U.S.: The Caucus | The Other Romney Parent

In style and temperament, Mitt Romney may have been influenced as much by his mother Lenore as his father George.

Produced by Ben Werschkul

View the original article here

The Caucus: Obama Goes After Republicans in New Michigan Ad

Tracking and analyzing campaign advertising.

DETROIT — President Obama is highlighting his support for the federal assistance plan that helped rescue Detroit automakers in a new television commercial that accuses Republican presidential candidates of abandoning the industry in its darkest hour.

The 30-second commercial, called “Made in America,” also mentions Mitt Romney’s now well-known opinion article that carried the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

Over images of factory employees hard at work and smiling families, an announcer says, “when a million jobs were on the line, every Republican candidate turned their back, even said, ‘Let Detroit go Bankrupt.’”

Then the commercial pivots to the president. “Not him,” says the announcer as a sound bite of the president plays. “Don’t bet against the American auto industry,” Mr. Obama is shown saying.

The ad is certain to draw even more of a focus on the sensitive and complex politics of the auto industry bailout, which all the Republican candidates have said they opposed. Mr. Obama and Democrats have sought to draw attention to that opposition now that Detroit car makers are adding jobs and the economy in Michigan is showing signs of progress.

In a Detroit Free Press poll released today, there were signs that Mr. Romney’s opposition to the bailout were complicating his prospects here in his home state. Asked what they disliked most about Mr. Romney, 12 percent of likely Republican primary voters cited his opposition to the rescue plan.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Arizona Republican Debate Fact Check

Times reporters take a closer look at some of the statements made by the Republican presidential candidates in Wednesday night’s debate.

Romney and the Auto Bailout

Mitt Romney provided a more nuanced explanation of his opposition to the federal loan package that helped rescue the auto industry in 2008 and 2009, saying there was “no way” he would have let American car companies implode. But a bipartisan group of auto industry executives, government officials and financial experts have said that if General Motors and Chrysler had followed his advice at the time and gone into bankruptcy, implosion is exactly what would have happened.

The context is Mr. Romney’s 2008 New York Times Op-Ed, in which he argued that Chrysler and General Motors should not receive federal aid. “Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check,” he wrote.

But auto industry executives and people who were involved in the government-mandated reorganization of the auto companies have said that the managed bankruptcy was not an option at the time Mr. Romney wrote his article. Furthermore, they have said, following a path into bankruptcy then would have caused far more severe job losses and even liquidation.

Mike Jackson, a Romney supporter and chief executive of AutoNation, the largest auto retailer in the country, said recently that Mr. Romney’s position on the auto bailout was a “circle that can’t be squared.”

To go through a managed bankruptcy, tens of billions of dollars in financing would have been necessary. Auto executives and government officials have said that the only entity at the time that could have provided that level of financing was the federal government. In late 2008 and early 2009, the credit markets seized up, making financing on that scale virtually impossible to come by.

Mr. Romney and others have argued that the markets would have provided that money if the government demurred. But even Mr. Romney’s former firm, Bain Capital, declined to help General Motors when asked in 2009 to invest in the automaker’s European division, said one person with direct knowledge of the conversations.

The most problematic comment on the auto bailout, however, was made not by Mr. Romney but by Newt Gingrich, who said foreign automakers like Toyota and Nissan were doing “just fine” at the time the federal government bailed out domestic carmakers. Mr. Gingrich made the remarks in an attempt to draw a connection between the American auto companies’ high labor costs and their decline. But at that point, car manufacturers were doing poorly regardless of whether they were foreign or domestic.

In early 2009, Toyota reported its first loss in 70 years — $7.7 billion. Nissan was also in bad shape at that time, reporting $2.4 billion in losses. Honda, another Japanese automaker, also lost billions then.

– Jeremy W. Peters

Santorum on Contraception

Rick Santorum had a hard time explaining his stance on contraception because he has made numerous statements that appear to be in conflict.

Did he clear it up Wednesday night? Not really. “I have a personal moral objection” to contraception, he said, “but I’ve voted for bills that included it too.”

This drew a big boo from the audience.

Last year, Mr. Santorum told an evangelical blog, “One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is, I think, the dangers of contraception in this country.”

He added: “Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that’s O.K. Contraception’s O.K.’ It’s not O.K. because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

So, his position seems to be that while he personally opposes birth control, he would not ban it as president. But he did not spell it out clearly tonight. Then again, he successfully deflected Mr. Romney’s attempt to press him on the issue by bringing up Mr. Romney’s health care plan in Massachusetts.

– Katharine Q. Seelye

Santorum Waffles on Title X

Mr. Santorum may have had a “I voted for it before I voted against it” moment Wednesday night.

In response to an assertion by Mr. Paul that he had voted to fund Planned Parenthood, Mr. Santorum said: “As Congressman Paul knows, I opposed Title X funding. I’ve always opposed Title X funding.” He quickly added, “But it’s included in a large appropriation bill that includes a whole host of other things.” Here the audience started to boo.

Technically, Mr. Santorum was saying that he opposed Title X funding — not that he voted against it — but he was implying that he had voted against it. Then when he said it was included in a larger bill, the audience cried foul.

Title X, by the way, is the major funding vehicle for family planning programs. It was signed into law in 1970 by a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who declared, “Contraception for all.”

Mr. Santorum said that because Title X “was always pushed through,” he countered by pushing for Title XX to provide funding for abstinence programs, saying they “actually work in keeping children from being sexually active instead of facilitating children from being sexually active.”

Finally, he got around to an admission: “Yes, I — I admit I voted for large appropriation bills and there were things in there I didn’t like.”

His bottom line, he said, is that as president, “I will defund Planned Parenthood; I will not sign any appropriation bill that funds Planned Parenthood.”

Mr. Santorum’s recent statements are likely to add to the confusion about his stance on the issue. Since 2006, he has cited his support for Title X to show that he is not opposed to funding for contraception.

As recently as last week, on “CBS This Morning,” Rick Santorum told the host, Charlie Rose, that he has no problems with federal funds for contraceptives, saying that he voted for Title X funds in the Senate.

– Katharine Q. Seelye

Obama and Iran

Mr. Romney pressed his case that President Obama had practiced appeasement toward Iran, but he mischaracterized Mr. Obama’s position on potential military action. The president has repeatedly said that military action against Tehran remains on the table.

It is also not true that Mr. Obama agreed to Russia’s demand to give up missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe. He negotiated with Russia over the scale of the system, in an effort to win Moscow’s agreement to the Start arms reduction treaty. In his discussion of national security, Mr. Romney also said the administration wanted to cut the Pentagon’s budget by “roughly a trillion dollars,” which is twice what Mr. Obama has suggested.

Mr. Santorum is correct in saying that in 2009, the Obama administration cut funding for a United States-based group that documented human rights abuses in Iran. But the State Department continues to finance other groups that seek to block censorship of the Internet in Iran. Mr. Santorum also slightly misstated Mr. Obama’s decision to open an embassy in Syria. The United States withdrew its ambassador to Damascus under President George W. Bush; Mr. Obama decided to send an envoy back to Syria before withdrawing him recently because of the civil strife.

– Mark Landler

Expanding E-Verify

When Mr. Romney spoke of Arizona as a model for fighting illegal immigration, he was referring to one of several laws Arizona passed in recent years that requires employers to confirm that new hires are legally authorized to work through a federal system called E-Verify.

The system, which is voluntary at the federal level, has been growing rapidly, with 288,000 employers now using it nationwide. It has proven to be a reasonably effective and efficient way for employers to avoid hiring illegal immigrants, and it discourages those immigrants from seeking jobs in companies known to use the system. There is bipartisan support in Congress for some kind of national system to verify the immigration status and work authorization of new hires.

However, there has been debate over proposals currently before Congress to expand the E-Verify system, making it mandatory for all employers nationwide. If that happened, all new hires — including Americans as well as immigrants — would have to provide documentation to verify their identity and eligibility to work. Some critics, including Republicans, have said that could become another costly and intrusive federal mandate.

E-Verify currently relies on data from the Social Security system, which has been shown to have errors that could be costly and time-consuming for Americans and legal immigrants to correct.

Also, farmers across the country are strongly opposed to making E-Verify mandatory nationwide without a new guest worker program to provide legal migrant labor for agriculture. So while the general idea that Mr. Romney proposes has support in theory, putting it into practice nationally is not easy — particularly for Republicans.

That said, all four of the candidates avoided the hot-button issue: what to do about 11 million illegal immigrants already living in the country.

– Julia Preston

Gingrich and Earmarks

Earlier in the debate, three of the Republicans – Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum and Mr. Romney — jousted as they often do on the subject of earmarks, which are spending items that members of Congress insert in the annual appropriations bills to benefit a particular project or program backed by constituents or supporters. Mr. Romney has criticized both of his rivals for their use of earmarks when each was in Congress. As the moderator, CNN’s John King, indicated, earmarked spending has always been a minuscule piece of federal spending – typically less than 1 percent.

Mr. King asked Mr. Gingrich to respond to Mr. Romney’s criticism that Mr. Gingrich, as speaker of the House from 1995 through 1998, raised earmarking to an art form. Mr. Gingrich, rather than respond directly, recalled that the federal budget was balanced when he was speaker.

Mr. Gingrich, as speaker, did preside over a period in which the number and total cost of earmarks spiraled, and Republican leaders openly encouraged new members to seek earmarks to buttress their local standing. In 1992, when he was still in the minority, Representative Gingrich said, “I am committed to hunting down every appropriation … that is some politician taking care of himself.”

But in 1995, Mr. Gingrich’s first year as speaker, the new Republican-led Congress approved a record 1,430 earmarked projects worth $10 billion, according to the conservative group Citizens Against Government Waste. The totals escalated annually. Mr. Gingrich was forced to resign his office in late 1998 after a fraud scandal and Republican election losses. But Republicans remained in control of the House through 2006, when there were 9,963 earmarks worth $29 billion. Disgust among conservative voters with the trend, and scandals surrounding the earmarks, was a factor that year in Republicans’ election losses, which gave control of the House and Senate to Democrats.

Earmarks are still a part of the budget process, but Congress and the executive branch disclose them. And nonpartisan groups like Citizens Against Government Waste, with its annual “Pig Book,” continue to report on the spending.

– Jackie Calmes

Controlling the Federal Debt

The Republican debate opened with a question from the audience that allowed each of the four remaining candidates to claim that they would bring the mounting federal debt under control. But nonpartisan analysts have concluded otherwise for the proposals to date from Mr. Romney, Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum.

Another group will weigh in on Thursday: the U.S. Budget Watch project of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a longstanding nonprofit group that includes former members of Congress, administration officials and budget experts of both major parties, will issue a report showing that all three Republicans would add to the projected debt. Each candidate has proposed deep spending cuts in coming years, but the reductions are exceeded by the additional tax cuts they propose.

– Jackie Calmes

Santorum and Romney's Earmarks

In recent weeks, Mr. Santorum’s rivals – and Mr. Romney in particular – have hammered him over his use of earmarks while in Congress. John King, tonight’s debate moderator, asked Mr. Santorum about the topic directly. He asked if there were any earmarks Mr. Santorum regretted and, pointing out that Mr. Santorum has attacked Mr. Romney over earmarks he secured to help the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, he asked if Mr. Santorum thought the Olympics were an improper use of earmarks.

In his answer, Mr. Santorum first defended his use of earmarks, as he has in the past. In multiple interviews, he has said that some are necessary, adding that there are “good earmarks and bad earmarks.”

Switching to the Salt Lake City Olympics, which Mr. Romney helped turn around, Mr. Santorum said that he no problem with the federal funding Mr. Romney secured – in fact, Mr. Santorum volunteered, he had even voted in favor of some of the earmarks – but that Mr. Romney was a hypocrite for attacking Mr. Santorum over earmarks after having used them to his own advantage. Mr. Romney, he added, asked for “tens of millions” in federal funds to help save the 2002 Olympics.

This is largely true. When Mr. Romney headed to Utah, he did so with the help of about $1.5 billion in federal funding, including $60 million for security. The Democratic National Committee has already made an issue of Mr. Romney’s own use of earmarks, including releasing a video that attacks him over the Olympics funds. .

In his answer, Mr. Santorum mentioned his specific use of earmarks. During his time in Congress, Mr. Santorum did request a lot of earmarks – Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group, estimates that he requested more than $1 billion. In the defense appropriations bill for the 2006 fiscal year, for instance, the group says that Mr. Santorum helped secure 54 earmarks, costing $124 million in federal financing.

When it was Mr. Romney’s turn to respond, he accused Mr. Santorum, as he has in the past, of supporting the “Bridge to Nowhere,” a bridge in Alaska that cost almost $400 million and was intended to connect Ketchikan to a sparsely populated island with an airport. In 2005, Mr. Santorum did vote with the majority of the Senate in favor of a transportation bill that included the bridge, though the money for it (roughly $225 million) was a minuscule portion of the overall bill, which was nearly $300 billion.

Though earmarks are currently being demonized by both parties, there is nothing inherently wrong with a legislator requesting federal spending in his or her home district or state, or setting aside federal money for a state project.

– Ashley Parker

The Auto Bailout and the U.A.W.

Several Republican candidates, especially Mr. Gingrich, charged that President Obama gave in to the autoworkers’ unions when his administration rescued the auto industry in early 2009, and Mr. Gingrich went so far as to say that Mr. Obama turned the companies over to the United Auto Workers.

The auto rescue of General Motors and Chrysler was worked out between the unions and management, with both sides making concessions they never had before as a condition for their federal loans, conditions set by the Obama administration’s team.

In contrast, a smaller rescue package in late 2008 from the Bush administration had no such conditions. Mr. Gingrich also cited a number of auto companies with operations in the United States that did not need bailouts, but he the ones he named are foreign-owned, like Toyota. The only major American company that did not take federal assistance was Ford, but Ford supported the rescue program because if G.M. and Chrysler had failed, that would have threatened the entire auto-manufacturing supply chain in the United States, which in turn would be a threat to Ford.

– Jackie Calmes

Repealing Health Care Law

Mr. Santorum said repealing the health care insurance law that President Obama signed in 2010 would reduce the deficit. His rival Mr. Romney has repeatedly made the same claim in debates and repeatedly been judged incorrect.

Mr. Romney said repealing the law would save $95 billion a year. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the health care law would reduce deficits by $210 billion in the first decade from fiscal year 2012 through 2021 given taxes, fees and health cost reductions mandated by the law. Similarly, the office reported that legislation passed last year by the House Republican majority to repeal the law would increase deficits by the same amount.

While the budget office has declined to put an exact figure on projected savings of the health care law beyond the first decade, given the uncertainty of such long-range projections, it concluded that the savings would be in the range of half a percentage point of the nation’s gross domestic product, a substantial amount. The Obama administration has projected that the savings in the second decade will exceed $1 trillion.

In November, the nonpartisan fact-checking group PolitiFact said of Mr. Romney’s claim: “We rate his statement false.”

– Jackie Calmes

Romney and Massachusetts Taxes

Mr. Santorum, rebutting claims that he expanded government spending in Congress, just claimed that Mr. Romney “raised taxes and fees” by $750 million as governor of Massachusetts.

There is truth to that claim — though there is debate about the terminology. As governor, Mr. Romney raised more than $700 million in revenue through two major measures: first, he increased fees on a variety of government services, like the price of a commercial driving license; second, he closed dozens of corporate tax loopholes, requiring corporations to pay bigger tax bills.

Were those, technically, “tax” increases? Mr. Romney did not think so, perhaps unsurprisingly — he had run for governor on a “no new taxes” pledge. But many Massachusetts business leaders — and the prominent Washington anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform — said otherwise. They assailed the changes as tax increases by another name.

“They changed the laws and the rules to significantly raise taxes,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, has said of Mr. Romney’s corporate tax loophole changes. “That is a tax increase.”

– Michael Barbaro

Gingrich and a Balanced Budget

Trip Gabriel previously looked at Mr. Gingrich’s claim that he helped balance the budget four years in a row:

Mr. Gingrich has made a campaign theme out of how the economy improved when he was last in office, as speaker of the House in the 1990s. In his first answer, challenged about his conservative credentials, Mr. Gingrich said he was responsible for four consecutive balanced budgets and paid down $400 billion on the national debt.

But in only two years when he was speaker was the budget balanced, in fiscal 1998 and 1999. Although the government remained in the black for two more years, Mr. Gingrich left office in January 1999 and had no role in those later budgets. The total surplus when he was speaker was $194.9 billion, not $400 billion.

And it takes two to tango — Mr. Gingrich didn’t mention that these years of government surpluses were the result of policies that fostered an economic boom, many worked out with President Bill Clinton. Mr. Gingrich opposed a 1993 tax increase widely credited with helping to begin reducing the deficit.

– The New York Times

View the original article here

The Caucus: Caucus Video: The Last Debate?

February 23

Michael D. Shear reports on the what could be the final debate of Republican primary season.

February 22

Times reporters take a closer look at some of the statements made by the Republican presidential candidates in Wednesday night's debate.

February 22

Rick Santorum said he opposed a major funding vehicle for family planning programs, but ultimately voted for it as part of a larger spending bill.

February 22

Rick Santorum's rationale for an education vote was a curious -- and unusual -- acknowledgement of politics trumping values.

February 22

Newt Gingrich, as speaker, did preside over a period in which the number and total cost of earmarks spiraled upward.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Debate Quote Is a Negative Ad in the Making

Rick Santorum just offered up what may be the evening’s most wince-inducing moment: he declared that he had voted for President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law even though “it was my against my principles.”

For a presidential candidate, it was a curious — and unusual — acknowledgement of politics trumping values.

Mr. Santorum suggested that he had backed the bill, despite his reservations, to assist a Republican president with a major policy initiative, referring to himself as a “team player.”

The political advisers over at Mitt Romney’s campaign headquarters must be salivating. Mr. Santorum may have just handed them footage for a potent attack advertisement.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Romney Urges Lower Tax Rates and Fewer Deductions

Mitt Romney, seeking to kick-start his presidential campaign among recalcitrant conservatives, on Wednesday proposed cutting the top income tax for individuals to 28 percent while holding out the prospect of limiting tax deductions.

Mr. Romney’s earlier economic plan called only for preserving the current top tax rate of 35 percent, while holding out the promise of lower rates later in an overhaul of the tax code. But facing a major challenge from the upstart Republican rival Rick Santorum, he chose to outline such an overhaul in Arizona before critical primaries here and in Michigan next Tuesday – and before a televised debate Wednesday night in Mesa, Ariz.

At a rally in Chandler, Ariz., Mr. Romney promoted the benefits of his approach.

“In order to limit any impact on the deficit, because I do not want to add to the deficit, and also to make sure we continue to have progressivity in our tax code, I’m going to limit the deductions and exemptions, particularly for high-income folks,” Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, said.

“And by the way, I want to make sure that you understand, for middle-income families, the deductibility of home mortgage interest and charitable contributions, those things will continue,” he said. “For high-income folks, we are going to cut back on that, so we make sure that the top 1 percent keeps paying the current share they’re paying or more. We want middle-income Americans to be the place we focus our help, because its middle-income Americans that have been hurt by this Obama economy.”

Mr. Romney’s top economic adviser, Glenn Hubbard, said the plan would cut all six current tax brackets – 10 percent, 15 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent, 33 percent, 35 percent, depending on a taxpayer’s income – by the same proportion of 20 percent. That would produce this new set of tax brackets: 8 percent, 12 percent, 20 percent, 22.4 percent, 26.4 percent, and 28 percent. “It’s a marginal rate cut for every American,” Mr. Hubbard said.

But echoing the candidate, he added that Mr. Romney was committed to making his plan both “revenue neutral” – meaning it won’t add to the budget deficit — and “distributionally neutral” – meaning that it won’t shift the tax burden from upper-income Americans to middle- and working-class Americans. Since the largest benefits from rate reduction would go to upper-income taxpayers, they will also bear the burdens of “base broadening” reductions in existing deductions needed to keep the government from hemorrhaging revenue, he explained.

Reducing large tax deductions, like the ones for home mortgage interest and state and local taxes, can be politically treacherous because of their popularity with voters and elected officials alike. For now, at least, Mr. Romney will dodge any potential backlash by avoiding such specifics.

Mr. Romney will pledge to work with Congress on “limiting them,” Mr. Hubbard said, but “it is not his intention to take on any specific
deduction or exclusion and eliminate it.”

Mr. Romney has praised the work of President Obama’s Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission, but criticized the president for ignoring its work. Mr. Romney, however, is also rejecting the commission’s recommendation that tax overhaul produce increased government revenue to cut the deficit, while embracing its recommendation to cut the top tax rate to 29 percent or lower.

Mr. Hubbard contrasted Mr. Romney’s “pro-growth” plan with Mr. Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 and households earning more than $250,000. He argued that would hurt economic growth by crimping small businesses, many of which file under the individual tax code.

Mr. Hubbard, who was an economic adviser to President George W. Bush and is now dean of the business school at Columbia University, also cast the
Romney plan as superior to Mr. Santorum’s. Mr. Santorum would also cut the top individual rate to 28 percent, the level it reached after Congress and the White House agreed on a tax overhaul plan during the Reagan presidency, while preserving only one more tax bracket of 10 percent. In the name of “national security,” Mr. Santorum has also proposed a zero tax rate for manufacturing businesses as a means of preserving and expanding that economic sector.

The Santorum plan would significantly expand the budget deficit, Mr. Hubbard said, and the zero rate for manufacturing would result in “significant capital misallocation.”

“Net-net, it’s a job destroyer, not a job creator,” Mr. Hubbard said.

Both Mr. Santorum and former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has proposed an optional “flat tax” system of 15 percent, have accused Mr. Romney of timidity. With his new proposal, Mr. Romney seeks to counter that charge in advance of Wednesday night’s debate.

Mr. Romney’s plan aims to balance two competing priorities of different Republican factions. By proposing to cut the top rate, he
is seeking support among supply-side conservatives who contend that lower marginal rates are the key ingredient for producing economic growth.

But by vowing to offset the loss of revenue by eliminating some deductions, he is addressing concerns among deficit hawks about expanding the tide of red ink that has the federal government spending an estimated $1.3 trillion more than it takes in this year.

And by insisting that those unspecified reductions will fall most heavily on the affluent, he is seeking to limit a line of attack that portrays him as a wealthy former financial industry executive who himself has paid taxes at only around the 15 percent rate because most of his income comes from capital gains. Mr. Romney would maintain the current 15 percent rate on dividends and capital gains.

Mr. Obama has proposed to tax the “carried interest” received by many hedge fund and private equity executives at higher ordinary income rates rather than as capital gains, arguing that current law gives them an undue advantage. Mr. Romney himself has benefited handsomely from that.

Mr. Hubbard said a President Romney would ask his treasury secretary to study the “devilishly hard question” of whether current law should change and tax some of that income at ordinary income rates.

Mr. Romney had proposed eliminating capital gains taxes on taxpayers earning less than $200,000, but that drew fire from some conservatives and campaign rivals like Mr. Gingrich on the grounds that it gave unwarranted preference to a specific group and would have small economic impact since those taxpayers receive relatively little in capital gains anyway.

Mr. Romney also proposes to eliminate both the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, while cutting the top corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent.

Mr. Hubbard said three different revenue streams would keep the plan from increasing the budget deficit: the “dynamic” effects of economic growth, the additional income that would be subject to taxation through “base broadening,” and spending cuts Mr. Romney plans that would reach $500 billion per year by 2016. The campaign promised more specifics on those spending cuts within the next week.

In advance of Mr. Romney’s tax plan, Mr. Obama’s Treasury Department on Wednesday proposed its own corporate tax overhaul plan cutting the top corporate rate to 28 percent by eliminating some existing corporate deductions. Part of the Obama plan includes a minimum tax on the overseas income of United States-based corporations.

Mr. Hubbard, accusing the administration of a “full-throttle attack on multinationals”, said Mr. Romney would propose shifting to a territorial system that would not tax corporate income earned overseas.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Pro-Gingrich Group Raises Almost $11 Million in January

Newt Gingrich is getting by with a lot of help from his friends.

News and analysis on campaign fund-raising.

A “super PAC” backing Mr. Gingrich, Winning Our Future, reported raising close to $11 million in January, according to campaign reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday. Most of that money came from just three people: Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino owner; his wife, Miriam Adelson; and Harold Simmons, a Texas industrialist and prominent Republican donor.

That money helped pay for ads that pummeled Mitt Romney over his record in the private equity business during the lead up to the South Carolina primary last month, setting up a major win for Mr. Gingrich. The group spent almost $10 million in January and ended the month with about $2.5 million in cash on hand.

In a twist, Mr. Simmons is also a major donor to Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mr. Romney, meaning that Mr. Simmons’s money was to some extent working against itself during the January run of Republican primaries.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Debate Fact Check: Santorum Waffles on Title X

Rick Santorum may have had a “I voted for it before I voted against it” moment Wednesday night.

In response to an assertion by Mr. Paul that he had voted to fund Planned Parenthood, Mr. Santorum said: “As Congressman Paul knows, I opposed Title X funding. I’ve always opposed Title X funding.” He quickly added, “But it’s included in a large appropriation bill that includes a whole host of other things.” Here the audience started to boo.

Technically, Mr. Santorum was saying that he opposed Title X funding — not that he voted against it — but he was implying that he had voted against it. Then when he said it was included in a larger bill, the audience cried foul.

Title X, by the way, is the major funding vehicle for family planning programs. It was signed into law in 1970 by a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who declared, “Contraception for all.”

Mr. Santorum said that because Title X “was always pushed through,” he countered by pushing for Title X to provide funding for abstinence programs, saying they “actually work in keeping children from being sexually active instead of facilitating children from being sexually active.”

Finally, he got around to an admission: “Yes, I — I admit I voted for large appropriation bills and there were things in there I didn’t like.”

His bottom line, he said, is that as president, “I will defund Planned Parenthood; I will not sign any appropriation bill that funds Planned Parenthood.”

Mr. Santorum’s recent statements are likely to add to the confusion about his stance on the issue. Since 2006, he has cited his support for Title X to show that he is not opposed to funding for contraception.

As recently as last week, on “CBS This Morning,” Rick Santorum told the host, Charlie Rose, that he has no problems with federal funds for contraceptives, saying that he voted for Title X funds in the Senate.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Romney Led Rivals in January Fund-Raising

Mitt Romney raised $6.5 million in the month of January but spent nearly $19 million, leaving him with about $7.7 million in cash as he began February and the unexpected fight with Rick Santorum, according to financial reports released Monday.

Mr. Romney still raised more money than two of his rivals to the nomination.

Mr. Santorum raised $4.5 million in January and spent $3.3 million, leaving him with about $1.5 million in cash. But that fund-raising was before Mr. Santorum’s triple victories in contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri on Feb. 8. He has said he raised at least $1 million in each of the two days following those wins.

Newt Gingrich raised $5.6 million during the month of January, but spent almost $6 million, leaving him with about $1.7 million in cash at the end of January. Representative Ron Paul of Texas has not yet filed his January fund-raising report, which is due by midnight on Tuesday.

Mr. Romney’s fund-raising during January was significantly smaller than what Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton raised in January of 2008. Mr. Obama raised $32 million that month; Ms. Clinton raised $13.5 million.

But Mr. Romney is aided by a “super PAC,” which has also raised millions of dollars on his behalf, a kind of fund-raising organization that did not exist in 2008.

And the campaign said Mr. Romney — who is said to be worth about $250 million — has not contributed to his campaign so far. In 2008, he donated tens of millions of dollars to his own effort to win the Republican nomination.

The new fund-raising reports suggest that all of the candidates may struggle to keep up the kind of ad wars that they have been waging as the campaign moves to multiple states — and expensive markets — in the days ahead.

Mr. Santorum, in particular, will need to turn his new momentum into dollars if he wants to compete with Mr. Romney over what could be several months of campaigning.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Pro-Romney 'Super PAC' Spent $14 Million in January

A “super PAC” supporting Mitt Romney blew through $14 million on a three-state advertising binge against his Republican rivals in January, according to campaign reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday.

But the super PAC, Restore Our Future, also raised close to $7 million during the same month, and began February with more than $16 million in the bank, money that has helped pound Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and may help restore momentum for Mr. Romney as the “Super Tuesday” round of Republican contests next month approaches.

Still, the heavy spending by Restore Our Future highlighted the difficult political terrain for Mr. Romney in January, when he lost the South Carolina primary to Newt Gingrich before pulling off a victory in Florida later in the month, helped in part by multimillion-dollar ad campaigns by the Romney campaign and the Super PAC.

While Restore Our Future took in donations as small as $5, close to $5 million raised by the super PAC came from just 25 individuals and corporations, each giving between $100,000 and $500,000.

Three individuals gave half a million dollars apiece: Joseph W. Craft, an Oklahoma mining executive; Bruce Kovner, a billionaire hedge fund founder from New York; and David Lisonbee, the founder of a Utah vitamin supplements company.

The group also received further donations from some past donors: Harold C. Simmons, a Texas billionaire who has already donated millions of dollars to Republican super PACs; members of the Marriott and Walton families, founders of the Marriott hotel and Wal-Mart chains, respectively; and Julian Robertson, a retired hedge fund manager.

Restore Our Future also received money from several corporations, some not easily connected to a specific executive or even business. Select Management Resources, a Georgia-based limited liability corporation, gave $100,000; the company appears to have registered to lobby on banking and credit card issues in Nebraska.

Another donor is RTTTA, LLC of Provo, Utah, where state records list the company’s registered agent as J. Todd Rawle, a Romney donor and an executive at a company that makes check-cashing and pay-day loan software

JTC Holdings, a California limited liability company registered by Justin Chang, a real estate executive at Los Angeles-based Colony Capital, gave two contributions totaling $20,000. Mr. Chang previous donated to Restore Our Future and to Mr. Romney under his own name.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Santorum Steps Up Critique of Obama's Worldview

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — Visiting coal country, Rick Santorum repeated criticisms of President Obama‘s pro-environmental “theology” and women’s health mandates that caused a dust-up over the weekend. He did not rescind one bit of his earlier remarks, as he sought support as a blue-collar native of neighboring Pennsylvania, here in a state that leans to the right in Republican primaries.

Mr. Santorum enjoys a lead over Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in state polls in Ohio, which votes on March 6, a week after Michigan, where he is vying closely with Mr. Romney and where he was headed on Monday afternoon for three more rallies.

Mr. Santorum was applauded for reiterating his critique of Mr. Obama’s health overhaul that requires insurance plans to cover prenatal screenings. The issue boiled over earlier when he suggested such screenings were used to “cull” fetuses with birth defects.

His objection, he explained, was to amniocentesis. The procedures “are done by and large to find out late in pregnancy whether the child in the womb has a disability,’’ Mr. Santorum said. “And as we all know, 90 percent of Down syndrome children in this country are aborted once the mother and father find out that child is going to be less than what they were expecting.’’

He charged that the president’s health care overhaul was heading toward “a brave new world” in which doctors would be pressured to make decisions based on cost, not the interests of the patient. “Let’s take a child who is high cost and who the world, particularly, unfortunately, the medical profession increasingly is looking at as less utility, less value than others in society,’’ he said. “‘I don’t want to see this patient. This is going to be a real cost for me. I’m going to get nailed on this one, so let’s minimally treat, let’s not treat all because it’s going to be such a cost to the system.’ That’s happening now, folks.’’

Mr. Santorum also revisited his charge that Mr. Obama was motivated by “a phony theology,’’ which he said was criticized by some “of our less-than erudite members of the national press corps.’’

He explained he was referring to the president’s embrace of “radical environmentalism” that valued all species equally.

That attitude, he said, was responsible for thwarting energy development including in coal country, although he also excoriated the president’s veto of a pipeline from Canada.

Global warming, he said, “is not climate science, it is political science,’’ adding, “affordable low-cost energy really drove this country.’’

“Ladies and gentlemen,’’ he said, “We need somebody who comes from the coal fields, who comes from the steel mills.’’

Mr. Santorum, never a natural speech-maker, has become more concise and attuned to the emotions of his crowd. More than 300 turned out to a catering hall here and he seemed to read their mood well.

“This guy in a sweater vest traipsing in a worn pickup truck in Iowa a couple of months ago with nobody paying attention to us,’’ he said, “has a message that is your message.’’

“Ohio is going to make a huge difference,’’ he told them. “You have the opportunity here to stand up and shout loudly across this country that you want a true conservative.’’

View the original article here

The Caucus: Pro-Gingrich Group Raises Almost $11 Million in January

Newt Gingrich is getting by with a lot of help from his friends.

News and analysis on campaign fund-raising.

A “super PAC” backing Mr. Gingrich, Winning Our Future, reported raising close to $11 million in January, according to campaign reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday. Most of that money came from just three people: Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino owner; his wife, Miriam Adelson; and Harold Simmons, a Texas industrialist and prominent Republican donor.

That money helped pay for ads that pummeled Mitt Romney over his record in the private equity business during the lead up to the South Carolina primary last month, setting up a major win for Mr. Gingrich. The group spent almost $10 million in January and ended the month with about $2.5 million in cash on hand.

In a twist, Mr. Simmons is also a major donor to Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mr. Romney, meaning that Mr. Simmons’s money was to some extent working against itself during the January run of Republican primaries.

View the original article here

The Caucus: In Maine, a County Votes, Ron Paul Wins, but Not by Enough to Overtake Romney

EAST MACHIAS, Me. — After a week of controversy over being initially left out of the tally in Maine’s Republican caucuses, residents of Washington County came out in high numbers on Saturday, and gave Ron Paul a majority of their votes. But the margin of victory was not enough to propel Mr. Paul ahead of Mitt Romney, who leads in the state count.

Mr. Paul won 163 votes; Mr. Romney, 80 votes. Rick Santorum received 57 votes, and Newt Gingrich, 4. Two people voted for other candidates.

In a recount announced on Friday, Mr. Romney was ahead in the state by 239.

The vote today capped a confusing week for Maine’s state caucus. The state’s Republican Party had declared Mr. Romney the victor on Feb. 11, even though Washington County’s vote had been canceled because of weather.

That decision kicked off protests, mostly from Mr. Paul’s supporters, about the caucus’s byzantine rules. State party officials were forced to rescind the original plan, and now say that all votes will be counted. The final results will not be announced until March 10, after all towns have voted and reported their results.

The presidential straw poll is a meaningless so-called beauty contest unrelated to the more important selection of the state’s 24 delegates, which will take place at a state party convention in May.

In Washington County, 306 people gathered to vote on Saturday, which the county’s Republican chairman, Chris Gardner, said was roughly triple the number who gathered in 2008.

Many voters said they were compelled to come after they were told their county — and votes — wouldn’t count.

“We wanted to show that we could make a difference, that we could sway the way the state goes,” said Laurel Beal, a Ron Paul supporter who attended the three-hour caucus with her 9-year-old son, Eli. “It was a long wait, but we did pretty well.”

View the original article here

The Caucus: In Georgia, Gingrich Campaigns on Guns and Gas

Stephen Morton for The New York TimesNewt Gingrich with his daughter Jackie Cushman, left, and grandson Robert, center, in Cumming Parkway, Ga., on Saturday.

ATLANTA — In every state where he campaigns, Newt Gingrich weaves local issues into his stump speech, and in Georgia he aimed at a sweet spot: “Let’s be clear what this election is all about,” he told supporters. “We believe in the right to bear arms, and we like to bear the arms in our trucks.”

His audience burst into laughter and applause. Mr. Gingrich repeated the line during two days of Georgia rallies on Friday and Saturday, where he met large, enthusiastic crowds, including at his final event at a hotel here where teenage cheerleaders, in town for a competition, stood on one another’s shoulders at the back of the room to be able to see.

Mr. Gingrich would not predict victory in the Georgia primary on March 6. Rick Santorum’s appeal among the large base of evangelical Christians is growing, and a group supporting Mitt Romney is attacking Mr. Gingrich in television ads. “This is the wildest process I’ve ever seen,” he said of the nominating race, comparing it to the Space Mountain roller coaster at Disneyland.

“It is obviously my home state, and it’s very, very important we do well here,” he told reporters. “We actually have a very good chance of doing well here, and that gives us a springboard then to go across the whole country. I think that’s part of what we are counting on.”

He raised an aggressive argument with President Obama over energy, framing it as a policy disagreement and a skirmish in the culture wars.

It was in the context of lengthy discussions at each stop of what he calls his “American energy policy,” a plan to dramatically boost oil and gas drilling on federal lands and offshore, which he promises will drop the price of gasoline to $2.50 a gallon from its current national average of $3.52.

His emphasis dovetailed with a decision by Republicans in Congress this week to hammer the president on the increasing price of gasoline. “This debate is a debate we want to have,” House Speaker John A. Boehner told his caucus in a closed-door meeting this week.

Mr. Gingrich used similar language. “I think gasoline has reached a tipping point where people really want to talk about energy more intensely,” he said.

Indulging his appetite for policy details, he described in depth a bonanza in natural gas that has become accessible through deep drilling in shale around the country, as well as shale oil reserves in North Dakota. The North Dakota gusher, he said, has led to a state unemployment rate of 3.5 percent and a series of state tax cuts.

These new energy sources, he said, “are destroying the left’s argument that we have limited resources and therefore we need government to ration.”

Many experts in the economics of oil dispute that more domestic drilling would significantly lower prices at the pump, because the United States produces only a small fraction of world oil, around 10 percent, and prices are determined by global supply and demand.

A study in 2009 by the government’s Energy Information Administration found that with unlimited offshore drilling, the country would produce 500,000 more barrels a day, but on the world market, that would translate to prices of only 3 cents a gallon less for American drivers.

The United States now produces more oil from all sources than during the past 20 years, but gas prices are still rising – because of increased global demand.

Mr. Gingrich pushed back on this objection. “It would be pretty hard to argue it wouldn’t be less expensive than under the Obama model,” he said.

Rather than framing the argument as one between the “drill, baby, drill” camp and environmentalists, Mr. Gingrich saw it as a skirmish with liberalism. “This is all a matter of cultural warfare,” he said. “These are people who believe if you’re a tenured faculty member who rides your bicycle” to work, you object to others driving a pickup truck. “This is an administration that is deeply opposed to Americans having the right to choose the kind of car they want to drive,” he said of the president.

A liberal’s ideal car, Mr. Gingrich maintained, was a Chevy Volt. And that led him to his new joke. “Here’s my point: you can’t put a gun rack in a Volt.”

View the original article here

The Caucus: Romney Campaigner in Arizona Resigns After Accusation

8:12 p.m. | Updated A revised version of this blog post is available here.

Paul Babeu, an up-and-coming member of the Republican Party, stepped down from his role as a co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s Arizona campaign on Saturday, in the wake of allegations that he threatened to deport a Mexican ex-boyfriend when the man refused to keep quiet about their relationship.

Mr. Babeu was the sheriff of Pinal County and made national headlines for his tough stance on illegal immigration. He endorsed Mr. Romney in October and is running for Congress in Arizona’s Fourth District.

The news of Mr. Babeu’s decision to step down from the Romney campaign was first reported by The Arizona Republic.

On Thursday, The Phoenix New Times reported the allegations of a 34-year-old Mexican man whom they identified only as “Jose.” He claimed that when he refused to sign an agreement that he would never mention his affair with Mr. Babeu, which lasted years, the sheriff and his lawyer tried to intimidate him with threats of deportation. Mr. Babeu has denied the charges.

“Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him,” said Andrea Saul, a campaign spokeswoman, in an e-mail statement. “We support his decision.”

When Mr. Babeu threw his support behind Mr. Romney in October, however, he had nothing but kind words for the sheriff.

“It is an honor to have the support of Sheriff Babeu,” Mr. Romney said at the time, in an e-mail announcement released by his campaign. “His efforts working to protect our border are critical to lowering crime, reducing illegal immigration and stopping both drug and human trafficking. Sheriff Babeu has been a leader in the call for the federal government to secure the border. As president, I will work with leaders like Sheriff Babeu to protect our Southern border, provide the required assistance from the federal government and put an end to the magnets that cause illegal immigration.”

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Department is standing behind Mr. Babeu.

“The entire sheriff’s department supports the sheriff,” said Elias Johnson, a spokesman for the department. “He has a right to his private life. None of the allegations happened when he was supporting the citizens of Pinal County. He has a right to a private life just as every other citizen has a right to a private life. His public record speaks for itself.”

View the original article here

The Caucus: Debate Looms as a Critical Moment for Santorum

The Republican presidential debates have proved critical for just about every candidate in the race — disastrous for some and essential for others.

Now it is Rick Santorum’s turn.

On Wednesday, the four remaining contenders for the right to challenge President Obama will meet again under the glare of the television lights, and under the scrutiny of a nation trying to understand where the Republican contest is headed.

The face-off, sponsored by CNN and held in Arizona, one of two states to hold primaries on Feb. 28, will be important for each of the candidates. But none more so than Mr. Santorum, who is suddenly being taken seriously as a threat to Mitt Romney.

It is the first debate since Mr. Santorum swept contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri two weeks ago, and it comes as he is under more scrutiny for his background and positions, including his opposition to many prenatal tests and his assertion on Saturday that the government’s role in education is “anachronistic.”

Despite moving to the top of four national polls and several state ones, Mr. Santorum remains a long shot to prevent the well-financed, well-organized Mr. Romney from winning the nomination.

Wednesday’s debate could change that dynamic. A strong performance by Mr. Santorum, or a particularly weak one by Mr. Romney, could ensure a shocking upset in Michigan, the other state that will vote a week from Tuesday. If that happens, the nomination could slip from Mr. Romney’s grasp.

Last year, in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, Rick Perry’s debate performances knocked him out of contention. In South Carolina, Newt Gingrich used two debates to become a serious threat to Mr. Romney. A week later, Mr. Romney reclaimed his position by putting Mr. Gingrich in his place in two Florida debates.

But the task for Mr. Santorum is not easy. Here are five things that he must do if he wants to emerge from the debate with momentum on his side:

Focus on Health Care

Senior Republican strategists say Mr. Santorum’s most aggressive moments in the debates so far have been when he criticizes Mr. Romney’s health care plan as governor of Massachusetts. He has been relentless in accusing Mr. Romney of being the inspiration for Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul. During one debate in Florida, he had Mr. Romney stammering. If he can do that again, it will be a good moment for him.

Look Presidential

When Mr. Santorum was at 2 percent in the national polls and hardly seemed to be a threat, he could afford to come across a bit like a fringe candidate. He cannot anymore. Voters in Arizona, Michigan and 11 Super Tuesday states will be watching closely on Wednesday, and they will be trying to determine whether they can picture him in the Oval Office.

Mr. Santorum will no doubt try to rise above the mudslinging that has characterized much of the race, in part as a way of conveying that presidential quality. But Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Romney will be doing everything they can to keep him engaged.

Rattle Romney

One of Mr. Romney’s great strengths throughout most of the debates, and for much of 2011, was his calm, cool demeanor. He rarely got rattled and conveyed a sense of stature that voters tend to like. But there have been times when his rivals have gotten under his skin, and those have tended to be his worst moments. Mr. Perry did it on immigration in an early debate. And Mr. Gingrich did it on taxes and Bain Capital in South Carolina.

The question for Mr. Santorum is whether he can find a way to do it without coming across as mean. One of Mr. Santorum’s strengths with voters is that he remains likable. If he can get Mr. Romney to lose his cool without seeming like a bully, it will help him in the coming primaries.

Be Authentic

If elections are about presenting voters with contrasts, this may be Mr. Santorum’s ace in the hole. With Mr. Romney sometimes seeming calculating about his positions, Mr. Santorum seems that much more real. But it is easy to be authentic when you are at the bottom of the pack, with no one thinking you can actually win. The challenge for Mr. Santorum is to make sure that the possibility of success does not make him come across as somehow less genuine — like a typical politician.

Avoid Gingrich and Paul

Most of the focus on Wednesday will be on the matchup between Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum. But the two other candidates, including Ron Paul, will be on the stage, and they will be eager to knock Mr. Santorum down as well. Mr. Gingrich, in particular, has a sharp wit and an ability to harness the enthusiasm of the audience. If Mr. Santorum is not careful, it could be Mr. Gingrich who sets a trap for him.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Santorum Defends Comments on Obama and Education

2:58 p.m. | Updated Rick Santorum on Sunday tried to clarify his comment that President Obama subscribed to a “phony theology,” saying he was referring not to the president’s faith but to his view of man’s relationship to the world.

It was during a campaign stop in Ohio on Saturday that Mr. Santorum described what he called the “phony theology” of Mr. Obama’s agenda.

“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said. “But no less a theology.”

On Sunday, Robert Gibbs, a political adviser to President Obama, criticized such attacks on “character and faith.”

“I can’t help but think that those remarks are well over the line. It’s wrong. It’s destructive,” Mr. Gibbs said on the ABC News program “This Week,” adding that it reflected the “nastiness, divisiveness, ugliness” and distortions of a hard-fought Republican nominating process.

Mr. Santorum, at another appearance on Saturday, in Columbus, Ohio, called the idea of schools being run by the federal government or by state governments “anachronistic.” Mr. Santorum did not say public schools were a bad idea, and he said that there was a role for government help in education.

“Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America?” he said. “Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.”

“Yes the government can help,” Mr. Santorum added. “But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly — much less that the state government should be running schools — is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools. And while those factories as we all know in Ohio and Pennsylvania have fundamentally changed, the factory school has not.”

Asked about those remarks on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” Mr. Santorum, who with his wife has home-schooled their children, remained adamant on Sunday.

While he said he did not oppose government financing of schools, Mr. Santorum said that “public education should be a dynamic process that’s locally run.”

“I think the parent should be in charge,” he added, “working with the local school district to try to design an educational environment for each child that optimizes their potential.”

Mr. Santorum also defended his criticism of a requirement in the president’s health-care policy that insurance companies to cover prenatal testing. He had said earlier that the policy was included to save money “because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society.”

The former Pennsylvania senator has a 3-year-old daughter, Bella, with a serious chromosomal disorder, and he said that doctors who detect such a condition before birth typically recommend abortion.

Asked whether he was suggesting that Mr. Obama lacked sympathy for the disabled, Mr. Santorum did not back down, saying, “I think the president has a very bad record on the issue of abortion and children who are disabled.”

One of Mr. Santorum’s rivals for the Republican nomination, Representative Ron Paul of Texas, scoffed at Mr. Santorum on Sunday for focusing on social issues like abortion and contraception – and for believing that he could defeat Mr. Obama.

“Well, I don’t see how that’s possible,” Mr. Paul said on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

“And this whole idea about talking about the social issues and who is going to pay for birth control pills,” Mr. Paul said. “I’m worried about undermining our civil liberties, the constant wars going on, the debt of $16 trillion. And they are worried about birth control pills?”

View the original article here

The Caucus: Sunday Breakfast Menu, Feb. 19

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Iran put up an increasingly aggressive front this week, threatening to cut off oil sales to Europe and posturing over the progress of its nuclear program, as well as drawing blame for assassination attempts on Israelis. The actions suggested that sanctions were working, as American and European officials announced negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program may resume soon.

National security and foreign policy officials will visit the Sunday shows to weigh in on tensions in the Middle East. On CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discusses Iran, as well as whether arming the Syrian resistance movement would be a wise decision. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Edward S. Walker Jr., former ambassador to Egypt and Israel, will talk about the turmoil on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

As the Michigan primary approaches, recent polls show Rick Santorum running neck-and-neck with Mitt Romney. Mr. Santorum will discuss his momentum on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” which will also feature Michael Kranish, co-author of “The Real Romney.”

Representative Ron Paul of Texas will talk about his standing in the Republican nominating contest on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota will also talk about the race. Plus, Howard Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks, will discuss job creation.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, will join ABC’s “This Week” from Afghanistan, weighing in on Iran and negotiations with the Taliban, as well as the Michigan primary. Also, Robert Gibbs, senior adviser to the Obama re-election campaign and former White House press secretary, will talk about the Republican nominating contest and its effects on the president’s campaign.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Newt Gingrich will address the upcoming primaries, particularly Super Tuesday. And now that Congress has passed an extension of the payroll tax cut, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, will talk about what’s next.

Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland — the chairman and ranking member of the House Budget Committee, respectively — join NBC’s “Meet the Press” to debate the economy, President Obama’s budget proposal and the presidential race.

Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, will be on Bloomberg’s “Political Capital.”

C-Span’s “Newsmakers” asks Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, about several of the recent debates in Washington, including the payroll tax cut extension, insurance coverage for contraceptives and the Keystone XL pipeline proposal.

Kamala D. Harris, attorney general of California, discusses foreclosure fraud on TV One’s “Washington Watch.” She recently brokered the largest share of the nationwide settlement with banks over foreclosure abuses.

Telemundo’s “Enfoque” features Representative Francisco Canseco, Republican of Texas, and Representative Xavier Becerra, Democrat of California.

And Univision’s “Al Punto” has Antonio Alarcón, who wrote a recent editorial in The Times about how his family has been separated by “self-deportation,” an approach to illegal immigration Mr. Romney endorsed.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Romney's Victory in the Maine Caucuses Is at Risk

Will Mitt Romney’s victory in Maine’s nonbinding presidential straw poll be overturned?

It seems possible, now that Maine has decided to include in the total vote the results from Washington County, which delayed its caucuses by a week and will vote on Saturday.

In practical terms, the straw poll is a meaningless “beauty contest” that does not award any delegates. That is to take place later at a Republican Party convention.

But the announcement last week that Mr. Romney had won the state’s straw poll by 39 percent to Ron Paul’s 36 percent — a difference of less than 200 votes — had stopped, at least temporarily, a negative story line for Mr. Romney, who lost three state contests earlier last week to Rick Santorum.

Losing the Maine straw poll, even after the fact, would be unfortunate for Mr. Romney,  former governor of nearby Massachusetts, since he is locked in a struggle right now in Michigan, his home state, with Mr. Santorum.

Turnout on Saturday in rural Washington County is likely to be much higher than it would have been last week and could be chaotic. Because this is the only county voting — and the margin needed for victory is known — supporters of both Mr. Romney and Mr. Paul could be galvanized to flood the caucus sites. (Mr. Santorum and Newt Gingrich did not actively compete in the state, and trailed in the straw poll.)

The party’s decision about how to count the vote has touched off a political storm and raised questions about the whole caucus system. Caucuses in other states have been plagued with problems this year, and doubts have been raised about their fairness and the ability of state parties to manage them.

In Iowa, Republicans first announced that Mr. Romney had won but later announced that the winner was actually Mr. Santorum; the belated announcement denied Mr. Santorum the momentum often accorded to the Iowa winner.

In Maine, party rules allowed a winner to be declared last week, even though several towns had not voted yet and their votes would not be counted in the total.

But then the caucuses in Washington County were postponed because of bad weather. That meant that the votes from an entire county would not be included in the final tally.

Charlie Webster, the state’s Republican chairman, initially said that Washington County’s absence from the total vote would not matter because in 2008, only eight people in the county had voted for Mr. Paul.

But the Paul campaign and others protested vocally, saying the decision was undemocratic.

In addition, it turned out that the results of some caucuses that were held last week — most of those in Waldo County, for example — and were expected to be included in the total had not been counted either. (Waldo County’s problem was attributed to a clerical error.) This only added to the outrage, much of it directed at Mr. Webster and the state party.

On Thursday afternoon, the party’s besieged executive committee issued a carefully worded news release in Mr. Webster’s name saying it was working diligently to “reconfirm” the results from all towns. (It also said the executive committee had “approved” the announcement from Mr. Webster.)

It  said the executive committee had voted unanimously to recommend to the state committee that the votes from Washington County on Saturday be added to the total from last week. It’s not clear when those votes will be added and the final tally announced.

View the original article here

The Caucus: Making It Official, With a Smile

Of all the legislative events in Washington, lawmakers tend to enjoy when things get signed the most.

So with camera-ready smiles and a thumbs-up or two, most of the 20 members of a bipartisan Congressional committee that drew up a plan to extend a payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits cheerfully showed up Thursday to sign their report.

One by one, the members filed into the office of the committee’s chairman, Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, to sign the papers splayed out on a large table under an ornate chandelier.

Reporters flocked to each member who entered the room like sparrows to seed-stocked feeders, looking for any final bits of wisdom on the tense negotiations that led to the bill, which House and Senate leaders hope to bring to the floors of their respective chambers by Friday.

“I think it was actually a healthy process,” said Representative Greg Walden, a Republican conferee from Oregon. “We need to do more of this.”

Mr. Camp and his chief negotiating partner, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, linked hands for the cameras, as Mr. Baucus said helpfully for anyone who didn’t get the visual cue, “Working together!”

Not everyone was on board. The three Republican senators appointed to the committee – Jon Kyl of Arizona, Mike Crapo of Idaho and John Barrasso of Wyoming – had not signed the bill by midday.

Mr. Barrasso and some Republican aides said that the three members felt left out of the process of shaping the report and did not feel the need to sign it. A majority of signatures from both chambers was needed to get the job done, and all House Republicans signed it, as well as Democrats from both chambers.

Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, a Republican conferee, looked genuinely hurt, as if he had been stood up by a handful of people he had invited to dinner.

“They’ll be coming, right?” he asked Mr. Baucus as the two left the ornate room.

“Jon told me he’s not going to do it,” Mr. Baucus whispered back, apparently in reference to Mr. Kyl.

At a news conference, the House speaker, John A. Boehner, said he did not believe Senate Republicans had been left out. “They’ve been as involved in the process as anybody else,” he said, adding: “If I recall correctly, there were two or three public meetings where they were all present. So, for someone to say they weren’t involved really would surprise me.”

Under the roughly $150 billion agreement reached by House and Senate negotiators, the current reduction in employees’ share of the Social Security payroll tax — to 4.2 percent of wages, from 6.2 percent — would be continued to the end of the year. The deal also extends unemployment benefits, but reduces the maximum duration of benefits in states with high unemployment to 73 weeks, from the current 99. It also prevents a pay cut for doctors who accept Medicare. The unemployment benefits will be paid for in part by the sale of some radio spectrum licenses and changes to the pensions of federal workers.

While Mr. Boehner said the deal was “one that I support,” he did not express great love for it.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “This is an economic relief package, not a bill that’s going to grow the economy and create jobs.”

View the original article here