd one or a boneheaded one, depending on who you ask. While some are contending that Trump risks coming off as a coward walking away from a fight, it’s undeniable that he’s robbing the media oxygen from his rivals as they try to make their closing arguments to caucus-goers.
The tiff apparently started after Trump tried to pressure Fox News to boot Kelly as one of the moderators. Kelly gained heightened notoriety after pointedly asking Trump at the first debate about his supposed “war on women.” But Fox refused to give in, issuing a biting press statement on Tuesday saying, “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president — a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”
Fox doubled down after Trump’s declaration of a boycott, issuing a statement Tuesday night that accused Lewandowski of threatening the network with “terrorizations” of Kelly.
“In a call on Saturday with a Fox News executive, Lewandowski stated that Megyn had a ‘rough couple of days after that last debate’ and he ‘would hate to have her go through that again,’” the network alleged.
The public feels that most Americans are angry at Washington and many believe the country would suffer lasting damage if people who did not share their principles got their way in politics. At the same time, the latest national Monmouth University Poll also found that most Americans feel the harsh rhetoric of politics is not justified and believe that we can recapture the spirit that landed astronauts on the moon in the 1960s. However, there are significant differences of opinion among those who hold ideologically extreme views. Politicker Staff, PolitickerNJ Read more
The message from the public has been clear this presidential cycle. Anti-establishment rhetoric has brought avowed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) to an equal plane with Hillary Clinton, while Donald Trump has held onto a commanding twenty-point lead against his closest rival, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Dissatisfaction with the Washington status quo has been the only common thread, and some of New Jersey’s most prominent party chairmen think that trend could continue when the primaries begin next month. JT Aregood, PolitickerNJ Read more
By Former Rep. John LeBoutillier (R-N.Y.), contributor
State of the 2016 Race
A column for The Hill analyzing the current state of the 2016 presidential race.
It is the beginning of the end of the House of Clinton:
1. There is the stench of political death around Hillary, Bill, Chelsea and the entire House of Clinton.
2. You could feel it when Republican front-runner Donald Trump hit back — hard — over the “penchant for sexism” charge by basically calling Hillary Clinton an enabler in the former president’s sexual shenanigans.
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3. When have we ever seen the Clintons back off? But they did.
4. Then came further reports about an expanded FBI probe of her handling of secure information; the nexus of State Department favors for donors to the Clinton Foundation; and the story that Hillary Clinton or her staff might have lied to FBI agents in this probe.
5. All of this has raised the speculation, yet again: Will President Obama stop the Department of Justice (DOJ) from indicting her if the eight-person DOJ team working with over 100 FBI agents recommends criminal charges?
6. The president will be in an odd situation: He ran against the Clintons. He is known to loathe Bill Clinton. He apparently does not want the Clintons back in charge of the Democratic Party (thus removing the thousands of Obama acolytes with cushy patronage jobs).
7. So: If the DOJ recommends an indictment and he K.O.’s it, he will have his own legacy smeared with a permanent taint of having covered up for the Clintons.
8. If he allows an indictment to move ahead, that will be the end of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Period. She may think she can march on despite charges, but that would be self-delusional. Her campaign will be finished the day charges are filed by Obama’s Justice Department.
9. She can’t claim “politics as usual” or that old “right-wing conspiracy” nonsense as this will beObama’s Justice Department — not a Republican-controlled entity — bringing these charges.
10. Now, even without an indictment, Hillary Clinton’s fortunes are rapidly sinking.
11. As of today, she is on track to lose both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary — to an unelectable 72-year-old Vermont socialist!
12. That tells us how politically weak and out of it the Clinton machine has become.
13. It is no coincidence that Vice President Joe Biden has suddenly resurfaced — first in a Hartford, Conn. TV interview stating that he regrets not running “every day,” and then by softly criticizing Hillary Clinton for not leading on the anti-1 percent front.
14. Biden may very well be warming up in the bullpen for a possible emergency entry into the Democratic field once Clinton is charged and has to withdraw.
15. In the meantime, we see a frantic, panic-stricken Clinton family out on the stump hitting Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on healthcare and guns. But they’re hitting him from the center on healthcare — not the left, where the votes are.
16. They are running national TV ads on guns on MSNBC; there are ads every few minutes. If Team Clinton members think they can turn around her negative trajectory over guns, they are sorely mistaken.
Chicago Tribune Editorial Board member Clarence Page and “McLaughlin Group” host John McLaughlin predicted the FBI will recommend Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton face prosecution for mishandling classified information on Friday.
McLaughlin asked, “Forced prediction for the panel: the FBI will recommend that Hillary Clinton face prosecution for mishandling classified information? That’s the FBI. Yes or no?”
By ALEXANDER BURNS and MAGGIE HABERMANJAN. 23, 2016
Michael R. Bloomberg has instructed advisers and associates to draw up plans for a potential independent campaign in this year’s presidential race. His advisers said he was galled by Donald J. Trump’s dominance of the Republican field, and troubled by Hillary Clinton’s stumbles and the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on the Democratic side.
Mr. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has in the past contemplated running for the White House on a third-party ticket, but always concluded he could not win. A confluence of unlikely events in the 2016 election, however, has given new impetus to his presidential aspirations.
Mr. Bloomberg, 73, has already taken concrete steps toward a possible campaign, and has indicated to friends and allies that he would be willing to spend at least $1 billion of his fortune on it, according to people briefed on his deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his plans. He has set a deadline for making a final decision in early March, the latest point at which advisers believe Mr. Bloomberg could enter the race and still qualify to appear as an independent candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.
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