There is a surprising, so far, a surprising recurrence of suggestions that we have universal background checks. Not just close the gun show loophole, but total, universal background checks, including private sales.Joe Biden re: the proposals being considered by his gun control task force. John Hickenlooper, the Democratic Governor of Colorado, echoed this same sentiment today. In addition, Biden said that he’s “never quite heard as much talk about the need to do something about high-capacity magazines as I’ve heard spontaneously from every group that we’ve met with so far,” and said that the president has given him until Tuesday to present a set of recommendations as to how best prevent future incidents like the one in Newtown. source
Defending the easily defendable: Beau Biden, Delaware’s Attorney General and the son of Joe Biden, said that his dad’s facial expressions were no big (effin’) deal. “I’m happy to defend my dad,” he said. “I don’t think he needs any defensiveness. Any time the other side – Karl Rove or folks on the far right – are going after my father for smiling too much, you know that’s a victory.”
What he didn’t tell you is he sat on that commission. He sat on that commission, and were he and his house Republican friends that he leads, had they voted with the commission, it would have been voted on, but he voted no. He would not let it go to the floor. He walked away.Vice President Joe Biden • Making a tough criticism of Paul Ryan’s Republican National Convention speech — specifically the part where Ryan criticized Obama for ignoring the bipartisan deficit commission’s recommendations — at a campaign stop in Wisconsin on Sunday. It wasn’t his only attack-dog moment — he also criticized Romney for not wanting to end the war in Afghanistan and referred to Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan as “Vouchercare.” Joe Biden makes a pretty good attack dog, if you ask us.
Gov. Chris Christie wasn’t willing to give up the New Jersey statehouse to be Mitt Romney’s running mate because he doubted they’d win, The Post has learned.
Romney’s top aides had demanded Christie step down as the state’s chief executive because if he didn’t, strict pay-to-play laws would have restricted the nation’s largest banks from donating to the campaign — since those banks do business with New Jersey.
But Christie adamantly refused to sacrifice his post, believing that being Romney’s running mate wasn’t worth the gamble.
“[Christie] felt, at one point, that [President] Obama could lose this. And, look, there still is that chance. But he knows, right now, you have to say it’s unlikely,” one source said.
Did Christie, who is making the keynote speech at this week’s Republican National Convention, make the right move?
» What “bounce”? And, as it turns out, Romney’s pick of Ryan didn’t exactly give him a desired jump in the polls. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight puts it like so: “This is a below-average ‘bounce’ for the selection of a vice presidential candidate. In past elections, the bounce has averaged in the neighborhood of 4 percentage points instead.” Silver has Romney well behind Obama in the electoral vote count.
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Looking to see Romney and his new vice-presidential candidate with a ticking stopwatch? “60 Minutes” has you covered tonight.
The Christian Science Monitor’s comparison of the Paul Ryan and Obama deficit plans nails things with a single sentence: “As Obama himself noted today, this fiscal confrontation represents a profound disagreement about the nature of government.”
There’s more to it than that. But that one sentence says more about the differences between the philosophies of the two than anything we can put together. Maybe Paul Ryan should run for president in 2012. Because, clearly, Obama’s giving him more attention than any other member of Congress now, and he’s clearly looking at an ideological fight that the American people should answer to. What direction do we want for our country in the long term: Paul Ryan’s or Obama’s? Or is it somewhere in-between? That’s the real question here. By giving it so much attention — and such a tough rebuttal — that’s effectively what Obama just did. By putting the Ryan plan on a pedestal, then knocking it over, he raised Paul Ryan’s stature even further. Unlike any of the fights with Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or Donald Trump, this is about actual real non-trivial stuff. If we were the GOP, we’d be poking at Paul Ryan to convince him to run, stat.
To put it simply, there was a period in the early part of the GOP primary race where the candidates were looking extremely boring or unserious — Donald Trump was a thing at this point — and (rather than paying attention to them) Obama responded by focusing heavily on Ryan’s budget plan, even if he disagreed with it. Even though Ryan didn’t run for president then, the point above is the fundamental conversation our country now gets to have on a national scale. Whether or not you like Ryan, he bumps up the “maturity” factor of the 2012 campaign significantly and could help Romney from getting sucked into another “Etch A Sketch” blender for a news cycle.
Flipping burgers at McDonald’s, steering the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, slinging cheap margaritas, and toning abs and pecs. That’s about the extent of Rep. Paul Ryan’s private sector experience.Politico’s Jonathan Martin • Discussing a glaring problem were Mitt Romney to pick Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate: He has little experience in the private sector, something Romney himself is pushing very hard. Ryan’s business experience? Limited to working at his family’s construction business only a few months. On the other hand, The Wall Street Journal just gave him some serious backing, noting that Ryan’s pick would give Romney a chance to win on big issues (with Ryan’s fiscal background offering up those big issues), rather than losing on small ones.
“That one, I don’t think was well handled,” said former vice president Dick Cheney about John McCain’s VP pick four years ago. He doesn’t think Sarah Palin passed the test of being “capable of being president of the United States.” He doesn’t think Palin fit that standard, and he doesn’t want Romney to make the same mistake. source
Interestingly, it could be a blank website that provides the greatest hint as to who Romney will pick.The Daily Dot’s Justin Franz • Claiming that Mitt Romney’s vice president might be hinted at simply by reading the social media tea leaves. Their guess? TPaw. Tim Pawlenty? Their evidence: Pawlenty’s site is currently down and has a “Please come back later” message on it, and that he hasn’t updated his main social media outlets in two or more weeks. Bobby Jindal and Rob Portman, the other two candidates suggested to be in the top three, have meanwhile kept their social media presences strong. Will the Web give away the story before Romney can announce it? That’s what The Daily Dot seems to be banking on.
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
“The idea that Condi Rice, an African-American conservative woman could team up with a white-guy Mormon to take on an African-American, left-leaning Democrat is just too delicious for reporters to ignore,” says Frank Sesno, director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs and a former Washington bureau chief for CNN.
So why not do it? Why shouldn’t news outlets take the opportunity to pooh-pooh the story as a way of driving clicks and ratings? Simple, Sesno says. If they don’t, someone else will. “The question in newsrooms now is “if ‘so many have seen it, heard it, read it, tweeted it, how can we ignore it?’”
The Daily Beast’s Lauren Ashburn puts it like this: “They know Drudge is a monster traffic-driver and that even if they ignore his tasty tidbits, their rivals won’t.” Why is it that a site which hasn’t updated its approach since 1998 can hold such pull over so many other outlets in the pivot-on-a-dime age of Twitter? (ht Anthony De Rosa)
I’m not gonna do it and I’m not going to be asked and it’s not going to happen.Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush • Saying that it’s unlikely that he’ll be the vice presidential pick in somewhat firmer terms than Mike Huckabee. Bush, who has emerged as a voice who isn’t afraid to disagree with his own party at times, admits that if we were to do it, “this was probably my time,” but that “I’m not sure I would have been successful as a candidate either.” The odds, either way, are looking good for a VP candidate out of Florida — CPAC voters in Chicago over the weekend heavily favored current Sen. Marco Rubio as their desired running mate for Mitt Romney.
I’m not going to even discuss the process anymore. I’m going to be respectful of the process he’s put in place.Florida Sen. Marco Rubio • Discussing Mitt Romney’s vice presidential process in vague enough terms that make it sound like he’s potentially in the running. Previously, he was more direct with his denials — saying “I’m not going to be the vice president” on two separate occasions in the past three weeks. Anyone want to read the tea leaves here?
So Dick Cheney just had a heart transplant. ”Although the former vice president and his family do not know the identity of the donor, they will be forever grateful for this lifesaving gift,” an aide to the former vice president said. Cheney famously has had a bum ticker for decades. (photo by Gage Skidmore)
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