Tag Archives: Republican

May 14 2012

news clips

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.

May 8 2012

Scott Brown just voted NO on a bill to stop student loan interest rates from doubling on July 1st

Friend,

Our Republican opponent Scott Brown just voted NO on a bill to stop student loan interest rates from doubling on July 1st.

Can you believe it?

Just a few weeks ago, Scott Brown voted once again to protect big oil subsidies. And now he is telling thousands of college students in Massachusetts — kids drowning in debt from the soaring cost of tuition and fees — that they have to pay even more.

This isn’t about economics — it’s about our values.

Tell Scott Brown and the Republican Party to stop blocking action on student loans.

Scott Brown had a choice this morning: To help students who are trying to build a future for themselves, or to stand with the leadership in the Republican Party.

Scott Brown made his choice loud and clear.

And Massachusetts voters are seeing through his independent act. Even after Scott Brown and the Republican Party have thrown the kitchen sink at Elizabeth this past week, a new poll conducted yesterday shows Elizabeth and Scott Brown are tied at 45-45.

We need your help to tell every student, parent and grandparent about Scott Brown’s vote today — and to make sure Massachusetts voters know whose side he’s on.

Thanks,

Mindy Myers
Campaign Manager
Elizabeth for MA

Donate

Apr 30 2012

Political Update

WATCH: Bill Clinton Video on President Obama as Commander in Chief: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD75KOoNR9k&feature=player_embedded

N.H. could be decisive battleground
Boston Globe // Matt Viser
WASHINGTON – New Hampshire offers a mere four electoral votes. But President Obama and Mitt Romney are fiercely pursuing the hearts and minds of the Granite State’s notoriously finicky electorate in a race that could come down to the wire in November. New Hampshire is seen as one of about 14 swing states in this election, and the only one in New England. Obama visited the state twice in the last five months; Michelle Obama was in Concord last month, and Vice President Joe Biden has been to the state three times this year. For Romney, the significance of New Hampshire is personal as well as political. The state is home to his summer residence and was the launch pad of his candidacy last summer. He was a regular visitor before the hotly contested primary in January. And Tuesday night, instead of celebrating in one of the five states holding a primary that day, Romney is returning to the Granite State for a speech and a victory party that his campaign considers his official pivot to the general election.

Big money in a big way for Obama’s reelection campaign
Washington Post // T.W. Farnam
President Obama’s reelection campaign has been rapidly increasing the number of big money “bundlers” collecting checks for his reelection, doubling the number of financiers who have brought in at least $500,000.The influx during the first quarter of the year shows the president is getting an especially warm embrace from Hollywood and the broader entertainment industry, partly making up for a drop in support from Wall Street after Democrats passed broad new regulations for the financial sector, according to a list of fundraisers released by the campaign on Friday.
Swing-state unemployment down, Obama’s chances up
AP // Paul Wiseman
The improving economy is swinging the pendulum in President Barack Obama’s favor in the 14 states where the presidential election will likely be decided. Recent polls show Obama gaining an edge over his likely Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, in several so-called swing states — those that are considered up for grabs. What’s made the difference is that unemployment has dropped more sharply in several swing states than in the nation as a whole. A resurgence in manufacturing is helping the economy — and Obama’s chances — in the industrial states of Ohio and Michigan.
Poll Finds Public Skeptical, Leaning Slightly Democratic
National Journal // Matthew Cooper
As the presidential and congressional election season rolls on, the political landscape seems somewhat more favorable for Democrats than for Republicans, but neither party has been able to overcome the deep distrust that Americans seem to have for Congress, and neither side can afford to be anything less than nervous come Election Day. The newest findings of the United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll show a public that’s predisposed to voting more Democratic. In a head-to-head race, President Obama bests Mitt Romney 47 percent to 39 percent, with 9 percent of respondents saying neither and 5 percent refusing or not knowing. Likewise, 50 percent of respondents wanted Democrats to keep control of the U.S. Senate, compared to 39 percent who favored a GOP majority. And by a 3 point margin, 46 percent to 43 percent, those surveyed said they wanted Democrats to take control of the House—down from a much sharper 11 percent lead as recently as January. Democrats found their strongest support among minorities and women.

Romney’s fiscal fantasy plan
Washington Post // Lawrence Summers
Political arithmetic is always suspect, and one should always examine carefully the claims of those seeking votes. Smart observers have learned to distinguish between the claims of political candidates and their advisers and proposals that have been evaluated by independent scorekeepers such as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). This principle was aptly illustrated by the “budget analysis” Mitt Romney’s chief economic adviser, Glenn Hubbard, recently put forward. In a Wall Street Journal op-edthis week, Hubbard constructs a budget plan that he imagines President Obama might propose someday, engages in a set of his own extrapolations and then makes assertions about it. He does not discuss the actual Obama plan or how it has been evaluated by the CBO. Nor does Hubbard invest his credibility in defending the claims that Romney has made about his own fiscal plans. He simply states that “Yes, President Obama and Mitt Romney have budgets with competing visions. But Gov. Romney’s budget makes tough choices” — without delving into the specifics or trade-offs that Romney’s “tough choices” entail.

Mitt Romney’s media coverage has been more positive than President Obama’s, study finds
Boston Globe // Callum Borchers
Mitt Romney complained last week of a “vast left-wing conspiracy”in the media, but a study published todayrevealed the presumptive Republican nominee has enjoyed more positive press coverage than President Obama in recent months. The Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that negative coverage of Obama outweighed positive coverage in each of 15 weeks between Jan. 2 and April 15. Romney, meanwhile, had six weeks of mostly positive stories and another four in which positive and negative coverage were roughly equal.  In fact, positive stories about the former Massachusetts governor have outnumbered negative ones almost 2-to-1 since the Feb. 28 Michigan primary, which Romney won.

Mr. Romney’s secret life
Washington Post // Editorial
MITT ROMNEY’S contemptuous attitude toward the importance of public disclosure is increasingly troubling. Whether it involves the details of his personal finances or the identity of his big fundraisers, the presumptive Republican is setting a new, low bar for transparency — one that does not augur well for how the Romney White House would conduct itself if he were elected. First is the matter of tax returns. Mr. Romney’s campaign, belatedly and under pressure, released a single year’s worth of tax information in January along with a summary for the 2011 return

The Amnesia Candidate
New York Times // Paul Krugman
Just how stupid does Mitt Romneythink we are? If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning, that’s a question you have probably asked many times.  But the question was raised with particular force last week, when Mr. Romney tried to make a closed drywall factory in Ohio a symbol of the Obama administration’s economic failure. It was a symbol, all right — but not in the way he intended.  First of all, many reporters quickly noted a point that Mr. Romney somehow failed to mention: George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, was president when the factory in question was closed. Does the Romney campaign expect Americans to blame President Obamafor his predecessor’s policy failure?

Karl Rove: Obama Is Winning
TIME // Adam Sorensen
Conservative horcrux Karl Rove is out with his first official electoral college projectionof 2012 and… it’s really bullish on Obama. Rove has South Carolina, which McCain won by 9 points in 2008, rated as a toss-up, and Texas–Texas–merely leaning Republican. The result, in Rove’s model, is 284 electoral votes within Obama’s grasp, 172 for Romney and 82 toss-ups.
Now, maybe this is some kind of devilishly brilliant plot to sow complacency among the ranks of the enemy, but Rove’s predictions were pretty spot-on in 2008and 2010. Either way, it has to be a little spooky for Democrats or Republicans looking at his map. [Via Weigel]

Apr 19 2012

Update on the Buffett Rule

Friends:

I wanted to make sure you heard the news on the Buffett Rule coming out of the Senate this week.

Senate Republicans filibustered the bill, blocking debate and preventing a simple up-or-down vote, despite the fact that a majority of senators supported the law.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans like you added your name to the call to pass the rule, and a recent CNN poll showed that almost three-quarters of Americans support the Buffett Rule. Monday’s result was disappointing, but it was not entirely unexpected. Republican leadership, from Mitt Romney to Mitch McConnell, has consistently lined up to defend tax breaks and loopholes for millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the middle class and the health of our economy. Apparently they think it’s fair that Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

It’s not fair, and it’s not right for the economy either. The Buffett Rule is an important part of the president’s plan to make tough choices on spending and taxes to bring down the deficit and invest in the middle class. And with supporters like you keeping the heat on, the Buffett Rule is going to be a defining issue in this race. We’re going to make sure the voters know President Obama is fighting for middle-class security, while Mitt Romney protects tax loopholes for himself and other millionaires.

Thank you for adding your voice to this debate. This isn’t over, and with your help, we’ll keep fighting for an economy built to last, where everyone pays their fair share.

-James

James Kvaal
National Policy Director
Obama for America

P.S. — The Buffett Rule is just one example of the choice voters will face in November. Can you pitch in to help spread the word?

Apr 6 2012

NEWFC’s Statement on RNC Chair Reince Priebus Dismissing Uproar Over Republican Attacks on Women As Fictional As A “War on Caterpillars”

New England Women for Change released the following statement in response to RNC Chair Reince Priebus dismissing the uproar over Republican efforts to roll back women’s health care as fictional as a “war on caterpillars:”

“If women needed any more proof that the Republican Party has little regard for the issues that are important to them, RNC Chair Reince Priebus comparing Republican attacks on women’s health care to a ‘war on caterpillars’ ought to remove all doubt.   When it comes to women’s issues and women’s health, Republicans are out of touch.
“The fact is, the Republican Party has been fighting tirelessly to implement policies that are antiquated on women’s health.  And their leading Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has said he wants to ‘get rid of’ Federal funding for Planned Parenthood and supports the Blunt-Rubio amendment, which would give any employer the ability to deny their employees coverage for health care services like contraception based on their own beliefs.  It’s clear what’s bothering Reince Priebus, Mitt Romney and the GOP: Women are paying attention to GOP attempts to undermine women’s health care, and they don’t like it. The GOP has spun a web of Tea Party policies that appeal only to the extreme fringe of their party and now they’re caught in it. Chairman Priebus may try and borrow the Romney campaign’s Etch A Sketch to erase the past few months of GOP attacks on women, but women have a clear message for Reince Priebus, Mitt Romney and the GOP: You can try to erase it all you want but we’ll remember in November.”

Mar 21 2012

News Articles

New York Times // Alessandra Stanley
It’s not exactly “Morning Again in America.” If anything, a new straight-to-the-Internet campaign video of President Obama looks more like darkness at noon. This 17-minute re-election ad, “The Road We’ve Traveled,” that hit the Web on Thursday evening isn’t telling voters that everything is rosy after three years of the Obama presidency. Instead, it suggests that it could all have been so much worse.

Biden names names; says GOP ‘dead wrong’ on auto bailout
MSNBC // Carrie Dann
TOLEDO, Ohio — In the White House’s most aggressive singling out of its Republican rivals to date, Vice President Joe Biden slammed Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum by name during his first public campaign event of the 2012 cycle. Addressing more than 500 union members and supporters at United Auto Workers Local 12 here, Biden touted the administration’s backing of the auto industry bailout, saying that the GOP presidential candidates were “dead wrong” in their opposition to the measure.

Senator Kerry defends Obama against GOP critics
Boston Globe // Glen Johnson
Had things gone according to plan, had the proverbial half-football stadium’s worth of extra voters turned out for him in Ohio in 2004, Senator John Kerry could be in the final year of his presidency.Yet the reality is that he did not win one term, let alone two. And he has instead spent the past seven-plus years in the US Senate, focusing his attention on his duties as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and – more recently – as the senior member from Massachusetts.This past week, though, Kerry showed that the presidential gene has not receded, as he launched a broad-based defense of the Obama administration. It only underscored the belief that he is a leading candidate for secretary of state should fellow Democrat Barack Obama win a second term in November.On Monday, Kerry delivered a sharply partisan speech to the nonpartisan New England Council, castigating congressional Republicans for blocking even the most mundane accomplishment as part of an effort to prevent Obama’s reelection.

Pennsylvania Becomes First State In 2012 To Enact Voter ID Law
Think Progress // Scott Keyes
With a stroke of a pen, hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians were potentially disenfranchised last night. Gov. Tom Corbett (R) signedinto law HB 934, which requires all Pennsylvanians to show a certain form of photo ID in order to be allowed to vote, after the Republican-controlled state legislature approved the bill this week. It will have a disastrous impact on the 700,000Pennsylvanians who currently lack photo ID, half of whom are senior citizens. With the new voter ID law in place, they would not be permitted to cast a vote in the November general election. (In 2008, a watershed Democratic year, Barack Obama only won the state by 600,000 votes.)

Obamacare critic leaves us holding her hospital bills
Tampa Bay Times // Wendell Potter
If I were trying to persuade the Supreme Court later this month that Obamacare should not be declared unconstitutional, I would tell the story of the Florida Panhandle woman who was the original named plaintiff in the lawsuit filed by the National Federation of Independent Business, one of the fiercest critics of the health care reform law. • The NFIB thought it had found the perfect person when one of its members, Mary Brown, a 56-year-old owner of an automobile repair shop in Panama City, volunteered to lend her name to the lawsuit.

President Recapturing Groups Won by G.O.P. in 2010
New York Times // Dalia Sussman
While President Obamais locked in a tight race for re-election, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll found him faring well against the top Republican candidates among some important groups that abandoned Congressional Democrats in 2010.   Among all registered voters, Mr. Obama had a three-point edge over Mitt Romneyand a four-point advantage over Rick Santorum, differences that are within the poll’s margin of sampling error.   Independents are the quintessential swing voters, and election results often hinge on them. In 2008, a majority of them supported Mr. Obama, according to exit polls, helping to fuel his victory. But in 2010, they helped hand Republicans control of the House of Representatives, supporting them over Democratic candidates by 19 points.

Voters blame president for gas prices, experts say not so fast
Washington Post // Steven Mufson
How much does the president have to do with the price of gasoline? A lot, say American voters. According to oil experts and economists, not so much — at least in the short term.  Today’s oil prices are the product of years and decades of exploration, automobile design and ingrained consumer habits combined with political events in places such as Sudan and Libya, anxiety about possible conflict with Iran, and the energy aftershocks of last year’s earthquake in Japan.   “This notion that a politician can wave a magic wand and impact the 90-million-barrel-a-day global oil market is preposterous,” said Paul Bledsoe, strategic adviser to the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Clinton administration official.

A TNR Symposium on Obama’s Second Term: Why Defending His First-Term Achievements Should Be Enough
The New Republic // Jonathan Cohn
Yes, we know we’re tempting fate. But we figure there’s a 50 percent chance Obama will get reelected, and in any case he needs an agenda to campaign on. So we’ve asked a number of TNR contributors to explain what they think Obama should focus on for the next four years—if he wins in November. Click here to read the collected contributions.  The strangest thing happened outside my house two hours ago. I killed a mosquito. In Michigan. In early March. If I had any doubts about what President Obama’s top priority should be in his second term, that moment erased them.  Scientists say this is the fourth warmest winter on record. By itself, that fact (like the insect I just crushed) tells us nothing about climate change, given that temperatures inevitably bounce around from year to year. But this winter’s weather is part of a much broader, more gradual warming trend that virtually every scientist not on the payroll of a coal or energy company has observed. (See the graph at the end of this article.)

With donors tough to find, Romney faces dilemma
Boston Globe // Brian Mooney
There are still no plans for Mitt Romney to dip into his personal fortune, as he did four years ago, to bankroll his candidacy, several campaign advisers said this week, even as the battle for the Republican presidential nomination looks increasingly like it will be a long and expensive fight.  Romney leads the GOP field by far in fund-raising, taking in about $75 million through the end of last month, and he is expected to have collected about $2 million at a series of four events in New York City and Connecticut during a fund-raising blitz Wednesday and Thursday. But his campaign continues to spend heavily in key states in its effort to halt the rise of Rick Santorum, whose once woeful fund-raising approached that of Romney’s last month. Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul did not respond to a Globe inquiry about whether tapping the candidate’s personal wealth is an option, other than to say in an e-mail that the campaign had its “second best fund-raising month to date in February.’’

Romney’s Donors Say the Darnest Things
New York Magazine // Eliza Shapiro
Mitt and Ann Romney have said their fair share of silly things about money recently. Mitt’s assurance that he had friends who own NASCAR teams didn’t help his populist cred, and Ann’s comment that she didn’t consider herself wealthy landed with a thud on the Internets last week. Now, Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel and a Romney supporter has told the Chicago Tribune that the super-rich have an “insufficient influence” on politics.  Griffin has given $150,000 to the Romney-supporting super PAC Restore our Future. He describes himself as a “Reagan Republican” who is also a fan of new Chicago mayor and former Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel, who recently gave Griffin a tour of his new office. And why don’t the rich have enough influence on politics? “Those who have enjoyed the benefits of our system more than ever now owe a duty to protect the system that has created the greatest nation on this planet,” says Griffin. Griffin gave to Obama in 2008 but has been at the forefront of a very public disappointmentwith the president by a certain slice of the really rich.

Mar 20 2012

Elizabeth Warren Leading Scott Brown by Five

Hot off the presses! - New Poll. Warren 46, Brown 41

Raleigh, N.C. – Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren leads Republican Scott Brown by 5 points, 46-41, a new poll from Public Policy Polling finds. Warren has increased her lead from 46-44 the last time PPP polled Massachusettes in September 2011. Scott Brown still enjoys almost unanimous support from Republicans, winning their share of the vote 89-3. Brown even takes a fair share of Democratic voters, taking 17% of them to Warren’s 72%, and he also wins independent voters by 12 points, 48-36. The difference is that in his 2010 victory Brown won independent voters by 32 points.
Voters are split down the middle on whether Scott Brown has been “an independent voice for Massachusetts” or “a partisan voice for the national Republican Party”, with 41% of voters picking each description. Independent voters see Brown as an “independent voice” by a 47-34 margin. The proportion of voters who see Brown as an independent voice for Massachusetts has gone down since last September – back then voters say him as more independent than partisan by a 47-41 margin. Warren’s favorability rating sits at 46% favorable and 33% unfavorable.
Voters marginally approve of Scott Brown’s job performance, with 45% approving and 42% disapproving, but he’s below the magical 50% approval rating – historically a danger sign for incumbent candidates facing strong challengers.
“Scott Brown’s still strong with independents, but not nearly as strong as he was in 2010,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “Elizabeth Warren’s doing 20 points better with those voters than Martha Coakley did, and that’s why she has a small early lead in this race.”
Massachusetts voters say they have a much more favorable than unfavorable impression of Harvard University, at 57% favorable and 19% unfavorable.
PPP surveyed 936 Massachusetts voters from March 16th – 18th. The margin of error for the survey is +/-3.2%.
This poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization. PPP surveys are conducted through automated telephone interviews. PPP is a Democratic polling company, but polling expert Nate Silver of the New York Times found that its surveys in 2010 actually exhibited a slight bias toward Republican candidates.
Public Policy Polling 3020 Highwoods Blvd. Raleigh, NC 27604
The Warren Campaign’s take on this poll:
Help keep our campaign growing  View Mobile Version
Elizabeth Warren for Massachusetts

Friend,

Breaking news: A new poll just released by Public Policy Polling has Elizabeth Warren again up by five in the Massachusetts Senate race, 46 to 41.

This is good news, but we know it’s easy to get caught up every time new polls come out. This campaign is going to be won with every phone call we make, every door we knock on, and every hand we shake.

Nobody expects this race to be easy — not Elizabeth, and not our opponents. This race will be close till the end, and we’re going to need you with us every step of the way.

Help us prove we’re ready for whatever’s ahead — the polls, the distortions, and whatever mud Scott Brown’s campaign throws at us. Make a $5 contribution right now.

The election is still almost eight months from now, and there will be plenty more polls that show us up and polls that show us down.

That’s why we just have to keep working, organizing all across Massachusetts and talking to voters about how Elizabeth will take her fight for middle class families to the U.S. Senate. The more that people hear Elizabeth’s story, and the more they learn about why she’s in this race, the stronger our support will be all across the Commonwealth.

We can’t do it without you — and we need your help now. Contribute $5 now to help keep our campaign growing and introducing Elizabeth to new voters.

Thanks,

Mindy Myers
Campaign Manager
Elizabeth for MA

Donate
  Follow Elizabeth on Facebook
  Follow Elizabeth on Twitter
All content © 2012 Elizabeth for MA, All Rights Reserved
PO Box 290568
Boston, MA 02129
Paid for by Elizabeth for MA

Mar 19 2012

Another example of Republicans and their “Clockwork Orange” views on women’s health decisions.

In case you missed it, Governor Corbett of Pennsylvania made some outrageous remarks last week about an ultrasound bill that is moving through his state. After being asked if the bill requiring women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound went too far, the Governor said, “You just have to close your eyes.” Although the bill doesn’t require women to keep their eyelids open, it does mandate that a woman’s doctor turn the image toward her face, give her signed copies of the image, and describe the number of heartbeats and health of the fetus.

is this next in Pennsylvania:

Feb 16 2012

An email from Emily’s list

Rep. Carolyn Maloney said it best: “Where are the women?”

This morning, an all-male panel of religious leaders testified in front of a Congressional committee about birth control coverage. That’s right, only men — who are not doctors, by the way — were allowed to testify by the GOP leadership about critical women’s health coverage. No women.

It’s absolutely outrageous. The all-male GOP leadership is calling on all-male religious leaders to decide whether birth control should be fully covered by insurance plans. We cannot let this happen. We cannot stand by while Far Right Republicans once again try to send us back to the Dark Ages.

Stand with EMILY’s List now and tell the GOP that women’s health decisions should be made by women — not by anti-choice, anti-woman men.

After pleading with the committee chairman to hear from a female witness, the Democratic women on the committee — all of them EMILY’s List women — literally stood up for us and walked out. These are the women who will always have our backs, but we desperately need more of them — and that’s what we’re working to do every day at EMILY’s List.

It’s time to stand up — right now — and say that you will not watch quietly while anti-choice, anti-woman legislators and religious leaders work to dismantle everything we’ve achieved.

Add your voice now! Tell the GOP that women should be the only ones in charge of women’s health.

We have to fight. Right now. Let’s do it.

Thank you for all you do.

All the best,

 

Amy K. Dacey
Executive Director

Feb 11 2012

More Politics

Obama has small-check donor advantage over Romney
Reuters // Alina Selyukh and Alexander Cohen
(Reuters) – It does not guarantee him re-election in November, but it is an advantage President Barack Obama is likely to carry into the fall: a broad base of supporters who have given him the symbolic vote of confidence with a donation of less than $200. Known as small donors, these people are personally invested in a candidate’s march to becoming president, many ready to become active at the ground level as foot soldiers of the campaign.

What to watch in Obama’s approval numbers
Washington Post // Jonathan Bernstein
More good news for the president: Gallup’s daily tracking poll today has him edging into positive territory, at 49% approval, 45% disapproval. He’s poked into positive territory a couple of times recently, but both the 49% approval and the +4 net approval he enjoyed today are the highest since the rally effect after bin Laden’s death last year. There’s no magic number for where approval has to be for him to be assured of re-election, but generally people estimate that 48% or so approval is probably around the break-even mark, and a low 50s rating makes re-election very likely.

Obama’s embrace of ‘super PAC’ will test his base of donors
Los Angeles Times // Matea Gold and Melanie Mason
Reporting from Washington— President Obama‘s decision to endorse a “super PAC” working on his behalf will test the devotion of his top contributors, who have yet to match the massive sums pouring into such groups allied with Republican presidential challengers.  In asking his top fundraisers to steer money to the main super PAC backing his reelection, Obama embraced a campaign vehicle he spent the last two years castigating — potentially undermining his efforts to cast himself as a reformer.

Colorado turnout could spell trouble for Republicans
Wall Street Journal // Neil King Jr.
Is President Barack Obama vulnerable in Colorado? He may be, but Tuesday night’s returns also tell a more sobering story for Republicans. With 20% of returns in, it looks as if fewer than 40,000 Republicans will have turned out for all four of the Republicans contenders. In 2008, twice that number caucused for Mr. Obama alone.

Is media getting politics of contraception all wrong?
Washington Post // Greg Sargent
Since the controversy over the White House’s new contraception policy broke, it’s been widely assumed that the battle is terrible politics for Obama, because it will cost him among Catholic swing voters. But some polling from August suggests a majority of Americans supports the White House position — and that the opposition to the provision from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops makes no difference to them. Even a majority of Catholic respondents said the same.

Massive mortgage settlement a win for Obama Administration
National Journal // Stacy Kaper
Although much of the initial grunt work to investigate and hold lenders accountable for questionable foreclosure practices was undertaken by ambitious and frustrated state attorneys general like Iowa’s Tom Miller, pressure from the administration and negotiations by federal regulators from the Justice and Housing and Urban Development departments played a major role in closing the deal and persuading wayward and significant states like California and New York to agree to sign on.

Romney keeping secret names of his mega fund raisers
Chicago Sun Times // Lynn Sweet
GOP White House hopeful Mitt Romney is trying to avoid scrutiny by being secretive about his fund-raising; where he goes to raise money and who are the individuals who help him the most. Romney has refused to reveal the names of his “bundlers” — people who tap their extensive personal networks to raise money.

Romney’s outsider message at odds with deep DC connections
MSNBC // Garrett Haake
After his stinging losses to Rick Santorum on Tuesday, Mitt Romney has responded with this message: He’s the only Washington outsider left in the race and, thus, the only one capable of changing its culture.And he has lumped his two main challengers – Santorum and Newt Gingrich – into the dreaded “Washington insider” category.

On China, Donald Trump brings out the worst in Mitt Romney
Bloomberg // Editorial
On most economic issues — notably the source of his personal fortune — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romneyseems to believe in the most extreme form of let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may capitalism. An exception is China.  Last week, accepting the endorsement of Sinophobe Donald Trump, Romney declaredthat “on my first day in office,” he will slap tariffs on any Chinese goods that arrive on American shores through “unfair trade practices” that “have cost American jobs.” He openly threatened a “trade war” because “you have to stand up at some point and say enough is enough — you have killed too many jobs.”

Mitt Romney 2012: Cartoon millionaire
Politico // Maggie Haberman
Meet Mitt Romney, the parody.  He’s really rich, worth between $150 million and “$200-odd million,” as he memorably put it.  He thinks “corporations are people,” but doesn’t much worry about real people if they’re “very poor.”  Homes? Three. Tax returns? None of your business. He invests in the same exotic places a James Bond villain might, the Cayman Islands and a Swiss bank account.
 

Sep 17 2011

Political Corner

DNC Chair uses debate moment to pounce on GOP

CNN // Shannon Travis
The woman working to ensure President Obama’s re-election entered the political equivalent of the lion’s den – and pounced on a debate moment to blast the Republican presidential candidates late Monday. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz stood in the “spin room” at the Florida State Fair Grounds in Tampa following the Republican Tea Party Debate broadcast by CNN and countered the Republican candidates’ slams of President Obama with some aimed back at them.

With Doubts, Voters Prefer Obama Jobs Plan
National Journal // Ron Brownstein
Despite deepening doubts about President Obama’s economic agenda, Americans generally prefer the proposals he offered last week for reviving the economy to the competing ideas advanced by congressional Republicans and the GOP’s 2012 presidential field, a United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll has found. The poll suggests Americans remain unconvinced that either party’s agenda can significantly dent the nation’s longest period of sustained unemployment since the Depression. The share of Americans who said that Obama’s policies have compounded economic difficulties was nearly double the portion who said he has improved conditions.

DNC campaigns for Obama jobs plan
Politico // Tim Mak
The Democratic National Committee is launching a new ad campaign Monday to build public pressure on Congress to back President Barack Obama’s job plan. The television spots feature clips from Obama’s jobs speech to a joint session of Congress last Thursday evening. “The next election is fourteen months away. And the people who sent us here, the people who hired us to work for them – they don’t have the luxury of waiting fourteen months… Members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities,” Obama says in the clip

Why the Perry-Romney Slugfest Plays Right Into Obama’s Hands
The New Republic // Ed Kilgore
But if all these implications of the Romney-Perry clash are reasonably clear, there is a more subtle but possibly even more significant additional consequence of Republicans arguing over whether to demolish or merely slash Social Security and Medicare: It will materially aid Barack Obama’s high-stakes effort to make the 2012 presidential election a choice between two very different visions of American government, rather than a referendum on his administration and its handling of the economy.

Poll: Don’t blame Barack Obama
Politico // MJ Lee
Despite his record-low approval ratings, not all unhappy Americans blame President Barack Obama for the problems in Washington. According to a new Bloomberg National Poll released Thursday, 45 percent of those surveyed said they blame Republicans on Capitol Hill for the problems inside the Beltway, while 39 percent said they believe the fault is with Obama or Democrats in Congress. More than a third of those surveyed said they “wish” Obama and the GOP in Congress would compromise — 28 percent said they are “frustrated” by the fighting in Washington, while more than a quarter said they are “angry and want to throw them all out.”

GOP Ties House Wins to President’s Woes
Wall Street Journal // Naftali Bendavid
Decisive Republican wins Tuesday in two House races have Democrats increasingly worried they will face problems in the 2012 elections if the economy and President Barack Obama’s job approval rating don’t improve significantly. Off-cycle elections often have their own dynamics that say little about national trends. But strategists from both parties tied Mr. Obama’s shaky poll numbers to Tuesday’s victory by Republican Bob Turner in a traditionally Democratic New York City district, and to a 22-point win by GOP candidate Mark Amodei in Nevada.

Obama campaign targets Georgia, possibly Savannah, as key battleground
Savannah Morning News // Larry Peterson
President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is targeting Georgia for extra effort next year, state Democratic chairman Mike Berlon said. Back this week from meetings with Obama operatives in Chicago, Berlon said the Peach State has moved up a notch on their priority list. “There will be a lot of national attention focused in Georgia, starting in January,” he told local Democrats this week. The upgrade comes after Republicans swept every statewide office in 2010, and experts question whether Georgia is fertile ground for Obama.

Obama’s chance to bounce back
The Washington Post // Aaron Blake 
It hasn’t been a good month for President Obama, but beneath it all, the American people are still ready to hear him out when it comes to his jobs plan. And in fact, at first glance, they seem to like it. Two new polls show more Americans like the president’s jobs plan than dislike it. A CNN/Opinion Research poll shows 43 percent favor Obama’s jobs plan, while 35 percent oppose it. And Gallup shows an even wider gap, with 45 percent in favor and 32 percent opposed. With less than majority support, it’s hardly a resounding affirmation of the president’s policies, and much has yet to play out. But the numbers do show that the American people haven’t written off the president’s economic ideas, even as the economy has tanked.

Insurers fought Obama’s health overhaul, but now they aid coalition to sign up uninsured
The Associated Press
Betting that President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul withstands lawsuits and a Republican repeal drive, an unusual alliance of industry, health care and consumer groups Wednesday launched a campaign to lay the groundwork for signing up uninsured Americans. Called Enroll America, the group started its work a day after the Census Bureau reported that nearly 50 million people had no health insurance in 2010, the highest number since the statistic was first collected more than two decades ago.

Obama imitates Truman’s re-election campaign
The Daily Caller // Neil Munro
President Barack Obama took the next step on his road to a 1948-style run for re-election by declaring he is being stymied by a do-nothing Congress. “This Congress, they are accustomed to doing nothing, and they’re comfortable with doing nothing, and they keep on doing nothing,” he told roughly 30 supporters at the first of two D.C. fundraisers held on Thursday evening. That depiction of a do-nothing Congress, which is set to become a feature of his stump speech, echoes President Harry Truman’s come-from-behind 1948 race for the presidency, in which he railed at a Republican-led “do-nothing Congress.”

Don’t Sweat the Jewish Vote
Daily Beast // Eric Alterman
Here we go yet again. Democrats lost a heavily Jewish seat in Brooklyn and Queens that they’ve held for almost a century, and just as they have done now for over 30 years, neoconservatives are predicting an exodus of Jews away from the Democrats into the Republican party. Most enthusiastic on this point is former Bush administration official Dan Senior. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he insists that “New York’s special congressional election on Tuesday was the first electoral outcome directly affected by President Obama’s Israel policy,” and he blames this on the fact that the president has “a record of bad policies and anti-Israel rhetoric.” Actually, not true.


Mar 18 2011

“Seriously – WTF?!” – sign the petition from MOVEON.ORG

What kind of country cuts food aid to hungry pregnant women and children in the middle of an economic crisis—while giving a giant tax break to billionaires?
Seriously. WTF?!
The Republicans are winning the battle over the budget, hands down, even though what they’re fighting for is, put simply, immoral. A cut of at least $400 million from a crucial program that puts food on the table for pregnant women and small children. Crippling the EPA. Completely eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AmeriCorps, and high-speed rail.1
Instead of creating jobs, the Republican budget would destroy 700,000 of them. Our only hope is a public outcry strong enough to stiffen Democrats’ spines and cause Republicans to back down.
The petition says: “Cutting food aid to hungry women and children in the middle of an economic crisis is wrong. Please oppose the devastating cuts in the Republican budget.”