Romney offers donors chance to “Dine with the Donald”
Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has raised millions of dollars by auctioning off dinners with the president, first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, former President Bill Clinton and Hollywood stars – and Democratic supporters – George Clooney and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Now his rival Mitt Romney is getting into the act with some Republican celebrity love – offering the chance to “Dine with the Donald,” that is, Donald Trump — and Mitt — to anyone who donates $3 or more.
“Jets owner Woody Johnson recently previewed a rival event to the George Clooney one that President Obama’s campaign did, and this appears to be it – a raffle for a dinner with Mitt Romney and Donald Trump,” Politico reported on Thursday.
The fund-raising website features a poster modeled on the old “Uncle Sam wants you” military recruiting image, with a picture of the blond real estate mogul and reality television star, in a blue suit and red tie, pointing at the reader. “I want YOU,” it says in large letters, above smaller letters saying “Dine with the Donald… & Mitt.”
Suggestion donation amounts on the site range up to $2500, with a box that can be ticked saying “Make this a recurring donation.”
Participants are eligible to win airport transportation in the Trump vehicle, a stay at the Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York, a Tour of the boardroom from Trump’s reality television show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” and dinner with Trump and Romney.
West Virginia primary ballot included felon, Virginia’s lacked candidates
A convicted felon not only made West Virginia’s Democratic primary ballot, he won 72,544 – or 41 percent - of votes in the contest against Democratic President Barack Obama, and could receive at least one of the state’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer.
The inmate, Keith Judd, is serving a 17-1/2 year sentence at a federal prison in Texas for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999.
Judd’s performance was taken as a sign of deep animosity in West Virginia toward Obama, who was handily defeated in the state’s 2008 primary by Hillary Clinton and lost there by 13 percentage points to Republican John McCain in the general election. Joe Manchin, the state’s former governor who is now a Democratic senator, declined to say on Tuesday whether he had voted for Obama.
On Tuesday, Judd beat Obama in nine of West Virginia’s 55 counties. Republican party officials, aides and strategists emailed and tweeted with glee about Judd’s performance, and the Associated Press headlined its story, “Against Obama, even a jailbird gets some votes.”
The inmate’s performance also highlighted the sharp differences across the country in rules for running for office. While Judd, a convicted felon, made his way onto West Virginia’s ballot, leading Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were unable to satisfy the complicated requirements to get onto the ballot to compete in the Republican primary in neighboring Virginia on March 6.
Mitt Romney, now the presumptive Republican nominee, and Texas Congressman Ron Paul were the only two Republican contenders who made it onto the Virginia primary ballot. The others’ failure was taken as a sign of their campaigns’ disorganization.
Intolerance and hate are alive and well in WV. May God help you!
Washington Extra – The Pentagon and the poor
Never ones to shy away from a budget fight, the current crop of House Republicans pushed ahead with their latest deficit-reduction ideas – ones that weren’t exactly designed to win bipartisan support.
By throwing last summer’s delicately-crafted budget deal overboard, this updated plan mandates deeper cuts to social programs for the poor while adding money to military accounts. Food stamps, child tax credits and Medicaid healthcare would all feel the knife, while the Pentagon would escape all of the cuts that otherwise would begin triggering in January.
Nobody is under the illusion that Democrats will let this fly in the Senate. But the House Budget Committee maneuvering is an important exercise anyway as it gives an early glimpse at how a spending-cut debate could be waged at the end of this year – after the Nov. 6 presidential and congressional elections.
That debate will be shaped by the outcome of the vote. In the meantime, get ready for a lively conversation throughout the U.S. over how best to shrink the government’s economic footprint and tame huge budget deficits.
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Washington Extra – An anniversary observed
One year ago, President Barack Obama was secretly holed up in the White House Situation Room monitoring what turned out to be the successful U.S. military operation to kill Osama bin Laden.
A year later, he spent the day on another secret mission: flying aboard Air Force One to Afghanistan, the country from which bin Laden hatched his Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
With journalists in tow (they had agreed not to report anything about the trip until after Air Force One landed and Obama was safely in Kabul), Obama signed a “U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement” and was set to deliver an address to Americans about the U.S. role after most NATO combat forces withdraw from the war-torn country by 2014.
The drama of the president of the United States arriving in the dead of night on an unannounced mission offered an early taste of what Mitt Romney is up against in his quest to unseat Obama on Nov. 6.
The Republican presidential candidate visited a New York fire station to mark the anniversary of bin Laden’s death. But the message of the campaign event, including Romney’s contention that the White House had politicized bin Laden’s capture, quickly was overshadowed by news flashes and video of Obama’s surprise trip.
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Washington Extra – Kids, cover your ears
With Washington gripped by a widening Secret Service scandal, reporters just couldn’t steer clear of the salacious story. Soon after spokeswoman Victoria Nuland saluted the handful of underage observers, the questions moved to charges that Secret Service agents and other government workers cavorted with strippers and prostitutes while on overseas assignments. Nuland lamented the topic du jour and one Department employee jokingly moved to cover his daughter’s ears.
The roughly half-dozen kids were models of decorum. There they sat, on the sidelines of the briefing room, staring down at the floor. None asked a question. But they might have been thinking “Mom, Dad, when we get home tonight, you’ll have some explaining to do.”
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US on guard for attacks ahead of bin Laden anniversary – President Obama has reviewed potential threats to the United States ahead of the anniversary next week of the killing of Osama bin Laden, but there is no concrete evidence that al Qaeda is plotting any revenge attacks, the White House said. Bin Laden’s killing last year by U.S. commandos is touted by the Obama administration as one of his top accomplishments and it may help inoculate the president from Republican election-year claims that he is weak on national security. For more of this story by Alister Bull, read here.
Biden knocks Romney for “back to the future” foreign policy – Vice President Joe Biden blasted Mitt Romney’s foreign policy vision as backward-looking and tied to George W. Bush, hammering the presumptive Republican nominee for thinking like a CEO and not like a commander in chief. The remarks were Biden’s latest attempt to define Romney as out of touch with Americans, and his foreign policy critique marked a shift from the Obama campaign’s focus on economic and domestic differences with the president’s Republican rival. For more of this story by Jeff Mason, read here.
Romney looks to give Bernanke the boot
“I’d be looking for somebody new.”
Those words from the U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may give Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke some pause – or at least thinking about some other job prospects if the GOP frontrunner wins the Nov. 6 election.
As we report, Romney, a former business executive who’s made the economy the cornerstone of his campaign, has made it clear that if he wins the White House he will try to replace Bernanke. The Fed chief’s term ends in January 2014 – a year after the next president takes office. Although Bernanke was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush, Democratic President Barack Obama give him second term in 2009.
Bernanke, who was back in the spotlight on Wednesday as he defended current U.S. monetary as being on track, has been both vilified and revered for his role amid the Great Recession that began in 2008. Critics contend he is pursuing a reckless money-printing binge that exposes the world’s largest economy to a dangerous inflation risks while his defenders credit him with bold moves to stimulate growth that prevented a repeat of 1929-level depression.
Romney is signaling he wants the Fed – and the economy — to take a different direction. And that means giving Bernanke the boot, he says.
Getting rid of Bernanke would be about as clueless as every other portion of Romney’s economic incompetence. He didn’t even move into Bain – with other people doing the investing – until he had a 100% salary guarantee in case he screwed up.
The man has the courage of the average bear – none! He has the competence of today’s Republican Party – none!
Part of the success story of the stimulus package has shown up around the country in basic manufacturing industries and continues. Half the credit goes to the halfway measures Obama was able to force past the Party of No – before it became the Party of Never. The other half goes to Bernanke and the availability of greenbacks for industrial revival.
Ohio steel being the best example. Unemployment down to 7.5% in that state.
Washington Extra – Moonshot no more
Earth calling Newt: When the biggest news of your presidential campaign is the penguin biting your hand at the zoo, it’s probably time to pack it in.
Even though Newt Gingrich’s odds of winning the Republican nomination were about as long as those of realizing his dream for a moon colony, the 68-year-old seemed to enjoy himself to the end. “I never got the sense that he was quote-unquote down,” said adviser Charlie Gerow. “I got the sense on a couple of occasions that he was tired. Really tired.” And really in debt. His campaign spent $4.3 million more than it brought in.
For all his offbeat ideas, Gingrich did bring a dose of seriousness to this campaign. With some stellar debate performances and a deep knowledge of politics and history, he probably made Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum study more and work harder to win support.
Members of the media, targets of some of his most vicious attacks, may not miss Newt much. But there’s no denying that, for the world of news, Gingrich was the gift that kept on giving, right up to his encounter with a penguin.
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US high court appears to back Arizona on immigration – Conservative justices who hold a majority on the Supreme Court appeared to endorse Arizona’s immigration crackdown, rejecting the Obama administration stance that the federal government has sole power over those who illegally enter the United States. During 80 minutes of oral arguments, the justices suggested by their questions and comments that states have significant latitude to adopt laws that discourage illegal immigrants from moving to and staying in the country. For more of this story by James Vicini and Joan Biskupic, read here.
Washington Extra – The bench’s backstories
The challenge to Arizona’s tough immigration law may have the justices thinking about their own families’ origins and journeys to America. As Reuters reports today, nearly all of them, like their countrymen, descend from people who came looking for a better life (the notable exception is Justice Clarence Thomas whose great-grandmother was a slave).
Their ancestral stories may not tell us how they feel about illegal immigration or whether they will rule in favor of Arizona. But they are clearly a point of pride in their biographies and were often cited in nomination hearings.
Take Justice Samuel Alito, who referred to the experience of his own father, brought to the United States from Italy as an infant. It “is typical of a lot of Americans both back in his day and today. And it is a story, as far as I can see it, about the opportunities that our country offers, and also about the need for fairness and about hard work and perseverance and the power of a small good deed.”
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U.S. eyes options to restart Afghan peace talks – President Obama’s administration, seeking to revive stalled Afghan peace talks, may alter plans to transfer Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay prison after its initial proposal fell afoul of political opponents at home and the insurgents themselves. For more of this exclusive story by Missy Ryan, read here.
Washington Extra – Gift of the gas
After negotiating a tricky stretch of road, the Obama campaign may be easing into the straightaway in the gas-driven presidential race.
News on Monday of a delay in the planned closure of the largest refinery on the East Coast could mean an end to skyrocketing gas prices. And that would effectively take the wind out of a forceful Republican line of attack — that the president is to be blamed for $4 a gallon gas, arguably the most visible price in the American economy today.
The narrative was working against the president, who currently gets some of his lowest poll marks for his handling of energy prices, even though the causes of higher prices are largely beyond his control. Even so, we shouldn’t expect the Republicans to simply drop the rhetoric.
“Until we are at the point where people don’t feel like they’re squeezing their entire paychecks into the gas tank, it’s an issue that Republicans are going to keep talking about,” said a Senate Republican aide.
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Signs of cheaper gas could brighten Obama campaign – New signs of lower gas prices could give a boost to President Obama’s re-election hopes and blunt a potent weapon that Republicans have used to attack him. News of a month long delay in the planned closure of the largest refinery on the East Coast was the latest indication sky-rocketing gasoline prices may have peaked. Industry experts say keeping Sunoco’s Philadelphia refinery open will ease supply concerns and help underpin a gradual decline in gasoline prices during the summer. For more of this story by Alister Bull, read here.
No privilege for most stay-at-home moms -poll
The recent flap over women voters — especially stay-at-home mothers — has sent both Republican and Democratic pundits scrambling and with good reason: many stay-at-home moms aren’t affiliated with either party and are a ripe target for swing votes, a new poll shows.
The survey from Gallup Inc also finds that moms who don’t work aren’t exactly a pampered lot, despite Ann Romney – the wife of a multi-millionaire businessman – being portrayed as their standard bearer. It found most moms who stay home are more economically disadvantaged than their working peers.
Women with more education and those with higher family incomes are far more likely to work after having children than lower-income women and those who have less schooling, the polling firm found.
“It does appear that stay-at-home mothers are more economically disadvantaged than working mothers, rather than more advantaged. And this may be directly related to education,” Gallup said in its poll released this week.
The dust-up over whether women who don’t work and instead stay home with their children are privileged arose last week when Democratic pundit Hilary Rosen made comments that seemed to criticize Ann Romney, whose husband Mitt is one of the wealthiest people to ever seek the U.S. presidency and who has never been employed outside her home.
According to Gallup, which interviewed more than 45,000 U.S. adult women over three months earlier this year, most mothers with children under age 18 work outside the home — 63 percent. Thirty-seven percent stay home.
The survey found 84 percent of moms with young kids who have postgraduate-level education also have a job along with 75 percent of college graduates and 66 percent of those with just some college coursework. That compares with 48 percent of those who have at most a high school education.
@LarryLinn: BRILLIANT.
My question is, is this celebrity dining lottery compulsory for all Romney campaign donors? If so, I’ll be interested to learn what kind of effect this has on campaign donations.
@kafantaris: True, but even self-promoting persons like Trump can be helpful from time to time (when it suits them). There are plenty of people who want to follow in their footsteps…