Bewitched, Bothered, and BeWillard

From POLITICO:

Former tea party candidate and U.S. Senate hopeful Christine O’Donnell has cast a, er, endorsement Mitt Romney’s way.

…snip…

Mostly, O’Donnell is best remembered for the “I’m not a witch, I’m you” ad that she produced, through admaker Fred Davis (now with the Jon Huntsman super PAC), which was met with much derision.

Derision?  I wonder from whom.

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Koch-conspirators

From Mother Jones:

The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, spread their money far and wide. They fund free-market think tanks, right-leaning academic organizations, and conservative political advocacy groups, such as the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which helped cultivate the tea party. The political action committee for the Kochs’ massive conglomerate, Koch Industries, has also given generously to big-name conservative politicians throughout the country at both the federal and state level. But when it comes to the 2012 presidential race, the Kochs have been more selective with their giving, with only one presidential candidate so far benefiting from their largesse: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

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Texass 2-(Mis)Step

From Alex Pareene at Salon:

Even though they have the exact same style of speaking and propensity to execute innocent people, current Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Texas Gov. George W. Bush are very different politicians. And they don’t like each other, according to the New York Times. Or rather their staffs and “camps” don’t like each other.

Rick Perry was Bush’s lieutenant governor. Whether the two men personally like each other is totally unknown (politicians don’t like other humans anyway; that is why they go into politics), but Perry is “signaling” that he is very different from Bush because Bush was a terrible president who left office hated by everyone and Rick Perry would maybe like to be the next president (or he is at least surrounded by people who think he could be the next president).

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The Right’s Guff

From John Avlon at THE DAILY BEAST:

The cycle of over-reach and backlash is in over-drive these days—with significant implications for the 2012 presidential election. In pivotal swing-states where voters narrowly elected Republican governors in 2010—like Florida and Ohio (with 47 electoral votes between them)—evidence of buyer’s remorse is piling up fast.

The latest sign: on Tuesday, Alvin Brown became the first Democrat elected mayor of Jacksonville—Florida’s largest city—in 20 years.

Just seven months ago, Republicans swept the Sunshine State with Tea Party-backed candidate Rick Scott winning the governor’s office with a 1.2 percent margin of victory.

But instead of consolidating support by reaching out and winning over the reasonable edge of the opposition, as popular past Republican governors like Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist have done, Scott continued with his campaign posture of refusing to talk to the press. He canceled a $2 billion federal high-speed rail project and is seeking to delay (and functionally deny) implementation of an anti-gerrymandering reform ballot referendum overwhelmingly passed in 2010.

Now Rick Scott finds himself the least popular newly elected governor in Florida history. It’s not just a matter of the honeymoon being over—this looks like a drunken Vegas marriage heading for a shotgun divorce.

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Who’s ‘MediScared’ Now, Asswipes?

From TALKING POINTS MEMO:

House Republican freshmen admit that their so-called “MediScare” attacks on Democrats helped them win a big majority in 2010. Democrats had voted for the health care law, which included $500 billion in “cuts” to Medicare — primarily slashing overpayments to private insurers — and Republican challengers never let them forget it.

Now, they say, it’s time to let bygones be bygones.

Nearly a dozen House Republican freshmen held a press conference outside the Capitol Tuesday morning to “wipe the slate clean,” and “hit the reset button.”

“Yeah, I mean there’s been — again, this is a both-sides issue,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) when asked if GOP candidates and the NRCC had engaged in ‘MediScare’ tactics last year. “To say that one side is blameless in trying to use issues to win votes is just dishonest.”

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The Hot Seat

From TALKING POINTS MEMO:

The resignation of scandal-plagued Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), and the expected appointment of current Republican candidate Rep. Dean Heller to the seat, could portend a political mess of a wholly different sort: A special election for Heller’s House seat — and the conundrum for Republicans posed by the potential candidacy of their losing U.S. Senate nominee from 2010, Sharron Angle.

Angle, who lost the 2010 Senate race despite the national Republican wave — due to controversy over extreme statements about “Second Amendment remedies” to Democratic policies, and her statements in favor of phasing out Social Security and Medicare — has already been running for the House seat, along with retired Navy Commander Kirk Lippold, who was chief officer of the U.S.S. Cole when it was attacked by al Qaeda in 2000. In addition, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki and state GOP chair Mark Amodei are reportedly considering the race.

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Balancing Act

From TALKING POINTS MEMO:

For Speaker John Boehner, the announcement of a deal funding the government caps one of the most dangerous period of his tenure as leader of his party, a long negotiation that tested his control of his members and his reputation with a general public that has yet to form a clear opinion on his leadership.

While he avoided a potentially disastrous shutdown, only time will tell whether he kept his hold on his party. Already some conservative Republicans are expressing their dismay at the deal.

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Bunions Might Not Be Covered

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Congress has yet to settle its first budget fight of the year but is already about to move on to an even more consequential fiscal clash.

Even as the two parties struggled over the weekend to reach a deal on federal spending for the next six months and avert a government shutdown at the end of the week, House Republicans were completing a budget proposal for next year and beyond. It is likely to spur an ideological showdown over the size of government and the role of entitlement programs like Medicaid and Medicare.

The plan, which is scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday, will be the most ambitious Republican effort since the November elections to put a conservative stamp on economic and domestic policy.

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