AP – Republican insiders are rising up to cut Newt Gingrich down to size, testament to the GOP establishment’s fear that the mercurial candidate could lead the party to disaster this fall.
Here’s one more way in which Mitt Romney’s campaign is showing a willful disregard for the truth: When it sends reporters transcripts of official campaign events, it scrubs those transcripts of portions that the campaign finds to be inconvenient. According to BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins, Romneyworld recently Tim Pawlenty’s answer to a question about Mitt Romney’s investments in government-sponsored enterprises. And Coppins points to a similar example when the campaign comments by John Sununu about Romney’s tax return from another transcript.
Obviously, there’s nothing illegal here, and nobody should be surprised by the fact that Romney’s campaign is doing everything it can—honest or otherwise—to elect their candidate. But anyone who relies on Romney’s campaign for accurate information should keep examples like this in mind: The only thing you can trust about something Romneyworld puts out is that it will be in Mitt Romney’s best interest.
Politico – Newt Gingrich has a new unofficial campaign surrogate and her name is Sarah Palin.
AP – Something unexpected happened on the way to North Carolina’s vote on a gay marriage ban this May: Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue decided not to run for re-election, meaning more voters who oppose the ban could turn out at the polls.
AP – TITLE: “What Kind of Man?”
AP – The hands came out of the pockets. The gaze was intense. Mitt Romney leaned confidently into the lectern.
AP – President Barack Obama fired a warning at the nation’s colleges and universities on Friday, threatening to strip their federal aid if they “jack up tuition” every year and to give the money instead to schools showing restraint and value.
AP – Ron Paul braved Maine’s snow and ice Friday in a quest to pick up delegates, vowing he and his loyal band of supporters would be a factor in the Republican nominating contest for weeks to come.
This is enough to .
FIRE stands for the finance, insurance, and real estate sector, or in other words, Wall Street. The Sunlight Foundation reveals that in the past two decades, the number of donors giving $10,000 or more from this sector has risen 405 percent. More astounding, the combined contributions to individual candidate, PACs, parties, or independent expenditure groups has grown by 700 percent.
Sunlight calls these donors the “Political One Percent of the One Percent.” There were 5,510 of them in the 2010 cycle, and they now contribute one quarter of all individual campaign contributions made in this country.
Where’s that money going?
That blip you see on the right, where the money to Democrats went just above 50 percent, was after the 2008 election, when Democrats had the House, Senate and White House. Then came Dodd-Frank and the 2010 election. Boy, that’s a steep drop off, huh?
But that’s instructive to see when you hear Republicans rail against taxing the wealthy. Because you know very few of the 5,510 donors, the Political One Percent of the One Percent, are paying 30 percent of their income in taxes.
AP – President Barack Obama rallied House Democrats for an election-year fight, urging them to work with Republicans if they show some willingness to put politics aside but telling the rank and file to call them out if they stand in the way.