House Majority Leader John Boehner is under attack from fellow Republicans for capitulating to the White House and his Senate peers on several key deals, under attack from voters for refusing to play ball on legislation to stimulate the economy and create jobs, and faces the prospect that a Newt Gingrich candidacy would jeopardize the GOP’s House majority. Yet he blithely predicts that the party will not only hold the House next year but for the next decade.
The key to all of this, he tells Politico in an exclusive interview, isn’t legislative legerdemain or belated recognition that his party’s strategy has been disastrous to suffering middle-class Americans. It is all because of . . . redistricting.
“I think it will be nearly impossible” for Democrats to win back the House in November, Boehner said. “I think our freshman members are doing a good job preparing themselves for the upcoming election. I would also note that redistricting across the country has helped those freshman members and others in tough seats who will now have better seats. So I think we’re in pretty strong shape for the year ahead.”
Boehner said he thought it “quite likely” the party would maintain control of the House through at least 2020, “as long as we listen to the American people and follow their will.” That apparently is the 19 percent of voters who think that Congress is doing a good job.
In a separate sit-down with Politico, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Democrats are in a position to demolish the GOP’s 25-seat majority and could even gain as many as 35 seats, while independent analysts, including The Cook Political Report and The Rothenberg Political Report, project that Democrats are on track to gain seats in 2012 but will fall short of the necessary 25.
Mitt Romney went for the jugular during the Republican presidential debate in Tampa in repeatedly bashing Newt Gingrich for being a lobbyist and influence peddler of the first water.
Gingrich’s indignant pushbacks that he had never been a lobbiest were plain silly and sillier still was his explanation — an oops! moment if ever there was one — that he had hired a lawyer to explain to him how to avoid the label.
The debate was Gingrich’s to lose and he did so badly.
Mitt Romney’s belated release of his 2010 tax return and his estimated 2011 return contained no surprises other than why it took him so damned long.
Bottom line:He is likely to pay a total of $6.2 million in taxes on $45 million in income over the two tax years of 2010 and 2011, which according to a New York Times analysis puts him in the top 0.006 percent of taxpayers.
Romney also reported financial accounts in Switzerland (since closed), Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, which will be grist of his opponents as the primary season plays out and if he wins the nomination.
“I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more,” Romney said during Monday night’s debate. “I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.”
Well no, but that’s not the point.
Romney did have some success parrying Gingrich’s efforts to paint him as a capitalist stooge in noting that under a proposal by the former House speaker to reduce capital gains taxes to zero, he would have paid no taxes in the last two years.
Said Democratic consultant Christopher Hahn: “The drip drip drip kills political careers and it looks like Romney needs a plumber and fast. Romney should have put all of his returns out for all the world to see so he could deal with whatever pain he needs to deal with now. Instead there will be continued calls for him to release additional years.”
The wife of a wealthy Newt Gingrich backer, taking advantage of the Citizens United travesty, will inject another $5 million into a super PAC supporting his presidential bid.
The lucre will come from Dr. Miriam Adelson, the wife of Sheldon Adelson, a longtime Gingrich friend and a patron who earlier month contributed $5 million to the Winning Our Future super PAC. The $10 million could substantially neutralize the millions of dollars already being spent in Florida by Romney and Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting him.
The donations are 2,000 times the Adelsons could legally give directly to Gingrich before Citizens United, and will have an outsized influence on how the primary season plays out. The initial $5 million already has paid for run a series of powerful attack ads and the When Mitt Romney Came To Town video
Newt Gingrich this morning threatened to not participate in future debates with audiences that have been instructed to be silent. That was the case last night when NBC‘s Brian Williams asked the audience in Tampa to hold their applause until the commercial breaks.
In an interview with the morning show “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Gingrich said NBC’s rules amounted to stifling free speech and were further evidence that the news media is trying to silence his dissenting points of view.