Somebody's Doing Some Serious Oppo on Liz Cheney

Serious oppo guys don't just surf the web.  They dirty their noses in courthouses, libraries, archives and other places where public records hold important information. The Casper Star-Tribune reports:

Senate candidate Liz Cheney improperly received a state resident fishing license based on an application with incorrect information, according to Wyoming Game and Fish Department records.

Cheney, who last month announced she will challenge Sen. Mike Enzi in the 2014 Republican primary, received her resident license just 72 days after closing on her Wilson house in May 2012. State law requires residents live in the state 365 consecutive days before they can receive a resident hunting or fishing license, which are cheaper than out-of-state licenses.

Cheney’s application also lists her as a 10-year resident of Wyoming.

The Game and Fish records are incorrect, Cheney told the Star-Tribune.

“The clerk must have made a mistake,” she said. “I never claimed to be a 10-year resident.”

Republicans and Spending

At The Daily Beast, Lloyd Green writes that if the Rand Paul faction cannot reach an entente with Chris Christie and Republican moderates,  "the 2016 Republican presidential nomination will be little more than a soap box to channel the ghosts of 1964 Republican nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater and the Confederacy’s long dead president, Jefferson Davis."

Much as libertarian purists may wish to believe—that welfare and Social Security are the same, they are not. One is viewed by voters a benefit earned after a lifetime of labor, while the other is a matter of the taxpayers’ grace. The bottom line is that the GOP can no longer afford scorn all spending, or to treat checks issued by Treasury alike.

To that end, the GOP must make common cause with more than just the wealthy or the worshipful, and if it is unable to tell friend and foe apart, it will be consigned to the role of the not-so-loyal opposition for a long time. AARP doesn’t have to be an enemy. If Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan could talk to the Teamsters, then the Republicans can surely speak to seniors.

Take disaster relief: as the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan describe it, “the American public wants money spent on disasters—cost be damned.” Parsing the numbers, Cillizza and Sullivan report, “fifty-nine percent of all respondents say federal emergency aid need not be offset by cuts in other parts of the budget, “ a number that includes a majority (52 percent) of self-identified Republicans.” To be sure, Christie is not alone. Other Republicans “get it,” too.

Democratic DEFCON 4

At Slate, David Weigel says that Senate Democrats are currently at DEFCON 4 (increased intelligence and heightened security):

The smart money in Washington is for a hung Senate—maybe the party loses West Virginia, South Dakota, Arkansas, Montana, and Alaska. But Democrats aren’t actually down in the polls in Alaska.

That state, which hadn’t previously elected a Democratic senator since Mike Gravel (yes, him), is a test case of whether Democrats can help a lousy candidate navigate the Republican primary to face the DSCC on the killing field. Begich is four points ahead of Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, who’s running, but he’d be 12 points ahead of Sarah Palin if she ran, and he’d be doing even better if failed (and Palin-endorsed) 2010 GOP candidate Joe Miller won the primary. Knowing this, Begich has aggressively trolled Palin, and gotten the predictable angry response in the form of Facebook posts.

This is a playbook Democrats haven’t snapped shut yet. In 2012, Guy Cecil helped shape Sen. Claire McCaskill’s strategy of elevating Todd Akin by attacking him as the “most conservative” candidate in TV ads that, obviously, thrilled conservatives. In 2014, they could try that in Georgia, where two of the most right-wing members of the House are trying to make the runoff. “They’ve never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” said Bennet. Would the DSCC help them in that effort? “If we did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

In After Hope and Change, we discuss the McCaskill ad that nominally criticized Akin but effectively won him support in the GOP primary:

Scandalabra at the Beginning of August

The multiple scandals besetting the Obama administration are not getting the same play that they did a few months ago -- but they are not going away, either.

On Benghazi, CNN reports:

CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, in the wake of the deadly Benghazi terror attack.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the assault by armed militants last September 11 in eastern Libya. 

Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.

CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency's Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out.

Read: Analysis: CIA role in Benghazi underreported

Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency's missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's workings.

The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

On IRS targeting, The Huffington Post reports:

A GOP lawmaker accused the Internal Revenue Service of obstructing congressional investigations into the agency's targeting of tea party groups, a charge the head of the IRS denied.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the IRS has been slow in producing documents that are so thoroughly blacked out they are useless to investigators.

Issa said he plans to bypass IRS lawyers and will subpoena documents directly from the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS.

"You are slow-rolling us," Issa told acting IRS head Danny Werfel in a heated exchange during a committee hearing Friday. "There are important facts to get out, and you are obstructing."

"That is not true," Werfel fired back.

Werfel said that by the end of the day Friday, the IRS will have given more than 16,000 pages of documents to Issa's committee and more than 70,000 pages to Congress as a whole. Werfel said documents are blacked out to protect confidential taxpayer information.

Issa's committee does not have legal authority to receive confidential taxpayer information. In Congress, that authority is reserved for the chairmen of the two tax-writing committees, House Ways and Means and Senate Finance, and their designated staff.

Werfel said the two tax-writing committees are receiving full documents. However, both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee have also complained that the IRS is producing documents too slowly.

On the NSA, Conor Friedersdorf writes at The Atlantic:

The Guardian's latest scoop concerns the ability of National Security Agency analysts to search vast databases of emails, online chats, and web browsing histories, among other online activity.
Glenn Greenwald notes that the NSA is lawfully required to obtain a FISA warrant if the target of surveillance is a U.S. person. But it provides analysts "the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant," he reports, and to reveal IP addresses of everyone who visits "any website the analyst specifies."

That alarms many Americans.

The Guardian article doesn't provide any evidence of NSA analysts targeting U.S. persons without a warrant, as critics of the newspaper are quick to note. Yet there is still ample reason to worry.

It is naive -- in fact, it is absurd -- to imagine that the scores or hundreds of NSA analysts given access to these databases will never commit abuses.

Early GOP Favorability Numbers

The Pew Research Center reports on a survey of Republicans:

[No] single figure stands out as the current leader of the Republican Party; in fact when asked who they see as the leader of the party these days more volunteer that nobody is (22%) than the most mentioned name, Speaker of the House John Boehner (10%). This is typical for parties out of power. In 2006, for instance, Democratic voters were unable to point to a single leader for their party.

At the same time, however, several prominent Republicans are quite popular with Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Of these, Rep. Paul Ryan stands out as having the most positive image among GOP voters (65% favorable). Not only is Ryan highly visible after his vice-presidential run, but the vast majority of those who know him view him favorably.

Sen. Rand Paul also has a very positive image (55% favorable), as does Sen. Marco Rubio (50%). Sen. Ted Cruz is not as well known as other GOP figures, but his image is quite positive among those who are familiar with him, particularly among those who identify with the Tea Party.

Chris Christie, by comparison, draws a more mixed reaction among the roughly three-quarters of Republicans who offer an opinion; 47% view him favorably while 30% say they have an unfavorable impression of the New Jersey governor.

Has Tea Party Fervor Cooled Off?

Josh Kraushaar notes at National Journal that pundits frequently cite the threat of tea party primary challengers as an explanation for congressional GOP voting behavior.

But as the argument became ubiquitous in 2013, something funny happened. The number of conservative challengers going up against GOP members of Congress hasn't developed as had been expected. In fact, there are currently as many notable Democratic primary challengers to incumbents as Republican intraparty battles. Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho is the only Republican currently facing a credible primary challenger, who is backed by the Club for Growth. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, facing blowback over passing a subsidy-filled farm bill, is the other member facing a similar threat. Freshman Rep. Rodney Davis is facing former Miss America Erika Harold in the Republican primary in Illinois, but few expect her to win.

Unlike in 2010 and 2012, when Republican divisions were front and center, there are as many noteworthy Democratic primary challengers this time around....

Meanwhile, only two members—GOP Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and John Campbell of California—have announced their retirement so far, a low number that suggests members are hardly running scared from their next election.

...
 There are many reasons why that's the case. Conservative activists have already pushed some of their biggest enemies out of the Congress, leaving fewer targets behind. Outside groups aren't raising money the way they did in 2010 at the apex of the tea-party wave and in 2012 during the high-stakes presidential election. The disappointment felt by the grassroots after Obama's reelection sapped some of the base's enthusiasm. Jim DeMint, the main agitator inside the Senate, is now operating from the outside, with less political influence.

Crossroads Fundraising

Byron Tau writes at Politico about Crossroads fundraising in the first half of 2013:

American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS and the Conservative Victory Project jointly posted a $3.37 million fundraising haul.

In the first six months of 2013, American Crossroads — the Rove-founded super PAC — raised $1.85 million, while Crossroads GPS — the 501(c)(4) nonprofit — raised $1.45 million.

The Conservative Victory Project — a super PAC founded to intervene on behalf of the most viable candidate in GOP primary fights — had no donors other than a few transfers from parent group American Crossroads. A person familiar with the group’s plans said that Conservative Victory Fund was still in a”start-up phase” and had not done any active fundraising.

The combined cash haul for all three groups is off from the group’s 2011 fundraising pace. At a similar point in 2011, American Crossroads alone posted a $3.3 million haul, while Crossroads GPS does not disclose its donors and is not required to file a mid-year report. The group could not immediately provide a mid-year 2011 total.

At USA Today, Fredreka Schouten adds:

"Our fundraising results so far are roughly comparable to where we were at this point in 2011, when you consider the absence of a presidential election this cycle," Collegio said in a statement. He said leaders have yet to "make any hard fundraising requests" this year of contributors, but said there's "growing donor enthusiasm" about winning control of the Senate.

American Crossroads' largest donation of the year — $1 million — came from Contran Corp. Its owner, Texas industrialist Harold Simmons, is a longtime Republican donor.

Another prominent Republican super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, also showed slower fundraising — collecting just shy of $600,000 from Jan. 1 through June 30. The group, which works to elect Republicans to the U.S. House, raised $11.3 million during the 2012 election cycle.