Gingrich's private ventures are going bankrupt
(Reuters) - ATLANTA - When he entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination in May 2011, Newt Gingrich was the prosperous head of a small empire commonly known as Newt Inc, which included both for-profit consultancies and nonprofit foundations. Altogether, these entwined ventures pulled in more than $110 million over the past decade. Now the vestiges of this empire are mired in debt, as is Gingrich's campaign fund. ...
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Coburn: Bush presidency a ?missed opportunity of tremendous proportions? [VIDEO]
In a video interview with The Daily Caller, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn said former President George W. Bush?s time in office was ?a missed opportunity of tremendous proportions,? particularly due to the creation of a new unfunded entitlement program.more
Will Donald Trump give keynote speech at RNC convention?
He flirted with a run for president of his own when polls showed him competitive. He has since raised money for Mitt Romney and has served as a surrogate for the presumptive Republican nominee on the campaign trail.more
Obama stands by hits on Romney's Bain Capital days
President Barack Obama sought to undermine Mitt Romney's key rationale for his presidential candidacy Monday, sharply attacking his Republican challenger's background as a venture capitalist and arguing that profit-making alone is not a qualification for the White House.
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Republicans challenge appeals court meeting in Maui
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' upcoming conference on a Hawaiian island sounds more like "a vacation than a business trip" to discuss the administration of justice, two Republican U.S. lawmakers charged on Monday. In a letter to Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, Senators Charles Grassley and Jeff Sessions wrote that Congress has an obligation to guard against "waste, fraud and abuse" and demanded details about the conference, set for August 13-16 in Maui. ...
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Obama and Romney Are Locked in Tight Race on Major Issues
President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican challenger Mitt Romney appear to be locked in a neck-and-neck race just more than five months before the election. Some recent polling data suggest how close the candidates are when it comes to the most important issues as well as likeability.more
Obama campaign steps up Bain attacks on Romney
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's re-election campaign on Monday stepped up its criticism of Mitt Romney for cutting jobs when he was a business executive, despite a warning from a leading Obama supporter that the attacks have gone too far. The Obama camp launched an ad featuring former workers at an office supplies business that went bankrupt after Republican candidate Romney's Bain Capital took it over in the mid-1990s. ...
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Republicans Need More Than 'Messengers' Among Minorities
COMMENTARY | Are we witnessing the peak of Republican power in American history? Demographic truths -- -- American minorities will soon be the most powerful voting blocks in the nation -- often ignored or placed on the back burner came into focus Sunday. And that could mean a decrease in political power for the Republican Party.more
Booker is Wrong to Slam Obama's Bain Ads
COMMENTARY | While I appreciate where Newark N.J., Mayor Cory Booker was going with his let's-play-nice message on "Meet the Press," I politely disagree. Republican front-runner Mitt Romney's history with Bain Capital is a pertinent subject for debate and President Barack Obama is right to use it for campaign material.more
Wis. recall leaders struggle to gain momentum
Amid signs that the effort to oust Republican Gov. Scott Walker is losing ground, Wisconsin Democrats and union leaders are preparing a fundraising and get-out-the-vote push to regain momentum in the final weeks before the June recall election.
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Cory Booker is latest gaffe-prone Obama surrogate
Add Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker to the long list of political stand-ins for both President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney who've veered wildly off message in a presidential contest notable for its attention-grabbing gaffes.
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N2K Presidential Race: His Honor's 'Very Uncomfortable' Concerns
Any hint of quarrel with one?s own party is inevitably refashioned and used by the opposition to cleave the variation deep, deeper, down to the bone, exploiting other areas of disagreement and portraying a party at odds with itself.Newark Mayor Cory Booker just didn?t have to make it so easy. ...more
Cuomo: Raising minimum wage impossible politically
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday that raising New York's minimum wage is impossible this year because of the Republican-led Senate, although advocates for the poor claim the Democrat can force the change on his own.more
Romney to raise about $10 million in NY, Conn.
Chasing President Barack Obama's cash advantage, Republican challenger Mitt Romney expects to raise $10 million during a three-day fundraising swing through the New York area that included a video meeting with donors in China.
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GOP Blasts Million Dollar Judicial Conference in Hawaii
In a scolding letter, two Republican senators blasted the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for holding a lavish tax-payer funded judicial conference scheduled for this August in Maui, Hawaii, that ?reads more like a vacation than a business trip.? ?We are concerned that using the...more
THE RACE: Obama and Romney fight over budget goals
The presidential race is shaping up as a battle between Republican calls for more government austerity and Democratic appeals for more spending to promote jobs and growth with tax hikes on high-income earners. It mirrors a fight raging in Europe.
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Pressure grows to list Nigerian militants as terrorists
(Reuters) - Congress is stepping up pressure on the Obama administration to formally designate the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram, which has alleged al Qaeda links, as a "foreign terrorist organization." Scott Brown, a Republican senator from Massachusetts, wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton late last week urging her to designate the group, an Islamist sect that has been linked to 700 killings in Nigeria over the last 18 months, as a terrorist organization under U.S. law. Then, on Sunday, U.S. ...
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Governor, lawmakers nearing deal on Okla. budget
Gov. Mary Fallin and leaders of Oklahoma's GOP-controlled Legislature have reached a "tentative agreement" on a $6.6 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year, but the deal still hasn't been approved by the majority of the Republican caucus, House Speaker Kris Steele said Monday.more
Pressure grows to list Nigerian militants as terrorists
(Reuters) - Congress is stepping up pressure on the Obama administration to formally designate the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram, which has alleged al Qaeda links, as a "foreign terrorist organization." Scott Brown, a Republican senator from Massachusetts, wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton late last week urging her to designate the group, an Islamist sect that has been linked to 700 killings in Nigeria over the last 18 months, as a terrorist organization under U.S. law. Then, on Sunday, U.S. ...more
Michael Steele: Planned Parenthood worked ?to eliminate and limit? African-Americans
On Laura Ingraham?s Monday radio show, former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele offered his views on the NAACP?s shift to the left on so-called social issues on the heels of its decision to endorse same-sex marriage.more
Examining the Newt Gingrich Campaign Debt
COMMENTARY | Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is managing to keep himself in the news despite giving up his presidential hopes. According to CNN, the Gingrich campaign ended with almost $5 million of debt. This information came by way of a Federal Election Commission report that leaves you wondering why some people couldn't fathom a world without Gingrich as commander in chief.more
Obama Defends Campaign Attacks on Romney's Bain Experience
President Obama on Monday defended his campaign?s attacks on presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney?s record at Bain Capital?a line of attack that has been questioned by several Democrats in recent days, including Newark Mayor Cory Booker.more
Veep Beat: Christie and Rubio on the Attack
RUBIO SLAMS OBAMA: Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., unleashed a set of attacks on President Obama Saturday evening in South Carolina as he called the president the most ?divisive figure? in modern American history. ?His ideas that sounded so good in the classrooms of Harvard and...more
Everything Old Is New Again (The Note)
By MICHAEL FALCONE (@michaelpfalcone) and AMY WALTER (@amyewalter) NOTABLES: ALL AMPED UP. Ampad, the office supply giant that suffered job losses after Mitt Romney?s former company, Bain Capital took it over, is getting another 15-minutes of fame today (and maybe more). The Obama campaign features...more
Booker Gaffe Reveals Democratic Divide
Meet the Press has lately become a forum for campaign flubs from President Obama?s leading surrogates. For the second time in three weeks, a leading Obama supporter went on the show and stomped on the campaign message.more
Conservative donors slow to back Romney's campaign
Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney and his party raised a sizable $40 million last month from donors who want him to replace President Barack Obama. But even as Romney solidifies his position as the eventual GOP nominee, many supporters who backed his primary election challengers have not yet come to his aid.more
Track the Toddlers: Their Impact on the 2028 Elections
For the first time, most of the babies born in the U.S. are members of minority groups, according to Census Bureau numbers released on Thursday. The report is a harbinger of a future in which whites are no longer the majority of Americans.more
Where Romney, Sen. Brown stand on various issues
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and U.S. Sen. Scott Brown publicly support each other and even share key advisers. But on many topics, from foreign policy to social issues, the Massachusetts Republicans take very different positions.more
Could Overhauled Organizing Deliver Virginia to the GOP This Fall?
If you need proof that President Obama's team will run a formidable ground game in Virginia, consider this: At the 2012 kickoff rally in Richmond, organizers say they signed up 1,500 new volunteers from the 8,000 people in the crowd. But in addition to obvious dangers like a struggling economy, Obama?s team will face a new threat -- a better-prepared Republican Party coming off three years of victories in the state.more
Romney Super PAC raises less, still tops Democrats
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Restore Our Future, an outside "Super PAC" backing Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, raised $3.9 million in April, less than half of its haul in March but still far ahead of its Democratic counterpart working to re-elect President Barack Obama. The pro-Romney "super" political action committee Restore Our Future had $8.2 million in cash on hand at the end of the latest reporting period, filings with the Federal Election Commission showed on Sunday. The pro-Obama group, Priorities USA Action, raised $1.6 million last month and had $4. ...
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Newark mayor: Romney business record is fair game
Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker is backing off comments he made earlier Sunday, when he criticized President Barack Obama's re-election campaign for its attacks on Bain Capital, the private equity firm once run by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.more
Pro-Romney Super PAC sees fundraising dip in April
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Restore Our Future, an outside "Super PAC" backing Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, raised $3.9 million in April, less than half the haul it collected in March, the group's financial disclosures showed on Sunday. But the "super" political action committee still emerged with $8.2 million in cash on hand at the end of last month - more than it did in March - after spending $2.9 million, according to the filing with the Federal Election Commission. In March, the deep-pocketed Super PAC brought in $8.7 million and had $6.5 million left in cash on hand. ...
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As G8, NATO gather, a thought: what would Romney do?
As world leaders meet this weekend for back-to-back summits hosted by President Barack Obama six months ahead of US elections, they would be forgiven for asking themselves a maladroit question: what would Mitt Romney do?
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U.S. banking laws unable to stop JPMorgan loss: Republican Boehner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. banking reforms could not have prevented JPMorgan Chase & Co's trading losses, and those involved in the activities that went awry should be held accountable, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said in an interview aired on Sunday. "I don't believe there's anything in Dodd-Frank (financial reform law) that would've prevented this activity at JPMorgan," said Boehner, the top Republican U.S. officeholder. He made the comments Friday in an interview for ABC's "This Week. ...more
John Boehner on GOP House: 'Hard to Keep 218 Frogs in a Wheelbarrow'
Republican House Speaker John Boehner compared trying to pass a bill in the House of Representatives to keeping "218 frogs in a wheelbarrow" on "This Week" this morning.
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Rubio Fires Up S.C. Republicans With Attacks on Obama
COLUMBIA, S.C. ? Florida Sen. Marco Rubio fired up an audience of South Carolina Republicans as he labeled President Obama the most ?divisive? figure in modern American history, picking up an attack line used by his party?s presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney.more
Pelosi: 75 GOP House Seats in Play
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that as many as 75 Republican seats may be in play, as leaders from both parties expressed confidence on Sunday about this year?s elections and the prospect of winning the majority.more
Rubio Comes Out Swinging at Obama at S.C. GOP Dinner
COLUMBIA, S.C. ? Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., doled out attacks on President Obama tonight in a high-profile speech before South Carolina Republicans, laying out aggressive criticisms of the president as he called him the most ?divisive figure? in American politics. ?The president and his party?s...more
Ron Paul Wins Minnesota State Convention
Ron Paul backers have secured 12 of 13 delegates at Minnesota? state GOP convention, according to a source who was there and is familiar with the delegates? leanings. Saturday?s convention gives Paul 32 of Minnesota?s 40 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.,...more