Gingrich camp heads off ex-wife interview
The Gingrich campaign launched a preemptive strike as news spread that ABC plans to broadcast a potentially damaging interview with Newt Gingrich’s second ex-wife on Thursday – just two days before Saturday’s crucial South Carolina primary.
Gingrich’s daughters (from his first marriage) Kathy Lubbers and Jackie Cushman came to their father’s defense in a letter released by his presidential campaign.
“The failure of a marriage is a terrible and emotional experience for everyone involved. Anyone who has had that experience understands it is a personal tragedy filled with regrets, and sometimes differing memories of events,” the daughters said in the letter addressed to ABC News Leadership.
“We will not say anything negative about our father’s ex-wife. He has said before, privately and publicly, that he regrets any pain he may have caused in the past to people he loves,” the letter said.
The daughters also said the former House Speaker intends to stay on message, suggesting one thing he will not be talking about in South Carolina is the ABC interview.
“ABC News or other campaigns may want to talk about the past, just days before an important primary election. But Newt is going to talk to the people of South Carolina about the future… We are confident this is the conversation the people of South Carolina are interested in having,” they said.
Gingrich, who’s married, has been divorced twice and admitted to cheating on his first two wives, including while he led the charge to impeach former President Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Gingrich addressed the issue earlier in the campaign. A renewed spotlight on his past domestic troubles could not have come at a worse time.
Washington Extra – The Keystone cudgel
President Obama had until the end of February to make a decision on the Keystone oil sands pipeline, but he made his move today. And, predictably, he rejected the $7 billion project. That keeps him in good standing with his environmental base for November 2012 but creates new tensions with his Republican foes.
Republicans had forced Obama to make a decision in 60 days as part of the deal for the two-month payroll tax cut extension. House Speaker John Boehner quickly reacted to the rejection by saying “all options are on the table” to craft a bill to fight for the pipeline.
But Boehner may not have many options. If the Republicans push for a bill to get approval for Keystone, the president can veto it. If they choose to make it a bargaining chip in talks for a full-year extension of the payroll tax cuts, they will likely meet fierce resistance from Democrats. We are hearing Boehner just wants to seal the payroll tax cut extension and move on after his painful capitulation in the December deal.
Perhaps Republicans should just be content to wield the Keystone cudgel on the campaign trail rather than in Congress. Mitt Romney showed how to use it pretty effectively today, blasting Obama for “his lack of seriousness” by putting electoral considerations before national interests.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Obama Administration rejects Keystone oil pipeline The Obama administration rejected the Keystone crude oil pipeline project, a decision welcomed by environmental groups but blasted by the domestic energy industry. Obama said TransCanada’s application was denied because the State Department did not have enough time to complete the review process. Lawmakers that support the project forced a decision by attaching a measure to a tax-cut law passed at the end of last year.
For more of this story by Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton, read here.
Washington Extra – A man and his dog
Here’s a modern-day twist on Harry Truman’s quip “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” If you, the president, have called John Boehner and urged him to compromise on extending the payroll tax deal by two months, then all that’s left to do is go out Christmas shopping with your dog.
That’s what President Obama did today, taking Bo, the only family member who hasn’t gone to Hawaii, to a pet store in a Virginia strip mall.
Bo made friends with a brown poodle named Cinnamon, prompting a warning from his master “Okay, Bo, don’t get too personal here.” Aw, Mr President, let the First Dog enjoy his time out in the real world.
The shopping excursion was a way to bide time while Washington waits for Speaker Boehner’s next move. The president pledged to work with Congress on a one-year extension. That may well be enough for Boehner to stand down, especially with fellow Republicans and conservatives criticizing him and the House for holding out on a tax cut.
We are hearing whispers on Capitol Hill that a deal could be quick to come on Thursday. Stay tuned for a possible wrap on Congress 2011. Or, conversely, watch for the president’s next holiday outing with Bo.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Washington Extra – Black box
For the past week or so, we’ve watched Democrats and Republicans playing chess on the payroll tax cuts, trying to outmaneuver each other and gain the upper hand in this final bitter budget battle of 2011. Today, it looks like the match moved off the chessboard and into the unknown.
In this vacuum, people are struggling to know what happens next. Eric Lascelles, chief economist at RBC Global Asset Management in Toronto, told us his confidence that the tax cut will be extended in 2012 “is beginning to waver.”
“As usual,” he added, “the political process is such a black box it’s hard to credibly put odds on this.”
President Obama might be feeling the same way, especially after he seemed fairly certain Saturday that the extension was all sewn up by the deal in the Senate. He came out today and said “let’s not play brinkmanship. The American people are weary of it.”
Obama may get something worse than brinkmanship, and that is nothing happening. There will be no votes in the House Wednesday and we hear some members who live in faraway places like California are heading home for Christmas. They will come back this week if needed, but it is increasingly looking like they won’t be. Congress may be effectively shutting down for the holidays, this year’s business far from finished.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Obama says time running out for payroll tax cut deal President Obama demanded that Republicans in the House of Representatives quickly pass a short-term extension of a payroll tax cut, showing an unwillingness to back down in a fight that could result in higher taxes for 160 million American workers. The House rejected a short-term deal passed by the Senate and called for fresh negotiations on the expiring tax break that saves the average American worker $1,000 a year. But Harry Reid, leader of the Senate, insisted he would not recall the chamber to reopen negotiations.
Obama says Washington vitriol is still a solvable problem
President Barack Obama thinks Washington’s political climate of vitriolic partisanship could start to wane over the next few years. Republicans just have to calm down, and Democrats have to stop playing the same silly political games as their opponents.
“A party that’s out of power, often times in those first few years of being out of power and reacting very negatively, their base ends up being very agitated. And it may take the next election or the next presidential election before things settle down,” the president told NBC’s Today show.
One problem is the media, and not just the mainstream media with its 24/7 news cycle but the cable-TV and radio talk shows, the Internet and the blogosphere — “all of which tend to try to feed the most extreme sides of any issue instead of trying to narrow differences and solve problems.”
Obama, who was once called a liar by a Republican lawmaker during a joint session of Congress, didn’t say which way he thinks the next elections would have to go to calm the savage partisan breast. But he didn’t seem to be predicting GOP victories.
“If we can demonstrate, as an administration, that regardless of whatever the day-to-day news cycle is saying, that we’re staying focused on the big picture and helping families, and the results are good, then I think that will show that it’s possible to be principled and stick to your convictions and not worry about the polls and ultimately be rewarded politically,” he said.
The problem with the way things work in Washington today is that one side will exaggerate the situation and target the opposition for ad hominem attacks.
Republicans do it. But they’re not alone: “There’s no doubt that Democrats are known to play the same game, which is to exaggerate the venality of the other side.”
This President, like the congressional majority handed to his party two years previously, was expected to tackle three things:
- stop the wars, without a moment’s delay
- prosecute the war criminals & fire all uppity war-drunk generals
and
- end the white-collar crime spree that has been sucking money, jobs and education out of American society’s grass roots
I assume he’s working on these, because that’s what he was elected to do. He shouldn’t be worrying about how loud the guilty will squeal before he’s even begun dropping the axe on them. By golly, Obama – let the damn thing drop now! The applause of America will drown out any lamentation of fools.
Younger Americans lean toward liberalism but Obama support lags
Today’s young Americans are the most likely of any generation to identify themselves as liberals. But their political enthusiasm for President Barack Obama and the Democrats appears to be waning.
That’s one finding in a wide-ranging Pew Research Center poll of so-called “Millennials,” the 18 to 29 year olds now making the passage into adulthood.
Young voters overwhemlingly supported Obama in 2008 in hopes that he would change the way Washington works. But more than a year into the Obama presidency, their political enthusiasm has cooled with the realization that Washington is still the same. Three in 10 blame Obama for the failure, while more than half say the president’s opponents and special interests are responsible.
That could help explain why the White House has quietly begun laying the groundwork for Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, even as offiicials tell Politico that the main focus is the “gathering storm” of the 2010 elections.
As for young America’s characteristics beyond politics, Pew says the 50 million teens and 20-somethings are more racially diverse than older adults, less religious, better educated, more hopeful and almost physically connected to the digital world via cell phones and social networking Web sites.
One more thing for Obama: 37 percent of them are unemployed or otherwise out of the workforce — the highest percentage for that age group in over three decades, according to Pew.
Bush and Cheney said we need to raise standards, Bush got into schools because of his family and left with gentleman C’s Ivy talk for being stupid but rich.
Cheney stayed in school long enough to avoid the draft, and grrr spells recent as resent while complaining about dumb kids.
I have one son working at a start up and another in a phd program that will keep America strong long after Cheney and Bush are just a bad memory.
This is a man in love with himself. If he is sleeping around personally, why not politically? Toledofan, divorce is a lot more common these days, it’s true, but that hasn’t changed it into a character asset! What happens if you vote for him because he said,”X”; and he does Y? What if he does something that you absolutely hate and never dreamed he would do based on the promises he made to you during the election? You can’t divorce him for four years! Personally, I wish politicians’ sexual exploits were left out of the mix.