H4A Press Clips

May 26, 2015

SUMMARY OF TODAY’S NEWS

Yesterday Hillary Clinton and President Clinton made their first joint appearance since the campaign launch at the Chappaqua Memorial Day Parade.

Senator Bernie Sanders will officially announce for President today. He said not to underestimate him, citing his record of winning unexpected races. The media immediately positioned Sanders as the candidate for the “Warren Wing” of the Democratic party to embrace.

An article from Bloomberg speculates that Hillary Clinton will run against President Clinton’s welfare legacy saying, DC-based and national outlets have begun covering the fallout for the health care market and the burden on Congress if the Supreme Court overturns the ACA in the upcoming ruling.

SUMMARY OF TODAY’S NEWS....................................................................... 1

TODAY’S KEY STORIES................................................................................... 3

Clintons march in Memorial Day parade // CNN // Dan Merica – May 25, 2015........... 3

The White House has released enough Benghazi documents to cover half a football field // Vox // Christophe Haubursin........................................................................................................... 5

Where the media loves Hillary Clinton // Politico // Hadas Gold – May 25, 2015........... 5

Will Hillary Clinton Run Against Her Husband’s Welfare Legacy? // Bloomberg // Melinda Henneberger - May 26, 2015................................................................................................ 8

Launching campaign, Sanders appeals to party's Warren wing // AP via Yahoo! News // Ken Thomas – May 25, 2015....................................................................................................... 13

HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE......................................................................... 15

Bill and Hillary Clinton Make First Public Appearance Together Since Campaign Launch // ABC News // Liz Kreutz – May 25, 2015..................................................................................... 15

Clintons march in Chappaqua parade; Hillary talks education // Lohud // Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy – May 25, 2015............................................................................................... 16

Can Hillary Clinton crumble? // Newsday // William F.B. O’Reilly – May 25, 2015...... 17

Clinton: I See ‘No Role Whatsoever’ For US Ground Forces In Iraq // CBS DC – May 25, 2015  18

The White House has released enough Benghazi documents to cover half a football field // Vox // Christophe Haubursin......................................................................................................... 20

Hillary Clinton was paid millions by tech industry firms with a 2016 stake // Daily Herald // Matea Gold, Rosalind S. Helderman and Anu Narayanswamy – May 25, 2015........................ 20

The Latest Proof That Clinton Can't Stop the Sleaze // Real Clear Politics // Rich Lowry – May 25, 2015....................................................................................................................................... 24

Hillary Tweets About Memorial Day, And She's Got The Right Message // Bustle // Chris Tognotti – May 25, 2015..................................................................................................................... 25

Here’s Everything We Learned From The Hillary Emails // The DC // Chuck Ross – May 25, 2015............................................................................................................................................... 26

Hillary Clinton's 1st SC campaign stop is Wednesday at Democratic women's event in Columbia // AP via Daily Reporter – May 25, 2015................................................................................ 30

Step aside, Bernie Sanders has a big week - the busiest of the presidential hopefuls // The Washington Times // Jennifer Harper – May 25, 2015.................................................... 31

GOP's policy: Attacking Hillary Clinton // Bloomberg // Frank Wilkinson – May 25, 2015            33

Obama + Clinton + Florida = fundraisers // The Washington Times // Jennifer Harper – May 25, 2015....................................................................................................................................... 35

What Young Feminists Think Of Hillary Clinton // National Journal // Molly Mirhashem – May 25, 2015....................................................................................................................................... 38

Presidentidal Candidates Continue to Take Shots at the Supreme Court // Bloomberg.com // David Knowles – May 25, 2015...................................................................................................... 45

OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE............................................. 47

10 questions with Bernie Sanders // CNBC // John Harwood – May 26, 2015............. 47

Bernie Sanders Aims To Catch On With Elizabeth Warren-Backing Democrats // AP via Huffington Post // Ken Thomas - May 25, 2015.................................................................................... 51

Vermont’s Favorite Underdog // Politico // Terri Hallenbeck - May 25, 2015............... 53

Bernie Sanders Takes It to Wall Street With Financial Transactions Tax // Huffington Post // Dean Baker – May 25, 2015.......................................................................................................... 55

Sanders: A Revolution With an Eye on the Hungry Children // NYT// John Hardwood – May 26, 2015....................................................................................................................................... 56

GOP................................................................................................................. 57

Ben Carson tells RNC to keep debates inclusive despite his own surge // Washington Times // Jennifer Harper – May 25, 2015......................................................................................... 57

The Koch brothers try to rein in the GOP presidential clown show // The Washington Post // Paul Waldman – May 25, 2015................................................................................................... 58

Here’s Everything We Learned From The Hillary Emails // The Daily Caller // Chuck Ross – May 25, 2015................................................................................................................................. 60

Super PACs test Sen. Lindsey Graham’s commitment to campaign finance reform // Greenville Online // Mary Troyan – May 25, 2015.............................................................................. 62

Nuclear Waste Hard To Handle For GOP Candidate // National Journal // Jason Plautz – May 25, 2015....................................................................................................................................... 64

Marco Rubio and the Challenge to Hillary Clinton // Huffington Post Politics /// Hoyt Hilsman – May 25, 2015........................................................................................................................ 66

Analysis: Anti-gay bill rejection gives Jindal a campaign opportunity // AP via LGBTQNation // Melinda DeSlatte – May 25, 2015...................................................................................... 68

Can Marco Rubio Make Peace With Conservatives on Immigration? // The Daily Signal // Ken McIntyre – May 25, 2015.................................................................................................... 69

Republican Presidential Debate Caps Upend 2016 Race // The Wall Street Journal // Reid J. Epstein – May 25, 2015........................................................................................................ 75

Christie places fourth in southern GOP conference straw poll // NJ.com // Claude Brodesser-Akner – May 25, 2015..................................................................................................................... 77

Iowa straw poll on death watch? // The Hill // Jonathan Easley – May 25, 2015......... 78

Mike Huckabee and his tax plan got slammed on Fox // Business Insider // Rob Garver – May 25, 2015....................................................................................................................................... 81

Mike Huckabee: Creating cynicism // The Washington Post // Jennifer Rubin – May 25, 2015  83

Cruz says GOP candidates afraid to talk gay marriage // GOPUSA // Michael F. Haverluck – May 25, 2015................................................................................................................................. 85

Walker emerges from Southern confab as GOP front-runner // Washington Examiner // Timothy P. Carney - May 24, 2015..................................................................................................... 87

And now Christie’s moment of Zen // North Jersey.com // Charles Stile  - May 25, 2015            93

Echoes of Hamilton in Huckabee's message // Philly.com // Robert Patterson - May 25, 2015   96

The day President Bush's tears spilled onto a Marine's face at Walter Reed //  Fox News // Dana Perino - May 22, 2015.......................................................................................................... 98

Koch Brothers Plan to Fund 'Several' GOP 2016 Presidential Hopefuls // Bloomberg // David Knowles - May 25, 2016..................................................................................................... 100

GOP’s fight for 2016 nomination likely to drag on longer than party desires // WaPo // Chris Cillizza - May 25, 2015..................................................................................................................... 101

The Right's Political Correctness // WaPo // E.J. Dionne  - May 25, 2015................... 103

TOP NEWS.................................................................................................... 105

DOMESTIC................................................................................................. 105

Deadly Flooding Wreaks Havoc in Texas, Oklahoma // ABC News via Good Morning America – May 25, 2015....................................................................................................................... 105

Biden praises Iraqi military after U.S. defense chief questions its will to fight // CNN // Kevin Liptak, Barbara Starr and Jim Acosta – May 25, 2015.................................................... 106

Joe Biden tries to patch things up with Iraq // Politico // Nahal Toosi – May 25, 2015 107

ObamaCare fallout? Supreme Court ruling sets up potential Obama, GOP battle // Fox News – May 25, 2015............................................................................................................................... 108

Islamic State faces battle in Iraq, U.S. reassures Abadi // Reuters // Baghdad Bureau, Jeff Mason, Andrea Shalal, Isabel Coles, Sylvia Westall – May 25, 2015............................................ 111

White House expected to remove Cuba from State Sponsors of Terrorism list // Aljazeera America // Sara Hassan – May 25, 2015......................................................................................... 113

OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS................................................................ 115

2016 presidential campaigns chase money, with no cop on the beat: Our view // USA Today // The Editorial Board – May 25, 2015.......................................................................................... 115

Super PACs are not the problem: Opposing view // USA Today // Bradley A. Smith – May 25, 2015.............................................................................................................................................. 116

TODAY’S KEY STORIES                                          

Clintons march in Memorial Day parade // CNN // Dan Merica – May 25, 2015

Bill and Hillary Clinton had two goals during Monday's Memorial Day parade in Chappaqua: Honor the men and women who lost their lives at war and not talk about the 2016 campaign.

Monday's Memorial Day parade was the first public event the Clintons have attended together since Hillary Clinton announced her campaign in April. The couple has tried to walk in the New Castle Memorial Day Parade every year since they moved to the Norman Rockwell-esque New York hamlet in 1999.

Clinton was followed by a small group of reporters who walked in front and around the presidential candidate for the about three-quarters of a mile parade route, while well-wishers on the sidewalk waved 2016 signs and shouted words of encouragement to the former secretary of state.

"Hillary 2016," read one sign. "POTUS at last."

Clinton, however, wanted to deflect attention away from the presidential race.

"This parade's not about that," Clinton said when asked about the signs. "This parade is about honoring those we've lost. That's what I want to keep focused on and make sure that we pay proper respect to our veterans and especially those who lost their lives."

Clinton said that parade was a "wonderful tradition."

"It is a good way to remember our veterans and particularly those who gave their lives or were grievously injured," she said. "This is a way of demonstrating that they are not forgotten and we are going to continue doing everything we can to make sure we honor their sacrifice and commitment."

Bill Clinton, too, declined to answer a question about how he thought the campaign was going.

"I don't know," he said with a laugh. "I'm in my foundation."

"Ask them," he said, pointing to Clinton's campaign aides walking with her.

For the first two months of the campaign, Hillary Clinton has campaigned without her former president husband. Instead, Bill Clinton has spent most of his time focused on the Clinton Foundation, including a nearly two-week trip to Africa.

The parade, while not a campaign event, did look like one. Clinton campaign staffers set up a volunteer recruitment table and were handing out stickers.

Hillary Clinton, sporting an American flag scarf, took selfies and shook hands with people who lined up to meet her. She greeted local town politicians and sat next to Rep. Nita Lowey at the ceremony after the parade.

Jim McCauley, the grand marshall of the parade, spent much of the event shouting at reporters to get out of the way.

"Move guys! Get on the sidewalk," McCauley said.

"Get them in line," Hillary Clinton joked.

Even though the horde of reporters changed the feel of the event, most in attendance were thankful for the Clintons attending.

"Every year I get an opportunity, I thank them for marching in the parade," said Rev. Larry Holland from Grace Baptist Church. "I'll be honest with you, I've lived in Westchester for a long time. No one knew Chappaqua until they moved here. We call it an honor."

The White House has released enough Benghazi documents to cover half a football field // Vox // Christophe Haubursin

The State Department turned over 900 pages of Hillary Clinton's private emails Friday to a House special committee investigating the Benghazi attacks of 2011. The documents join 40,000 pages the White House has handed over to Congress already. The volume is enormous.

Benghazi documents would cover half of a football field.

The volume of information produced by this case ends up giving comfort to both sides of the fight: Republicans believe a smoking gun must be hidden in reams of documents, while Democrats point to the continued demand for documents, given how much has been made available and how little wrongdoing has been found, as proof this is a partisan witch hunt.

Regardless, the investigation will continue on Capitol Hill and dog Clinton on the trail as she campaigns for the Democratic nomination.

Where the media loves Hillary Clinton // Politico // Hadas Gold – May 25, 2015

Hillary Clinton may feel like the press hounds and harasses her, but there’s one segment of the media from which she’s getting the kind of coverage you just can’t buy: women’s magazines.

Better known for features like “10 ways to flatten your tummy” and lush fashion spreads, the magazines have been hiring well-connected Washington women lately in the hopes that having an inside political track will position them for could be a historic White House run.

They’ve also ramped up their interest in politics, delving into hot-button issues like abortion rights and gay marriage and profiling members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. But a POLITICO review of several of the magazines’ past few months of coverage suggests that readers will be getting a heavy dose of liberal cheerleading this campaign season along with their skincare, makeup and fashion tips.

“We’re thrilled that Hillary is in the race,” said Marie Claire Editor-in-Chief Anne Fulenwider, whose May issue included an entire section on the women who run Washington. “We’d love to see a woman president for the United States.”

Clinton, a fashionista in her own right who counted herself among famed designer Oscar de la Renta’s friends, already has a natural home among women’s magazines and their mostly liberal audiences. But the reporting and writing often veers beyond alignment and into outright boosterism — if not of Clinton herself, then of Democrats and the progressive causes they identify with.

Take Vogue. In the past few months, the magazine — whose fabled editor, Anna Wintour, is an unabashed Clinton fan and has even taken her shopping — has featured John Kerry, a book about the first lady, and a feature on the first gay male White House social secretary, Jeremy Barnard. Clinton was the first first lady to appear on the magazine’s cover and has appeared in the magazine at least seven times.

“I can only hope that all of you here in Little Rock will be celebrating her come November 2016,” Wintour said as she introduced Clinton at an event in Arkansas in 2013. “Just as all of us, all of us at Vogue, look forward to putting on the cover the first female president of the United States.”

Elle has seen perhaps the most Clinton action in its pages recently, with a Gucci-clad Chelsea gracing the cover the same week her mother announced her candidacy — a coincidence, Editor-in-Chief Robbie Myers said — along with several online articles on everything from how Clinton’s inner circle is dominated by women to “12 Times Hillary Clinton showed us exactly who she is” (“brave, feminist, and unapologetic”).

It’s enough to make Republicans scream.

“I just hope that these editors, which in my experience tend to be very liberal women, can take their blinders off and can see that there are lots of conservative issues women can embrace and lots of conservative women who can be celebrated,” said Katie Packer Gage, a top campaign aide for Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential bid.

The magazines don’t ignore the GOP. Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, Reps. Elise Stefanik, Martha McSally, Martha Roby and Jaime Herrera Beutler have all been featured in print or online over the past few months. In previous years, Vogue has written about Laura Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Nikki Haley, Sarah Palin, Rand Paul and other Republicans. And as the cycle gets moving, more GOP women will probably be covered. But you’re not likely to see articles defending the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, or arguments against federal regulations requiring equal pay for women.

Of all the top women’s magazines, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire cover politics most intensely — both host stand-alone politics sections on their websites. Cosmopolitan has a full-time politics writer; last October, Cosmo announced a get-out-the-vote campaign and even began endorsing candidates (though Editor Joanna Coles said the endorsements would be limited to the midterms). Marie Claire has hired former White House deputy chief of staff Alyssa Mastromonaco and former Jill Biden aide Courtney O’Donnell as contributors, while Glamour hired Giovanna Gray Lockhart, a former aide to Sen. Kristen Gillibrand and wife to former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart.

Coles, whose recent issue includes a feature on female senators, has been perhaps the most vocal about only backing candidates who are abortion-rights supporters and favor equal pay and mandatory insurance coverage for contraception. But she was actually a bit more subdued about Clinton, saying that while “there’s a lot of excitement” about the former secretary of state among Cosmo readers, there’s also some anxiety over her perceived inevitability.

“It’s incredibly interesting to us watching the first female presidential candidate with a real shot,” Coles said in an interview. “I don’t think we think that differently from rest of media on this, but the fact she has been the first women running as president really seriously with a serious shot is very interesting, as a moment of history.”

Clinton deserves some credit for getting more politics into women’s magazines, Glamour Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive said.

“When we first started three cycles ago, we really had to persuade the politicians to be in the magazine — we had to go through the whole eye-roll, ‘Ugh, is this going to be about fashion, are you going to do her do’s and don’t’s?’ Now, I don’t get any of that,” Leive said.

But Leive, whose magazine featured Michelle Obama on its May cover, pushed back against the idea that women’s magazines lean left.

“I think there’s a misconception that fashion or women’s fashion magazines lean one way, that we’re Democrats. So part of our coverage that we really adhere to is a fairness and a philosophy of being pro-woman, nonpartisan,” she said, noting that last fall she interviewed Stefanik and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.). “We have 20 million print and online readers, and these are women whose political views are not monolithic. We keep that top of mind when it comes to our coverage of Washington and politics.”

The magazines know they’re not publishing the most serious political profiles. They tend to focus more on the personal stories behind the candidate, or what it’s like being a powerful woman, than on their policies or positions on major issues.

“I don’t want to pretend we’re doing some huge, in-depth political coverage,” Coles said, hastening to add that Cosmo’s readers still care about serious topics like the economy or foreign policy. “But so much of that is covered in the mainstream media, so where we’ve been focused is on issues that particularly engage our reader,” she said.

Covering politicians, especially women politicians, can lead to certain pitfalls, as “Saturday Night Live” comedian Cecily Strong made clear during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month when she demanded that reporters pledge not to report on Clinton’s appearance.

“What you never want to do is to go into a situation with a preconceived idea of the outcome, and you never want to go into an interview with a politician with a preconceived sense of what the conversation will be,” Coles said. “We have to be as vigilant as everybody else and at Cosmo we are, actually.”

For Myers, the Elle editor-in-chief, focusing on a candidate’s image is a gender-neutral endeavor.

“It’s so funny to me, but we talk about a man’s image too, meaning, ‘Oh, he’s scrappy or he’s a natty dresser, or he clearly has invested in botox’ or whatever,” Myers said.

She pointed to a recent Elle story on Clinton. “There was not a lot of undue attention to the way she looked. When you talk about her image, it’s a much broader word — how does she come across, communicate to people.”

The magazines boast enormous audiences, especially among the younger women whom Clinton’s camp has always counted on for support — millions of readers, according to Hearst, which owns Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and Elle. Cosmo reports its “reach” (an audience measure combining print and digital readers) to be 53 million, Glamour’s about 28 million, Vogue’s at 28 million, Elle at 21 million.

It’s a hugely important demographic for Clinton and Republican rivals, too: According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, women have cast 4 million to 7 million more votes than men in recent elections. Additionally, a higher proportion of women under the age of 44 voted in the past four presidential elections. That pattern is reversed among older voters. The main audience of these magazines? Young women.

“These are not typically women who are sitting at home at 6 p.m. at night watching the evening news,” Gage said. “They’re not sitting and watching Sunday morning shows. You have to reach them where they’re at.”

Will Hillary Clinton Run Against Her Husband’s Welfare Legacy? // Bloomberg // Melinda Henneberger - May 26, 2015

In a campaign focused on inequality, Bill Clinton's famous pledge to "end welfare as we know it" is liable to be a central focus.

Almost 20 years ago, when Bill Clinton made good on his campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it,’’ some of his oldest friends were beside themselves. The plan, as originally conceived, had been to pump significantly more money into programs designed to move poor single mothers off of assistance and into jobs, which couldn’t be done on the cheap. Yes, Clinton had proposed a strict time limit on benefits, but he had also pledged to “make work pay.” As it turned out, only one of those two things happened.

On August 22, 1996, Clinton proudly signed a Republican bill that pushed recipients out of the program after five years and ended an entitlement in place since the New Deal. “In a sweeping reversal of Federal policy, the New York Times story on the event began, “President Clinton today ended six decades of guaranteed help to the nation's poorest children.”

The bill wasn’t the solo handiwork of then House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had proposed sending poor children to orphanages. Rather, a Democratic president with political capital to spare was freely approving what many in his party saw as a baldly punitive bill. And Hillary Clinton, who in this early phase of her campaign has made "the-deck-is-stacked" inequality a central focus, was fully in support.

“You can put wings on a pig, but you can’t make it an eagle.”

Clinton's signing of the bill was a source of near-physical pain to someone like Peter Edelman, then Clinton’s assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, who as a speechwriter for Robert Kennedy had penned one of the earliest liberal critiques of welfare’s shortcomings, in 1967. RFK’s proposed antidote, however, had been a massive jobs program. Edelman had known Hillary Clinton since 1969, when he’d put her in touch with his wife, Marian Wright Edelman, who became her mentor and employer at the anti-poverty organization she'd just founded, the Children’s Defense Fund.

After Clinton signed the legislation, Edelman and his Health and Human Services colleague Mary Jo Bane, both of whom had been brought into the administration as advocates of a very different brand of welfare reform, did what few in Washington ever do—they resigned in protest. In an “Open Letter to the President’’ published in the Washington Post, Marian Wright Edelman called it a “moment of shame” for her old friends and their party.

The Edelmans weren't the only ones who were alarmed. New York’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose U.S. Senate seat Hillary Clinton later filled, warned that children would be sleeping on hot-air grates if Clinton signed the bill. The liberal icon Paul Simon, of Illinois, said, ''This isn't welfare reform; it's welfare denial.''

The pain was all the sharper because the consensus among Clinton's aides, both those who supported and opposed the bill, was that the move was not politically necessary. Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos told the president that he did not have to sign the bill to be reelected, but was far enough ahead of GOP nominee Bob Dole that he’d win in November either way.

Two decades later, much of the left feels that Moynihan, Simon, Bane and the Edelmans have been proven right: In the early years, in a strong economy, many single moms did move from welfare to work. “When people think about welfare reform as a success, that’s what they’re talking about,’’ says LaDonna Pavetti, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But since 2000, those gains have slipped away, until “now we’re almost back to where we started.”

There’s no question that a smaller percentage of Americans are getting the help they need: In 1996, 68 of every 100 families living in poverty received cash assistance. Today, only 26 of 100 do, and in 10 states, that number is under 10. Because federal aid is no longer guaranteed to anyone living in poverty, states can simply make it harder to qualify for help, and then point to the low number of people they're serving as a measure of success.

Bruce Reed was the Clinton aide who wrote the phrase “end welfare as we know it” in one of his earliest presidential campaign speeches, and he still believes that the reform worked. “It was one of President Clinton’s proudest achievements,'' Reed says, "moving 7 million people out of poverty in those 8 years—100 times more than Reagan did’’ during his two terms in office.

Reed's figures are correct. But digging into the numbers, a more complicated picture emerges. For one thing, 40 percent of those on welfare did not get a job, even in the early years.

“It did increase the work rate among never-married mothers,’’ says the Brookings Institution's Ron Haskins, a Republican who helped write the welfare reform bill, “but that peaked in 2000 and has never gotten back to there because of three recessions.”

What’s more, as Haskins notes, the rate of extreme or deep poverty—defined as living on around $2 a day—has actually increased slightly: “There is a group at the bottom who are not better off. In the old days, they could stay on welfare forever, and now, any mom who does not have the ability to maintain her household and work at the same time is going to have trouble.”

In a campaign focused on both income inequality and the opportunity gap, how Hillary Clinton engages with her husband's record on poverty and the safety net is liable to become a central question. And both Clintons have already said they've changed their minds on other issues that were central to his presidency. They no longer stand by his administration’s record on criminal justice—especially the mandatory sentencing guidelines that filled prisons and hollowed out communities—or on gay rights, which were seen so differently by much of the public two decades ago.

But welfare reform was to the Clinton administration what health care reform is to Obama’s; despite the controversy, it's always been considered a signature achievement. At the time, there was no discernible daylight between the Clintons on the bill he signed. “I think her views were like his," says Reed—"that the Republicans were wrong to play politics with extraneous cuts, but that there were good aspects of the welfare reform bill,” including stepped-up child support enforcement, which made it, on balance, something to be proud of. Reed notes that most of the cuts to immigrants’ benefits in the bill were later restored.

In Hillary Clinton’s first memoir, “Living History,” published in 2003, she wrote at some length about the fight over welfare reform. Clinton had vetoed the first two bills that hit his desk, but when the third one passed, she wrote, “I agreed that he should sign it and worked hard to round up votes for its passage—though he and the legislation were roundly criticized by some liberals, advocacy groups for immigrants and most people who worked with the welfare system … I was most concerned with the five-year lifetime limit, because it applied whether the economy was up or down, whether jobs were available or not, but I felt, on balance, that this was a historic opportunity to change a system oriented toward dependence to one that encouraged independence.”

There were political considerations, of course: “The legislation was far from perfect,’’ she wrote, “which is where pragmatic politics entered in. It was preferable to sign the measure knowing that a Democratic administration was in place to implement it humanely. If he vetoed welfare reform a third time, Bill would be handing the Republicans a potential political windfall.”

She was nonetheless sorry, she wrote, that “Bill’s decision, and my endorsement of it, outraged some of our most loyal supporters,” including the Edelmans, and “[i]n the painful aftermath, I realized that I had crossed the line from advocate to policy maker. I hadn’t altered my beliefs, but I respectfully disagreed with the convictions and passion of the Edelmans and others who objected to the legislation.”

In the book, Clinton came very close to suggesting that they were naïve, and said outright that that kind of purity was easy for people in their position: “As advocates, they were not bound to compromise, and unlike Bill, they didn’t have to negotiate with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole or worry about maintaining a political balance in Congress."

Engaging with the entwined issues of inequality and poverty will inevitably mean engaging with the consequences of the welfare bill Bill Clinton signed, though she has not done so yet. Asked if she would distance herself from welfare reform as she has from ’90s-era mandatory sentencing, a Clinton campaign spokesman issued this statement: "Hillary Clinton has a long record fighting for everyday Americans and their families, and she is running to make sure all families are not only able to get ahead, but stay ahead. In the coming months she will discuss more details on her approach to addressing children and families living in poverty, including how best to support those families who rely on the safety net of welfare to temporarily keep their families afloat during the hardest of times, as well as other ideas to further strengthen families and help them move forward."

On that front, too, Clinton will not only face challenges from the left, but from the right. “A rising tide lifts all boats—that’s a comment John Kennedy made—except if your boat has a hole in it,'' GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said recently. "And in America today,’’ said Santorum, who supports an increase in the minimum wage, “millions of Americans have holes in their boats.”

Many anti-poverty advocates are hopeful that Clinton will address the holes in the safety net head-on, finally repairing the system that she and her husband had a hand in creating: “Welfare reform needs to be revisited,’’ said Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at Catholic University and a former national co-chair of Catholics for Obama. "I think Hillary needs to stand up and say, ‘My husband and the Republicans in the 90s really thought they’d put together a package that was going to fix welfare and poverty but didn’t fix either one.’ She needs to call America to the barricades in the struggle against deep poverty.’’

Will she? Robert Putnam, whose new book on the inequality of opportunity in America today, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, said Clinton had “used extremely well chosen words, I thought, that kids everywhere should have the same opportunities as her granddaughter.’’ Speaking that way, he added with a laugh, “emphasized the ‘It Takes a Village,’ and Children’s Defense Fund part of her resume’—and she has a rich, complicated and not always internally consistent one—but she didn’t just discover this issue yesterday.”

Already, at this early stage in the campaign, Clinton is speaking with more specificity on the subject than her rivals on the right, calling for more support for child care and early childhood education. At  Effie O. Ellis Early Learning Center in Chicago last week, she criticized Republicans in Congress for making America "turn its back on our children and working parents."

Yet even as Clinton talked about fairness, those she called by name were not the have-nots, but members of the middle class: "When we talk about child care, we're talking about the economy, we're talking about families, we're talking about fairness. We're talking about all the values that we believe are necessary to raise healthy, successful, productive children in society today. ... I want you to get ahead and stay ahead. And I want the words 'middle class' to mean something again."

At the same stop, in Bronzeville on Chicago’s South Side, she listened to Lakesia Collins, a single mom of three boys who makes $10 an hour: "It kind of hurts me that I can't afford things for them, but I'm able to work. It really is shameful for me because I can't give them what they need because I don't make enough money." Work still doesn't pay, in other words.

Those completely left out of both our safety net and the policy debate so far include older women who've done physical labor all their lives—what do they do after their bodies start to give out?—and mothers who are not disabled enough to qualify for SSI, but are not able enough, for a constellation of reasons, to go straight to work, either. "I'm a true believer in work," says Pavetti, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "but our programs are set up as, 'You do it now or you never do it.' "

Some remedies for inequality that are being discussed, on and off the campaign trail, include raising the minimum wage, extending Earned Income Tax Credits, subsidizing wages and doing more to support job training and job readiness, along with more macro solutions like financial sector reform, rethinking trade agreements and bankruptcy rules, and allowing the government to negotiate health care costs.

Peter Edelman, who supports Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, doesn’t expect her to revisit the ’90s when it comes to welfare reform. But then, he’s been mistaken about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s intentions before—for instance, the month before President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill, when Clinton remarked that "You can put wings on a pig, but you can’t make it an eagle."

“So a bunch of us hear that and think he’s going to veto it,’’ Edelman remembers, “and that’s what he wants us to think."

Those arguing for the bill inside the White House back then included Reed, Rahm Emanuel, Mickey Kantor, and Al Gore, while those who opposing it were Donna Shalala, Robert Reich, Robert Rubin, Leon Panetta, George Stephanopoulos and Harold Ickes.

The principle concern among those arguing against it was that it ended the legal right to aid. And while the states always set the amount of the benefit, Edelman says that they now they can effectively say, “You look like you could work; go away.”

A lot of states, Reed notes, “have stolen that money—legally—and use it for other things.’’ In Texas, for example, more than half of the federal welfare dollars support child welfare programs, and some states, according to Pavetti, have even used it for college scholarships. Though it does have to be used for low-income residents, she says, “it all depends where the shortfalls are.”

“There is no welfare in big chunks of the country any more,’’ Edelman argues, “and because too many of the Democrats own a piece of it, nobody says it’s a terrible failure, but it is. You want people who can work to work, but we have a deeply damaged safe net.’’

More than any presidential election since the civil rights era, this one is likely to focus on those who have fallen through that net. And more than any other contender, Peter Edelman’s old friend Hillary Clinton knows what’s at stake.

Launching campaign, Sanders appeals to party's Warren wing // AP via Yahoo! News // Ken Thomas – May 25, 2015

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) — For Democrats who had hoped to lure Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren into a presidential campaign, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders might be the next best thing.

Sanders, who is opening his official presidential campaign Tuesday in Burlington, Vermont, aims to ignite a grassroots fire among left-leaning Democrats wary of Hillary Rodham Clinton. He is laying out an agenda in step with the party's progressive wing and compatible with Warren's platform — reining in Wall Street banks, tackling college debt and creating a government-financed infrastructure jobs program.

"I think our views are parallel on many, many issues," Sanders said in an interview with The Associated Press, describing Warren as a "good friend."

Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in Washington and is running for the Democratic nomination. He and Democratic former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley are vying to become the primary alternative to Clinton. Much of the energy behind a Clinton alternative has been directed to drafting Warren, but she has repeatedly said she won't run.

For Sanders, a key question is electability. Clinton is in a commanding position by any measure. Yet his supporters in New Hampshire say his local ties and longstanding practice of holding town hall meetings and people-to-people campaigning — a staple in the nation's first primary state — could serve him well.

"Toward the Vermont border it's like a love-fest for Bernie," said Jerry Curran, an Amherst, New Hampshire, Democratic activist who has been involved in the draft Warren effort. "He's not your milquetoast left-winger. He's kind of a badass left-winger."

A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders has raised more than $4 million since announcing in early May that he would be a presidential candidate. He suggested in the interview that raising $50 million for the primaries was a possibility. "That would be a goal," he said.

He rejects the notion that he's simply in the race to shape the debate.

"Hillary Clinton is a candidate, I am a candidate," Sanders said. "I suspect there will be other candidates. The people in this country will make their choice."

Whether Sanders can tap into the party's Warren wing and influence Clinton's policy agenda remains unclear. But he has been on the forefront of liberal causes as Clinton has seemed to be tacking to the left.

Clinton regularly refers to an economic stacked deck against American workers — rhetoric that offers comparisons to Warren's frequent description of the economic system being "rigged" against middle-class families.

Sanders has joined with Warren to drive opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade proposal, arguing it would ship jobs overseas. Clinton has avoided taking a specific position on the trade deal.

The Vermont senator has introduced legislation to make tuition free at public colleges and universities, a major piece of Warren's agenda. The free tuition would be covered by a mix of state and federal money and paid for by higher taxes on Wall Street investment firms, hedge funds and other financial transactions. Clinton's campaign has signaled that she intends to make debt-free college a major piece of her campaign.

Sanders' disdain for big money in politics is also shared by liberals. Clinton frequently tells voters that she would back a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court decision allowing super PACS to raise unlimited money. But Democratic super PACs are already lining up behind her.

"I'm not going to have a super PAC in this campaign," Sanders said. "I don't go to fundraisers where millionaires sit around the room and say here's a million, here's $5 million for your super PAC. That's not my life. That's not my world. And I think the American people are saying that is not what our politics should be about." He said the money he's raised so far has come from more than 100,000 individual donors, giving an average of $42 each.

Organizers of the pro-Warren effort say Clinton may still win over many of their supporters. Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Vermont-based Democracy for America, said Sanders would "fill the void" for some of the voters hoping for Warren to run. But not for all.

"They're different people. They've got different pluses, they've got different minuses," Chamberlain said. "Some of the people who want to see Elizabeth get in the race are going to Hillary. Some of them are going to go to Martin O'Malley." O'Malley is expected to announce his candidacy Saturday.

If Sanders is the underdog, that's fine by him. During the 1970s, he lost four statewide elections as a third-party candidate, and then narrowly defeated a Democratic incumbent in 1981 to become Burlington's mayor.

"Nobody — trust me — nobody thought I would defeat a five-term incumbent Democratic mayor," Sanders said, noting the winning margin of 10 votes.

The lessons, he said, are clear: "Don't underestimate me."

HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE

Bill and Hillary Clinton Make First Public Appearance Together Since Campaign Launch // ABC News // Liz Kreutz – May 25, 2015

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took a short break from the campaign trail today to participate in her favorite Memorial Day tradition: the annual New Castle Memorial Day Parade in Chappaqua, New York.

Clinton, who loves the parade (like “really, really, really” loves it), was joined this year by her husband, Bill Clinton -- marking their first public appearance together since the announcement of her presidential campaign.

The two arrived in Clinton’s famous Scooby van just before 11 a.m., when the parade was scheduled to start, and were instantly swarmed by crowds of locals, young and old, clamoring for a moment with their town’s most famous couple.

“Hi! Oh, hi! Hi! So good to see you! Mwah!” Clinton called out as one after the next, she greeted friends and neighbors.

The crowds were eventually asked to step aside so the Clintons could take their position at the front of the parade, where they walked alongside friends and other local elected officials.

“It's a wonderful tradition,” Clinton said as she began walking. “Obviously it happens in towns and cities across our country but it's a good way to remember our veterans particularly those who gave their lives or were grievously injured, and we just need to, you know, make sure that it continues from year to year, generation to generation."

Hillary Clinton has attended the parade nearly every single year since she and Bill Clinton moved into the town, about an hour north of New York City, in 1999 -- and it’s something she does not like to miss no matter what.

"I put this on my calendar every year, and I basically tell my staff I really, really, really want to do this," the then-secretary of state told the New York Times on Memorial Day in 2012. "So unless there's some crisis of significant proportions, I'll be here, and I've had a few crises where I've had to take phone calls as I've marched."

This year, Clinton was greeted by crowds cheering their support for 2016, some even wearing t-shirts reading: “It Takes a Village: Chappaqua for Hillary.”

But when asked by a reporter about the signs of support along the parade route, Clinton didn’t engage.

“This parade is not about that,” she said.

Clintons march in Chappaqua parade; Hillary talks education // Lohud // Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy – May 25, 2015

NEW CASTLE – As Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential hopeful, marched alongside former President Bill Clinton in their hometown Memorial Day parade, chants of "Hillary 2016" filled the air.

Close to a thousand onlookers crowded the parade route down King Street in Chappaqua.

The Clintons smiled and waved at the adoring and often loud supporters.

"Many of our veterans came home from combat with injuries of all kinds," Hillary Clinton told the media about taking part in the event. "This is a way of demonstrating that they are not forgotten, and we are going to make sure we do everything we can to honor their sacrifice."

Hillary Clinton also surprised a few middle school boys by posing for selfies while still waking the route.

"Hillary 2016. POTUS at last" read one sign posted in the front yard of a home using the abbreviation for president of the United States.

After the event, Clinton gave a hint of what one of her priorities as a presidential candidate may be.

When asked by The Journal News about key actions the U.S. could take to improve education and remain competitive with other leading economies, Clinton said early childhood education should be a priority.

"Education is absolutely key. And you have to start early. The years birth to 5 are critical," she said.

Anne Boundas, whose house sits on Ridgewood Terrace, where the parade originates, said she had had front row seats to the festivities every year since 1974 and has often seen the Clintons take part.

"The parade has become bigger over the years, "she said. "It's just a lot of fun. Gets you thinking of all the sacrifices that have been made so we can have a community like this."

Can Hillary Clinton crumble? // Newsday // William F.B. O’Reilly – May 25, 2015

Martin O'Malley has good abs. And wasn't he was once mayor of Baltimore?

That seems to be about the sum of what most Americans know about the former Maryland governor as he prepares to launch a presidential bid on May 30. O'Malley polls somewhere between zero and 2 percent in early Democratic primary surveys, a dozen points behind Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who's not even running.

O'Malley's bleak numbers remind me of a former New York State senator who put his hat in the ring for mayor of New York in 1977. His pollster had good news and bad news, he once told me. The good news was that he was at 3 percent in the latest survey. The bad news was that the poll had a 4-percent margin of error. He could be at negative one.

But O'Malley is suddenly interesting, far more so than his anemic poll numbers would typically warrant. He matters because he's the sole candidate in the current Democratic field who could legitimately step in as the party's standard-bearer should Hillary Clinton's candidacy collapse. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (12 percent in the latest Economist survey) is an avowed socialist, which, thankfully, still makes him a non-starter in American politics. Vice President Joe Biden (11 percent), who is reportedly hanging around in the wings in case Clinton tanks, remains America's favorite crazy uncle. He's a hoot at Thanksgiving, but you don't want to see him behind the wheel.

O'Malley comes out of central casting. He's handsome, articulate and passionate about his beliefs. He stands decidedly to Clinton's political left, but he has the clean-cut looks of someone who wouldn't spook the American public in a general election. Indeed, when he's not posing shirtless for cameras in beach photo-ops, he looks like the Brooks Brothers conservative Aaron Sorkin might conjure for a new HBO series. And at 52, O'Malley is vibrant. He appears to be reaching his prime, whereas Clinton, rightly or wrongly, seems to have exceeded hers. It's not so much that her past is wearing on her, it's that it's catching up with her.

It's a marvel to watch Clinton at present. It's as if she's suspended in air. She's the prohibitive favorite to be the Democratic nominee while carrying at least 1,000 pounds of baggage, with more seemingly being added by the day. The big question is whether she can continue to defy gravity. It's possible she can. But it's probable that she eventually falls to earth.

O'Malley's positioning as the dark horse candidate in the race isn't escaping notice. Political blogger Matt Drudge had a field day this week reciting past praise heaped on O'Malley by none other than former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton sang O'Malley's praises liberally at the 2014 annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. In a 2002 letter to then-Baltimore Mayor O'Malley, the former president wrote, "I won't be surprised if you go all the way." Say what you will about Bill Clinton, he has a good eye for political talent.

I recently asked a prominent New York Democrat in a television green room -- a progressive Democrat -- what's wrong with O'Malley? Why aren't more left-wing Democrats backing him? He was genuinely perplexed by the question. There's nothing wrong with O'Malley, he said, but why on earth would we mess with a good thing? In other words, Clinton is the surest thing they've got going into 2016.

She certainly is. So long as she can remain suspended above ground. But if she's ever forced to touch terra firma, watch for O'Malley to be there to meet her.

Clinton: I See ‘No Role Whatsoever’ For US Ground Forces In Iraq // CBS DC – May 25, 2015

HAMPTON, N.H. (CBSDC/AP) — Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday she sees “no role whatsoever” for U.S. ground forces in Iraq despite setbacks in the struggle against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militants.

The existing U.S. policy of providing air support, intelligence, surveillance and training is the right one, Clinton said, in comments that appeared more definitive than her past statements about how the Iraqis themselves must carry the fight.

She addressed the matter after visiting Smuttynose Brewery, where she spoke in defense of the Export-Import Bank, a little-known U.S. agency that guarantees loans to help U.S. exporters and is opposed by some Republicans. Clinton was on her second visit to New Hampshire since opening her campaign for the Democratic nomination.

ISIS advances have intensified questions about whether the U.S. should be doing more in the country it invaded in 2003, setting off a years-long war that President Barack Obama drew down by phasing out American combat operations. Clinton supported the invasion as a senator, a decision she later called a mistake.

On Friday, she said the U.S. should stay its course, not expand it.

“American air support is available, American intelligence and surveillance is available, American trainers are trying to undo the damage that was done to the Iraqi army by former Prime Minister Maliki, who bears a very big part of the responsibility for what is happening inside Iraq today,” she said.

“But at the end of the thought process that I engage in … this has to be fought by and won by the Iraqis. There is no role whatsoever for American soldiers on the ground to go back other than in the capacity as trainers and advisers.”

In remarks at the brewery, Clinton accused Republicans in Congress and the presidential race of threatening tens of thousands of small business jobs by seeking to cut the Export-Import Bank.

Conservative Republicans have sought to eliminate the bank, arguing it unfairly helps some large American companies sell products overseas at the expense of others and gives government too big a hand. Clinton said she learned as secretary of state that the U.S. was in a global competition for business, and the notion that Congress would eliminate “this relatively small but vital” agency is “absolutely backwards.”

Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said Clinton is a “natural cheerleader” for the bank because its “biggest beneficiaries are foreign governments and giant corporations.”

These, he said in a statement anticipating her defense of the bank, are “among the biggest donors to the Clinton Foundation as well as major underwriters of the speaking fees that added millions of dollars to the Clinton bank account.”

At the brewery, Clinton spoke about her wish for regulations to be loosened on community banks to ease lending to small businesses.

Joanne Francis, the brewery’s co-owner, said it was a “white-knuckle ride” securing loans and other money to start the brewery and open a new operations facility in 2014. “It was terrifying, to be honest with you,” Francis said.

But Clinton criticizes Republicans for wanting to roll back regulations on the types of large financial institutions that contributed to the 2008 economic crisis. She said Republicans were holding a community banking overhaul hostage to their attempt to overturn the 2010 financial regulation law known as Dodd-Frank.

Her appearances in New Hampshire coincided with the State Department’s release of emails, from her time as secretary of state, related to the 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. Clinton said she welcomed their release and the information in the emails was handled appropriately, but kept focus on her economic message.

“I’m not running for my husband’s third term and I’m not running for Barack Obama’s third term,” she said. “But I am running to continue the positive results-oriented policies that both of them worked for.”

Clinton will make her first campaign speech at a major rally June 13 and is scheduled to attend events in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, New Mexico, Texas and Connecticut in the coming weeks.

A recent CBS News/New York Times poll finds that 85 percent of Democratic voters would consider voting for her.

The White House has released enough Benghazi documents to cover half a football field // Vox // Christophe Haubursin

The State Department turned over 900 pages of Hillary Clinton's private emails Friday to a House special committee investigating the Benghazi attacks of 2011. The documents join 40,000 pages the White House has handed over to Congress already. The volume is enormous.

Benghazi documents would cover half of a football field.

The volume of information produced by this case ends up giving comfort to both sides of the fight: Republicans believe a smoking gun must be hidden in reams of documents, while Democrats point to the continued demand for documents, given how much has been made available and how little wrongdoing has been found, as proof this is a partisan witch hunt.

Regardless, the investigation will continue on Capitol Hill and dog Clinton on the trail as she campaigns for the Democratic nomination.

Hillary Clinton was paid millions by tech industry firms with a 2016 stake // Daily Herald // Matea Gold, Rosalind S. Helderman and Anu Narayanswamy – May 25, 2015

In one of her last gigs on the paid lecture circuit, Hillary Clinton addressed an eBay summit aimed at promoting women in the workplace, delivering a 20-minute talk that garnered her a $315,000 payday from the company.

Less than two months later, Clinton was feted at the San Francisco Bay-area home of eBay chief executive John Donahoe and his wife, Eileen, for one of the first fundraisers supporting Clinton's newly announced presidential campaign.

The two events spotlight the unusually close financial ties between Clinton and a broad array of industries with issues before the government that paid tens of millions of dollars to her and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, in the months preceding the launch of her presidential campaign.

Disclosure documents recently filed by Hillary Clinton revealed that the couple have earned about $25 million for delivering 104 paid speeches since January 2014.

While Bill Clinton's lucrative speaking career since leaving the White House in 2001 has been well documented, the new disclosures offer the first public accounting of Hillary Clinton's paid addresses since she stepped down as secretary of state. And they illustrate how the Clintons have personally profited by drawing on the same network of supporters who have backed their political campaigns and philanthropic efforts -- while those supporters have gained entree to a potential future president.

Silicon Valley is one place where those overlapping interests come together, according to a Washington Post analysis of the new Clinton disclosures.

Out of the $11.7 million that Hillary Clinton has made delivering 51 speeches since January 2014, $3.2 million came from the technology industry, the analysis found. Several of the companies that paid Clinton to address their employees also have senior leaders who have been early and avid supporters of her presidential bid.

The tech sector was the largest single source of speaking fees for Clinton, followed by health care and financial services, according to the Post analysis. Bill Clinton also made substantial income speaking to tech groups but focused more heavily on financial services, insurance and real estate companies.

A Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman declined to comment.

While it is common for former presidents to receive top dollar as paid speakers, Hillary Clinton is unique as a prospective candidate who received large personal payouts from corporations, trade groups and other major interests mere months before launching a White House bid. In some cases, those speeches gave Clinton a chance to begin sounding out themes of her coming campaign and even discuss policy issues that a future Clinton administration might face.

Companies that paid her to speak include industry giants such as Xerox, Cisco Systems and Qualcomm, as well as start-ups and trade groups focused on biotechnology and medical technology.

The blurred line between personal and political is apparent in the cases of companies that hired Clinton to speak and are led by executives who are now prominent backers of her campaign. Salesforce.com, for instance, paid Clinton $451,000 to deliver two talks last year, and its CEO, Marc Benioff, is a major donor to Ready for Hillary, a super PAC that laid the groundwork for her presidential bid. Another major backer of the PAC is Irwin Jacobs, he former chairman of Qualcomm, which shelled out $335,000 for Clinton to speak in late October.

A spokeswoman for Salesforce declined to comment on how Clinton came to be invited to speak. Qualcomm did not return requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Jacobs said that he is retired from the company and does not play a role in its decisions.

When Clinton arrived at eBay for her March 2014 women's-leadership speech, she had another connection to the company. Eileen Donohoe, wife of the CEO, had worked for Clinton as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Abby Smith, spokeswoman for eBay, said that, "as one of the world's most admired women, Hillary Clinton was the perfect choice" for the event. Smith declined to comment on the Donahoes' fundraiser for the Clinton campaign.

The new disclosures showed Clinton's vast earning power on the public speaking circuit as a former secretary of state who many viewed as the Democratic presidential nominee in waiting.

In some cases, organizations that had once paid Bill Clinton to speak now paid even more to lure his wife.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization paid Bill Clinton $175,000 in 2010. Four years later, the group paid $335,000 -- nearly twice as much -- to hear from Hillary Clinton. Likewise, the Advanced Medical Technology Association paid Bill Clinton $160,000 to speak in 2009 and paid Hillary Clinton $265,000 to speak in 2014.

The warm reception for Hillary Clinton in Silicon Valley comes after she watched a young upstart named Barack Obama lock up many of the industry's top money players during their fight for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Since then, the region has experienced explosive growth, making it an even bigger target for candidates hunting for political donors. Republicans such as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and former Florida governor Jeb Bush are making a play to win over the traditionally left-leaning enclave.

But Clinton is not giving them much of an opening, assiduously courting tech leaders as she contemplated another White House run.

One day last July, she tweeted, "In #SiliconValley today visiting @Google, @Facebook, & @Twitter. Looking forward to seeing everyone and answering some questions."

Clinton did not receive any speaking fees from those companies, which she visited as part of a tour promoting her latest book, "Hard Choices."

But about a month later, she scooped up $625,000 in one day from the tech sector -- first addressing a conference in San Francisco sponsored by Nexenta Systems, a data storage start-up, and then as a surprise guest at Cisco's sales conference in Las Vegas, where she was interviewed by chief executive John Chambers.

At the Nexenta conference, Clinton addressed several hot-button policy issues in Silicon Valley that the next president will have to confront.

She spoke of the need to "rebalance" privacy and security when it comes to government surveillance, an issue viewed as both a business and philosophical matter among tech leaders. And she expressed interest in an idea proposed by Chambers and other chief executives to allow companies to bring profits invested overseas back to the United States at a reduced tax rate.

"It doesn't do our economy any good to have this money parked somewhere else in the world," Clinton said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The event also provided Clinton, who was making few public appearances, a platform to weigh in on an increasingly hot national issue. In her first remarks about the unrest that followed the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, she urged Americans not to ignore "inequities that persist in our justice system."

Allison Darin, director of communications for Nexenta, said that the topic "has nothing to do with what we do."

But, she added, "it was obviously compelling news which brought a lot of attention to the event, which is exactly what we want."

Tarkan Maner, the company's chief executive, sits on the national finance committee of the Ready for Hillary PAC and made a $5,000 donation to the group in September, about a month after Clinton's speech.

Darin said Maner's support for Clinton had nothing to do with the company's invitation to have her speak. Rather, she said, company officials decided Clinton would have broad appeal for the audience of 500 top executives who attended the conference.

"It really wasn't politically focused at that time," she said. "It was just good timing."

Most of Clinton's paid speeches were closed to the public and the press. But in the few that were open, Clinton appeared to be road-testing themes that would become a part of her upcoming campaign.

In an April 2014 speech at a technology conference sponsored by Marketo, a software branding company, she discussed the growing gap between rich and poor in the United States. According to news reports, she proposed changes to taxation and corporate policies to address the issue.

"Inequality of the kind we are experiencing is bad for individuals, bad for society, bad for democracy," she said, according to The New York Times. "If you look around the world, this is becoming a bigger issue everywhere."

Clinton's latest financial disclosures also highlight the extent of personal support she and her husband have received from organizations and individuals who have donated to their charity, the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

At least 72 organizations that have paid the Clintons for speeches since 2001 have also donated to the Clinton Foundation.

For example, Cisco, which paid Hillary Clinton $325,000 for her August appearance, has given the foundation between $1 million and $5 million. In 2011, the company paid Bill Clinton $210,000 to speak at an event on Kiawah Island in South Carolina.

As for eBay, the company's charitable foundation has given more than $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

The Latest Proof That Clinton Can't Stop the Sleaze // Real Clear Politics // Rich Lowry – May 25, 2015

Charity Navigator should make this an informal rule: If your charity is employing Sidney Blumenthal, it automatically goes on the watch list.

The ethical controversies around Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have often seemed 1990s redux, and never more so than when a New York Times story resurfaced longtime Clinton loyalist Blumenthal.

According to the Times, from a perch at the Clinton Foundation, Blumenthal was sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton memos on Libya that she forwarded around the State Department, even though they were occasion for eye-rolling by the professionals.

Sidney Blumenthal is the former writer for The New Republic, The Washington Post and The New Yorker whose devotion to the Clintons was too much even for his fellow journalists.

He eventually traded in his status as a quasi-Clinton apparatchik for official Clinton apparatchik, taking a job at the White House.

He was noted for his conspiratorial thinking and nasty, highly personalized, whisper-campaign politics. Much can be learned about his smash-mouth style by studying the social behavior of the spotted hyena.

Ultimately, Blumenthal himself isn’t the issue. What’s interesting isn’t the suckerfish per se, but what it tells us about the shark.

When the Obama team went with Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, it undertook a high-stakes experiment: Could it hire a Clinton and, with enough rules and constraints, force him or her to act in a manner above reproach?

The Blumenthal affair is yet another indication that the answer is a resounding “no.”

Then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly had Blumenthal banned for — what else? — spreading harsh attacks about Barack Obama during the 2008 primaries.

Emanuel’s edict would have seemed to bar Blumenthal from serving Clinton while she was secretary of state. Ah, but as the poet said, you can drive nature out with a pitchfork, she will nevertheless come back.

Blumenthal happened to be sending Hillary memos about Libya at the same time that he was in league with people trying to make money in Libya. Let’s think about this.

One scenario is that Blumenthal’s would-be business associates got together and thought: “We need to find the best expert we can on North Africa, someone who understands the subtleties of Libyan political and tribal dynamics. Let’s get Sidney Blumenthal!”

Another is that they thought: “We need to find someone who is in tight with the Clintons and has a back channel to Hillary so, when the time comes, the State Department will give our venture the most favorable possible consideration. Let’s get Sidney Blumenthal!”

The Blumenthal story underlines what we already knew or suspected about Hillary’s tenure as secretary of state and at the Clinton Foundation.

She portrays herself as the picture of openness, explaining how she wants her e-mails public as soon as possible. But we wouldn’t know about the Clinton-Blumenthal correspondence but for the exertions of a Romanian hacker.

For all its good works, the Clinton Foundation was a political slush fund and holding tank for Clinton operatives. Presumably, the March of Dimes manages to get along without paying former government officials as they scheme to return to power.

The ethics of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state were atrocious. In what world is it OK for the secretary of state to get and pass along back-channel advice from a friend about a country where he has business interests at stake?

Finally, it’s impossible to credit “the new Hillary” so long as she is dependent on the same old cronies.

Asked about Blumenthal, Hillary said his e-mails were her effort to make sure she wasn’t “caught in the bubble.” Because nothing keeps you intellectually fresh and on your toes like e-mails from a loyal hatchet man of some 20 years and counting.

Hillary Tweets About Memorial Day, And She's Got The Right Message // Bustle // Chris Tognotti – May 25, 2015

Monday is Memorial Day, a holiday that marks a very solemn remembrance: all those American service members who lost their lives throughout our nation’s history. And on Monday afternoon, likely the country’s foremost presidential contender weighed in with her thoughts on the meaning of the day — Hillary Clinton tweeted a Memorial Day message, and it’s the sort of thing almost anyone could agree with, regardless of politics.

Clinton’s 2015 Memorial Day was far more involved than just sending out an appropriately commemorative tweet. She also marched in the Memorial Day parade in Chappaqua, New York on Monday afternoon, alongside her ex-president husband Bill. The Clintons are no strangers to the New York hamlet, having kept a residence in there since leaving the White House in 2001, and she finished up the march by discussing her campaign’s emphasis on early childhood education, as detailed by The Journal News.

In her tweet, which was sent out at 6:44 a.m., Clinton discussed the “sacred responsibility” of Memorial Day. It was marked with a -H at the end, which is meant to denote a tweet originating from Clinton herself, rather than her campaign. In other words, you at least know that she’s got some experience as an early-riser.

Hillary’s straightforward tweet sends a good message, to be sure, especially the part about sacrifice. Even though Memorial Day commemorates the soldiers we’ve lost, if you have a still-living veteran in your family, or close to you, be sure to voice your appreciation today. And be sure to take their issues seriously everyday, to make sure people who need and deserve care can get it. As detailed by the New York Daily News, Clinton told a reporter following the march where she wanted the focus to be.

I want to keep focusing and make sure we pay proper respect to our veterans and particularly those who lost their lives.

The nature of the tweet does show a clever campaign strategy, however. Having her staff manage and send the bulk of her tweets while she just jumps in for an occasion personal aside could be a politically advantageous way for her to engage on a variety of topics. Campaign staffers handling more officious business, while Clinton chimes in on the news of the day. She did the same thing on Saturday, in a tweet congratulating Ireland for voting to legalize same-sex marriage.

Different candidates, obviously, responded to the big occasion differently. While Clinton and presumptive GOP candidates Mike Huckabee and Rick Perry decided to go the lo-fi social media route, while Florida Senator Marco Rubio (who’s actually officially in the race) released a video — though it ended up being more about outlining some defense-related policy views than Memorial Day itself. Obviously, President Obama had a job to do today as well — he delivered a speech at Arlington National Cemetary Monday, dedicated to the memory of America’s fallen soldiers.

Here’s Everything We Learned From The Hillary Emails // The DC // Chuck Ross – May 25, 2015

With its Friday dump — on Memorial Day weekend, no less — the State Department ensured that Hillary Clinton’s 296 Libya-related emails would receive limited news coverage.

But the records are well worth reviewing because they contain important insight into Clinton and her top aides’ views on Libya and Benghazi leading up to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, which killed four Americans.

Here are the 13 most interesting exchanges.

‘The public face of the U.S. effort in Libya’

If one email chain comes back to haunt Clinton on the campaign trail it would be an April 4, 2012, message top aide Jake Sullivan sent touting Clinton’s “leadership on Libya.”

“HRC has been a critical voice on Libya in administration deliberations, at NATO, and in contact group meetings — as well as the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya,” Sullivan wrote. “She was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition, and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.”

While deposing Gaddafi was seen as a major U.S. victory at the time, the attack at Benghazi and its vulnerability to Islamist groups like ISIS calls Clinton’s and the Obama administration’s intervention there into question.

Clinton overslept and missed a national security briefing days after the Benghazi attack

Clinton missed a President’s Daily Brief meeting on the morning of Sept. 15, 2012, just days after the Benghazi attack, because she overslept.

Monica Hanley, a Clinton aide, sent an email to Clinton at 9:17 a.m. stating that a briefer “has some sensitive items that he would like to personally show you when he arrives.”

Clinton responded at 10:43 a.m., stating “just woke up so i [sic] missed Dan. Could he come back after finish my calls?”

Interested in a movie on morning of the Benghazi attack

Early on the morning of Sept. 11, 2012, before the attack on Benghazi, Clinton had a movie on her mind. But she wasn’t thinking of “Innocence of Muslims,” the short film that the Obama administration initially falsely blamed for the Benghazi attack. Instead, she emailed aides Philippe Reines and Huma Abedin seeking a copy of “The Oath of Tobruk,” a documentary about the Libyan civil war directed by French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and produced by her friend, Harvey Weinstein.

Clinton was interviewed for the film, which Weinstein claimed depicted the secretary’s “leadership” in Libya.

Confused the names of two Americans killed at Benghazi

After Clinton learned that ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith, a Foreign Service officer, had been killed at Benghazi, she sent an email to several top aides asking if she should issue a statement that night or the following day.

The only problem was, Clinton flubbed the two murdered Americans’ names. Her email was entitled “Chris Smith.” None of the aides on the email chain — Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Victoria Nuland — corrected the mistake.

Clinton’s aides prepared her speech for a Clinton Foundation event

Emails from Sept. 22, 2012, just 10 days after the Benghazi attack, show that Clinton was concerned with a speech she was set to give on behalf of her family charity, the Clinton Foundation.

Her aide, Jake Sullivan, wrote that “Megan is working on a development speech but please read the below if you can this afternoon.”

“Please let me know your thoughts,” he added.

Clinton instructed another aide, Oscar Flores, to print off the speech, which is redacted in the emails.

State Department and White House officials asked YouTube to block video

One email shows an all-hands-on-deck effort to ensure YouTube and its parent company, Google, continued to block “The Innocence of Muslims” from appearing online.

The Obama administration falsely blamed the movie for sparking the attacks on Benghazi.

On Sept. 27, 2012, Denis McDonough, then the deputy national security advisor, sent an email to several State Department officials which listed contact information for Google’s and YouTube’s CEOs.

Nora Toiv, who worked in Clinton’s office, contacted others within the department stating that the video would be blocked until at least the following Monday, Oct. 1.

Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s then-chief of staff, forwarded the email chain to Clinton.

While it was known that the Obama administration had asked YouTube and Google to block the movie, the emails show that the effort was far more involved that previously reported.

Clinton received now-classified information on her private email account

Shortly before the State Department released Clinton’s records, the FBI redacted portions of a Nov. 18, 2012, email because the information was classified. The email appears to have included names of individuals suspected of carrying out the Benghazi attack.

Clinton and her team have repeatedly denied that she sent or received classified information on her personal email account. The FBI’s re-classification raises questions over whether the agency would have marked the information as classified if Clinton had turned her records over to the State Department as she was required to do when she left the agency in Feb. 2013.

On Oct. 3, 2012, Clinton received an email from Cheryl Mills which included a link to a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Benghazi was Obama’s 3 a.m. call.”

The Journal article pinned the Benghazi attack on Obama’s “policy and worldview” and did not criticize Clinton’s role in the fiasco.

The 3 a.m. reference was to a campaign ad Clinton ran against Obama in Feb. 2008. The ad, which was roundly criticized when it aired, asserted that Obama did not have the chops to handle international crises.

Clinton discussed her “cracked head” and health

Emails Clinton sent to aides show her discussing a concussion she reportedly suffered in Dec. 2012.

Clinton fainted before she was to testify in front of Congress about Benghazi. As many questioned whether she actually suffered a fall, Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren interviewed Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain who said that he believed Clinton. Clinton emailed Mills on Dec. 20 telling her that someone should call Van Susteren to thank her for “knowing the truth” about her injury.

Clinton sent another Dec. 20 email to aides Williams Burns and Thomas Nides. In the message Clinton joked she was unable to make a meeting on Capitol Hill because “I’ll be nursing my cracked head.”

Clinton aides sought to reassure her about her Benghazi video comments

In a Sept. 24, 2012, email Sullivan reassured Clinton that she had never blamed the “Innocence of Muslims” video for the Benghazi attack.

“You never said spontaneous or characterized the motives, in fact you were careful in your first statement to say we were assessing motive and method. The way you treated the video in the Libya context was to say that some sought to *justify* the attack on that basis,” Sullivan wrote.

Other administration officials had publicly blamed the video for the uprising which led to the four American deaths at the consulate.

Sid Blumenthal tells Hillary about planting an anti-Romney story

On Oct. 1, 2012, longtime Clinton insider, Sidney Blumenthal, emailed Clinton to share an article another jounralist published at Salon entitled “GOP’s October Surprise.”

Blumenthal’s email was entitled “Romney’s last gambit. Got done and published.” According to Bloomberg News, this is an indication that Blumenthal planted the story with Salon.

The article cited a “highly reliable source” who claimed that the Romney campaign was planning to roll out a “Jimmy Carter strategy” in which it planned to paint Obama as weak because of the Benghazi failure.

Clinton aides’ jokes about a fawning reporter and about FOIA

In an Oct. 2012, email, State Department communications director Caroline Adler sent an email to Clinton aides Philippe Reines and Thomas Nides poking fun at Wall Street Journal reporter Monica Langley for gushing over Clinton during an interview.

“This will be exciting when it’s FOIA’d…but will give you a sense of the interaction,” Adler wrote.

Reines described the scene when Langley pulled up a chair to sit extremely close to Clinton. He wrote that he didn’t “think you see that behavior among any type of mammal.”

Missing messages

Perhaps as noteworthy as emails Clinton and her staff did send are those that they did not. As the Washington Examiner noted, the team only sent 35 Libya- and Benghazi-related emails between January 2012 and the Sept. 11 attack at Benghazi.

Hillary Clinton's 1st SC campaign stop is Wednesday at Democratic women's event in Columbia // AP via Daily Reporter – May 25, 2015

COLUMBIA, South Carolina — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's first campaign stop in South Carolina will be a speech to Democratic women who say they are trying to make South Carolina better.

Clinton's campaign says she will speak Wednesday afternoon at Marriott hotel in downtown Columbia to the South Carolina House Democratic Women's Caucus and the South Carolina Democratic Women's Council.

She will be at the Statehouse earlier in the day to speak to the Democratic caucuses in the House and Senate.

The gathering at the hotel is called the Third Annual 2015 Day in Blue. The event helps women become better citizen advocates and leaders.

Clinton has already opened phone banks in South Carolina and her campaign has held neighborhood parties across the state.

Step aside, Bernie Sanders has a big week - the busiest of the presidential hopefuls // The Washington Times // Jennifer Harper – May 25, 2015

He is the busiest of all the presidential hopefuls this week. Sure, Sen. Marco Rubio will celebrate his birthday in Las Vegas on Thursday, and Carly Fiorina and Gov. Scott Walker will head for New Hampshire later in the week, but it’s Sen. Bernard Sanders who has the wall-to-wall schedule punctuated by the rallying cry, “A political revolution is coming.” So step aside, folks.

On Tuesday, the Vermont senator kicks off his formal campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination with a Zydeco band and free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Company founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield will be by his side, incidentally. Mr. Sanders rushes to New Hampshire on Wednesday for town meetings in Concord, Portsmouth and Eppington. By Thursday, he will be in Iowa for more town meetings in Davenport, Muscatine, West Branch, Iowa City and Kensett and pushing his new “Agenda for America” wherever he goes. And Mr. Sanders, 73, is in a fighting mood when it comes to the press.

“In terms of campaign coverage, there is more coverage about the political gossip of the campaign, about raising money, about polling, about somebody saying something dumb or some kid works for a campaign and sends out something stupid on Facebook, right?” Mr. Sanders told CNN on Sunday. “The media’s job is to say, ‘Look, these are the major issues facing the country. We’re a democracy. People have different points of view. Let’s argue it.’”

A CHEER FOR MISS AMERICA

The National Memorial Day Parade to honor the American military has its share of celebrities on Monday: actors Gary Sinise and Joe Mantegna; celebrity chef Robert Irvine; singers Billy Corgan, Caleb Johnson and Beau Davidson; and TNA Wrestling stars, including Army vet Chris Melendez. Then there is Miss America Kira Kazantsev, who will wave at the crowd as only Miss America can do.

“As Miss America, it is my responsibility to not only raise awareness about the military, our veterans and their needs, but to thank them in person for their service. The National Memorial Day Parade is the perfect opportunity for that, and I am so honored to be a part of this celebration of our troops,” Ms. Kazantev tells Inside the Beltway.

She is also the first Miss America in four decades who has stepped up to the plate for the USO and visited U.S. troops overseas — logging 25,400 miles last month with stops that included Afghanistan, Bahrain, the Korean DMZ and USS Carl Vinson. In her online diary of the experiences, she recounted meeting a Medal of Honor recipient who recalled his time in Vietnam — particularly memories of a certain Hollywood patriot who arrived in the unforgiving combat zone with Miss America. The hero had never forgotten those moments.

“He said that Bob Hope would bring Miss America up on stage and say ‘Soldiers, this is what you’re fighting for.’ I still can’t believe that I am now a part of this legacy and that, in my own way, I have had the honor of serving our country,” Ms. Kazantev wrote.

GOP: SHOW SOME TEETH

“Fully 75 percent of Republicans want GOP leaders to challenge President Obama more often; just 15 percent say they are handling relations with the president about right, and 7 percent say GOP leaders should go along with Obama more often,” reports a new Pew Research Center poll.

Forty percent of Americans overall agree with this, along with 37 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats. More numbers at column’s end.

ALOHA, OBAMACARE

The Affordable Care Act does not get intense media coverage these days, but it’s still a troublemaker. Americans for Tax Reform reports that the rickety Obamacare sign-up system will cost taxpayers plenty.

“The Obama administration had implemented the special enrollment period from March 15 to April 30 to assist individuals who were unaware they would face a tax penalty for not having qualifying health insurance. In all, less than 250,000 individuals decided to enroll nationwide — meaning that millions of Americans would rather pay the tax than enroll in Obamacare,” reports analyst Alexander Hendrie.

His case in point: In Hawaii, the Obamacare exchange enrolled no participants during the grace period. None. The state’s sign-up website, meanwhile, cost taxpayers $205 million to launch, with a total of 8,592 people enrolling in the first year. The cost to taxpayers is $23,899 per person, Mr. Hendrie says.

“Hawaii’s is not the first website to implode. Oregon’s $305 million exchange was officially abolished earlier this year at an additional cost of $41 million. The exchange is currently under investigation by numerous federal organizations for how it wasted so much money,” he adds. “In all, states received $5.4 billion from the federal government for state-based Obamacare exchanges with no strings attached and zero oversight over spending decisions.”

THE OKLAHOMA AFTERMATH

“Hillary Clinton must not be president of these United States as she is not trustworthy, and does not have a record of leadership. Since I launched my campaign for the presidency less than three weeks ago, I have answered 413 questions from the press, and yes, I am counting. Hillary Clinton, I think, has answered 13 questions since April 12. We know that Hillary Clinton will not be held to account unless we have a nominee that holds her to account in the general election,” Carly Fiorina told the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, which ended Saturday in Oklahoma City.

And in a telling snapshot, Ben Carson won the straw poll at the aforementioned conference with 25 percent of the vote. Gov. Scott Walker placed second with 20 percent, followed by Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Ms. Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Donald Trump — who each received between 1 percent and 16 percent of the vote. Three-fourths of the 715 poll respondents were from Oklahoma, incidentally.

WHITE HOUSE CRUNCH TIME

Are things getting a little intense on Memorial Day? Pollster John Zogby suggests so.

“President Obama is one step closer to achieving fast-track authority to negotiate a new free trade agreement with Asian nations. This is one of his key goals and one he shares with Republican leaders, though vigorously opposed by the left,” Mr. Zogby says. “Secretary of State John Kerry held a four-hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose help can be useful in both Iran and Syria. Nonetheless, the Islamic State has taken over the capital of Anbar Province, the city many Americans lost their lives to liberate several years ago, and have secured control over the whole Iraq-Syria border. It’s crunchtime for U.S. decision-makers.”

His current grade for Mr. Obama: C-.

POLL DU JOUR

• 72 percent of Americans disapprove of the job performance of Republican leaders in Congress; 55 percent of Republicans, 74 percent of independents and 84 percent of Democrats agree.

• 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the job performance of Democratic leaders in Congress; 87 percent of Republicans, 65 percent of independents and 35 percent of Democrats agree.

• 37 percent overall say what Congress is accomplishing is “less than expected”; 36 percent of Republicans, 38 percent of independents and 38 percent of Democrats agree.

• 23 percent overall say GOP leaders are “keeping their campaign promises”; 37 percent of Republicans, 20 percent of independents and 17 percent of Democrats agree.

GOP's policy: Attacking Hillary Clinton // Bloomberg // Frank Wilkinson – May 25, 2015

It’s possible to view Hillary Clinton as a money-grubbing opportunist and shady political operator who has amassed millions of dollars and gobs of power by exploiting the inside tracks that she and her husband spent decades carving through the upper strata of American society.

After all, it’s not that much of a reach — especially for Republicans already inclined to a cynical view of the former secretary of state.

To amplify that negative portrait, and heighten its political resonance, the Republican National Committee sends emails with titles such as “Fast Track To Duplicity” and “Secretary Stonewall” — the latter about a Wall Street Journal story depicting Clinton political aides at the State Department meddling with Freedom of Information Act requests.

“Clinton’s Latest Fundraising Hypocrisy” is another RNC missive. In this one, the RNC quotes Clinton saying, “There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the typical worker.” The RNC then juxtaposes that with a jab — “11 out of 19 Clinton fundraisers have been hosted by financial bigwigs.”

Get it? Clinton talks as if she cares about workers, but behind closed doors, she’s raising millions from the super rich.

You can argue about whether this genre of attack — it has been around a long time — is successful. But there’s no doubt that it would be more salient if, unlike Clinton, seemingly every viable Republican candidate running for president were not committed to cutting the taxes of the “bigwigs” who are raising money for her (and them). Worse, several Republicans are revisiting their quadrennial flirtation with various flat taxes, most of which would drive down taxes for chief executive officers while raising them for the typical worker.

At The Atlantic, David Frum wrote that Jeb Bush will have a hard time drawing useful political contrasts with Clinton because, while the Clintons are unquestionably expert at using power to gain wealth and wealth to gain still more power, in all fairness, the Bushes got there first.

It’s true that Bush’s family history is a specific drawback in a race against Clinton. But the atrociousness of Republican policies is a general disadvantage — and one far more encumbering to any Republican who wins the nomination, including Bush.

Republican complaints about Clinton’s wealth and connections are presumably intended to turn the left wing of the Democratic Party against her. But in November 2016, the Republican candidate for president will almost certainly be a man who will have not only accepted hundreds of millions from “bigwigs” — just as Clinton will have — but who will also have promised, in an age of burgeoning plutocracy and rising inequality, to engineer a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich to provide those bigwigs with a windfall on their political investment.

Political campaigns run on contrasts; that one doesn’t sound like such a winner.

Indeed, the Ivy League cronyism and transactional relationship-leveraging that characterize the Clinton empire may strike many voters as unseemly. But Clinton’s policy platform probably won’t. It will not, for example, take money out of middle-class voters’ paychecks, undermine their health insurance, ramp up carbon pollution in their air or leave their children with additional trillions in national debt to finance better living for billionaires. Will the Republican nominee be able to say that his policies are similarly benign?

The 2016 Republican candidates are vastly superior to those of 2012, when Mitt Romney was the only good choice in a disturbingly weak field. It’s unclear how much the higher quality of candidates will matter, however, because the party is very much the same. Its donors and activists continue to make demands — more tax cuts! never compromise! — that no rational, public-spirited candidate for national office should ever honor. It’s unclear how even a high-quality politician rises above that.

In principle, there’s nothing wrong with lambasting Clinton. Politics shouldn’t be easy. But we’ll know the Republican Party is on the mend when its candidates spend as much energy showcasing sensible conservative policies as they do attacking Clinton’s character.

Obama + Clinton + Florida = fundraisers // The Washington Times // Jennifer Harper – May 25, 2015

The phrase gets old after a while, but it’s time to rev up Air Force One once again: President Obama has a pair of fundraisers to attend in Florida.

On Wednesday he’s off to Miami to raise money for the Democratic National Committee at a private dinner in the home of a local real estate kingpin, priced up to $33,400 a plate. Then it’s on to one of those private “roundtable discussions,” this at the home of a mortgage broker, fetching $33,400 a person for donors eager to parse the issues.

There’s some official business too. On Thursday Mr. Obama visits the National Hurricane Center “to receive the annual hurricane season outlook and preparedness briefing,” this according to the White House.

But the siren call of the Sunshine State is very loud this week. After an appearance in South Carolina, Hillary Rodham Clinton is bound for Florida as well, and yes, the two will be in Miami on the very same day. On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton attends a pair of “Conversations with Hillary” events in Miami and Parkland to benefit her presidential campaign — at $2,700 a person. Then she journeys to Orlando for a private fundraiser at the home of a trial lawyer. She’s just getting going, though. Beginning next week Mrs. Clinton will also be on the fundraising trail in New Mexico, Texas and Missouri.

THE FADING OF ‘INEVITABLE’

“We live in an age of narratives, not news,” points out Thomas Lifson, editor of AmericanThinker.com. “The narrative in the mainstream media is that Hillary Clinton is ‘inevitable’ as the Democratic nominee, with supporting polling data from The New York Times that oversamples Democrats and undersamples Republicans, manufactured to support the narrative.”

Such political artistry between press and pollster can shore up their candidate of choice. Sometimes the facts get in the way though.

“The real news, what people need to know, is that Hillary looks like a disaster in the making, with very poor campaign skills and an indefensible record overseeing foreign policy disasters that have exploded in the face of Obama. But some in the mainstream media are beginning to shed their reluctance to say that the empress has no clothes,” Mr. Lifson says, citing new op-eds centered on Mrs. Clinton’s private email system, the Benghazi matter and the increasing competition from eager Democrats like Martin O’Malley, who has scheduled his first fundraising event on Friday, followed by an “announcement event” on Saturday.

There could be a bonus for Republicans if Mrs. Clinton stays in the 2016 race.

“I am hoping that Hillary toughs it out and damages the Democrat brand. We could really use a reformist presidency backed by a GOP Congress,” Mr. Lifson concludes.

BERNIETOPIA

“Paid for by Bernie Sanders, not the billionaires.”

That’s the campaign motto of Sen. Bernard Sanders. The Vermont senator kicks off his campaign to become the Democratic nominee for president on Tuesday in Burlington, to be followed by a 10-event tour through New Hampshire and Iowa in the 48 hours that follow.

“We are at a moment of truth. We need to face up to the reality of where we are as a nation, and we need a mass movement of people to fight for change,” Mr. Sanders advises in his campaign outreach.

JEBTOPIA

Some big doings in Kennebunkport, Maine: Construction is underway on a 3,000-square-foot “cottage” at Walker’s Point, the George H.W. Bush family compound. It is the ninth residential building on the expansive seaside acreage, and it is being built for Jeb Bush, according to the Portland Press Herald.

The local newspaper also reports that architect Kristi Kenney is both honored and intimidated to work for “a politically prominent family.”

But she’s keeping with traditional design on the four-bedroom, five-bath home: cedar shingles, gabled roofs, wraparound verandah, big windows. Jeb’s vacation getaway will be finished in July. It’s not the largest house in the compound, however. That honor goes to the original 7,100-square-foot, 12-room main home built in 1920 — and where the big family will gather June 8 to celebrate matriarch Barbara Bush’s 90th birthday.

NOT SOMETHING FOR AL GORE

“World’s leading skeptics of man-caused global warming gather in Washington, DC,” proclaims the Heartland Institute, which has organized the 10th International Conference on Climate Change in the nation’s capital for June 11-12.

“Should policies adopted at the height of the global warming scare be repealed and replaced with pro-environment, pro-energy, and pro-jobs policies? In short: Given the new science and economics of climate change, isn’t it time for a fresh start to the debate over what, if anything, to do about global warming?” the organizers ask.

A SUB FOR JERSEY

Here is a moment far removed from the questions of Bridgegate for the potential presidential campaign of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. At a formal ceremony in none other than Jersey City, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced at the weekend that “SSN 796,” a Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, will bear the name “USS New Jersey.” And she is a big girl: 7,800 tons, 377 feet in length, a speed of 25 knots submerged — complete with enhanced stealth and surveillance and the capability to attack targets ashore with accurate Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The Navy’s first sub was built in New Jersey in 1900, incidentally. Two naval ships also have been named New Jersey — a battleship commissioned in 1906 and another commissioned in 1943.

“New Jersey’s relationship with our Navy has been defined by innovation, leadership and courage — in conquest and in combat,” said Mr. Mabus. “The name of our newest nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine will carry on that strong tradition. She will sail the world like those who have gone before her, defending the American people and representing our American values.”

CNN, 35 YEARS LATER

Back in the day, it was the world’s first 24-hour cable news station — signing on the air June 1, 1980. On Tuesday the Cable News Network — yes, CNN — will air a recap of 35 of its most pivotal stories of the decades, including the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Anita Hill matter, the rescue of Baby Jessica, the first Persian Gulf War, the O.J. Simpson trial, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Boston Marathon bombing.

Larry King, Bernard Shaw, Aaron Brown and Paula Zahn are among the past CNN talents to have their say in this hour long special — which airs at 9 p.m. EST and will repeat on June 1.

POLL DU JOUR

50 percent of Americans say the current federal tax system is fair; 40 percent of Republicans, 52 percent of independents and 66 percent of Democrats agree.

39 percent overall favor a flat tax system; 59 percent of Republicans, 39 percent of independents and 25 percent of Democrats agree.

38 percent overall do not trust either political party to handle the federal tax system; 30 percent of Republicans, 55 percent of independents and 23 percent of Democrats agree.

30 percent oppose a flat tax system; 17 percent of Republicans, 24 percent of independents and 45 percent of Democrats agree.

27 percent overall trust Democrats to handle the federal tax system; 1 percent of Republicans, 12 percent of independents and 62 percent of Democrats agree

20 percent overall trust Republicans to handle it; 60 percent of Republicans, 12 percent of independents and 3 percent of Democrats agree.

What Young Feminists Think Of Hillary Clinton // National Journal // Molly Mirhashem – May 25, 2015

Alexandra Svokos was six years old, growing up in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, when she became a Hillary Clinton fan. It was 1998, and Clinton had published Dear Socks, Dear Buddy, a collection of children's letters addressed to the first family's pets. Svokos became so obsessed with the book, she recalls, that she wrote her own letter—not to Socks the cat or Buddy the Labrador, but to Clinton herself. When she got a reply on official White House stationery with the first lady's signature, Svokos was thrilled.

Clinton was an early feminist icon for many women of Svokos's generation—long before they even began to think of themselves as feminists. Svokos, who's now 23 and a fellow at The Huffington Post, grew up with parents who called themselves feminists and practiced gender equality in the house, balancing household responsibilities and encouraging Svokos and her two sisters to "fight for what we deserved." Mostly, she says, feminism meant "girl power" to her—and that meant, in turn, rooting for Clinton when she made her first run for the presidency in 2008. Svokos was in high school then, and her ideas about feminism were still pretty simple; she admired Clinton "because she was a woman, rather than knowing much about what she stood for."

Eight years later, Svokos's notion of feminism has evolved—and the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming president no longer fills her with unbridled excitement. Svokos says her ideas about feminism began to change when she studied economics at Columbia University, beginning in 2010. As she learned about economic inequality in the United States and around the world, she says, she began to see how gender, race, and class were intertwined—how, for instance, expanding access to birth control can stimulate an economy by enabling women to pursue their own careers.

Feminism came to mean something very different from girl power. And Hillary Clinton came to look like the symbol of an older generation of women more concerned with female empowerment—in particular, with white, middle-class, American female empowerment—than with broader issues of social and economic justice. Svokos says she'll vote for Clinton in 2016, but she's not expecting her to make social justice and inequality true priorities if she makes it to the White House. "I find her lacking, in that I realize she's not likely to push for the kind of change I'd like to see," Svokos says. "At the same time, though, I believe she knows how to manage politics and will be more than capable in the position."

Among feminists of her generation, Svokos is hardly alone in her lukewarm feelings about Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. I recently interviewed 47 young women, most in their early to mid-20s, who call themselves feminists; they talked about what feminism means to them and shared their thoughts about Clinton's candidacy and public image. While the overwhelming majority of these women said they would likely vote for her in 2016, only about a quarter of them were enthusiastic or emphatic in their support. Jennifer Schaffer, a 22-year-old weekend editor at Vice, summed up a common sentiment among these women: "I'm glad we have a female presidential candidate," she told me, "but it's incredibly difficult to get excited about something that should have happened decades ago." A vote for Clinton, many said, would be a vote by default, because no other viable progressive alternatives—female or male—are in the offing.

While it's not exactly news that Clinton is a less-than-ideal candidate for many on the Left, the critique of her from those on the vanguard of contemporary feminism is more surprising—and potentially problematic for her presidential effort. To win in 2016, Clinton doesn't just need half-hearted support from young women; she needs them to be a base of her grassroots efforts, as fired up as young people were for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. But even as more and more young women are embracing the "feminist" label—with pop-culture icons like Beyoncé making it central to their public personas—the feminism that Clinton represents seems increasingly outmoded. While her campaign banks on young feminists like Svokos and Schaffer being "Ready for Hillary," these women say they're ready for more.

HILLARY CLINTON came of age during the peak years of second-wave feminism. The first wave began in the mid-1800s, with women's suffrage as the goal; the second stretched from the 1960s to the early 1980s, and focused on reproductive and workplace rights. Writer and activist Betty Friedan is usually credited with catalyzing the second wave with The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, the landmark book called for women's liberation from housework, with Friedan famously writing: "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my house.' "

As the feminism of Friedan and second-wave stalwarts like Gloria Steinem moved into the mainstream, some began to criticize it as a movement tailored to white women of means. Who, they asked, would clean the homes and care for the children of Friedan's liberated middle-class housewives? Where was their liberation? Such questions fed into a larger critique of second-wave feminism: that it saw white American women's concerns as representing those of all women.

In 1989, a term emerged for a feminist philosophy that would include women of color and other marginalized groups: "intersectionality." To the uninitiated, the word might sound like unwieldy academic jargon. But without my bringing it up, many of the women I spoke to said intersectionality was the foundation of their feminism—and of their skepticism about Clinton. First coined by legal scholar and professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, the word refers to the connections (the "intersections") between different systems of oppression—not just sexism, but also racism, homophobia, transphobia, and classism. It's a recognition that a black woman, for instance, is not affected independently by racism and sexism—those forms of discrimination are inextricably linked, which makes her experience sexism differently from a white woman and racism differently from a black man.

The concept itself was far from new; it stretched as far back, at least, as Sojourner Truth's famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech in 1851, in which she highlighted the dramatic differences between the ways black and white women experience sexism. "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere," Truth said. "Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?"

“I think it’s problematic to assume that just because she’s a woman, she’s the best spokesperson for all women.”

Now the idea had a name. But in the 1990s, as intersectionality was gaining popularity in academic circles, Hillary Clinton was bringing her own, more traditional brand of feminism to her role as first lady. Her domestic initiatives included adoption, foster care, and child care. In 1995, Clinton gave her famous Beijing speech to the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women, declaring that "women's rights are human rights." She helped to form the Justice Department's Violence Against Women Office and partnered with then–Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to found the Vital Voices Democracy Initiative, a series of conferences devoted to promoting female leaders and involving women around the globe in politics.

In the early and mid-2000s, after she left the White House and took up residence in the U.S. Senate, Clinton largely shifted away from a women-centered agenda as she worked to bolster her presidential résumé. At the same time, young bloggers like Lauren Bruce (Feministe) and Jessica Valenti (Feministing) were bringing feminist theory out of the Ivory Tower. "Each month seemed to bring a new site with feminist content," Rebecca Traister writes in her 2010 book, Big Girls Don't Cry. "At various points there were about six sites calling themselves The F-Word."

Social media changed the landscape of feminism. Young women who might not learn about feminism in their schools or communities could find primers on Tumblr blogs with names like intersectional feminism 101. Their feminist awakenings thus involved, from the start, debates about second-wave feminism's perceived failures of inclusivity. "Anyone who entered the feminist conversation in the Internet age has immediate access to not only research about those failures, but also to a lot of the conversations about them," says feminist organizer and writer Shelby Knox, who's 28. "The barriers are a lot lower for participation in the movement."

Young women could now do more than read about feminist issues and discuss them in class; they could find communities of women on Twitter or Tumblr whose experiences they could relate to—or who could open up new vistas for them on what other women's lives are like. They could participate in the creation of a new feminism—one that would be a far cry from Friedan's. By 2011, the writer Flavia Dzodan was famously declaring on her blog: "My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit." Her words became a rallying cry.

As young women's notions of feminism evolved and broadened, so did their idea of what constitutes "women's issues" in the political arena. "If you're taking intersectionality as the foundation of this kind of feminism, you wouldn't just be concerned with how any particular policy issue is affecting women," says Gwendolyn Beetham, director of the Global Village at Douglass Residential College, the women's residential college affiliated with Rutgers University. "But you would be asking, 'Which women, and how?' And you would be asking this whether or not you are a member of one of those groups."

To young women like Sylvie Edman, a 20-year-old student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Clinton embodies "corporate feminism," which Edman defines concisely: "It's empowering women who are already powerful." Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook COO and author of Lean In, are often name-dropped in this context; while they experience sexism, the thinking goes, they've been able to dare greatly because of their race and class—while being helped along the way by working-class women and women of color who didn't have the same opportunities.

Some of the concerns raised by the women I spoke to about Clinton were traditional "women's issues" like reproductive justice and equal pay. But just as many brought up police brutality, criminal-justice reform, and environmental issues as primary concerns—and as integral to what they mean by "feminism." Some of the most commonly expressed critiques of Clinton echoed those of many left-of-center Americans: She's "hawkish" on foreign affairs, "part of a political dynasty," and simply "not very progressive." Collier Meyerson, who writes for the website Fusion, told me that her ideal candidate "wouldn't be part of a legacy, and wouldn't be a career politician." A candidate more like Barack Obama—"somebody who is rooted more in community-organizing"—would fit the bill better, Meyerson says.

Ayesha Siddiqi, the 24-year-old editor-in-chief of the online magazine The New Inquiry, says that this range of concerns should be no surprise. "Feminist issues," she says, "are no more complicated than the issues of people's lives." But that philosophy makes young women's views of Clinton—and her campaign's efforts to galvanize them behind her—very complicated indeed.

At April’s Women in the World summit, Clinton talked about inequities in what women are paid, taking care to note the “even wider gaps for women of color.” Will such rhetoric speak to young feminists’ concerns that she’s a classic “corporate feminist”? (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

AT THE ANNUAL Women in the World Summit in New York this April, Sam Viqueira stuck out from the crowd. The summit, a high-powered gathering of leaders and activists launched by former New Yorker and Daily Beast editor Tina Brown in 2010, this year featured a keynote address by Hillary Clinton. Most of the women in attendance looked like Clinton's crowd, her generation: Dressed business casual, the mostly middle-aged women flocked to the free coffee and Luna bars on offer, chatted in small groups, and snapped selfies in front of a Dove-sponsored backdrop. The 17-year-old Viqueira and her high school friend stood off to the side in a small lounge, looking like they were dressed for a regular day of school. They'd taken the train in from Maplewood, New Jersey. "To me, feminism isn't only about wanting equality for all genders," Viqueira told me later, "but wanting and advocating for the equality of all oppressed groups, which can and do intersect."

In some respects, Viqueira exemplifies the rising generation of feminists—and their conflicted feelings about Clinton. She grew up with three sisters and parents who were big on women's empowerment, encouraging the girls to play sports and study math and science. But she credits social media with teaching her about the intersection of race and gender, and the issues women face outside of the United States; she first read the term "intersectionality" online when she was just 15 and now follows a lot of young women on Twitter who help broaden her perspective.

This spring, she's taking the first gender-studies class ever offered at her public high school. Next fall, Viqueira will be old enough to cast her first vote. That has led her, like so many other young feminists, to think long and hard about what Clinton would—and wouldn't—represent as the first woman president. "It's nice to see a strong female candidate running for president," Viqueira says, but she can't help wishing it were a woman with a different track record. She's particularly troubled by Clinton's support of the 1996 welfare-reform bill her husband signed and of the Clinton-era crime-fighting legislation that, among other things, lengthened prison sentences for drug offenses. At best, she says, Clinton has been inconsistent on social-justice issues; at worst, she has been a hypocrite.

While Viqueira is hesitant to say she'll vote for Clinton, she acknowledges that the limited options for progressive-minded voters will probably push her in that direction. But it bothers her to see Clinton held up as a model feminist: "I think it's problematic to assume that just because she's a woman, she's the best spokesperson for all women."

While her deep résumé impresses many young women, Clinton has to grapple with past policies that are anathema to others. (Luis Acosta/AFP/GettyImages)

Clinton's first presidential campaign relied heavily on that assumption. An internal campaign memo from March 2007, written by the campaign's chief strategist and pollster, Mark Penn, and published in The Atlantic the following year, advised Clinton thusly:

1) Start with a base of women.

a. For these women, you represent a breaking of barriers.

b. The winnowing out of the most competent and qualified in an unfair, male-dominated world.

c. The infusion of a woman and a mother's sensibilities into a world of war and neglect.

2) Add on a base of lower- and middle-class voters.

a. You see them; you care about them.

b. You were one of them, it is your  history.

c. You are all about their concerns (health care, education, energy, child care, college, etc.).

For young feminists, Penn's memo, and Clinton's campaign, represented the antithesis of intersectional thinking. The problem isn't merely the assumption that women would be Clinton's primary base because of their gender alone; it's also the fact that lower- and middle-class voters are itemized as a separate group, with a different (and far more specific) set of concerns from those of "women." "With strategies like this," Traister writes, "it was not unjust to suggest that one serious problem with the Clinton campaign leadership was that it did not think much of the women with whom it was supposed to be making history." Traister notes that "Penn assured Hillary that internal polling showed that 94% of young women would automatically vote for the first female president. It was perhaps this confidence that led him to shrug off concerns about reaching them." In the end, according to a CBS News poll, Penn's initial estimates were way off: 53 percent of young women backed Obama over Clinton.

While these young women, rallying for Clinton in New York in April, are “Ready for Hillary,” others say they’re ready for more. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Far from a high-water mark for feminism, Siddiqi, The New Inquiry editor, sees Clinton's presidential campaigns as "the nadir of the 'Lean In' feminism moment. This is what you get when that's what your feminism looks like," she says. "You don't get a victory that all women can celebrate."

OF COURSE, plenty of young women will be celebrating next November if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency—including some who see themselves rooted in "intersectionality." Gabriel Clarke, a 20-year-old musician and student at Oakwood University in Alabama, says she had a wake-up moment during protests over the shooting of Michael Brown last summer in Ferguson, Missouri. "A young woman grabbed the microphone and said, 'I am a woman, but before I am a woman, I am black.' And I was thinking, that's not how we have to look at these things. That's not how we have to be. We have to understand that we are both of those things simultaneously."

Women of color like herself have long been "on the back burner in the movement," Clarke says. It's a welcome change that "people are starting to see that you can't have a social movement about equality and leave out everyone else who's not a white woman." But intersectional thinking hasn't dimmed her passion for electing Clinton. The first time Clinton ran, Clarke was just 13. She had a hard time taking the candidate seriously, she says, because of the media's relentless focus on her hair, clothes, and manner of speaking. But the summer before Clarke went off to college in 2013, her impression was changed by watching the documentary Miss Representation, which shines a critical light on the way women leaders are portrayed by the media. "It really opened my eyes and made me see Hillary in a totally different way," Clarke says. "They talked more about her pantsuits than her policies!"

Like most of the one-quarter of these young women who told me they're gung ho for Clinton, Clarke cites the candidate's extensive experience—the same experience others use to knock her as a "career politician"—as a prime factor in her support. Clinton, says Clarke, is obviously the most-qualified candidate in the race. "But that's the story of being a woman," she says. "You have to be ten times better than everyone else to even get your foot in the door." Clarke realizes that many feminists of color are "very skeptical" of Clinton, wondering "whether she will really be a champion or a voice for them, or only for white women"—and she gets the skepticism. But to her, there's something more fundamental at stake: "I think that even her as a symbol for women, that a woman can be president, is powerful enough."

This time around, the Clinton campaign isn't taking that kind of solidarity for granted. Young feminists' social and economic views may have been overlooked in 2008, but in the early stages of Clinton's second run, they've been front and center. You could hear it in her keynote at the Women in the World Summit, where Clinton talked about inequities in what women are paid, taking care to note the "even wider gaps for women of color." You could hear it in another speech she recently gave in New York calling for police reform and in her frequent invocations of income inequality. "Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times," Clinton said in the April video announcing her campaign. "But the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top."

Such talk is welcomed by Clinton skeptics like Viqueira, the 17-year-old, who sees the candidate "redefining her feminism to be all-inclusive." Collier Meyerson says that Clinton's announcement video—which, as pundits noted, took pains to feature just about every group of "marginalized" people in America—was a clear attempt to reach people ignored during her 2008 campaign. "My hope is that she continues with this thread," Meyerson says, "and goes on to pull in people from different socioeconomic classes, backgrounds, and races."

By and large, these women say they'll need to see more evidence of Clinton's new inclusiveness before their ambivalent support morphs into enthusiasm. "So far, she's hit on a lot of the things I'm passionate about," says Laura Brown, a 26-year-old fashion designer and seamstress in Los Angeles. "I want to see her prove it. I want to know it's genuine and not just part of the game."

Presidentidal Candidates Continue to Take Shots at the Supreme Court // Bloomberg.com // David Knowles – May 25, 2015

Of late, the U.S. Supreme Court has become a regular target for the current crop of presidential candidates, but for two decidedly different issues.

For Republicans still burned by the court's 2012 ruling that let stand insurance mandates and penalties under the Affordable Care Act, the latest beef with the court concerns its forthcoming ruling on whether gay marriage should be recognized nationwide. That prospect is so galling to some GOP candidates, that some have gone so far as to suggest that the court does not have the authority to enforce such a decision.

Mike Huckabee

During an appearance last weekend on Fox News Sunday, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee voiced his frustration with the prospect of having the court decide the gay marriage question once and for all. "The notion that the Supreme Court comes up with the ruling and that automatically subjects the two other branches to following it defies everything there is about the three equal branches of government," Huckabee said.

Pressed by host Chris Wallace how far he would carry his logic, Huckabee floated a hypothetical.

“Then, what if the Supreme Court ruled they were going to make the decision as to who was going to be the next president and save the taxpayers and voters from all the expense and trouble of voting, and they'll just pick a president? Well, we would say, 'Well, they can't do that.' Why can't they do it? They can't do it because it's not in the law.”

Ted Cruz

Back in October, Texas Senator Ted Cruz reacted strongly to news that the supreme court had rejected requests from five states seeking to overturn lower court rulings that legalized gay marriage.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to let rulings by lower court judges stand that redefine marriage is both tragic and indefensible,” the senator said in a statement. “By refusing to rule if the states can define marriage, the Supreme Court is abdicating its duty to uphold the Constitution.”

Cruz also described the court's move as "judicial activism at its worst."

Ben Carson

Interviewed by Fox News' Chris Wallace in May, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson argued that it was an "open question" whether a president should be obliged to follow the Supreme Court's rulings. Asserting that "the laws of the land are not provided by the judicial branch," Carson suggested that the question of judicial review had its limits and might be revisited.

"I have said this is an area that we need to discuss. We need to get into a discussion of this because it has changed from the original intent," Carson said (discussion begins at the 1:45 mark in the video).

Marco Rubio

Unlike his GOP rivals, Florida Senator Marco Rubio did not specifically mention the U.S. Supreme Court when, during an interview in April with the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody, he mocked the notion that the right to same-sex marriage is protected in the Constitution.

"It doesn’t exist. There is no federal constitutional right to same sex marriage," Rubio declared. "There isn't such a right. You have to have a ridiculous reading of the U.S. Constitution to reach the conclusion that people have a right to marry someone of the same sex."

For Democrats, meanwhile, disappointment with the court largely stems from the 2010 verdict in the Citizens United v. FEC case, which ruled that the First Amendment to the Constitution prevented the government from restricting the amount of money that corporations and unions can spend on elections. Still, neither of the two politicians to have declared their candidacy have suggested amending the current balance of power the way their Republican counterparts have.

Bernie Sanders

Shortly after declaring himself a presidential candidate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders pledged to enact a Supreme Court litmus test if elected whereby he would not nominate judges who did not promise to overturn the Citizens United decision.

“If elected president, I will have a litmus test in terms of my nominee to be a Supreme Court justice. And that nominee will say that we are going to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United. Because that decision is undermining American democracy. I do not believe that billionaires should be able to buy politicians,” Sanders told CBS' Face the Nation in May.

Hillary Clinton

One week after announcing her 2016 candidacy, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began targeting Citizens United.

"We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all—even if it takes a constitutional amendment," Clinton said during her first trip to Iowa in April as a candidate.

Not to be outdone by Sanders, Clinton too began talking up a Citizens United litmus test for Supreme Court nominees.

"I will do everything I can do to appoint Supreme Court justices who will protect the right to vote and not the right of billionaires to buy elections," Clinton told supporters at an Iowa house party two weeks ago. 

OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE      

10 questions with Bernie Sanders // CNBC // John Harwood – May 26, 2015

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 73, is the only self-described socialist in Congress. Now

he is mounting a long shot bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination against his former Senate colleague Hillary Rodham Clinton, who served most recently as Secretary of State.

Sanders calls for nothing less than a "political revolution" that would use tax policy to reverse what he calls the massive transfer of wealth from ordinary families to the most affluent over the past generation. He sat down to discuss the campaign with me over spaghetti-and-meatballs at a bistro near the Capitol. What follows is a condensed, edited transcript of our conversation.

HARWOOD: I read that you ran track in school. Was athletics important to you as a kid?

SANDERS: I came in third in my junior year in the New York City public school one-mile. I think my best was 4:37, which is not superstar, but it's pretty good.

We used to play ball every day. we chose up teams. One of the differences, by the way, between today and way back then is maybe you learn a little bit about democracy. Kids are out on the street. There wasn't any supervisors. There wasn't any parents. You chose—punch ball, softball. Everybody knew how good you are. It didn't matter how much money you had. You were the third best basketball player. Everybody knew it, 'cause they played with you day in and day out. Baseball the same.

You want to know who the Brooklyn Dodger team of 1951? Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Billy Cox, Gene Hermanski, Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe. How's that? Were they important to me? We would occasionally, go in the bleachers, which were then 60 cents. And when we really could put together the money and really were goin' big, we would sometimes get a buck-and-a-quarter seats.

HARWOOD: After the revolution, what does it look like? What do you see happening to the 1 percent?

SANDERS: What is my dream? My dream is, do we live in a country where 70 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent of the people vote? Where we have serious discourse on media rather than political gossip, by the way? Where we're debating trade policy, we're debating foreign policy, we're debating economic policy, where the American people actually know what's going on in Congress? Ninety-nine percent of all new income generated today goes to the top 1 percent. Top one-tenth of 1 percent owns as much as wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Does anybody think that that is the kind of economy this country should have? Do we think it's moral? So to my mind, if you have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top one-tenth of 1 percent, you know what, we've got to transfer that back if we're going to have a vibrant middle class. And you do that in a lot of ways. Certainly one way is tax policy.

HARWOOD: Have you seen some of the quotations from people on Wall Street, people in business? Some have even likened the progressive Democratic crusade to Hitler's Germany hunting down the Jews.

SANDERS: It's sick. And I think these people are so greedy, they're so out of touch with reality, that they can come up and say that. They think they own the world.

What a disgusting remark. I'm sorry to have to tell them, they live in the United States, they benefit from the United States, we have kids who are hungry in this country. We have people who are working two, three, four jobs, who can't send their kids to college. You know what? Sorry, you're all going to have to pay your fair share of taxes. If my memory is correct, when radical socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent.

HARWOOD: When you think about 90 percent, you don't think that's obviously too high?

SANDERS: No. That's not 90 percent of your income, you know? That's the marginal. I'm sure you have some really right-wing nut types, but I'm not sure that every very wealthy person feels that it's the worst thing in the world for them to pay more in taxes, to be honest with you. I think you've got a lot of millionaires saying, "You know what? I've made a whole lot of money. I don't want to see kids go hungry in America. Yeah, I'll pay my fair share."

HARWOOD: In the latter part of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan came along and there was a big pivot in our politics. It revolves around the idea that we need less government and more market forces. Do you think that basic pivot was wrong?

SANDERS: Let me answer it this way, John. I think there is obviously an enormously important role for the free market and for entrepreneurial activity. I worry how free the free market is. In sector after sector, you have a small number of companies controlling a large part of the sector.

Certainly, in my view, the major banks should be broken up. We want entrepreneurs and private businesses to create wealth. No problem. But what we're living in now is what I would call—what Pope Francis calls—a casino-type capitalism, which is out of control, where the people on top have lost any sense of responsibility for the rest of the society. Where it's just "It's all me. It's all me. And to heck with anybody else." I want to see the result of that wealth go to the broad middle class of this country and not just to a handful of people.

HARWOOD: Have you seen some of the quotations from people on Wall Street, people in business? Some have even likened the progressive Democratic crusade to Hitler's Germany hunting down the Jews.

SANDERS: It's sick. And I think these people are so greedy, they're so out of touch with reality, that they can come up and say that. They think they own the world.

What a disgusting remark. I'm sorry to have to tell them, they live in the United States, they benefit from the United States, we have kids who are hungry in this country. We have people who are working two, three, four jobs, who can't send their kids to college. You know what? Sorry, you're all going to have to pay your fair share of taxes. If my memory is correct, when radical socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent.

HARWOOD: When you think about 90 percent, you don't think that's obviously too high?

SANDERS: No. That's not 90 percent of your income, you know? That's the marginal. I'm sure you have some really right-wing nut types, but I'm not sure that every very wealthy person feels that it's the worst thing in the world for them to pay more in taxes, to be honest with you. I think you've got a lot of millionaires saying, "You know what? I've made a whole lot of money. I don't want to see kids go hungry in America. Yeah, I'll pay my fair share."

Read More10 questions for Mitch McConnell

HARWOOD: In the latter part of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan came along and there was a big pivot in our politics. It revolves around the idea that we need less government and more market forces. Do you think that basic pivot was wrong?

SANDERS: Let me answer it this way, John. I think there is obviously an enormously important role for the free market and for entrepreneurial activity. I worry how free the free market is. In sector after sector, you have a small number of companies controlling a large part of the sector.

Certainly, in my view, the major banks should be broken up. We want entrepreneurs and private businesses to create wealth. No problem. But what we're living in now is what I would call—what Pope Francis calls—a casino-type capitalism, which is out of control, where the people on top have lost any sense of responsibility for the rest of the society. Where it's just "It's all me. It's all me. And to heck with anybody else." I want to see the result of that wealth go to the broad middle class of this country and not just to a handful of people.

HARWOOD: If the changes that you envision in tax policy, in finance, breaking up the banks, were to result in a more equitable distribution of income, but less economic growth, is that trade off worth making?

SANDERS: Yes. If 99 percent of all the new income goes to the top 1 percent, you could triple it, it wouldn't matter much to the average middle class person. The whole size of the economy and the GDP. doesn't matter if people continue to work longer hours for low wages and you have 45 million people living in poverty. You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country. I don't think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on. People scared to death about what happens tomorrow. Half the people in America have less than $10,000 in savings. How do you like that? That means you have an automobile accident, you have an illness, you're broke. How do you retire if you have less than $10,000, and you don't have much in the way of Social Security?

HARWOOD: It came out in disclosure forms the other day that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, in the last 16 months, have made $30 million. What does that kind of money do to a politician's perspective on the struggles you were just talking about? Does it make it difficult for recipients of that kind of income to take on the system?

SANDERS: Well, theoretically, you could be a multi-billionaire and, in fact, be very concerned about the issues of working people. Theoretically, that's true.

I think sometimes what can happen is that—it's not just the Clintons—when you hustle money like that, you don't sit in restaurants like this. You sit in restaurants where you're spending—I don't know what they spend—hundreds of dollars for dinner and so forth. That's the world that you're accustomed to, and that's the world view that you adopt. You're not worrying about a kid three blocks away from here whose mom can't afford to feed him. So yes, I think that can isolate you—that type of wealth has the potential to isolate you from the reality of the world.

HARWOOD: I read an interview that you did about the corporate media. And you said the corporate media was reluctant to call out people for lying in public debates. You're on corporate media right now. Who's lying in our politics?

SANDERS: I'm the ranking member of the Budget Committee, okay? Leader of the opposition. The Republican budget does the following: It throws 27 million people off of health care by ending the Affordable Care Act and cutting Medicaid by $440 billion. Have you seen that in print? Have you seen that statement? There is a reality that goes on here. And you have many people who try to be, "Oh, I've got to be even-handed here and even-handed there. You got the Koch Brothers there, Bernie Sanders there." That's nonsense. And I think a lot of right-wing people get away with murder, because the media doesn't call them out on it.

HARWOOD: President Obama, in talking about trade the other day, said that Elizabeth Warren and some of the people taking her position were just making things up about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Do you think he's making things up in selling it? He says it's the most progressive one that's ever been negotiated.

SANDERS: Yeah, like what? The minimum wage in Vietnam is 56 cents an hour. Workers there cannot form independent unions. And if you protest government policy, you might end up in trouble. Okay? What does this trade agreement have to say about that? Not a goddamned thing. Not a bloody thing. In this trade agreement there is language, what we call the Investor State Dispute Resolution. This is what it says: that Philip Morris can take Australia and Uruguay to court and try to collect many millions of dollars. For what reason? You know why they can do that? Because Australia and Uruguay have passed strong legislation trying to keep their kids from smoking. And Philip Morris is aggrieved because their future profits are being threatened by strong anti-smoking legislation. That is exactly how you undermine American democracy.

-Sen. Bernie Sanders

HARWOOD: You and I talked some months ago. You said you were going to take a look at running, and you weren't going to do it if it wasn't viable. What did you see that made you think it was viable?

SANDERS: If I do badly, and I don't run a good campaign, and we don't get our message out, and we don't bring people together, it reflects not just on me, but on the ideas that I'm talking about. A couple months ago, I was in California, a beautiful sunny day. We had 500 people coming out at a union hall. I went to Austin, Texas - we had about 600 people coming out. I was in Las Vegas, we had 300 people coming out. Went to Chicago, we had 400 people. So I am sensing that based on that trip and trips that I made to Iowa, New Hampshire, that there is more disconnect and more anger at the establishment—the corporate establishment, the political establishment, the media establishment.

Is there the potential support out there? I sensed that there was. Gut feeling, that's all.

I fully concede that I get into this race as a major underdog. No question about it. I mean, Hillary Clinton is known by 95 percent of the American people. And clearly, in terms of money, I will be very, very, very heavily outspent. As I've said before though, don't underestimate me.

We're going to do better than people think. And I think we got a shot to win this thing.

Bernie Sanders Aims To Catch On With Elizabeth Warren-Backing Democrats // AP via Huffington Post // Ken Thomas - May 25, 2015

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) — For Democrats who had hoped to lure Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren into a presidential campaign, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders might be the next best thing.

Sanders, who is opening his official presidential campaign Tuesday in Burlington, Vermont, aims to ignite a grassroots fire among left-leaning Democrats wary of Hillary Rodham Clinton. He is laying out an agenda in step with the party's progressive wing and compatible with Warren's platform — reining in Wall Street banks, tackling college debt and creating a government-financed infrastructure jobs program.

"I think our views are parallel on many, many issues," Sanders said in an interview with The Associated Press, describing Warren as a "good friend."

Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in Washington and is running for the Democratic nomination. He and Democratic former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley are vying to become the primary alternative to Clinton. Much of the energy behind a Clinton alternative has been directed to drafting Warren, but she has repeatedly said she won't run.

For Sanders, a key question is electability. Clinton is in a commanding position by any measure. Yet his supporters in New Hampshire say his local ties and longstanding practice of holding town hall meetings and people-to-people campaigning — a staple in the nation's first primary state — could serve him well.

"Toward the Vermont border it's like a love-fest for Bernie," said Jerry Curran, an Amherst, New Hampshire, Democratic activist who has been involved in the draft Warren effort. "He's not your milquetoast left-winger. He's kind of a badass left-winger."

A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders has raised more than $4 million since announcing in early May that he would be a presidential candidate. He suggested in the interview that raising $50 million for the primaries was a possibility. "That would be a goal," he said.

He rejects the notion that he's simply in the race to shape the debate.

"Hillary Clinton is a candidate, I am a candidate," Sanders said. "I suspect there will be other candidates. The people in this country will make their choice."

Whether Sanders can tap into the party's Warren wing and influence Clinton's policy agenda remains unclear. But he has been on the forefront of liberal causes as Clinton has seemed to be tacking to the left.

Clinton regularly refers to an economic stacked deck against American workers — rhetoric that offers comparisons to Warren's frequent description of the economic system being "rigged" against middle-class families.

Sanders has joined with Warren to drive opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade proposal, arguing it would ship jobs overseas. Clinton has avoided taking a specific position on the trade deal.

The Vermont senator has introduced legislation to make tuition free at public colleges and universities, a major piece of Warren's agenda. The free tuition would be covered by a mix of state and federal money and paid for by higher taxes on Wall Street investment firms, hedge funds and other financial transactions. Clinton's campaign has signaled that she intends to make debt-free college a major piece of her campaign.

Sanders' disdain for big money in politics is also shared by liberals. Clinton frequently tells voters that she would back a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court decision allowing super PACS to raise unlimited money. But Democratic super PACs are already lining up behind her.

"I'm not going to have a super PAC in this campaign," Sanders said. "I don't go to fundraisers where millionaires sit around the room and say here's a million, here's $5 million for your super PAC. That's not my life. That's not my world. And I think the American people are saying that is not what our politics should be about." He said the money he's raised so far has come from more than 100,000 individual donors, giving an average of $42 each.

Organizers of the pro-Warren effort say Clinton may still win over many of their supporters. Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Vermont-based Democracy for America, said Sanders would "fill the void" for some of the voters hoping for Warren to run. But not for all.

"They're different people. They've got different pluses, they've got different minuses," Chamberlain said. "Some of the people who want to see Elizabeth get in the race are going to Hillary. Some of them are going to go to Martin O'Malley." O'Malley is expected to announce his candidacy Saturday.

If Sanders is the underdog, that's fine by him. During the 1970s, he lost four statewide elections as a third-party candidate, and then narrowly defeated a Democratic incumbent in 1981 to become Burlington's mayor.

"Nobody — trust me — nobody thought I would defeat a five-term incumbent Democratic mayor," Sanders said, noting the winning margin of 10 votes.

The lessons, he said, are clear: "Don't underestimate me."

Vermont’s Favorite Underdog // Politico // Terri Hallenbeck - May 25, 2015

As the sun sets Tuesday over Lake Champlain, Bernie Sanders plans to join Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race during a rally at Burlington’s Waterfront Park filled with Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and music from Vermont’s best Cajun band, Mango Jam. It’s an unlikely, long-shot bid for the nation’s highest office—but it’s not entirely Quixotic. “Bernie,” as everyone in this state knows him, has after all made a career out of unlikely, long-shot bids for public office.

And, if Sanders’ presidential bid is going to go anywhere, he’s going to have to do it the way he’s always done it: as the outside candidate, winning over voters one town hall meeting at a time.

Over a forty-year political career, he’s gotten pretty good at it. Bernie Sanders wasn’t even up for reelection in 2014, but at a late October campaign rally last year in small-town Bristol, Vermont, he was clearly the headline act. The incumbent governor and Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor and state legislative seats filled the front of the room. But who was the biggest draw to the town hall brunch? Sanders. “Oh god, yeah,” said Bristol resident Suzanne Boyle, who enthusiastically supported his push for universal health care.

The wild-haired, filled-with-outrage Sanders has long had a rock-star status in Vermont that is envy of fellow politicians. And it follows him to the polls. He won 71 percent of the vote in 2012, his most recent election. That’s better than President Barack Obama fared in the state.

In 2006, his first election to the Senate after 16 years in the House, Sanders won every county in the state despite facing off against a self-financed millionaire Republican. He did better than the incumbent governor that year.

The self-described democratic socialist polls well in relatively populous, left-leaning Burlington, where he got his political start as mayor in 1981. But he also does surprisingly well in the so-called Northeast Kingdom, one of the most rural and conservative corners of the state. He’s big with liberals but also with seniors and veterans, farmers and postal workers.

During four decades of politics in Vermont, Sanders has managed to win over a wide array of voters with his unique style. If the presidential campaign he is kicking off Tuesday in Burlington is to gain traction, he will likely have to do it the same way.

“Bernie has really been able to speak for the underdog,” says Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont who has followed Sanders’ entire career. “They see Bernie as a person who can be their champion.”

Though Sanders was headlining a Democratic campaign rally last fall in Bristol, he has never been elected to office as a Democrat. Congress’ longest-serving independent caucuses in Washington with Democrats, runs in Democratic primaries and campaigns with Vermont Democrats, but he is not one of them.

That showed clearly last week, as Gov. Peter Shumlin, a three-term incumbent Democrat, announced he’s supporting Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. Shumlin joins a long list of the state’s top Democrats to do so: former Govs. Howard Dean and Madeleine Kunin, Sen. Patrick Leahy and Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger. Only the state’s sole at-large congressman, Democrat Peter Welch, has remained uncommitted.

“Bernie and I are great friends,” Shumlin said last week. “But my belief is that the most qualified candidate running for president who’s going to fight for the middle class and who understands the challenge of foreign policy is Hillary Clinton.”

Sanders is used to being the outsider. Other than a few early unsuccessful elections in which he was part of the liberal, anti-war Liberty Union Party, Sanders has always run his own party. He’s become a master at hosting town hall-style meetings, where his staff serves up a free brunch, lunch or dinner and he adds a heaping spoonful of political theater. 

He wins over voters, but not with charm. The gruff 73-year-old, who has never lost his blustery Brooklyn accent, is not the sort of politician who remembers your name, or your kids’ names. He does not linger for idle chatter. He seems far too busy with weighty matters.

Instead, he leaves voters believing they can count on him to bully their bullies, whoever they might be. He stands up for almost everybody but the rich.

Bernie Sanders Takes It to Wall Street With Financial Transactions Tax // Huffington Post // Dean Baker – May 25, 2015

Last week, Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont and only announced challenger to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, took a strong stand for everyday people. He proposed a financial transactions tax (FTT), effectively a Wall Street sales tax, and to use the revenue to make public colleges tuition free.

While making college affordable to low and middle income families is important, the proposal for an FTT is a real game changer. There is no single policy that would have anywhere near as much impact in reforming the financial sector. A FTT would effectively impose a sales tax on stocks and other financial assets, so that speculators have to pay a tax on their trades, just like people who buy shoes or clothes.

There are three points people should understand about a FTT. The first is that it can raise an enormous amount of money. A FTT could be imposed at different rates. Sanders proposed following the rate structure in a bill put forward by Minneapolis Congressman Keith Ellison. Eleven countries in the European Union are working to implement a set of FTTs that would tax stock trades at a rate of 0.1 percent and trades of most derivative instruments at the rate of 0.01 percent.

Extrapolating from a recent analysis of the European proposal, a comparable tax in the United States would raise more than $130 billion a year or more than $1.5 trillion over the next decade. This is real money; it dwarfs the sums that have dominated most budget debates in recent years. For example, the Republicans had been trying to push through cuts to the food stamp program of $40 billion over the course of a decade. The sum that can be raised by this FTT proposal is more than thirty times as large. The revenue from a FTT could go far toward rebuilding the infrastructure, improving the health care system, or paying for college tuition, as suggested by Senator Sanders.

The second point is that Wall Street will bear almost the entire cost of the tax. The financial industry is surely already paying for studies showing the tax will wipe out the 401(k)s held by middle income families. This is nonsense. Not only is the size of the tax small for anyone not flipping stock on a daily basis, research indicates that most investors will largely offset the cost of the tax by trading less.

Most research shows that trading volume falls roughly in proportion to the increase in transaction costs. This means that if a FTT doubles the cost of trading then the volume of trading will fall by roughly 50 percent, leaving total trading costs unchanged. Investors will pay twice as much on each trade, but have half as many trades. Since investors don't on average make money on trades (one side might win, but the other loses), this is a wash for the investor.

While most middle income people don't directly trade the money in their retirement accounts, they do have people who manage these funds. The research means that the fund managers will reduce their trading, so that the total costs of transactions that are passed on to the investor remain roughly constant. This means that the financial industry will bear almost the entire cost of the tax in the form of reduced trading volume.

This gets to the last point: a smaller financial industry is a more efficient financial industry. The purpose of the financial industry is to allocate money from savers to companies that want to finance new investment. As the industry has exploded in size over the last four decades there is no reason to believe that it has gotten better in serving this basic function. In fact, the stock bubble at the end of the 1990s and the housing bubble in the last decade might suggest that it has gotten worse.

A study from the Bank of International Settlements and more recent research from the International Monetary Fund find that a bloated financial sector slows growth. An oversized financial sector pulls resources away from more productive sectors of the economy. People who could be engaged in biological research or developing clean technologies are instead employed on Wall Street designing computer programs to beat other traders by a microsecond to garner profits at their expense. A FTT will make much of this activity unprofitable, encouraging people to turn to more productive work.

In short, a FTT is a great way to raise large amounts of money to meet important public needs. It will come almost entirely at the expense of the financial industry and should strengthen the economy. We now have one presidential candidate who is prepared to support a strong FTT. Are there others?

Sanders: A Revolution With an Eye on the Hungry Children // NYT// John Hardwood – May 26, 2015

Mr. Sanders won’t condemn Mrs. Clinton for raking in millions in speech fees and campaign donations. But he warns it could curb her effectiveness in challenging corporate interests on behalf of working Americans.

“When you hustle money like that, you don’t sit in restaurants like this,” Mr. Sanders said during an interview in a small Italian bistro on Capitol Hill. “You’re sitting in restaurants where you’re spending — I don’t know what they spend, hundreds of dollars for dinner.”

“That’s the world that you’re accustomed to, and that’s the worldview that you adopt,” he added. “You’re not worrying about a kid three blocks away from here whose mom can’t afford to feed him.”

Mr. Sanders spoke on the eve of the first big rally for his 2016 presidential bid, in Burlington, Vt. One question looming over his effort is how aggressively he will draw contrasts with Mrs. Clinton, his former Senate colleague who he concedes is heavily favored.

Mr. Sanders advocates a “revolution” to reverse a “massive transfer of wealth” from the middle class to the affluent over the last generation.

He exuded contempt for the “sick” and “disgusting” views of some titans of business who have likened such efforts to Hitler and his persecution of Jews.

“These people are so greedy, they’re so out of touch with reality,” Mr. Sanders said. “You know what? Sorry, you’re all going to have to pay your fair share of taxes.”

He doesn’t flinch over returning to the 90 percent personal income tax rates of the 1950s for top earners. And if reducing income inequality reduces economic growth, he says, that’s fine. “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants,” he said, “when children are hungry in this country.”

GOP

Ben Carson tells RNC to keep debates inclusive despite his own surge // Washington Times // Jennifer Harper – May 25, 2015

Ben Carson has penned his second open letter to the Republican National Committee concerning the upcoming GOP presidential debates, which will only include the 10 best-polling candidates according to new restrictions set by host networks Fox News and CNN.

Initially, Mr. Carson urged the RNC to let all GOP hopefuls participate in the high profile debates beginning Aug. 6, asking consideration for himself and fellow hopeful Carly Fiorina.

The national polls, however, turned out to be in Mr. Carson’s favor; he is now on the Top 10 list after a Fox News poll found him tied with Jeb Bush in first place.

Nevertheless, he expounded on his concerns about the broadcasts, again calling for inclusiveness in an open letter released at the weekend.

“I am very worried that out of broadcasting convenience our party is about to exclude voices from our debate programs that are critical to making our party bigger, better, and bolder. The rules may be good for me personally, but they are not good for the process,” Mr. Carson wrote. “We are blessed to have so many qualified candidates running for president, more than a typical debate format can handle. Surely we could find a format to allow every voice to be heard.”

With potential candidates including Donald Trump, Ohio Gov. John Kasich to Sen. Lindsey Graham, the field of GOP presidential hopefuls currently ranges from a low of 12 — all the way up to 30, depending on who’s doing the counting. Candidates “must place in the top 10 of an average of the five most recent national polls,” according to the Fox News criteria; CNN’s rules were similar.

“In the past, this type of rule has been used to keep ‘fringe’ candidates off the stage. None of these men and women deserves this exclusion,” Mr. Carson concluded.

As for Ms. Fiorina, her campaign manager Steve DeMaura issued his own statement, saying the campaign expects to meet the standards.

“We are confident that Carly’s growing momentum and support will meet and exceed whatever inclusion criteria Fox News and the RNC set. Fox News has deep political expertise and we are hopeful that whatever criteria they settle on will accurately reflect both the state of the race and the realities of the nominating contest,” he said.

The Koch brothers try to rein in the GOP presidential clown show // The Washington Post // Paul Waldman – May 25, 2015

If you’re a Republican primary voter, you’re probably feeling pretty good about the presidential primaries. Even if you haven’t yet found the candidate who will make you swoon, one thing you’ve got is choices. By my count, there are currently 10 candidates who are declared or all but certain to run, and another four who will probably run. But while the voters might find this an embarrassment of riches, for the party’s leaders and financiers, it looks like a recipe for trouble. Which is how I interpret this news:

In a Saturday interview on the Larry Kudlow Show,  a nationally syndicated radio broadcast, David Koch let it slip that the roughly $900 million that he and his brother, Charles, plan to lavish on the 2016 presidential race could find its way into the hands of more than one GOP contender.

“We are thinking of supporting several Republicans,” David Koch said, adding, “If we’re happy with the policies that these individuals are supporting, we’ll finance their campaigns.”

Koch said the brothers would begin writing checks to individual candidates in “the primary season, winter and next spring.”

Up until now, the Koch brothers hadn’t indicated that they’d be taking a side in the primaries. It almost seemed that they viewed that as the kind of thing amateurs like Sheldon Adelson do, throwing money at some candidate based on overly irrational personal feelings, while they keep focused on the real goal of getting a Republican — any Republican — into the White House. By saying they’re going to support several candidates in the primaries, the Kochs are pledging to accelerate the winnowing process, by which the race’s chaff can be sloughed off and the focus can stay on the serious contenders.

Don’t be fooled by the line about them supporting all the ones whose policies they’re happy with. That’s because there’s almost no disagreement among the candidates, at least on the issues the Kochs care about. All of them would like to see low taxes on the wealthy (most have even advocated a flat tax, a boon to people like the Kochs), a dramatic reduction in regulations that affect corporations and a rollback of the social safety net. Where the Kochs personally disagree with the candidates (as they may on some social issues or on immigration), they disagree with all the candidates, because the candidates’ positions are so similar.

So mark my words: If the Kochs pick out a few candidates to support, it will be the ones they think would be the strongest in a general election and those they think put the best face on the GOP.

And the Kochs aren’t the only ones trying to do this winnowing. Fox News, which always keeps the long-term interests of the Republican Party in mind, recently announced that in the first debate of the season, it will be refusing admittance to all but 10 candidates. The excluded ones will in all likelihood find themselves caught in a vicious cycle where they can’t get coverage because they aren’t being taken seriously, and the can’t get taken seriously because they aren’t getting coverage. Ten is still a large number of candidates, but that first debate will be a key moment in the winnowing process.

So as open as the campaign is, certain key players still have ways to at least try to rein it in. But their power is limited. One result of the newly freewheeling nature of presidential elections is that a rich donor or two can prop up the candidacy of someone with little chance to win the party’s nomination, enabling him or her to stick around and cause trouble months after he or she ought to have departed the race. This year, multiple candidates could have billionaires feeding them the money they need to keep their campaigns active deep into the primary season. If you’re a thoughtful Republican, a primary with this many candidates is a cacophonous mess, full of extremist cranks squabbling with each other and taking progressively nastier potshots at the leaders, one of whom will end up as the nominee. The longer it goes, the more that nominee has to pander to the base and the less time he or she will have to focus on Hillary Clinton.

If the Kochs are ready to put some of their ample resources into the primary campaign, it’s a sign that the enormous size of the primary field is generating some serious concern at the top of the GOP. The question is whether, even with their money, there’s much they can do about it.

Here’s Everything We Learned From The Hillary Emails // The Daily Caller // Chuck Ross – May 25, 2015

With its Friday dump — on Memorial Day weekend, no less — the State Department ensured that Hillary Clinton’s 296 Libya-related emails would receive limited news coverage.

But the records are well worth reviewing because they contain important insight into Clinton and her top aides’ views on Libya and Benghazi leading up to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, which killed four Americans.

Here are the 13 most interesting exchanges.

‘The public face of the U.S. effort in Libya’

If one email chain comes back to haunt Clinton on the campaign trail it would be an April 4, 2012, message top aide Jake Sullivan sent touting Clinton’s “leadership on Libya.”

“HRC has been a critical voice on Libya in administration deliberations, at NATO, and in contact group meetings — as well as the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya,” Sullivan wrote. “She was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition, and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.”

While deposing Gaddafi was seen as a major U.S. victory at the time, the attack at Benghazi and its vulnerability to Islamist groups like ISIS calls Clinton’s and the Obama administration’s intervention there into question.

Clinton overslept and missed a national security briefing days after the Benghazi attack

Clinton missed a President’s Daily Brief meeting on the morning of Sept. 15, 2012, just days after the Benghazi attack, because she overslept.

Monica Hanley, a Clinton aide, sent an email to Clinton at 9:17 a.m. stating that a briefer “has some sensitive items that he would like to personally show you when he arrives.”

Clinton responded at 10:43 a.m., stating “just woke up so i [sic] missed Dan. Could he come back after finish my calls?”

Interested in a movie on morning of the Benghazi attack

Early on the morning of Sept. 11, 2012, before the attack on Benghazi, Clinton had a movie on her mind. But she wasn’t thinking of “Innocence of Muslims,” the short film that the Obama administration initially falsely blamed for the Benghazi attack. Instead, she emailed aides Philippe Reines and Huma Abedin seeking a copy of “The Oath of Tobruk,” a documentary about the Libyan civil war directed by French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and produced by her friend, Harvey Weinstein.

Clinton was interviewed for the film, which Weinstein claimed depicted the secretary’s “leadership” in Libya.

Confused the names of two Americans killed at Benghazi

After Clinton learned that ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith, a Foreign Service officer, had been killed at Benghazi, she sent an email to several top aides asking if she should issue a statement that night or the following day.

The only problem was, Clinton flubbed the two murdered Americans’ names. Her email was entitled “Chris Smith.” None of the aides on the email chain — Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Victoria Nuland — corrected the mistake.

Clinton’s aides prepared her speech for a Clinton Foundation event

Emails from Sept. 22, 2012, just 10 days after the Benghazi attack, show that Clinton was concerned with a speech she was set to give on behalf of her family charity, the Clinton Foundation.

Her aide, Jake Sullivan, wrote that “Megan is working on a development speech but please read the below if you can this afternoon.”

“Please let me know your thoughts,” he added.

Clinton instructed another aide, Oscar Flores, to print off the speech, which is redacted in the emails.

State Department and White House officials asked YouTube to block video

One email shows an all-hands-on-deck effort to ensure YouTube and its parent company, Google, continued to block “The Innocence of Muslims” from appearing online.

The Obama administration falsely blamed the movie for sparking the attacks on Benghazi.

On Sept. 27, 2012, Denis McDonough, then the deputy national security advisor, sent an email to several State Department officials which listed contact information for Google’s and YouTube’s CEOs.

Nora Toiv, who worked in Clinton’s office, contacted others within the department stating that the video would be blocked until at least the following Monday, Oct. 1.

Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s then-chief of staff, forwarded the email chain to Clinton.

While it was known that the Obama administration had asked YouTube and Google to block the movie, the emails show that the effort was far more involved that previously reported.

Clinton received now-classified information on her private email account

Shortly before the State Department released Clinton’s records, the FBI redacted portions of a Nov. 18, 2012, email because the information was classified. The email appears to have included names of individuals suspected of carrying out the Benghazi attack.

Clinton and her team have repeatedly denied that she sent or received classified information on her personal email account. The FBI’s re-classification raises questions over whether the agency would have marked the information as classified if Clinton had turned her records over to the State Department as she was required to do when she left the agency in Feb. 2013.

Super PACs test Sen. Lindsey Graham’s commitment to campaign finance reform // Greenville Online // Mary Troyan – May 25, 2015

WASHINGTON – Sen. Lindsey Graham’s all-but-official presidential campaign likely will draw support from super PACs, but the South Carolina Republican said this should be the last election where wealthy donors are allowed to write such huge checks.

Graham, a third-term senator, is expected to officially announce candidacy for the Republican nomination on June 1 in Central.

Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money running ads supporting or opposing individual candidates, as long as they don’t coordinate with campaigns. Most of the 2016 presidential contenders have at least one super PAC backing them, and the committees are raking in millions.

“Every campaign will have friendly super PACs,” Graham said. “You can only ask for a $5,000 contribution as a candidate. So the super PAC role looms large in presidential campaigns.”

But Graham is not a fan. He supported the 2002 law that tightened campaign finance limits, and he’s criticized the 2010 Supreme Court decision that loosened them.

In a recent interview, he said super PACs are a necessary evil of the 2016 contest and whoever wins the White House should try to rein them in.

Many super PACs are using the presidential race to test the limits of campaign finance rules. A new super PAC supporting Democratic contender and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, called Correct the Record, argues it’s allowed to work closely with her campaign because it doesn’t intend to fund paid advertising.

Republican Jeb Bush has appeared at a fundraiser for a super PAC supporting his likely bid. His allies say that’s OK because he’s not yet an official candidate.

Super PACs didn’t exist before 2010, when a pair of federal court rulings, including the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, paved the way for corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts helping get candidates elected.

A crucial factor in Graham’s decision to run for president was his view, based on the few months he spent traveling the country, that he can raise enough money to be competitive.

“I feel like in my case, I’ll have a finance team that can adequately fund my campaign,” Graham said. “That was one of the big Rubicons I had to cross, and I’ve never felt better about that. On the super PAC side, I have very little ability to influence that.”

Voters will grow weary of super PACs’ influence, he said.

“I think over time, there will be a real re-evaluation after this election cycle over the role that some of these PACs play,” Graham said.

He went further during a TV interview in New Hampshire in April, saying a constitutional amendment is needed to curtail super PACs.

“Eventually, we’re going to destroy American politics with so much money in the political process because they are going to turn you off from wanting to vote,” Graham told WMUR in Manchester.

Until then, however, Graham isn’t disavowing any super PAC that may emerge to back his campaign.

His 2014 Senate re-election campaign was helped by the West Main Street Values PAC, run by his allies in South Carolina. The PAC raised about $900,000 last year and financed $272,000 worth of pro-Graham advertising that helped him beat six primary challengers and win the general election by a wide margin.

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated the largest amount, $250,000, to the super PAC. Several other donors have links to pro-Israel organizations, reflecting Graham’s ardent support of the Mideast ally and his willingness to commit military resources to target terrorism.

In January, Graham created a standard political committee, Security Through Strength, to finance his travels while he mulled a White House bid. Donations to that committee were capped at $2,700 per person, and the donors will be disclosed later this summer.

In March, a Hilton Head man who has previously donated to Graham’s Senate campaigns created a super PAC called Security Is Strength. William Bethea Jr., a former chairman of the South Carolina Ports Authority, is listed as treasurer of the new super PAC, which has not yet had to file a report on its financial activity.

Federal Election Commission records don’t specify if the super PAC supports or opposes a specific candidate.

Efforts to reach Bethea for comment Thursday were unsuccessful. Brittany Bramell, a spokeswoman for Graham’s Security Through Strength committee, declined to comment Friday.

Nuclear Waste Hard To Handle For GOP Candidate // National Journal // Jason Plautz – May 25, 2015

In South Carolina, voters want to ship their nuclear waste far away, maybe to a long-dormant federal site in Nevada called Yucca Mountain. Nevadans, on the other hand, mostly want to see it anywhere but in their state.

And with both states hosting early primaries just days apart, Republican presidential candidates are facing a tricky tightrope walk to avoid losing face in either state.

The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which would sit 100 miles outside of Las Vegas, was long thought to be dead, given Sen. Harry Reid's virulent opposition. But with Republicans back in control of the Senate and Reid's pending retirement, the issue has suddenly been revived, and candidates are stuck balancing competing local interests.

Saying you want to open the project—the position taken in recent weeks by Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson—and it's a winner on Feb. 20 in South Carolina, site of the nation's third primary after Iowa and New Hampshire.

But former Nevada Rep. James Bilbray called it "political suicide" in his state, which hosts a wide-open Feb. 23 caucus, the fourth in the nation and first in the West.

"In my political life, I've never seen an issue as emotional in Nevada as Yucca Mountain," said Bilbray, who, as a freshman Democrat, tried to fight the project when Congress first approved it in 1987.

"But I can understand in other states where this can be popular," he said. "I'm not the campaign, I'm not a candidate, but I can see where if you're looking at the big picture and you don't think you can win Nevada, you just try to get some publicity."

The project had been stalled under President Obama and Reid, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reopened its safety study in 2013, which has been favorable towards the site. The House approved $150 million for the site in its fiscal 2016 Energy Department spending bill, and while the Senate did not include similar money, Republicans say they're open to inserting it during a floor debate or in conference with the House.

Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee, two former governors, are staking out more nuanced positions on the Yucca Mountain project. Bush, who's expected to run for the Republican nomination, last week said he's doubtful of Yucca's future, although he acknowledged the need for a long-term solution to the country's waste storage problem.

"I think we need to move to a system where the communities and states want it," Bush told reporters in Reno. "It's a system where instead of having it forced down the throats of people, that there is a consensus inside the communities and states that they want it and they proactively go for it.

And in a statement to National Journal, Huckabee said that "the citizens of Nevada—not federal bureaucrats—should determine the future of Yucca Mountain."

"As a former governor, I believe the federal government should not force Nevada to accept nuclear waste against their will, but work with Nevada officials to find a mutually agreeable solution," Huckabee said.

That stance, which mirrors what major GOP candidates like Mitt Romney have said in the past, is a bit of a hedge, said University of Nevada, Las Vegas political science professor David Damore.

"That's language you hear from Republicans trying to find a middle ground between what the nuclear industry wants and what you say when you're in Nevada," said Damore.

Polls show that voters largely don't want the repository to open, and Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval has pushed funds through the state legislature to fight the project. Reid lashed out at Bush and Rubio, saying in an email that he dared "any Republican to step foot in Nevada and declare their support for" Yucca Mountain.

"Let this be a warning to Republican presidential candidates as they make their way to Nevada: Google exists and you cannot hide from your past positions on Yucca Mountain," he said in a statement from the Nevada Democratic Party.

But nationally, Republicans and the nuclear industry want to see Yucca opened, since the government already has poured millions into the site and it's seen as the best federal location (there also is movement for smaller, private repositories in other states). Bush is even a member of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a pro-Yucca group backed by the Nuclear Energy Institute, although he splits with it on this issue (the tie was first reported by Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston).

And in South Carolina, Yucca represents an opportunity to clear out its crowded nuclear waste sites; along with Washington, it sued the NRC to reopen its review of the Nevada project, a decision it won in 2013. Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Lindsey Graham, himself an expected 2016 candidate, applauded the decision and said they were determined to ensure South Carolina did not become a permanent home to nuclear waste.

"If we could ship everything away, we'd do it for sure. We've even talked about putting it on rockets and sending it into space," said David Woodward, a political science professor at Clemson who has advised Republican campaigns. "Obviously its best to say that you're for Yucca Mountain here."

And that's why the state has become a welcome site for some pro-Yucca statements. Rubio saidthis month that with the money spent on Yucca, it should move forward. Cruz told the Greenville News that Yucca should have opened years ago, blaming the delay on Reid's "brand of nasty, partisan politics," although he added that if Nevadans opposed, he would be open to moving the site and recouping the federal funds spent there.

And Ben Carson said the Yucca site was "logical" given its sparse population, saying, "if the science is correct, we do have to come up with a mechanism for transporting the nuclear waste in a safe manner, and I think the people of Nevada would need to be compensated for that as well."

But that again leaves them on shaky ground in the valuable Nevada race. Rubio is in an especially awkward spot -- lieutenant governor Mark Hutchison also opposes the project, but was recently named chair of Rubio's Nevada campaign. Hutchison told the Las Vegas Review Journal that he wouldn't leave the campaign over the issue, but would "use my own personal influence and my relationship with him to make Nevada's case against Yucca Mountain."

A spokesman for Rand Paul said the senator was not commenting on Yucca, while a spokesman for Carly Fiorina did not return a request. Democrats have been generally opposed to the project; Hillary Clinton in the 2008 campaign said she opposed it.

Another variable complicating the candidates' stance was Nevada's current use of a caucus. Although it's an early voting state, the format of the caucus has blunted turnout and in the past made Romney, who had the support of the state's Mormon voters, and Ron Paul, backed by libertarians, the dominant figures there.

State leaders are exploring a move to a primary, which state analysts say could make the state more appealing to national candidates. That, Bilbray said, could give candidates like Bush a leg up when they avoid full-throated support for Yucca.

"If I don't think I'm winning a caucus, I move on and say something that's going to get me publicity," Bilbray said. "But I don't see how a candidate can win on this. Anyone, even you or me, could win against a candidate who supports Yucca."

Marco Rubio and the Challenge to Hillary Clinton // Huffington Post Politics /// Hoyt Hilsman – May 25, 2015

In a recent article in the New York Times, Jeremy Peters reported on the growing fears of some Democrats -- even within the Clinton camp -- over facing Marco Rubio in the 2016 campaign. They see several powerful forces at work in Rubio's candidacy -- his youth and his Hispanic heritage, not to mention his charismatic personality.

Patti Solis Doyle, who ran Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign and was the first female Hispanic to run a presidential campaign, was quoted in the article as saying Rubio "is a powerful speaker," adding "He is young. He is very motivational. He has a powerful story."

Rubio has two strong cards to play if he faces Clinton in the election. First and most important is the generational divide. Rubio, at age 43, can argue that he represents the future of American politics, while Clinton, at age 69, represents the past. Since the Democrats have relied on younger voters for their support in recent presidential elections, even a modest percentage of young voters defecting to the Rubio camp would be a serious threat to Democratic prospects.

The other obvious advantage is his Hispanic heritage. Again, Democrats have relied on the loyalty of Hispanic voters -- and the Republican hard-line against immigration reform -- to keep Hispanics solidly in their camp. However, as Doyle points out, Rubio "could have the ability to nip away at the numbers for the Democrats." That could mean trouble for Clinton, especially in the crucial swing state of Florida, Rubio's home territory.

Rubio understands his natural advantages over Clinton and has wisely exploited them in recent days. Following the old adage in politics that one should attack an opponent's strength, Rubio proposed a tax plan aimed at helping middle-class families instead of the traditional Republican approach of lowering taxes for high earners. This proposal very cleverly provides a benefit for most Americans and addresses the income inequality issue more concretely than the populist "tax the rich" proposals.

The conventional wisdom among Democrats is that Rubio's departures from Republican orthodoxy will doom him in the primaries and that if he moves to the center in his policies, he will never get the Republican nomination. This is a curious strategy for Democrats since it relies on the Republican right to rescue Clinton from a formidable opponent. It also is likely wrong. Many Republicans are tired of losing presidential elections and of being steamrolled by Tea Party and other ultra-conservative forces. Even the ranks of the hard right are being weakened by competing, more moderate forces.

In the meantime, Democrats are looking in the rear-view mirror and hoping that the past is prelude to the 2016 election. On the left, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are trumpeting a populist platform that resonates with many Americans but has very little to offer in the way of concrete, practicable solutions to the pressing problems of average families. And Clinton has yet to present a credible reason why she should be president or how her policies would address the challenges that we face as a nation.

Barack Obama was presented as a transformational candidate when he ran in 2008. He was young, charismatic and promised change. Although his presidency ran aground on the realities of the political system, the hunger for change is just as great today as it was in 2008. Unless Democrats can offer the hope of real change with a candidate that inspires voters to believe in her, they may be fighting an uphill battle the White House. And Democrats cannot rely on the Republican right -- the Tea Party, the Koch brothers or the rest of the ultra-conservative gang -- to deliver the White House to the Democratic nominee. As the old saying goes, they have to "earn it."

Analysis: Anti-gay bill rejection gives Jindal a campaign opportunity // AP via LGBTQNation // Melinda DeSlatte – May 25, 2015

BATON ROUGE, La. — By voting down a proposal to give special protections to people who oppose same-sex marriage, lawmakers thought they had put the divisive issue to bed and ended one of the major controversies of the legislative session.

The defeat seemed a sharp rebuke to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who championed the religious objections bill as a central plank of his legislative agenda.

Instead, lawmakers handed Jindal a way to bolster his rallying cry about “religious liberty” as he uses the nation’s culture wars to help build a likely campaign for president.

Perhaps the Republican governor hoped it might go this way all along.

The defeat gave Jindal the ability to issue an executive order that he could tout across presidential campaign states to showcase his efforts to protect what he describes as religious freedom. And it came the same week Jindal announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee and a group tied to the governor launched an ad in Iowa positioning Jindal as a defender of religious rights.

On Tuesday, the House civil law committee voted 10-2 against the bill proposed by Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Bossier City, that would have prohibited the state from denying people or businesses any licenses, benefits, jobs or tax deductions because of actions taken “in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction” about marriage.

Johnson framed it as a protection for Christians who believe that marriage should only be between a man and woman, anticipating the U.S. Supreme Court this summer will strike down same-sex marriage bans across the country.

Critics saw it as sanctioning in law discrimination against same-sex couples.

Businesses came out in opposition, much like they did for similar debates in Indiana, Arkansas and other states. Dow Chemical Company – which employs 6,000 direct workers and contractors in Louisiana – said it would hinder the company’s ability to recruit employees. Tourism leaders said it could heavily damage one of the state’s most important industries.

Lawmakers called the proposal an unnecessary distraction from important work on balancing next year’s budget and stabilizing the state’s finances. The House committee’s shelving of Johnson’s bill was designed to end the controversy.

Jindal, who is courting evangelical Christians for his likely White House bid, seemed to see the committee’s action as an opportunity. He issued an executive order aimed at doing the same thing as Johnson’s bill, albeit in a narrower fashion.

The order prohibits state agencies under Jindal’s control from denying licenses, benefits, contracts or tax deductions in response to actions taken because of someone’s “religious belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman.”

“We don’t support discrimination in Louisiana and we do support religious liberty. These two values can be upheld at the same time,” Jindal said.

Many suggest the order has no practical effect and is unenforceable because of limits on Jindal’s power through executive order. Jindal’s office dismisses such criticism. But it’s also unclear if enforceability is really the point.

Rep. Walt Leger, D-New Orleans, the second-highest ranking member of the Louisiana House, said while lawmakers came to the conclusion the bill wasn’t necessary, “the governor is engaged with something other than trying to deal with real issues in the state of Louisiana.”

Jindal did something similar in relation to the Common Core education standards.

Last year, the governor came out in opposition to the multistate English and math standards, but he did little to bolster efforts from a group of lawmakers trying to remove Common Core from Louisiana’s public school classrooms.

Instead, he waited until the legislative session had ended and the bill had failed, then issued a series of executive orders he said were aimed at getting Louisiana out of Common Core.

The orders had no such effect, and the education standards remain in place.

Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire won’t know if Jindal’s latest executive order, as some contend, really does nothing. And Jindal will get to say he was the fighter for “religious liberty” who put it in place.

Can Marco Rubio Make Peace With Conservatives on Immigration? // The Daily Signal // Ken McIntyre – May 25, 2015

Some conservatives wrote off Marco Rubio as a prospective candidate for president because of the Florida Republican’s work on, and advocacy for, the Gang of Eight immigration reform bill.

The first-term senator began to talk about that legislation as a mistake, though, as he moved toward his April 13 announcement that he was formally entering the race for the White House.

Even so, he mentioned the immigration issue only once as he declared his candidacy at Miami’s Freedom Tower, a former immigrant-intake facility.

“If we reform our tax code, reduce regulations, control spending, modernize our immigration laws and repeal and replace Obamacare,” Rubio said about halfway through the speech, “the American people will create millions of better-paying modern jobs.”

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“The thing that’s different with Marco is that he’s responded to criticism,” one close observer of policy battles in Congress for an outside group tells The Daily Signal.

Rubio’s problem, this person adds, is that he chose several years ago to make immigration reform his signature domestic issue.

Although not straining to bring up what to do about immigrants already in the country illegally, Rubio, who turned 44 this month, appears to be increasingly comfortable explaining why he decided they should wait longer before the government considers legal status for them.

In a May 1 appearance at a gathering of conservatives sponsored by the National Review Institute, the son of Cuban immigrants forcefully took on liberal activists who claim a “right” for immigrants in the country illegally to become citizens.

“There is no right to illegally immigrate anywhere in the world,” he told the crowd.

“What I’m saying to people is that we can’t do it in a massive piece of legislation,” Rubio said of reforming the immigration system and addressing the status of  illegal immigrants in an interview with Bob Schieffer of CBS News that aired April 19 on “Face the Nation.”

He said Americans have a message for their public officials about the more than 12 million living here unlawfully:  “We know we have to deal with this. We’re not prepared to deal with this until first you can prove to us that this will never happen again.”

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, says he thinks Rubio has gotten closer to the mark but faces skepticism among conservatives because of his leadership role in promoting the Gang of Eight bill.

“The real question is, are we actually going to plug the hole in the boat before we start bailing it out?” Krikorian says in an interview with The Daily Signal.

With Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker talking about possible new limits on legal immigration as he contemplates a White House bid, Krikorian says, Rubio and other hopefuls will need to specify whether they favor net increases in higher-skilled workers.

“He is going to have to be pressed on the issue, and we’ll see what he says.”

The word “immigration” does not appear in the policy agenda on Rubio’s official Senate web site. In the blog and commentary section of the site, he hasn’t mentioned immigration reform since April 17, 2013.

That’s a rough measure, perhaps, of when Rubio began to disassociate himself from the Senate bill that supporters called comprehensive immigration reform and opponents called amnesty for illegal immigrants.

As one of the so-called Gang of Eight in what was then the Democrat-controlled Senate, the Florida Republican co-sponsored, helped craft and promote, and ultimately voted for the bill when it passed 68-32 on June 27, 2013.

Billie Tucker, former head of the First Coast Tea Party in Florida, says she hasn’t lost faith in Rubio—and she isn’t alone.

“I will tell you from my observations that Marco Rubio is still a man of principle and conviction,” Tucker says in an interview with The Daily Signal.

She recalls Rubio calling several years ago to talk about his plans to focus on doing something for children unlawfully brought here by their parents, who “never knew anything else” but America. He wanted to know how tea party activists would react.

“I told him, ‘Marco, I don’t think people would be opposed to that if it was done right.’ These children shouldn’t be punished for what their parents did, but they shouldn’t get special treatment either,” Tucker recalls.

“He will have some people who will never forgive him, who expect people to be perfect. I still trust Marco. That is my personal opinion,” she says, adding: “I’m going to get all kinds of crap about that, but I don’t care.”

Also voting yes on the Gang of Eight bill were two of the four other senators in the presidential race, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Among those voting no were Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

The legislation proved dead on arrival in the House, where a significant portion of Republican lawmakers—some citing Obamacare—said they wouldn’t support an all-in-one bill that could move illegal immigrants toward citizenship without first ensuring border security, workplace compliance and enforcement of other immigration laws.

By October 2013, Rubio’s break from his own bill was clear.

He “had to be reasonable about what is achievable,” Rubio told the Wall Street Journal.

House Republicans did move several bills addressing aspects of immigration, although none was scheduled for a floor vote.

Interest in the Republican-controlled House then withered when President Obama went around Congress to take executive actions that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to stay and work here without fear of being deported.

By that time, Rubio rapidly had lost ground with grass-roots conservatives.

As one angry voter wrote in a typical comment on news accounts of the Senate action:

I contributed to Rubio’s Senate campaign and I regret it. … I will do all I can to defeat Rubio for any office that quisling runs for. He … lied through his teeth about his real position on amnesty in his 2010 campaign.

But another posted this comment on Rubio:

And why did FL [Florida] go to President Obama [in] 2012? He [Rubio] has earned my respect for taking a stand on something that is not popular with the immigration hawks in his party. This will get done. If it isn’t done this time the GOP will win a battle but will ultimately lose the war.

In the annual presidential preference poll conducted at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference, to take one measure, Rubio dropped from second to seventh place. He stayed there this year.

Some Rubio sympathizers blamed Cesar Conda, his chief of staff at the time, who last spring joined Reclaim America, the political action committee advancing Rubio’s White House bid. Conda was once a domestic policy aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Rubio’s underestimation of the blowback revealed that he perhaps wasn’t as engaged with tea party conservatives in Florida and elsewhere as he was depicted to be, Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler says in an interview with The Daily Signal.

Meckler speculates that Rubio did not see an advantage in becoming too closely associated with the tea party movement in Florida, not only a swing state but one that is key to winning the White House.

How Rubio treats skeptical grass-roots activists could be “his win-or-lose move” as a contender for the presidency, says Meckler, now head of  Citizens for Self-Governance.

“Rubio, far more than the other GOP candidates, will have to be much more specific with his immigration reform agenda to convince suspicious voters,” says Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “Simply saying, ‘We need to secure the border before anything else happens’ may be heard as ‘amnesty a little later’ rather than ‘amnesty never.’

Rubio devotes eight pages to reform of the nation’s immigration system in his 195-page book “American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone,” couching the issue as part of “winning the global competition for investment and innovation.”

“We simply cannot remain competitive in the 21st century if we are unable to attract and keep the most talented people in the world,” he writes.

Then, noting the struggles of “so many working-class and middle-class families,” Rubio argues that advocating continued immigration reform doesn’t have to be at odds with helping those Americans—so long as policymakers reform a “chaotic” system.

He cites sectors of the border with Mexico that are not secure, immigration laws that “are simply not enforced or unenforceable,” and a family-based system of legal entry that is a “relic of the last century.”

He writes:

No nation on earth is more generous when it comes to immigration than America. Each year about 1 million people permanently immigrate here legally. But when people hear that we have over 12 million people here illegally, they feel as if we are being taken advantage of. They see how hard it is to find and keep a steady and well-paying job, and they worry that more people will mean more competition for already scarce work. That’s not nativism. That’s human nature.

Rubio argues that economic growth depends on a merit-based, high-skilled immigration system that works, in part by encouraging innovators and entrepreneurs to settle here. The holdup, he adds, is failure to address the nation’s 12 million or more illegal residents.

“We will never have the votes needed in Congress to modernize any part of our immigration system until the issue of illegal immigration is adequately dealt with first,” Rubio says in his book. Americans “simply don’t trust” politicians of either major party to move forward “before illegal immigration has been brought under control.”

Skepticism was fueled in early 2014 when parts of the southern border “essentially were overrun,” largely by unaccompanied children from Central America, he says, despite assurances that the border was “as secure as ever” from Obama, allies in Congress and advocates of immigration reform.

Obama’s executive actions to “ignore, suspend, rewrite or violate” the law cemented public mistrust of the administration and resulted in stalemate, Rubio writes.

Public mistrust and the backlash against his leading role in the Senate bill apparently convinced Rubio to renounce what he calls “comprehensive reform of anything in a single bill” as unrealistic.

“Having tried that approach, I know this to be true firsthand,” Rubio adds:

The fear that such massive pieces of legislation include some clever loophole or unintended consequence makes it even harder to achieve. The only way we are going to be able to break this impasse and make progress on this issue is in a sequential and piecemeal way, with a series of bills that build upon one another until ultimately we have put in place the kind of immigration system our nation needs.

He then lays out the necessary steps.

Step one: Exercise effective, verifiable enforcement, including “securing the most vulnerable and most trafficked” stretches of the border using more electronic monitoring as well as personnel; a “mandatory” E-Verify system that reliably allows employers to check the legal status of those they hire; and “full implementation” of an entry-exit tracking system designed to flag visitors who overstay visas.

Step two: Move to a merit-based legal immigration system by reassigning existing visas from family-based entries toward work- and skill-based entries; implementing reforms encouraging visas for high-tech workers; and creating a “guest worker” program for seasonal agricultural laborers.

Step three: Address the 12 million here illegally in a three-part process.  First, they come forward to be registered and “will have to leave” if they “committed serious crimes” or “have not been here long enough” (Rubio does not specify).

Then, those who qualify are allowed to apply for a temporary nonimmigrant visa, which they can’t get until paying a fee and a fine, undergoing a background check and learning English. To keep the visa, Rubio says, they must pay taxes but “would not qualify for government programs like Obamacare, welfare or food stamps.”

Finally, visa holders have to retain that status “for at least a decade” before they are allowed to apply for permanent residency – “the way anyone else would, not through any special pathway,” Rubio writes.

The chronology Rubio outlines in this third step closely tracks provisions in the Senate bill; the difference is that he now insists border security and other enforcement measures first will be fully implemented—not just planned or budgeted.

How Rubio’s changed perspective on a sequenced response to the immigration challenge will play with voters is only beginning to be tested. The first GOP debates are months away, and the first primary and caucus voters even further.

For now, activists on both sides of the issue are watching. Two who spoke to The Daily Signal are with organizations that oppose a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants and want to see what they consider sensible curbs on legal immigration.

“The take-away lesson for others,” FAIR’s Dane says, “is to listen to your constituents, approach immigration from the principled standpoint of what’s in the broad national interest and stick with it.”

“He’s rehabilitating himself. It’s a big hill to climb,” says Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, adding:

There’s a lot of distrust [but] I think also there is a real reservoir of interest among conservative Republicans for a fresh face. They’re fighting with him, but they like him. There’s a real desire among a lot of people for him to rehabilitate himself.

Republican Presidential Debate Caps Upend 2016 Race // The Wall Street Journal // Reid J. Epstein – May 25, 2015

New rules that limit the number of contenders on stage during the first Republican presidential debates are likely to alter the campaign calculations for many of the GOP candidates, forcing them to try to build national name recognition months earlier than planned.

Four Republicans are poised to formally announce their White House campaigns in the next 10 days, but it is virtually certain that not all of them will qualify for the party’s initial televised debates, the premier venue for introducing themselves to voters.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and former officeholders Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and George Pataki will start their campaigns with low standing in national surveys, the barometer Fox News and CNN will use to determine who is invited to participate in GOP-sanctioned debates. None of the four new contenders is drawing above 2.5% in an aggregate of national polls, which could prove too low to meet the networks’ cutoff for making it onstage for the main debate forums.

With national polls largely a function of name recognition, strategists working for various campaigns said they expected long-shot candidates to spend time in cable TV studios in New York that may instead have been used to meet voters at small events in Iowa or New Hampshire. Money that might have gone to build a campaign infrastructure in early states could instead be diverted to buying national TV ads.

Moreover, candidates traditionally have tried to time their campaigns to peak right at the time of the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, scheduled this cycle for February. Now, candidates with low name recognition must try to build national profiles ahead of the first primary debate, set for Aug. 6.

Not being invited to the debates could serve as an early death knell for candidates already in the shadows of fundraising behemoths such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who have yet to formally declare their candidacies, or Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

“At some point, if you’re not in the debates you’re not a legitimate candidate,” said Matt Moore, the South Carolina GOP chairman.

Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore noted that when he ran a quixotic campaign for the party’s nomination in 2008, he was allowed to join the GOP’s first three debates before he dropped out. Now weighing a 2016 run, Mr. Gilmore said the networks’ debate rules will affect campaigns’ decision-making.

“The debate criteria begins to govern the strategy of the candidates,” Mr. Gilmore said. “It’s a very significant thing. The debate rules here are very influential.”

Fox News, which will host the GOP’s first debate, in Cleveland, said last week it would limit participation to candidates who are in the top 10 of an average of national polling. CNN, which will air the party’s second debate, in September, said it would do the same, though it will also include a segment for lower-polling candidates, a kind of junior-varsity debate before the main event. Rules for subsequent debates, beginning with a planned October debate on CNBC, haven’t been announced.

With 16 or more serious candidates likely to run, the Fox News rules could winnow out such hopefuls as Mr. Pataki, a former governor of New York, as well as Mr. Graham, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, unless they improve their current standing in the polls. At the same time, entertainer and businessman Donald Trump could qualify based on national name recognition, should he run.

The Republican National Committeesaid last year that it was wresting control of what in the 2012 cycle was an unwieldy process of nearly two dozen debates—many of them involving eight candidates—by sanctioning 12 official forums for this coming cycle. But the RNC left it to the broadcast networks to determine the criteria for participation.

Now, GOP officials find themselves worried in particular that excluding Mrs. Fiorina, the only woman seeking the party’s nomination, from debates would reflect poorly on a party widely expected to run against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Fiorina has professed optimism that she will increase her standing in national polls enough to qualify.

“If you give me a goal, I’m going to work really hard to try and meet or exceed that goal, so that’s what I’ve got to go do now,” she said last week during a radio interview on SiriusXM.

For the candidates joining the race this week, worrying about getting into the debates is already coloring their thoughts. Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator and 2012 White House candidate, blasted the Fox News rules at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Oklahoma last week, telling reporters they were “not legitimate.”

David Catalfamo, a top aide to Mr. Pataki, said dropping long-shot candidates from the debate stage would have eliminated some presidents whose road to the White House began with little support.

Mr. Catalfamo said Mr. Pataki won his first election as governor, in 1994, as a long-shot candidate. “He wouldn’t have been the 10th candidate [on the stage]” under the current debate rules, Mr. Catalfamo said. “Just like Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Abe Lincoln wouldn’t have been when they were elected.”

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who by current polling exceeds the standard to qualify for the debates, wrote an open letter to RNC members Friday urging them not to exclude “fringe” candidates.

“I am very worried that out of broadcasting convenience, our party is about to exclude voices from our debate programs that are critical to making our party bigger, better and bolder,” Mr. Carson wrote.

Perhaps just as concerned are top GOP officials from early presidential nominating states, who now worry about diminishing influence.

“The purpose of the [early-voting] carve out-states is to not crowd out the underfunded and upstart candidates,” said Mr. Moore, the South Carolina party chairman. “Many here are disappointed about using national polling to set debate criteria.”

Christie places fourth in southern GOP conference straw poll // NJ.com // Claude Brodesser-Akner – May 25, 2015

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie placed fourth in the Southern Republican Leadership Conference's 2016 straw poll this Memorial Day weekend, edging out top tier GOP candidates like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and current U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky but finishing well behind former neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

The poll of nearly a thousand conservative voters is an early indicator of southern primary voter support.

Christie had attended the conservative gathering in Oklahoma City on Friday, giving a speech which argued for pragmatism above all: As a conservative governor in a state with three-quarters of a million more registered Democrats, he represents his party's best chance of wresting back control of the White House next year, he said.

"We need a presidential candidate who knows how to fight," Christie said, "And how to win."

Carson handily won the straw poll with more than one in four votes cast, doing best with social conservatives. Walker finished second, with 20.5 percent of the vote, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas placed third with 16.6 percent. Christie's 5.3 percent was good for fourth, ahead of both former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Christie's better than expected finish with socially conservative voters shows the governor has clearly managed to convince at least some GOP voters to give him a second look. In March, one in three Republicans said they "definitely would not vote for" Christie if he ran for president in 2016, according to an Washington Post-ABC poll.

"Showing up fourth in that group is more surprising and impressive than people recognize," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a taxpayer advocacy group that argues for conservative economic policies.

"The field is so divided that you don't need to be one of three guys to stay alive," explained Norquist, comparing Christie's sudden revival to that of U.S. Sen. John McCain seven years ago.

"McCain would never have been the nominee in 2008, except for the fact that everyone thought he was dead," said Norquist. "As a result, all of the things that would have disqualified him in some parts of the base were not an issue."

Norquist described Christie's surprising strong finish as "the flower in the crack of the pavement where you look and say, 'This could be something.'"

Over the Memorial Day weekend, the undeclared Christie again sounded every bit a presidential candidate, assailing the Senate and his GOP rivals in it for failing to renew the USA Patriot Act as "a failure of the US government to perform its most important function - protecting its citizens from harm."

Paul and Cruz had both voted against renewing the Act over its collection of U.S. citizen's phone records and metadata.

Christie attacked them as "misguided ideologues" with "no real world experience in fighting terrorism" for "putting their uninformed beliefs above the safety and security of our citizens."

The SLRC straw poll was voted on by 958 attendees of the conference, 75 percent of whom were from politically conservative Oklahoma, where the Republican candidate has carried the state in every presidential election since 1968. The rest hailed from Texas, Arkansas and other, primarily southern, states.

Iowa straw poll on death watch? // The Hill // Jonathan Easley – May 25, 2015

The Iowa straw poll deathwatch is underway.

Political watchers in the Hawkeye State say the controversial event, which has served as the traditional starting point for the GOP presidential campaign, has suffered significant blows to its credibility and is at risk of collapsing.

“The straw poll is toast,” said Steffen Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University. “The brand is dead.”

The event, which has been a big moneymaker for the state party, has been criticized for years, chiefly for two reasons: the cost of full participation for candidates has been prohibitive, and the results have tended to push forward  long-shots with no real chance of winning the GOP nomination.

The state party has sought to address some of these issues, moving the event from Ames to a smaller venue in Boone, and no longer requiring candidates to pay enormous sums for prime positions and food for attendees.

But some in the state say the party hasn’t adequately addressed the political risks candidates take by participating in a poll that has only picked the eventual Republican nominee twice in several decades of existence.

In 2011, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) spent about $1 million at the event on his way to a third place finish. He bowed out of the race the next day, while then-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) won the poll before flaming out in the caucuses.

“The mistake the Iowa Republican Party made is that they haven’t done anything to entice frontrunners to show them how they could benefit from this,” said former Iowa Republican Party political director Craig Robinson, who in 2007 served as the liaison between the straw poll and the campaigns.

That criticism has played out publicly over the last couple of weeks as two top-tier candidates said they’d take a pass on the event.

Jeb Bush will spend the second weekend in August in Georgia, along with five other declared or potential candidates, at a gathering hosted by conservative blogger and Red State founder Erick Erickson.

And on Thursday, GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said he too would skip the event, taking to the pages of the state’s most influential newspaper to trash the proceedings.

“I have concluded this year's Iowa straw poll will serve only to weaken conservative candidates and further empower the Washington ruling class and their hand-picked candidates,” Huckabee wrote in the Des Moines Register.

Huckabee’s words were particularly powerful considering he finished second at the event in 2007 on his way to winning the caucuses. (The straw poll was won that year by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a somewhat incongruous result for an event that is widely perceived for favor “red-meat” conservatives.)

Despite the high-profile withdrawals, some Republicans in the state believe that reports of the straw poll’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

“It’s way too early to administer last rites to the Iowa straw poll,” said former Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn. “There’s still no other gathering in Iowa or any early states where candidates will have the opportunity to get in front of upwards of 15,000 or 20,000 of the most active Republicans in the state. There’s clear value there.”

Strawn argued that there’s a breakout opportunity for one or more of the huge field of GOP contenders at the poll, especially those who may be excluded from the debates.

He also argued that there’s risk inherent in skipping, particularly for Huckabee, who faces competition from a handful of candidates who will be fighting for the votes of social conservatives and evangelical Christians who attend the event in big numbers.

“In 2007, [Huckabee] used the straw poll to become the movement conservative and effectively knocked out his competition,” Strawn said. “This year, someone else could be catapulted into that role.”

But for that to happen, the poll will need to land some firm commitments.

The Hill reached out to all of the declared candidates, and so far only two – Ben Carson and Donald Trump – have said they intend to participate.

Representatives for Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz said they’re still undecided, while a spokesperson for Carly Fiorina, who would appear to be almost an archetype of the kind of candidate that could benefit from a strong showing in the poll, was noncommittal. Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

“They need at least six candidates, because it’s not going to work with just two or three,” said Robinson. “And they really need to get Scott Walker. He’s at the top of the polls in Iowa and nationally. If they can get him to commit, a lot of things will fall into place, and some of the other candidates might worry that they’ll be damaged by skipping.”

A spokesperson for Walker’s political team said they’ll make that decision if the governor decides to run for president, as he’s expected to do some time in June.

Strawn said the state party just started reaching out to candidates about the logistics of the event, and he expects some big-name conservative groups will get on board, giving added incentive for candidates to attend.

Beyond the long-standing controversies, the poll has struggled to stay relevant among increased competition from other events in recent years.

This year alone, Iowa Republicans and presidential contenders have already gathered for Rep. Steve King’s Freedom Summit, the first-ever Ag Summit, and the Faith and Freedom Coalition Summit. In June, seven candidates will be attending Sen. Joni Ernst’s first-ever “Roast and Ride” event.

There is a GOP debate on Aug. 6 this year, just days before the straw poll, and the Red State gathering, which is going on the same weekend in Georgia, has generated considerable buzz, with Walker, Bush, Rubio, and Fiorina already confirmed, as well as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

“You’re getting too many events before the caucuses and the straw poll is just one more, and it’s really become a nuisance,” said Schmidt. “I used to be a supporter, but it’s clear now that it’s become a disruption.”

Mike Huckabee and his tax plan got slammed on Fox // Business Insider // Rob Garver – May 25, 2015

A few months after he left his gig as a Fox News television host to pursue the Republican nomination for president in 2016, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was back on Fox News Sunday, and to put it mildly, things did not go well.

While Fox has a reputation for being friendly, sometimes overly so, toward the GOP, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace is usually an equal opportunity interrogator, and he didn’t hesitate to ask his former colleague to explain some of his more controversial claims.

Huckabee, for instance, is an advocate of the “FairTax” plan, which would eliminate the income tax and replace it with a consumption tax of about 30 percent while remaining revenue-neutral. Tax experts have repeatedly exposed the FairTax plan as highly regressive – meaning that lower-income individuals would pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the wealthy.

It was a point Wallace asked Huckabee to address, quoting an analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center which found that “the average rate of the lowest income group would exceed 33 percent, while the average for the top group would fall to less than 16 percent.”

“They have it exactly wrong,” Huckabee said. “In fact, it’s the bottom third of the economy who benefit the most from the FairTax, and the people at the top third who benefit the least Everybody benefits some. That tax study is one that has been discredited by the people who spent over $20 million, very thoughtful economic study developing the FairTax. It’s not just some political idea….“

Wallace interrupted, “Doesn’t it just stand to reason that if I make $5,000, I’m going to spend a higher percentage of my income just for necessities, and if I make $1 million, I’m not going to spend as much of a percentage of my income?”

Huckabee launched into an explanation of what FairTax advocates call a “prebate.” Under the proposal, the government would send a check every month to every taxpayer equivalent to what someone living at the poverty level would pay in taxes for “necessities.” He claimed that the prebates mean low-income earners do better under the system than they do currently.

“The FairTax empowers the consumer,” Huckabee said. “That’s power to the people.”

As it turns out, though, the folks at the Tax Policy Center don’t take kindly to having their analyses described as “discredited” on national television.

Asked to respond to Huckabee, William Gale, co-director of the Center, delivered a withering email takedown of Huckabee’s claims and the FairTax proposal in general.

“He has the distributional benefits backwards,” wrote Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former senior economist for President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. “The notion that a tax on consumption will help the poor and hurt the rich is contrary to just about everything that is known about rich/poor spending and income habits, not just our model.”

In a swipe at the FairTax program, he added: “The ‘people who spent over $20 million on this did not understand for a decade how the tax actually worked, and it took two papers by me as well as other work – for example, the Bush tax reform panel – to convince these people that they had vastly misstated the tax base because they made 20-25 percent of government disappear.”

Len Burman, the director of the Tax Policy Center, joined the fray as well. Also by email, he said that the idea that the poor would do better under the FairTax plan is simply wrong.

“This issue doesn't involve complicated economic analysis,” wrote Burman, who among other things served as a deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis in the Clinton Treasury Department. “It's simple math, and the FairTax advocates have repeatedly and willfully flubbed the math.”

“The distributional effects are pretty straightforward,” he wrote. “High-income people spend only a fraction of their income, so they effectively benefit from a giant tax exemption compared with an income tax.”

In the Fox interview, Wallace eventually let Huckabee wriggle away from the tax issue, but moved on to some other interesting claims the former governor has recently made – including a suggestion that presidents and lawmakers don’t necessarily need to abide by the rulings of the Supreme Court.

Huckabee claimed that the United States has fallen victim to what he called “judicial supremacy,” in which the Supreme Court has set itself above the other branches of the government.

“The Supreme Court isn’t the Supreme branch, and for God’s sake, it isn’t the Supreme Being,” he said. Wallace, who had not suggested that the Supreme Court was in any way God-like, had no answer for that one, and Huckabee was off, dropping straw man arguments as he went.

“It’s a matter of balance of power,” he said. “If the Supreme Court could just make a ruling and everybody has to bow down and fall on their faces and worship that law – it isn’t a law because it hasn’t been yet passed.”

Umm…

“What if the Supreme Court ruled that they were going to make the decision as to who is going to be the next president and save the taxpayers and the voters from all the expense and trouble of voting and they’ll just pick a president? Well we would say that they can’t do that. Why can’t they do it? They can’t do it because it’s not in the law,” Huckabee continued.

But wait, nobody said….

“We are sworn to uphold the Constitution and the law and it has to be agreed on by three branches of government. One can’t overrule the other two,” He said “That’s all I’m saying. We learned that in 9th grade civics, but I’m convinced a lot of Ivy League law schools must have forgotten that simple, basic civics lesson along the way.”

Okay, enough.

That’s just not true. A bill passed by Congress and signed into law by the president can be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. That’s pretty much the definition of one branch overruling the other two.

Sometimes it’s a little difficult to tell if Huckabee is actually mounting a presidential campaign or just an extended book tour for his latest tome, God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy. On Sunday, it felt a lot like the latter.

Mike Huckabee: Creating cynicism // The Washington Post // Jennifer Rubin – May 25, 2015

Former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee speaks at the Freedom Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, in January. (Jim Young/Reuters)

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee complains that trust in government is at an all-time low. Perhaps he is a cause not a solution. Consider this exchange with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday:

WALLACE: Governor, I want to keep moving along, because as I say, there are a lot of things you said in your announcement. You also seemed to indicate that as president, you wouldn’t necessarily obey court rulings, even the Supreme Court. . . . But, Governor, we have operated under the principle of judicial review since the Marbury versus Madison case in 1803.

HUCKABEE: Judicial review is actually what we’ve operated under. We have not operated under judicial supremacy. Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson, presidents have understood that the Supreme Court cannot make a law. They cannot make it. The legislature has to make it, the executive branch has to sign it and enforce it.

And the notion that the Supreme Court comes up with the ruling and that automatically subjects the two other branches to following it defies everything there is about the three equal branches of government. Chris, the Supreme Court is not the supreme branch. And for God’s sake, it isn’t the Supreme Being. It is the Supreme Court.

WALLACE: But, sir, George Will, the conservative columnist, has pointed out that back in 1957, another governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, decided to disregard and refuse to obey the ruling to desegregate schools. President Eisenhower had to call in the 101st Airborne.

Are you saying President Huckabee might decide he wasn’t going to obey the ruling on desegregation, or like President Nixon to turn over the tapes? You know, it’s up in the air as to whether you’re going to obey the Supreme Court?

HUCKABEE: Well, Chris, as you know, George Will is no fan of mine. He’s not very fond of me. He recently called me appalling. So, I’m not surprised he would make such a false comparison.

But the point is, in that case, the Supreme Court had ruled the legislature and the executive branch had agreed with the Supreme Court, and precisely what happened is what should happen. The president ordered the airborne to come in and enforce the law, the law that did exist.

WALLACE: But —

HUCKABEE: It wasn’t that the president defied the law. The president was carrying out the law and using all the forces at his resource to do it.

WALLACE: But, OK, let’s say the president decided, “I don’t like the Supreme Court’s ruling on that,” let’s say Nixon had said, for instance, in Watergate, “I don’t want to turn over the tapes and the court can’t make me”?

HUCKABEE: Well, the president has to follow whatever the law is. Does Congress have a law that tells him what he is going to do? In that case, the Congress was ready to impeach Nixon and he ultimately resigned.

So “the president has to follow whatever the law is,” except if he’s Mike Huckabee railing against gay marriage? Huckabee’s notion is incoherent and in any event a recipe for chaos and lawlessness. The right wing can’t demand the president abide by existing immigration law and any rulings on his executive order while at the same time preaching lawlessness on gay marriage. Huckabee is either deeply cynical or deeply ignorant, but in either case he offers a mirage for the unsophisticated. In doing so he, in essence, says that elected leaders are lying or misleading the public when they say they must obey the court’s ruling. In short, Huckabee is spreading cynicism and a sense of betrayal.

He does not stop there. He and politicians like senators Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) prey on voters’ fears that their phone calls are being listened to and their e-mails read. As Wallace reminded Huckabee, “Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which is the section that is going to expire on June 1st, has nothing to do with listening in on phone calls. It’s just recording the fact that my phone number called your phone number. So, aren’t you, one, wrong there when you talk about listening in?” But facts don’t get in the way of the fear-mongers. Again the result is to spread suspicion and cynicism.

There is plenty to be upset about in Washington. Seven years into the Obama administration there is no entitlement or tax reform, for example. Immigration reform is going nowhere (in part, because there are those to tell the public that immigrants will steal our jobs and lower wages). The international scene is frightful. But while presidential candidates should highlight legitimate failures, they should not heighten the anti-government and conspiratorial fever that already exists. The GOP voters can do their part as well — by rejecting the cranks and fear-mongers. They could start by sending Huckabee packing.

Cruz says GOP candidates afraid to talk gay marriage // GOPUSA // Michael F. Haverluck – May 25, 2015

Taking on the competition in his run for the White House, GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz says that there are many Republican politicians who are scared to jump into the debate over same-sex “marriage” and religious liberty, including some of the candidates he’s running against.

While speaking at the Watchman on the Wall three day conference that ended Friday, Cruz told the crowd of more than 600 in the nation’s capital that he is not afraid to champion their religious freedom.  He wore his faith on his sleeve and addressed some touchy subjects other candidates have appeared to be a bit reticent to tackle.

Opening up the recent debate over the passage of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the Texas senator addressed the topic of religious freedom, noting that the bill was grossly misinterpreted by the great majority of Democrats opposing the bill, according to the Christian Post.

Delving into the issue further, Cruz pointed out how the highly controversial Indiana bill was “substantively identical” to the federal RFRA that was relatively uncontested when President Bill Clinton signed it — a bill that passed with an impressive 97 Senate votes, while unanimously passing the House.

“[The federal RFRA] received the support of such famed right-wing nut cases as Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden," Cruz said in jest to the hall filled with pastors at the event, which was hosted by the Family Research Council.

He went on to explain why Democrats had a sudden change of heart over RFRA, mentioning how the bill was opposed by a number LGBT supporters with deep pockets.

"The modern Democratic Party, working hand-in-hand with big business, decided their allegiance to gay marriage trumps any devotion to religious liberty," Cruz asserted.

Blues in Red’s clothing?

Cruz said it’s even more of a travesty that a large amount of Republicans cease to champion Americans’ religious liberty to avoid a head-on collision with activists pushing for LGBT rights, noting that several of them were running alongside him in the GOP presidential pool for the 2016 Republican ticket.

"I'm going to tell you something that was even sadder was just how many Republicans ran for the hills,” Cruz added, without pointing fingers. "I'll point out that some of the Republicans running in 2016 were nowhere to be found when Indiana was being fought."

Using other candidates’ silence to amplify his voice on the issue, Cruz emphasized that he will champion the freedom of expression and free speech rights of all in the faith community.

"And I can tell you this — I will always, always, always stand and fight for the religious liberty of every American," Cruz promised.

Fighting persecution

He then revisited the latest attempt by the state to silence churches, reminding the audience how believers scored a victory over Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who unsuccessfully tried to subpoena pastors’ communications on homosexuality. Cruz said the scandal was overcome by Christians who applied “pressure and heat and light” to the situation — not allowing the government to quash religious freedom in the pseudo name of tolerance.

Cruz stressed that the threat to religious liberty is nowhere more rampant than in nations that are threatened by Islamic terrorists, where Christians suffer a level of persecution for their faith that few Americans can fathom.

"What's happening here pales in comparison to what is happening across the globe," Cruz insisted.

The senator from the Lone Star State went from ISIS beheading children to crucifying Christians for not denying Jesus Christ and submitting to the Islamic god, Allah.

He also brought up Meriam Ibrahim’s time in a Sudanese prison, where the pregnant mother was released before the Islamic nation’s judicial system could execute her for not submitting to Allah.

Attributing Ibrahim’s release to Christians’ “pressure and heat and light on the government of Sudan,” Cruz recounted meeting with the nearly martyred Sudanese Christian at a previous FRC event, sharing with the crowd a question he posed her. In response to Cruz’s inquiry about how she managed to not renounce her faith throughout her horrific experience in prison, Ibrahim simply told him, “Jesus was with me.”

Cruz used the response as a segue to incite gratefulness in Americans who complain about being discriminated against for their faith.

"Compared with that, problems in America don't seem all that bad," Cruz concluded.

Walker emerges from Southern confab as GOP front-runner // Washington Examiner // Timothy P. Carney - May 24, 2015

OKLAHOMA CITY — The annual Southern Republican Leadership Conference provided a glimpse into the state of the Republican base and the presidential field.

The conference revealed a Republican base that is (1) broadly happy with the crowded and conservative field, (2) still smitten with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and (3) unimpressed and uninterested in Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Senate chaos over the Patriot Act kept the four senators who are running from making it, dampening the mood a bit.

The candidates running a second time — Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Mike Huckabee — do not excite the conservative base.

Also, it was evident from the speakers and the attendees that defense and national security have returned to the forefront of the Republican mind.

Straw Poll: The straw poll results mostly reflected Scott Walker's popularity, and the apprehension the Republican base has for Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, the perceived establishment moderates in the field.

1) Dr. Ben Carson won the straw poll handily, thanks to his having the biggest organized effort. His campaign bought a booth and bought 100 tickets, to allow supporters to attend for free. Many of these supporters came in from out of state. All told, Carson won about 240 votes.

2) The biggest winner may have been Wisconsin Gov. Walker, who finished a close second, with about 200 votes. He had no organized effort to win the straw poll, but he still won the most votes among Oklahomans in the crowd. His Friday afternoon speech was spot-on and well delivered. His strong showing reflects that the good will Walker garnered through his fights in Madison, Wis., sill buoy him, even after other conservative stars have entered the race.

3) Sen. Ted Cruz was a big reason many conservatives attended the event — he was slated to be the keynote speaker, and is something of a superstar, but he had to miss the confab for Senate votes. Cruz's campaign ran a small but clever operation to try and win the straw poll. A third-place finish for a no-show isn't bad.

----------------------------

THE CANDIDATES

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Walker: Walker continues to impress the GOP crowd, especially those who haven't seen him before.

1) His strong second-place finish in the straw poll was impressive because he was the only candidate to post double digits without an organized straw poll effort.

2) Pacing the stage, jacketless, in a blue shirt, sleeves rolled up, Walker's speaking style was easy and comfortable. Some attendees found him too low-key. Most saw his style as confident and assuring.

3) What recommends Walker most to Republican voters is his successful battles with powerful labor unions, the media, and the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Walker made these battles — including his recall election victory — the focus of his talk.

4) Walker was able to tick off a long list of legislative accomplishments, touching on all the major conservative policy priorities: cutting spending, cutting taxes, bringing the bureaucracy to heel, defunding Planned Parenthood, expanding gun rights, passing right to work, requiring photo ID for voters and so on.

5) Walker cast his political and policy wins as populist victories over powerful insiders. He described his fight against the government unions as "taking power out of the hands the big-government special interests" and putting it in the hands of ordinary people.

6) Walker closed with a pointed critique of his rivals. He said many Washington politicians are good at picking fights, but they don't win — a clear reference to Cruz's failed Obamacare shutdown, and Marco Rubio and Paul's lack of a record. Alternatively, many Republicans, Walker said, are good at winning races, but they never fight for important, tough things — presumably referring to Christie and Bush.

7) Conference attendees praised Walker's "courage," and ability to "solve problems." They said he reminded them of Reagan.

8) The word "front-runner" can carry many meanings, but it probably fits Walker at the moment.

Cruz: Cruz was a no-show because of Senate votes, but he still made an impression from afar.

1) Cruz was supposed to be the dinner keynote address. Instead he gave a 25-minute video-taped speech. The message was standard Cruz, and the delivery was constrained by the format. Still he elicited applause from the dinner crowd.

2) Cruz's father, pastor Rafael Cruz, spoke twice — once at the dinner and once Saturday, near the end of the proceedings. The elder Cruz pleased the crowd.

3) Cruz's 16.6 percent in the straw poll was enough for third place, and it was three times the vote total of the fourth-place finisher, Chris Christie. This was partly the fruit of his campaign's small but clever campaign to win the straw poll.

4) Along with his decent positives, Cruz has some negatives with the base — more than the other conservatives. Some Republicans dislike his libertarian streak (these people dislike Rand Paul more), while others see him as a grandstander.

5) Cruz was probably the most common target (unnamed) of criticism from other candidates. Many candidates made pointed reference to grandstanding, empty speechifying, ineffective unbendingness and inexperience in office.

Carson: Carson has high positives and low negatives among the conservative base, but many see him more as a running mate or a cabinet official.

1) Carson's straw poll victory was not proof that he is the favorite of the southern Republican crowd. It was instead the fruit of a deliberate, paid effort by his super PAC to win the straw poll. Still, he earned at least 150 more votes than his supporters bought in tickets — an impressive showing that would have put him in third place.

2) The assembled Republicans all had good things to say about him. At least three attendees independently called Dr. Carson "a healer," suggesting he could "heal" the country.

3) Conservative enthusiasm for Carson is partly grounded in the belief that Obama has divided Americans along racial lines, and that Carson would bridge that divide.

4) Carson is the only Republican in the field who has never before run for office, and that is generally seen as a positive among a base that has grown increasingly anti-establishment and anti-Washington.

5) Carson's speaking style, while endearing, is not compelling. He's sleepy, down to earth, charming and funny. But he's not forceful in the way Walker is, nor does he seem as purposeful as Carly Fiorina. Although he's not a career politician, his message isn't significantly different from that of the other candidates.

6) Attendees often mentioned Carson as a potential running-mate for a more experienced nominee.

Christie: Greeted with skepticism as a possible squish from the Northeast, Christie won over — or at least entertained — the conservative crowd. His was probably the best speech of the weekend.

1) Christie speaks in an easy, relaxed tone that conveys confidence. He walked the stage, with no script or notes at hand, but still delivered a well-crafted speech, peppered with personal stories both funny and moving.

2) His two main themes are his record, and criticism of Barack Obama.

3) Christie was perhaps the most consistent candidate in knocking Obama (as opposed to merely Hillary Clinton). This is likely an attempt to undo the harm he did to himself among the GOP base by hugging President Obama after tropical storm Sandy. When he pledged to undo Obama's executive orders, the crowd roared.

4) Christie touted his record of "fiscal conservatism," in New Jersey, cutting spending and regulation and axing thousands of state jobs. He didn't play up his cooperation with Democrats, but instead portrayed himself as fighting the special interests in his state.

5) Electability — specifically, his ability to beat Hillary — was a powerful point Christie made in his talk. Republicans need a nominee who "knows how to fight and knows how to win."

6) In his catalog of policy prescriptions — not a central focus of the talk — Christie won some decent applause. He hit some standard GOP issues such as entitlement reform and flatter taxes.

7) Christie's forceful critique of the civil libertarian wing of the party divided the crowd more than any other issue. When he attacked (without naming) Rand Paul for holding up the Patriot Act reauthorization, deploring the "very dangerous debate," half the crowd rose to their feet in applause, while the other half sat on their hands.

8) Attendees received Christie's speech well, applauding often, and in interviews saying they were pleasantly surprised.

9) Still many conservatives rule out Christie, as a RINO, often mentioning his post-Sandy embrace of Obama. Christie's hard line in favor of NSA spying also turns off a subset of the conservative crowd.

10) Christie has serious upside potential. There will probably be a Christie boom or boomlet at some point in the primary season.

Perry: Rick Perry's speech was excellent, one of the two best of the weekend. Still, few conservatives see him as their top choice.

1) Perry's style was more formal than the others. He stood behind the podium, in his crisp dark suit, and read clearly with gravity from a script — but it was a good script.

2) Perry played up his record in Texas, as a series of policy victories, as an economic success story, and as having provided the experience a president will need. He said the president must be "someone who's been tested."

3) Perry specifically contrasted his executive experience with the inexperience of his rivals who sit in the U.S. Senate, particularly Paul and Cruz: "Leadership's not a speech on the Senate floor — it's a record of action." Along similar lines, Perry said: "A lot of candidates will say the right thing. We need a candidate that will do the right thing."

4) He ticked off his accomplishments on job growth, budgets, border enforcement and education, eliciting a roar from the crowd with his criticism of Common Core.

5) Very few attendees volunteered Perry's name as one of their favorite candidates, even after his powerful speech. His fifth-place finish — behind Christie, and in a state neighboring his own — suggests the Perry's failed 2012 run puts him at a disadvantage as 2016 starts.

Jindal: Bobby Jindal delivered a culture-war polemic that seemed to touch the rawest nerves of the conservative crowd.

1) Jindal — whether he was talking about the Islamic State, religious liberty, school, his life story or immigration — spoke in terms of a culture war.

2) Jindal seemed the most in touch with this conservative, mostly older and white, Oklahoma crowd. He warned that Obama wants to "redefine our country" and works to "divide us." This sort of talk of cultural identity and divisiveness is ubiquitous among the conservative crowd. Jindal was the only one to clearly tap into this apprehension.

3) Jindal's style was down-home story-telling, filled with legitimately funny jokes — not just politician jokes, but actual comedian material. On a dreary, rainy Friday afternoon he woke up a crowd that had been dulled by Jeb Bush, and a bit dispirited by the recently announced absence of superstars Rubio and Cruz.

4) Most of Jindal's speech was his own American dream story. This quietly highlighted his ethnic minority status in a way that appealed to the crowd.

Fiorina: Fiorina has little support but the biggest upside potential of any candidate in the field.

1) Fiorina barely registers in the minds of conservatives when you ask them to name their favorite candidate or candidates. Speaking last at the conference — after the straw poll — didn't help her in OKC.

2) Fiorina defines herself as the anti-Hillary. She leads and closes her speech with barbed attacks on the Democratic front-runner. She elicited one of the weekend's loudest cheers with a direct and undeniable headshot to Clinton: "She. Can. Not. Be. Trusted."

3) Her style is fairly flat, but poised. She comes across as possibly the smartest of the Republican candidates — and that's in a field with some high IQs.

4) She is most insistent and direct in going after crony capitalism, an issue that has the power to motivate the base, and which will be potent against Clinton.

5) Fiorina makes a decent case that her business experience would be useful to the presidency, but her defense of her rocky tenure at HP ("when you lead, you make enemies,") may not be convincing.

Santorum: Santorum barely registered in the straw poll. He'll have a hard climb to convince GOP voters that he's the guy for 2016.

1) Santorum's speech was at times compelling, but often awkward and stiff.

2) He lays on the populism better than the others. His populist pitch to the conservative crowd is part of an electability pitch: unless Republicans get over their Romney 47-percentism, and speak to middle America and the working class if they want to win.

3) Santorum barely registered in the straw poll, even though he won this state's primary in 2012.

Bush: Bush was the loser of the weekend — except maybe when it came to fundraising from the oil and gas barons in OKC.

1) Bush's speech was the worst of the bunch. The delivery was flat and uninspired. He didn't seem to want to be there, and it looked like he barely wanted to be running for president.

2) He has a strong governor record to tout, and the crowd applauded as he recalled his battles with trial lawyers, teachers' unions, and the like.

3) Bush leans hard on the electability issue. "We have to get outside of our comfort zones" in order to win the presidency, he says.

4) I asked dozens of attendees if there were any candidates they would rule out, and Bush's name was easily the most mentioned — for a variety of reasons. Some cited his immigration stance. Others just pointed to his last name. The dislike for Jeb showed up in the straw poll, where he finished in sixth place with less than five percent of the vote.

5) One state party official attended the small gatherings where candidates met with big local donors. She said Bush's gathering had the most impressive crop of billionaires and millionaires, and that they received his message warmly.

The Field: Other candidates didn't register very much at the conference.

1) Rubio was often mentioned when attendees were asked to name their favorite candidates, but Senate votes kept him from attending.

2) Paul also was a no-show, but he hadn't signed up to attend in the first place.

3) Huckabee, who surely would need to win Southern states to even have a chance in the primary, oddly was absent.

Issues: There is no clear priority issue among the candidates nor among the attendees.

1) Education — specifically opposition to Common Core standards — was a common theme from the candidates, and it always revved up the crowd.

2) Along similar lines, religious liberty was big for candidates and attendees alike. As with Common Core, the attacks on religious liberty leave conservatives feeling powerless and disenfranchised. In both cases, big business sides with big government against cultural conservatives.

3) Populism in general was a theme with the candidates, with Fiorina taking on crony capitalism; Walker, Christie and Bush talking about battling the special interests; and Santorum calling for outreach to the working class.

4) Foreign policy was up there with economics as a top concern of the gathered conservatives. It was one of the favorite issues for the candidates. Consistently, support for Israel invoked loud applause.

5) Many attendees — in a crowd that was overwhelmingly old, white, and Southern — fretted about America "losing its identity," and "coming apart," due to "divisiveness."

And now Christie’s moment of Zen // North Jersey.com // Charles Stile  - May 25, 2015

Days after his now legendary “sit down and shut up” outburst aimed at a heckler in Belmar last October, Governor Christie issued a blanket warning of sorts: If anyone pushes him too far, he’s going to push back. They can expect the full-throated Christie takedown.

“I’m not going to change, Matt,” Christie told NBC’s Matt Lauer. “This is who I am.”

Yet as Christie edges closer to a possible plunge into the 2016 presidential campaign, he is presenting himself as a changed man, with a thicker skin and a new appreciation of restraint. Gone — at least for the time being — are the town-hall confrontations and the tart-tongued putdowns that his office proudly circulated on YouTube.

The once-combative Christie now wants the nation’s voting public to see him as the cool-under-pressure Christie, who could be trusted not to go ballistic in a nuclear standoff with Russia or North Korea. The Christie who fired off barbs at public school teachers now wants to demonstrate that he can take the heat of a national campaign.

The anger-management makeover comes as Christie is struggling to climb out of the second tier of hopefuls for the 2016 Republican nomination. But this rebooting of the Christie image presents him with a paradox: New Jersey’s self-proclaimed “tell it like it is” governor runs the risk of becoming more generic, more like the “air-brushed” politicians he once derided.

Instead of standing out, he’s more likely to blend in.

And at this stage, he needs to be noticed.

“At some point, you have to stand out from the pack,” said Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire Republican state chairman and a political consultant not affiliated with any candidate. “He just can’t drift along as just one of 18 candidates forever. “There are also a significant number of Republicans who want somebody who is combative.”

During Christie’s recent swings through New Hampshire, Cullen witnessed a careful Christie, staking out positions and staying clear of any conflict that might go viral. The same approach has also been on display in his recent New Jersey appearances.

At a town-hall-style event in Hasbrouck Heights last month, Christie sparred with a critic for 16 minutes — an unprecedented stretch for him — without losing his patience or his temper. The encounter ended in a handshake.

Christie also refused to take the bait from a couple of patrons in a New Hampshire bar who needled him with jokes about the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal.

And in an interview last week on CNBC, Christie — who once labeled a legislator “numb nuts,” called Democrats “animals” and urged reporters to “take a bat” to state Sen. Loretta Weinberg — argued that the GOP needed to rally behind a nominee who was capable of striking a more tolerant, inclusive tone.

Someone like himself.

“I feel very strongly about the things that I feel very strongly about,” Christie said. “But I don’t have to denigrate somebody else in the process. I think part of our problem has been tone.”

Christie’s defenders say he’s undergoing a rite-of-passage transformation that all presidential candidates face as they step onto the national stage.

“I see it more as a natural progression from a guy who is running a state that is Democratic … to a guy who now realizes he has to show that he can be a statesman,” said former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who ran a brief, unsuccessful campaign for the 2008 Republican nomination for president. “Part of what he has to do is show people the depth of his personality, that he’s not a caricature.”

Impact of GWB case

A raucous, ruffle-the-feathers style was key to Christie’s swift rise to celebrity during his first term. But the George Washington Bridge lane closings — a politically vindictive plot allegedly carried out by close Christie associates to punish Fort Lee’s mayor with traffic snarls — damaged the governor’s image as a leader. While no evidence has linked Christie to the scheme, it created the impression that intimidation and retaliation were tolerated.

Suddenly, Christie’s sharp retorts didn’t seem like truth-telling as much as the words of a political bully. So Christie may be holding his tongue, eager not to reprise the image that he has worked hard to banish.

Others, however, say Christie’s restraint is guided by a more practical consideration. He cannot afford to alienate any voters at this stage, especially in New Hampshire, the early, pivotal primary state that usually embraces pragmatic, moderate Republicans. If Christie fails to make a strong showing there, most analysts say he has little chance of winning the nomination.

“The voters who are only attracted to him because of his bombast are already with him,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “The voters who are not sure of him … are not going to be won over by that kind of behavior.”

Questions about his temperament are clearly a concern for Christie. At a VFW Hall in Hudson, N.H., last week, he went so far as to make the case that he is the Republican Party’s best choice to run against Hillary Clinton because he’s already defeated a liberal Democratic woman, former state Sen. Barbara Buono, in his 2013 reelection bid. Most important, Christie stressed that he never lost his cool when Buono, a weak candidate who posed no real threat to him, goaded him with attacks on the campaign trail and during a debate.

“The point is, the entire time my eyes were focused on the prize. The prize wasn’t to beat her that night,” Christie said of their debate. “The point was to win in November so that I could govern.”

Can it last?

Of course, given Christie’s back-of-the-pack status, he might need more than a behavioral adjustment to become competitive. But if he does formally announce his candidacy and gain momentum, some question how long Christie can keep his measured approach. He hasn’t faced the heat of a debate, the competition of a mid-summer straw poll in Iowa or the negative campaign ads financed by super PACs aligned with his rivals — ads that could raise questions about his temperament and fitness for office.

“I don’t think we’re ever going to end up with Chris Christie who is a milquetoast,” Giuliani said. “No matter how much anybody reins him in, there will be times during this campaign when Chris Christie is going to be very tough, that’s just going to happen. The question is the style he uses to display that.”

He added: “Can he do that? I think he can, but that’s the challenge.”   

Echoes of Hamilton in Huckabee's message // Philly.com // Robert Patterson - May 25, 2015

Not long ago, pundits were dismissing Mike Huckabee as a religious-right candidate whose folksy demeanor wouldn't fly outside the South. Yet in his presidential announcement this month, the former Arkansas governor is already distinguishing himself as the Republican with the most compelling vision in a generation.

Insisting "we need to be able to fight for ourselves by bringing manufacturing back to our communities, where we make our own planes, tanks, bullets, and bombs," Huckabee is breaking from the globalist-corporatist groupthink that has handicapped the post-Reagan GOP. His championing of domestic nation-building imperatives that Alexander Hamilton outlined in Philadelphia will resonate not only in Middle America, but also in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

A strong dose of economic nationalism couldn't be timelier, as a Democratic president and a Republican Congress prepare to deal away more prime sectors of our economy to rival nations, as well as third-world backwaters, via the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Huckabee cuts through all the "free-trade" happy talk, noting that "unbalanced trade deals ... undercut American workers and drive wages lower than the Dead Sea."

Yet more concerning to Huckabee is the threat to national survival as Washington and Wall Street have abandoned our healthy economic independence for dysfunctional codependency on foreign powers.

It's the inverse of Hamilton, the founder who in 1791 advised the second Congress that "every nation ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply." Our first treasury secretary's national strategy transformed the fledging republic into a continental superpower and preserved American independence for 200 years. But today, bowing to the gods of globalization is decimating the industrial base needed for maintaining a defense second to none.

Thanks to an unprecedented wave of subsidized and "dumped" foreign steel, we no longer produce enough steel to supply our defense and infrastructure needs. And trade surpluses in advanced technology are gone as we face troubling inadequacies in defense-related industries such as propellant chemicals, batteries and photovoltaics, specialty metals, hard-disk drives, and flat-panel displays. Not to mention our reliance on foreign suppliers of semiconductors, printed circuit boards, and machine tools.

Most disheartening: the emasculation of the U.S. aerospace sector. As Eamonn Fingleton has detailed in Forbes, Boeing has led the crown-jewel industry in "one of the most outrageous sellouts in modern business history": transferring technology and production secrets achieved via defense contracts at the expense of U.S. taxpayers to its international "partners," especially Japan.

Now fancying itself a "systems integrator," Boeing merely assembles airplanes here at home, relying on overseas vendors for high-end components, from avionics to jet engines and wings, a downshift that Fingleton also sees occurring in the U.S. auto industry. Yielding America's "comparative advantage" in plane-making and "consciously cooperating in its own demise," the company has turned David Ricardo's free-trade theory on its head.

British historian Paul Kennedy sensed this erosion of the "arsenal of democracy" in his 1987 classic, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: "Were there ever to be a large-scale future war ... one is bound to wonder what the impact upon U.S. productive capacities would be after years of decline in certain key industries."

Kennedy's fears have become reality, warns Dan DiMicco, former Nucor CEO. As he notes in his new book, American Made: Why Making Things Will Return Us to Greatness: "For 30 years we have supported a failed business model of our economy that said we could ignore being a nation that creates, makes, and builds things; that we could remain a rich nation that only services things."

Even the 1999 Nobel Prize winner and father of supply-side economics, Robert Mundell, laments: "It has been a mistake to let U.S. manufacturing run down so low. While other nations have industrial policies to maximize their trade benefits, the United States leaves itself open like a naked woman. A big problem is with nations that may prove to be future enemies."

In short, America can't afford to lose any more industrial capacity. The pending TPP portends to expand commerce for the United States and 11 other nations. But its true significance is the de facto surrender of America's automotive sector to the Japanese car industry, aided by the same currency manipulation that has boosted China. If ratified by an unwitting Congress, the Pacific pact would leave the country vulnerable in a perpetually hostile world.

To ensure we don't lose the next war - including stealth trade wars aimed at wiping out our industrial base - Huckabee's call for "bringing back manufacturing to our communities" like Philadelphia, a former industrial powerhouse, deserves a full hearing. By hitting a chord that resonates not only with historians, economists, and Founding Fathers - but also with working Americans - the gifted communicator may achieve just that.        

The day President Bush's tears spilled onto a Marine's face at Walter Reed //  Fox News // Dana Perino - May 22, 2015

News of America’s military men and women [who] were wounded and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan almost overwhelmed me on some days. I may have sounded strong when I was talking to the press, but sometimes I had to push my feelings way down in order to get any words out of my mouth to make statements and answer questions.

The hardest days were when President Bush went to visit the wounded or families of the fallen. If it was tough for me, you can only imagine what it was like for the families and for a president who knew that his decisions led his troops into battles where they fought valiantly but were severely injured or lost their lives.

He regularly visited patients at Walter Reed military hospital near the White House. These stops were unannounced because of security concerns and hassles for the hospital staff that come with a full blown presidential visit.

One morning in 2005, Scott McClellan sent me in his place to visit the wounded warriors. It was my first time for that particular assignment, and I was nervous about how the visits would go.

The president was scheduled to see 25 patients at Walter Reed. Many of them had traumatic brain injuries and were in very serious, sometimes critical, condition. Despite getting the best treatment available in the world, we knew that some would not survive.

We started in the intensive care unit. The chief of naval operations (CNO) briefed the president on our way into the hospital about the first patient we’d see. He was a young Marine who had been injured when his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb. After his rescue, he was flown to Landstuhl U.S. Air Force Base in Kaiserslautern, Germany. At his bedside were his parents, wife, and five-year-old son.

“What’s his prognosis?” the president asked.

“Well, we don’t know sir, because he’s not opened his eyes since he arrived, so we haven’t been able to communicate with him. But no matter what, Mr. President, he has a long road ahead of him,” said the CNO.

The Marine’s young child tugged on the president’s jacket and asked, “What’s a Purple Heart?” The president got down on one knee and pulled the little boy closer to him. He said, “It’s an award for your dad, because he is very brave and courageous, and because he loves his country so much. And I hope you know how much he loves you and your mom, too.”

We had to wear masks because of the risk of infection to the patient. I watched carefully to see how the family would react to President Bush, and I was worried that they might be mad at him and blame him for their loved one’s situation. But I was wrong.

The family was so excited the president had come. They gave him big hugs and thanked him over and over. Then they wanted to get a photo. So he gathered them all in front of Eric Draper, the White House photographer.

President Bush asked, “Is everybody smiling?” But they all had ICU masks on. A light chuckle ran through the room as everyone got the joke.

The Marine was intubated. The president talked quietly with the family at the foot of the patient’s bed. I looked up at the ceiling so that I could hold back tears.

After he visited with them for a bit, the president turned to the military aide and said, “Okay, let’s do the presentation.” The wounded warrior was being awarded the Purple Heart, given to troops that suffer wounds in combat.

Everyone stood silently while the military aide in a low and steady voice presented the award. At the end of it, the Marine’s young child tugged on the president’s jacket and asked, “What’s a Purple Heart?”

The president got down on one knee and pulled the little boy closer to him. He said, “It’s an award for your dad, because he is very brave and courageous, and because he loves his country so much. And I hope you know how much he loves you and your mom, too.”

As they hugged, there was a commotion from the medical staff as they moved toward the bed.

The Marine had just opened his eyes. I could see him from where I stood.

The CNO held the medical team back and said, “Hold on, guys. I think he wants the president.”

The president jumped up and rushed over to the side of the bed. He cupped the Marine’s face in his hands. They locked eyes, and after a couple of moments the president, without breaking eye contact, said to the military aide, “Read it again.”

So we stood silently as the military aide presented the Marine with the award for a second time. The president had tears dripping from his eyes onto the Marine’s face. As the presentation ended, the president rested his forehead on the wounded warrior's for a moment.

Now everyone was crying, and for so many reasons: the sacrifice; the pain and suffering; the love of country; the belief in the mission; and the witnessing of a relationship between a soldier and his Commander in Chief that the rest of us could never fully grasp. (In writing this book, I contacted several military aides who helped me track down the name of the Marine. I hoped for news that he had survived. He did not. He died during surgery six days after the president’s visit. He is buried at Arlington Cemetery and is survived by his wife and their three children.)

And that was just the first patient we saw. For the rest of the visit to the hospital that day, almost every family had the same reaction of joy when they saw the president.

But there were exceptions. One mom and dad of a dying soldier from the Caribbean were devastated, the mom beside herself with grief. She yelled at the president, wanting to know why it was her child and not his who lay in that hospital bed.

Her husband tried to calm her and I noticed the president wasn’t in a hurry to leave—he tried offering comfort but then just stood and took it, like he expected and needed to hear the anguish, to try to soak up some of her suffering if he could.

Later as we rode back on Marine One to the White House, no one spoke.

But as the helicopter took off, the president looked at me and said, “That mama sure was mad at me.” Then he turned to look out the window of the helicopter. “And I don’t blame her a bit.”

One tear slipped out the side of his eye and down his face. He didn’t wipe it away, and we flew back to the White House.                             

Koch Brothers Plan to Fund 'Several' GOP 2016 Presidential Hopefuls // Bloomberg // David Knowles - May 25, 2016

The good news for Republican presidential candidates seeking to get a slice of Koch brothers cash is that the siblings, two of the world's richest individuals, seem to be in a sharing mood.

In a Saturday interview on the Larry Kudlow Show,  a nationally syndicated radio broadcast, David Koch let it slip that the roughly $900 million that he and his brother, Charles, plan to lavish on the 2016 presidential race could find its way into the hands of more than one GOP contender.

"We are thinking of supporting several Republicans," David Koch said, adding, "If we're happy with the policies that these individuals are supporting, we'll finance their campaigns."

Koch said the brothers would begin writing checks to individual candidates in "the primary season, winter and next spring."

The pledge to fund multiple Republicans is consistent with what Charles Koch told USA Today in April about the candidacies of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. He indicated all six were at the top of the list in terms of who might receive funding.

"Those are the ones we have talked to the most and who seem to be the possible leaders," Charles Koch said.

Cruz, Rubio and Paul all spoke at the Koch brothers' event in Palm Springs, California, in January, which was dubbed the "American Recovery Policy Forum." Walker has been a frequent recipient of Koch donations, and Bush also is considered to be still in the running for Koch backing.

"What we've told them all is that right now, we're not supporting anyone," Charles Koch said in April. "We're telling them that if they want our support, one way to get it is articulating a good message to help Americans get a better understanding and a better appreciation of how certain policies … will benefit them and will benefit all America."

The GOP field is still growing, and the Koch brothers seem content to let the sifting process play out before placing their chips on a single candidate.

"Only if somebody really stands out from the standpoint of their message and what they would actually do to benefit America and has a chance a decent chance of being elected, only then would we select one over the others," Charles Koch told USA Today.

Charles and David Koch have matching fortunes of $51.3 billion dollars each, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, ranking them equal at number five in the world.

GOP’s fight for 2016 nomination likely to drag on longer than party desires // WaPo // Chris Cillizza - May 25, 2015

Republicans have made no secret of their desire for a quick presidential primary fight aimed at rapidly producing a nominee to take on former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton.

They almost certainly won’t see that wish granted — thanks to the greatly crowded GOP field and a drastically reshaped fundraising landscape that could combine to keep the fight for the Republican nomination active until late spring, and maybe later.

Let’s start with the size of the field.

At the moment, there are six announced candidates: Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. By my count, there are at least nine others — including bold-faced names such as Jeb Bush and Scott Walker — who will be in the race by this summer.

That puts the field at 15 (and it could easily be a few candidates more), which would make it the largest Republican primary to date — eclipsing the 12 candidates who actively ran in 2008 and 2012.

The enormousness of the Republican field is due to a number of factors. The most obvious is that there is no strong front-runner a la George W. Bush in 1999, and so every GOP pol who has ever looked in the mirror and thought “Hello Mr./Mrs. President” is getting in.

But it’s also become a winning business proposition for many second-tier (or lower) candidates to run for president. Think back to 2008. No one knew who Huckabee was before that race. By the time it ended, he was one of the hottest commodities in Republican politics — and cashed in (TV show, radio show, speeches, books) accordingly. Winning the nomination isn’t the true goal for some of the 2016 candidates; upping their speaking fees and visibility is. (And I’m not even talking about Donald Trump.)

Then there is the rise of the ever-present super PAC. Virtually every candidate — from the Jeb Bushes of the world on down — has an “independent” organization aligned with their campaign. And that super PAC can collect checks for unlimited amounts — meaning that a single donor or two could finance millions of dollars’ worth of ads for a candidate who might not be able to raise that sort of money in the $2,700 increments allowed by federal law.

We’ve already seen a glimpse of what this everybody-has-a-super-PAC world might look like. During the 2012 presidential primary, former House speaker Newt Gingrich was struggling to raise money after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. But Gingrich had casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in his corner; Adelson donated $5 million to Gingrich’s super PAC in the run-up to the South Carolina primary, which Gingrich won. All told, Adelson and his wife, Miriam, donated $16.5 million to Gingrich’s super PAC; Gingrich raised $25 million total for his campaign committee.

Now, rather than just a handful of candidates with a well-funded super PAC, we could be looking at a dozen or more who have a setup similar to Gingrich’s in 2012. And, although Bush’s super PAC, which reportedly will have raised $100 million by the end of this month, gets all the attention, it’s actually super PACs for the Fiorinas and Rick Perrys of the world that will prolong this race.

Traditionally — that is, in the time before super PACs — the way that the field was winnowed was via fundraising. A candidate underperformed expectations in Iowa or New Hampshire (or both), the fundraising spigot dried up, and he or she was forced to acknowledge reality and drop from the race.

Now, though, your aligned super PAC can function as a sort of campaign life support — keeping candidates alive for as long as wealthy donors want them to be around.

Gone is the incentive to drop out of the race; here is the incentive to stick around as long as possible because in a field this wide open and with so many super PACs spending so much money, who knows when your opportunity might come?

Then there is the ever-present uncertainty about the state of the primary calendar. What we know is that Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada will be the first four states to vote. Beyond that, though, chaos reigns. There is talk of an “SEC” primary, named after the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference, featuring a passel of southern states on March 1. And several more states are trying to push their way closer to the front of the calendar.

What a crowded early primary calender could mean is that candidates pick and choose states where they think they can run well, meaning that there is rarely, if ever, a state in which every candidate is playing hard at the same time.

Add up a historic number of candidates, a potentially limitless amount of funding and the potential for a series of different winners in the early going, and you see why Republicans seem likely to be fighting for their presidential nomination well into next spring and even, possibly, as summer begins.

The nightmare scenario for Republicans is a brokered convention fight — playing out in mid-July in Cleveland. We’re not there yet. Yet.

The Right's Political Correctness // WaPo // E.J. Dionne  - May 25, 2015

WASHINGTON -- Scott Walker insists that when he changes his positions, he is not engaged in "flips."

"A flip would be someone who voted on something and did something different," the Wisconsin governor explained last week on Fox News. His altered views on immigration don't count because he is not a legislator. "These are not votes," he helpfully pointed out.

Sheer brilliance! Other than former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Walker's major rivals at the moment are Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky. They have all cast lots of votes. So Walker can accuse them of flip-flopping while claiming blanket immunity for himself.

Unfortunately for the Republican Party and the country, Walker's careful parsing of shape-shifting counts as one of the cerebral high points of the debate among the party's 2016 presidential candidates.

The shortage of philosophical adventure and the eagerness of GOP hopefuls to alter their positions to make them more conservative have the same cause: a Republican primary electorate that has moved so far right that it brooks no deviationism. What makes it even harder for the candidates to break new ground is that the imperatives of orthodoxy are constraining even the thinkers who are trying to create a new "reform conservatism."

The fall-in-line-or-fall-in-the-polls rule means that Walker has gone from supporting to opposing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, as has Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J. Rubio got much praise for his work in negotiating a bipartisan bill that would have allowed the undocumented to become citizens -- and then, faced with hostility from tea partyers, he turned against it.

Paul, the most daring of the lot because of his libertarian convictions, deserves kudos for being true to his small-state ideology by standing up -- literally, for nearly 11 hours on the Senate floor -- against the Patriot Act. But even Paul has recast his foreign policy positions to make them sound more hawkish and thus more in keeping with prevailing Republican views.

Accommodating right-wing primary voters poses real risks to the party in next year's elections. Its candidates' messages on immigration and gay marriage, could hurt the GOP with, respectively, Latinos and the young.

But the greater loss is that none of the leading Republicans is willing to offer a more fundamental challenge to the party's rightward lurch over the past decade. L. Brent Bozell III, a prominent activist on the right, could thus legitimately claim to The Washington Post: "The conservative agenda is what is winning the field."

Where, for example, is the candidate willing to acknowledge that, like it or not, there's no way anywhere close to all Americans will be able to get health insurance unless government plays a very large role? Where is the Republican who will admit that if the party had its way on further tax cuts, many programs Americans like would fall by the wayside?

The reform conservatives were supposed to remedy this shortcoming, and they have issued some detailed proposals. But their efforts remain largely reactive. Last week, Yuval Levin, the intellectual leader of the movement, joined a symposium in Reason, the sprightly libertarian magazine, to reassure others on the right that reform conservatives are -- honest and true! -- no less committed than they are to "limited government," to rolling back "the liberal welfare state," and to reducing government's "size and scope."

It's not surprising that Levin's fervently anti-statist Reason interlocutors were not fully persuaded. What's disappointing to those outside conservatism's ranks is that the Reformicons are so often defensive.

With occasional exceptions, they have been far more interested in proving their faithfulness to today's hard-line right than in declaring, as conservatives in so many other democracies have been willing to do, that sprawling market economies need a rather large dose of government. Conservatives, Levin says, are "eager to build on the long-standing institutions of our society to improve things." Good idea. But somehow, the successes of decades-old governmental institutions in areas such as retirement security, health care provision and environmental protection are rarely acknowledged.

Many Republicans, especially reform conservatives, know that most Americans who criticize government in the abstract still welcome many of its activities. Yet stating this obvious fact is now politically incorrect on the right. Conservatives who condemn political correctness in others need to start calling it out on their own side. Otherwise, Scott Walker's artful redefinition of flip-flopping could become the 2016 Republican debate's most creative intellectual contribution.

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DOMESTIC

Deadly Flooding Wreaks Havoc in Texas, Oklahoma // ABC News via Good Morning America – May 25, 2015

At least five people were killed, three others are missing and hundreds of homes were destroyed as large parts of the central and southern Plains states faced flash floods and tornadoes.

In Claremore, Oklahoma, about 30 miles northeast of Tulsa, firefighter Jason Farley died when he was swept away while attempting a water rescue, said Deputy Chief Matt Wilson of the Claremore Fire Department. A 33-year-old woman in Tulsa died a traffic-related crash, Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management spokeswoman Keli Cain said. In Texas, a man’s body was recovered from a flooded area along the Blanco River, which rose 26 feet in one hour and left piles of wreckage 20 feet high, authorities said.

Alyssa Ramirez, 18, a student at Devine High School in Texas, died Saturday driving home from her school’s prom, after her car got stuck in floodwater, ABC affiliate KSAT reported.

According to the National Weather Service, one other person died in Union, Mississippi when a tree fell on the victim’s car.

In Wimberley, about 40 miles southwest of Austin, hundreds of homes were destroyed, many of them washed away, after more than 9 inches of rain was reported and the Blanco River rose. Trey Hatt, Communications Specialist for the city of San Marcos, told ABC News that three people remain missing from the Wimberley area -- and 550 properties and 1,100 structures were impacted by the flood waters.

A tornado touched down in Houston, severely damaging an apartment complex and sending at least two people to the hospital. The National Weather Service identified the tornado in a preliminary report as an EF-1 with 100 mile per hour winds.

Two EF-1 tornadoes were also reported in Dallas County, Texas, on Saturday.

The threat for severe weather will encompass a large swath of Texas and the southern part of Oklahoma yet again on Memorial Day with large hail, damaging winds, and an isolated tornado possible across the region.

Heavy rain and more flash flooding are expected for areas that are already extremely saturated.

Biden praises Iraqi military after U.S. defense chief questions its will to fight // CNN // Kevin Liptak, Barbara Starr and Jim Acosta – May 25, 2015

Washington (CNN)American officials attempted to explain on Monday the claim made over the weekend by Defense Secretary Ash Carter that Iraqi defense forces "showed no will to fight" prior to the ISIS siege of Ramadi.

The comment, made in an exclusive interview with CNN, was the harshest public criticism of the Iraqi security forces to date from the Obama administration. The United States has said local fighters, rather than U.S. forces, must lead the fight against ISIS, a strategy that has come under withering criticism as the terror group gains ground in Iraq and Syria.

The remark surprised Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who told the BBC that Carter was "fed the wrong information."

In a Monday phone call with Abadi, Vice President Joe Biden "recognized the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces over the past 18 months in Ramadi and elsewhere," according to a statement from the White House.

Biden, who told Abadi before Ramadi's fall that shipments of weapons were being expedited to help protect the city, explained to the prime minister on Monday the U.S. was planning to ramp up training to combat ISIS truck bombs, which were deployed in brutal fashion during the group's takeover of the Anbar capital.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials were parsing what precisely Carter meant when he told CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr that "we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves," despite outnumbering ISIS forces.

A senior administration official said Carter's remarks were in reference to the Ramadi siege specifically, which came after months of fighting and was hastened by a rash of ISIS suicide bombings, some of them at the same magnitude as the 1995 Oklahoma City blast.

"The reference to lack of will was in relation to this specific episode, which followed 18 months of fierce (Iraqi Security Forces) attrition against ISIL in Ramadi, coupled with what the Iraqi government has acknowledged were breakdowns in military command, planning, and reinforcement," the official said.

A senior defense official pointed to specific factors that may have contributed to Iraqi troops' lack of fighting will in Ramadi, including the absence of regular payments, the inability to visit family members and a general sense that commanders weren't looking after their battalions.

According to this official, the U.S. has grown increasingly concerned about a lack of leadership skills within the Iraqi ranks, seen as crucial to winning the support of troops in combat situations like the battle for Ramadi.

The White House has consistently ruled out sending American combat forces back into Iraq after the decade-long war begun by President George W. Bush. Instead, the U.S. is relying on a strategy of empowering local forces to beat back ISIS where they've made gains.

President Barack Obama, speaking to The Atlantic magazine last week, said that "if the Iraqis themselves are not willing or capable to arrive at the political accommodations necessary to govern, if they are not willing to fight for the security of their country, we cannot do that for them."

Officials say in Anbar province, the equipping and training of Sunni tribes is a priority as Iraqi forces regroup and attempt to retake Ramadi.

"The rapid integration of the Sunni tribes into the fight alongside other Iraqi forces is essential as they will be the most invested in fighting for their areas," an administration official said.

Michele Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense who Obama considered naming to the top Pentagon post, said on CNN Sunday the administration has "under-resourced" its counter-ISIS strategy.

"We need to provide more fire power support, more intelligence surveillance," she told CNN's Jim Acosta on "State of the Union."

Joe Biden tries to patch things up with Iraq // Politico // Nahal Toosi – May 25, 2015

Vice President Joe Biden is trying to calm tensions with Iraq’s leaders after the U.S. secretary of defense accused Iraqi troops of lacking the “will to fight” Islamic State.

Biden spoke to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi on Monday to reaffirm U.S. support for Iraq’s government and to recognize “the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces,” according to a White House statement.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in an interview with CNN that aired Sunday, said that although Iraqi troops greatly outnumbered the forces of Islamic State, they could not hold their own against the extremists in the city of Ramadi, allowing it to fall just over a week ago.

His comments were among the harshest to date from the administration, which has invested for years in training and equipping Iraqi troops, and his words implied the White House is growing frustrated with the Iraqis as they battle the militant network, which also is known as ISIS or ISIL.

“We have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves,” Carter said. “We can give them training, we can give them equipment. We obviously can’t give them the will to fight.”

In an interview with the BBC, the Iraqi premier expressed surprise at Carter’s comments, adding, “I am sure he was fed with the wrong information.”

Ramadi is the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, a Sunni-majority area; the city fell to the Islamic State after more than a year of fighting and numerous casualties. For the most part, Obama administration officials have described its loss as a tactical setback, and they have stressed the battle is a long one.

But there’s a growing sense within the administration and beyond that Ramadi’s loss is a major blow, although President Barack Obama is resisting calls to deploy additional U.S. troops to Iraq beyond those advising the Iraqi army.

According to the White House statement, Biden welcomed the Iraqi government’s recent decision “to mobilize additional troops, honor those who have fallen, and prepare for counter-attack operations.” He also promised the U.S. would speed up its provision of training and equipment to deal with the militants’ use of truck bombs.

ObamaCare fallout? Supreme Court ruling sets up potential Obama, GOP battle // Fox News – May 25, 2015

March 4, 2015: Demonstrators rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, as the court was hearing arguments in President Obama's healthcare overhaul.

The upcoming Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act could wipe out insurance for millions of people covered by the president’s health care plan, leaving states that didn't set up their own health care markets scrambling to subsidize coverage for those left uninsured.

Twenty-six of the 34 states that would be hardest hit by the ruling have GOP governors. Twenty-two of the 24 Senate seats that are up for re-election in 2016 are currently held by Republicans. What that means is that it’s the GOP – and not the White House –that’s working on damage control.

President Obama’s landmark legislation offers subsidized private insurance to those without access to it on the job. In the Supreme Court case, opponents of the law argue that its literal wording allows the government to subsidize coverage only in states that set up their own health insurance markets. 

The justices will determine whether the law makes people in all 50 states eligible for federal tax subsidies -- or just those who live in states that created their own health insurance marketplaces. The question matters because about three dozen states opted against their own marketplace, or exchange, and instead rely on the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Healthcare.gov.

If the court rules against the Obama administration, insurance subsidies for people in those states would be in jeopardy.

If the court invalidates the subsidies in those states, the results would be “ugly,” former Kansas insurance commissioner Sandy Praeger told The Associated Press.

"People who are reasonably healthy would just drop coverage," she said. "Only the unhealthy would keep buying health care. It would really exacerbate the problem of the cost of health insurance."

Praeger, a Republican who retired this year, called it "a classic death spiral," using a term for market collapse.

In March, the Supreme Court appeared divided along ideological lines after hearing the challenge that, if struck down, could affect up to 8 million policy holders.

If the subsidies survive, the ACA will look like settled law to all but a few passionate opponents. However, if they are overturned, the shock could carry into next year’s elections.

Here are just a few of the potential consequences:

BAD TIMING

Around the time when the court announces its decision, insurers will be working to finalize premiums and plans for the coming year. Contracts with the government for 2016 health law coverage have to be signed by early fall. If the subsidies are overturned, insurers would have to tear up their projections about markets in more than half the states.

Populous states such as Texas, Florida, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia and Pennsylvania would be among those affected.

State lawmakers could mitigate the impact by setting up their own insurance markets, or exchanges. But that can't be done overnight.

States might try authorizing an exchange, and then contracting with the federal government to run it. But that sort of end-run might prompt lawsuits from opponents of the law.

In any case, most state legislatures will be out of session by the summer.

During arguments, Associate Justice Samuel Alito raised the possibility that the court might be able to delay the effective date of its decision. Even a delay through the end of this year wouldn't buy much time. Enrollment for 2016 health law plans is scheduled to start Nov. 1. 

HOUSE OF CARDS

The health law was designed as a balancing act. Insurers can't turn people away because of health problems, but most healthy people are required to contribute to the insurance pool, and the government subsidizes most of the premium for low- to middle-income households.

Take away subsidies, and the other two parts become unstable.

The law's requirement to carry insurance, never popular, would probably become the biggest target for repeal.

"My guess is there would be overwhelming political support for the elimination of the individual mandate if people can't afford the premiums," said former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who was an influential Obama adviser on health care.

Insurers would demand relief from provisions of the law intended to limit premium increases, or they might drop out of the insurance exchanges.

STICKER SHOCK FOR SELF-PAY CUSTOMERS

Many people still buy individual health care policies directly from an insurance company, bypassing the law's markets and paying the full cost. They tend to be small-business owners, self-employed professionals and early retirees.

But even they would not escape the tumult in states losing subsidies.

The health law created one big insurance pool in each state, combining customers who purchase their policies directly with those who buy through the government market. If healthy people exit the insurance exchanges in droves, premiums for those buying directly would go up. Some may be unable to afford the higher cost.

"It would set off cascading events," said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "The individual market would empty out as premiums rise significantly." 

REPUBLICANS TO THE RESCUE?

Leading congressional Republicans have been walking a fine line, opposing the law in the Supreme Court case while pledging to protect consumers if their side wins.

If the subsidies are overturned, Republicans will first try blaming Obama and the Democrats for writing flawed legislation and then trying to paper over problems with regulations. Then they'll move ahead with a patch to appease angry constituents.

A bill introduced by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., would continue the subsidies for existing customers only on the federal exchange until September 2017. That would open a window for states to act, but it would ultimately leave the problem for the next president and Congress. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is a co-sponsor.

Johnson's bill would repeal the requirements for individuals to have insurance and for larger employers to offer coverage to workers.

Obama is unlikely to accept any of those changes.

"The president is likely to veto whatever we would propose, because we don't have a willing partner," said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., leader of a GOP working group on health care.

Islamic State faces battle in Iraq, U.S. reassures Abadi // Reuters // Baghdad Bureau, Jeff Mason, Andrea Shalal, Isabel Coles, Sylvia Westall – May 25, 2015

Islamic State poured more fighters into Ramadi as security forces and Shi'ite paramilitaries prepared to try to retake the Iraqi city, while Washington scrambled on Monday to reassure Baghdad after a U.S. official's sharp criticism of Iraqi forces.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden spoke to Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi after Defense Secretary Ash Carter questioned Iraqi troops' will to fight when Ramadi fell. The U.S. damage-control effort came as the loss of Ramadi and Palmyra in Syria put its strategy against Islamic State into question.

"The vice president recognized the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces over the past eighteen months in Ramadi and elsewhere," the White House said in a statement about Biden's call with Abadi.

"The United States will ... do all we can to help the brave Iraqi forces, including the tribes of Anbar, secure the province from ISIL terrorists," a senior U.S. official said separately, referring to the group by an acronym.

The insurgents reinforced Ramadi on Monday, deploying fighters in preparation for battle against security forces and paramilitary groups advancing on the provincial capital, 110 km (70 miles) northwest of the capital, Baghdad.

Iraqi forces have regained ground east of Ramadi since launching a counter-offensive on Saturday, a week after it was overrun, and on Monday retook a rural area south of the city.

In comments to CNN on Sunday, Carter knocked Iraqi forces for being unsuccessful in holding Ramadi despite being more numerous than the militants, drawing a rebuke from Abadi, who told BBC the U.S. defense chief had been misinformed. Abadi predicted Iraqi forces would take back Ramadi "in days."

In Palmyra, the Syrian air force struck at buildings captured by the Sunni militant group, whose arrival has raised fears that the city's famed Roman ruins will be destroyed.

The air force leveled Islamic State "hideouts" and killed a large number of its members around Palmyra's military air base, Syrian state media said.

Islamic State has killed at least 217 people execution-style, including children, since it moved into the Palmyra area 10 days ago, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

RAMADI PUSH

Police sources said Iraqi forces supported by Iran-backed Shi'ite militia and locally recruited Sunni tribal fighters had retaken parts of al-Tash, 20 km (12 miles) south of Ramadi.

Pro-government Sunni tribal fighters, with the help of the army, laid land mines to reinforce their defensive lines around Baghdadi, a settlement northwest of Ramadi that controls access to a major Iraqi air base. Islamic State attacked Baghdadi with seven suicide car bombs on Sunday.

In Ramadi, residents said trucks carrying Islamic State fighters arrived on Sunday evening.

Abu Saed heard a commotion outside his house in the city's southeastern Officers neighborhood. "I saw two trucks pull up outside with dozens of fighters carrying arms running quickly into nearby buildings and taking cover."

Another resident said at least 40 fighters had jumped out of three trucks that arrived in the southern al-Tamim district on Sunday evening.

"They were carrying weapons and wearing mostly khaki dress with ammunition belts wrapped around their chests," said Abu Mutaz. "They were talking in an Arabic dialect, they were not Iraqis."

MAJOR SETBACK

The seizures of Ramadi and Palmyra were Islamic State's biggest successes since a U.S.-led coalition launched an air war against it last year.

The near simultaneous victories against the Iraqi and Syrian armies have forced Washington to examine its strategy of bombing from the air while leaving fighting on the ground to local forces.

One analyst said the U.S. defense secretary's remarks suggested the White House realized a change in policy was needed. A spokesman for Abadi dismissed Carter's comments as "untimely and surprising at a time when Iraqi security forces are preparing to launch a counter-offensive to retake Ramadi".

The general in charge of Iran's paramilitary activities in the Middle East said the United States and other powers were failing to confront Islamic State.

"Today, in the fight against this dangerous phenomenon, nobody is present except Iran," said Major General Qassem Soleimani.

In a move that could mark an expansion of U.S. involvement in the conflict, Turkey said it and the United States had agreed in principle to give air support to some forces from Syria's mainstream opposition.

The United States and its allies carried out 10 air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria and 25 strikes in Iraq since Sunday, the U.S. military said.

Days after taking Ramadi, Islamic State defeated Syrian government forces to capture Palmyra, home to 50,000 people and site of some of the world's most extensive and best-preserved Roman ruins.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there had been no reports so far of Islamic State destroying Palmyra's ruins and artifacts.

The militants have proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory they hold in Syria and Iraq. They have carried out mass killings in towns and cities they have captured, and destroyed ancient monuments, which they consider evidence of paganism.

In Syria, Hezbollah fighters captured two hilltops from al Qaeda's Syria wing, the Nusra Front, in areas close to the Lebanese border and killed dozens of enemy combatants, Hezbollah-run al-Manar television reported on Monday.

Iranian-backed Hezbollah has backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his country's civil war. The group's leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed to clear the border area of Sunni Muslim militant groups that have carried out attacks on Lebanese soil.

White House expected to remove Cuba from State Sponsors of Terrorism list // Aljazeera America // Sara Hassan – May 25, 2015

The White House is expected to remove Cuba from America’s “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list later this week. Despite progress during the talks between the two countries, negotiators have failed to reach an agreement on exchanging ambassadors.

The Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson commented on the situation by saying, “We made great progress … but we still have a few things that need to be ironed out, and we're going to do that as quickly as possible. I do remain optimistic, but I'm also a realist about 54 years that we have to overcome.”

Cuba was placed on the U.S. terror list during the Reagan Administration in 1982. It’s one of four other countries still on the list, along with Iran, Sudan, and Syria.

Historians say that Cuba and the U.S. were once close to sparking a global nuclear war. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro nationalized all businesses in his country after taking power, prompting the United States to close its embassy in Havana in 1961 and impose a crippling embargo. Later that year, the U.S. tried to overthrow Castro in a failed coup known as the Bay of Pigs incident.

Castro then turned to the Soviet Union for help, setting off decades of mistrust between Washington and Havana.

It wasn’t until 2012, when Raul Castro took over power from his ailing brother Fidel Castro, that Cuba suggested normalizing relations with the United States. President Barack Obama responded by moving to lift parts of the trade embargo and kick-starting talks in January.

Not everyone is on board with the President’s strategy, but many are optimistic about better relations between the two countries.

During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment "The Week Ahead," Lisa Fletcher spoke to Christopher Sabatini, founder and Editor-in-Chief of the website Latin America Goes Global, and Paul Bonicelli, a former Assistant Administrator at USAID.

Bonicelli says that he does not agree with President Obama’s approach on the negotiations. “The President hasn’t really required concessions from this government,” he says. “The Castro brothers are running a dictatorship, and you would think that the President would require at least some movement on politics, on economics, and on our national security interests before he’s willing to give them everything. He could have gotten a lot of Republican support for that kind of negotiation, but he hasn’t asked for anything in return.”

Sabatini says, however, that the Cuban government had made changes even before Obama’s announcement last December to begin negotiations. “Right now Cuba has far fewer political prisoners than it has had in decades,” he says. “Detentions and harassment continue, but there have also been economic reforms. There were over 400,000 entrepreneurs that Cuba’s allowing to help grow the economy and help bolster socialism, that’s been really important in creating some space for civic activism.”

Bonicelli disagrees, saying “entrepreneurial activity is not up in Cuba. In fact, the number is down over the years because the Cuban government has been more talk than action. I think the President missed a great opportunity to sit down with Congress and get a bi-partisan deal.”

Sabatini says though that there is a better chance for success with diplomatic negotiations. “Cuba hasn’t been engaging in sponsoring terrorism for decades. In fact, it is sponsoring a peace negotiation between the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerillas and the Colombian government, one of our allies.”

When asked how opening U.S. trade with Cuba would be different than what Canada and Europe have already been doing with the island for decades, Sabatini says “neither of them is 90 miles off the coast of Cuba, and neither of them have close to 2 million Cubans living on their shores.” He adds that once the Castro brothers out of power, “we need to be engaged in Cuba. We cannot risk having that regime collapse without us having some sort of stake in its present, if we want to have a role in the future.”

OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS                      

2016 presidential campaigns chase money, with no cop on the beat: Our view // USA Today // The Editorial Board – May 25, 2015

Money has always been the dark force of politics, but it's reaching a tipping point in the 2016 presidential election. Whoever wins will be more beholden than any recent predecessor to megadonors who write huge checks. Campaigns are skating up to, or over, ethical and legal lines to maximize the dollars.

There's little worry about prosecution, though. The agency set up to enforce campaign laws after the Watergate scandals in 1974 — the Federal Election Commission — is mired in partisan stalemate on major issues, meaning there's effectively no cop on the beat.

That leaves no one (except the news media) to police the flood of big money set loose by court decisions in 2010 that made it legal for corporations, labor unions and rich people to give unlimited amounts to "super PACs," which can support candidates as long as they remain independent from them.

In practice, the independence is fiction. Super PACs are typically run by a candidate's close aides, but it's hard to prove illegal coordination.

Advisers to Republican Jeb Bush have already told reporters that his presidential campaign — which technically doesn't exist yet because Bush hasn't officially declared — will be offloading big expenses such as television ads, direct mail and get-out-the-vote efforts to its super PAC.

Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign will also rely on an affiliated super PAC for TV and Internet advertising. The idea that campaigns would outsource crucial activities to groups they could not at least clandestinely steer is hard to swallow.

At least super PACs are required to disclose the names of anyone who gives more than $200. That's not true of non-profit "social welfare" organizations, which can do what super PACs do but keep contributors' names secret as long as the PAC's chief purpose isn't politics. Reformers say groups routinely abuse this rule, but a challenge to four such groups went nowhere when the FEC deadlocked and refused to investigate. FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel told The New York Times that the agency, which has three Democratic commissioners and three Republicans, is "worse than dysfunctional," and that "the likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim."

When candidates comment on the situation, they tend to sound like St. Augustine asking to "make me pure, but not yet." Clinton says if she's elected, she'll appoint Supreme Court justices who will make the money-grubbing unconstitutional. Bush has ordered donors to his super PAC to cap their donations at $1 million, apparently on the theory that no one can be corrupted for a mere million. Meanwhile, they and their rivals are raising megabucks for their super PACs.

This would be amusing if it weren't such a sad indictment of politics. It's a reason why Americans don't vote, why elections seem like arms races, and why the next president will get to office with an indelible taint.

Americans demanded change once and got it, but it took one of the worst political scandals in history. That's a terrible price to pay for something politicians should see is in their and the nation's best interest.

Super PACs are not the problem: Opposing view // USA Today // Bradley A. Smith – May 25, 2015

A super PAC is a group of people pooling their resources to support candidates for political office. They don't contribute to candidates' campaigns, but instead say what they want to say. Super PACs must register with the Federal Election Commission, and report all of their expenditures and contributions over $200. Why is all that considered so bad?

Americans tend to forget, or not know, that until 1975 our elections always featured the equivalent of super PACs. But that year, we decided to vastly increase the government's role as a speech policeman. Not surprisingly, the combined incumbent re-election rate over the three election cycles since the return of super PACs is lower than at any time since 1974.

People hate political spending the same way that children hate spinach, but it turns out to be good to have. Studies show that spending increases voter knowledge and turnout, but it's not cheap. One recent study showed it cost roughly $87 a vote to increase turnout.

Unfortunately, current campaign-finance laws make it difficult for candidates to raise the money necessary to get their message to voters. Super PACs help fill that need. And that, in turn, means that candidates can spend less time fundraising and more time talking to voters.

Before super PACs, if a presidential candidate didn't do well in Iowa and New Hampshire, his campaign typically ended for lack of money. In 2012, however, super PACs kept campaigns of candidates such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum alive. They didn't ultimately win, but they did win primaries and millions of votes, and, more important, gave Americans more time to consider and debate the candidates and issues. What's wrong with that?

In the old days, the 2016 GOP primary would have played out like this: Jeb Bush would have just out-fundraised everyone, leaving voters with less choice and less information about the candidates. Why is that good for democracy?

Let's take stock: Since the return of super PACs, turnout, up; competition, up; candidate time spent fundraising, down; personal freedom, up. Our campaigns aren't perfect, but super PACs aren't the problem.

Alexandria Phillips

Press Assistant | Communications

Hillary for America | www.hillaryclinton.com