Thank You, President Obama
The New Republic // Editorial
Yes, it was a few years too late. Yes, his hand was forced by Joe Biden and Arne Duncan. Yes, his statement is just a statement—it does not change any law. And yes, we shouldn’t minimize the role of an extraordinary civil rights movement—comprising millions of average Americans, gay and straight—in dragging our country over the past two decades toward the current moment, one where a president could feel politically able to take such a stand. But none of this should minimize the significance of what took place yesterday in Washington. President Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage was both substantively important and politically brave. And he deserves enormous credit for it.
President Obama’s Moment
New York Times // Editorial
It has always taken strong national leadership to expand equal rights in this country, and it has long been obvious that marriage rights are no exception. President Obama offered some of that leadership on Wednesday. “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with ABC Newsthat the White House arranged for the purpose of giving Mr. Obama a forum to say just that. With those 10 words, Mr. Obama finally stopped temporizing and “evolving” his position on same-sex marriage and took the moral high ground on what may be the great civil rights struggle of our time. His words will not end the bitter fight over marriage rights, which we fear will continue for years to come. But they were of great symbolic value, and perhaps more. As Mayor Michael Bloomberg noted, no expansion of rights embraced by a president has failed to become the law of the land.
Obama Winning Investors by 49%-38% Against Romney in Poll
Bloomberg // Mike Dorning
Global investors increasingly prefer President Barack Obama to Republican challenger Mitt Romneyand most say they believe the incumbent will remain in the White House for another four years. Asked who would be the better leader for the global economy, 49 percent favor Obama against 38 percent for Romney, according to a quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll. In January, the two candidates tied on the question. By the same margin, they say Obama has a better vision for the U.S. economy, according to the survey of 1,253 Bloomberg customers, who are investors, analysts or traders.
Lugar defeat fits Obama campaign narrative on GOP
Los Angeles Times // Michael Memoli
The defeat of Sen. Dick Lugar in his bid for a seventh term in Indiana has given Democratsnew hope of holding on to their narrow majority in the Senate. The result could also play out in the race for president, fueling the narrative of an Obama campaign running as much against the tea party-infused Republican Congress as it is against Mitt Romney. Within an hour of Richard Mourdock being declared the winner, the White Housereleased a statement from Obama hailing Lugar’s “distinguished service.”
Air wars: Americans for Prosperity buying in swing states
Politico // Maggie Haberman
According to a reliable media-buying source, the Koch brothers-affiliated Americans for Prosperity is starting to buy time in swing states, for ads to air in mid May. AFP has been on the air before. But unlike a number of other third-party groups, AFP doesn’t coordinate with the other major player on the right, American Crossroads. The messaging has been a bit disparate from the outside groups – energy or Solyndra, and generally less frontal on the topic of the day, jobs.
Defense spending to spike $2.1 trillion under Romney
CNN // Charles Riley
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Mitt Romney is campaigning on a platform that emphasizes less spending, smaller deficits and renewed fiscal responsibility. But in one budget area, Romney is running the opposite direction. The former Massachusetts governor wants to increase defense spending by leaps and bounds. By one estimate, additional spending would exceed $2 trillion over the next decade. Romney’s plan calls for linking the Pentagon’s base budget to Gross Domestic Product, and allowing the military to spend at least $4 dollars out of every $100 the American economy produces.
Mitt Romney’s prep school classmates recall pranks, but also troubling incidents
Washington Post // Jason Horowitz
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it. “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
