America's Voice, Republicans for Immigration Reform, and Lindsey Graham

The Los Angeles Times reports:

When television ads aired in South Carolina this spring attacking Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham for supporting immigration reform, a GOP group came to his aid. So did the other team.

"We came up with the money," said Frank Sharry, founder and executive director of America's Voice, a Washington-based group with close ties to the Obama White House. "We were just frustrated that nobody was doing anything, and Graham was under attack. We said, 'Fine, we will put money in.'"

Sharry's group, knowing an ad sponsored by a left-leaning advocacy group could hurt Graham, donated $60,000 to Republicans for Immigration Reform, a super PAC started by President George W. Bush's former Commerce secretary, Carlos Gutierrez, and GOP fundraiser Charlie Spies.

So is Sharry really helping Graham by telling the Los Angeles Times about the ad he funded?

Seniors and the GOP

Molly Ball writes at The Atlantic:

As bad as things get for Republicans -- with women, with minorities, with youths -- there's always been one group they can count on: the old. But now one Democratic pollster sees evidence that even seniors are starting to turn on the GOP.

Just 28 percent of voters 65 and older had a favorable view of the Republican Party in a national survey conducted last month by the Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, versus 40 percent who had a positive view of the Democrats. That's a reversal from a poll Greenberg conducted in early 2011, when 43 percent of seniors saw Republicans favorably and 37 percent saw Democrats that way.

"It is now strikingly clear that [seniors] have turned sharply against the GOP," Erica Seifert, a senior associate at Greenberg's firm, wrote on the company's website this week. "We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens.

...
Greenberg is a Democratic pollster, to be sure. But his work is widely respected on both sides of the aisle. Republican pollster Whit Ayres didn't question the idea that seniors are souring on the GOP. "I don't think any Republican pollster who's looking at the numbers is sanguine about the state of the Republican brand at this point," he said. "You are going to see the impact of the damaged brand in every demographic group."

Nonetheless, Ayres noted, Greenberg's survey still has Republicans poised to win in 2014, if by a narrower margin than the 2010 wave. "What is striking to me in this survey is that the generic ballot is a dead heat," he said. "Republicans are actually one point ahead."

Tom Cotton

At The Daily Beast, Michelle Cottle writes of Tom Cotton, a GOP candidate for the seat of Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR):

Even setting aside Pryor’s handicap as the lone remaining Dem in the congressional delegation of a state that’s fast trending red and that really really doesn’t like President Obama, Cotton is a genuinely impressive political specimen. The lanky, whip-smart 37-year-old has a CV that is, as GOP strategist Ralph Reed puts it, “out of central casting”: two degrees from Harvard (undergrad and law), a stint at the Claremont Graduate University (including a Publius fellowship in conservative political thought at the Claremont Institute), a federal clerkship, a turn at the crème de la crème consultancy McKinsey & Co., plus—and here’s where it gets almost too good to be true—an Army stint that featured tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He left the service with the rank of captain and, among other decorations, a Bronze Star. “He’s a star,” asserts Reed

Crossroads GPS on Obamacare Implementation

Scott Wong reports at Politico:

HUDDLE FIRST LOOK: CROSSROADS GPS PRODUCES RECESS OBAMACARE VIDEO FOR LAWMAKERS -- Crossroads GPS has made a three-minute video about the harmful consequences of Obamacare. Now they just want lawmakers to play it during their town hall meetings this recess. Steven J. Law, president and CEO of Crossroads GPS, will send the video to House and Senate chiefs of staff today accompanied by a memo: “A recent public opinion survey conducted by Crossroads GPS found that while a majority of Americans remain opposed to Obamacare, many people are still unaware of the specific harmful consequences this law will have. We strongly encourage your Members to educate their constituents on this issue in August, whether in townhall meetings, speeches, web-based presentations or other constituent outreach events.” Watch the video here: http://youtu.be/uhwUjHCQLjw Read the memo here: http://bit.ly/19PyP1N

 

America Rising, American Bridge, and Trackers

At The Washington Post, Jackie Kucinich reports on tracking and trackers.  She interviews representatives from American Bridge and America Rising.

After Hope and Change: The Meme

The title of our book, After Hope and Change, anticipated a media meme that has been spreading.  Some recent examples:

• Paul Peterson, on disturbing data about minority education:  "Some might argue that this comparison is unfair to the Obama administration, as the 1999-2008 data cover nine years, while Mr. Obama had only four years to bring hope and change to American schools."
• Michael Boyle in The Guardian: "That short-sightedness, and the insincerity which has clothed so much of what he does in aspirational language of hope and change, will ultimately make his counterterrorism polices as disastrous as the ones he inherited."
• Kevin Williamson in National Review: "IPAB is the most dramatic example of President Obama’s approach to government by expert decree, but much of the rest of his domestic program, from the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law to his economic agenda, is substantially similar. In total, it amounts to that fundamental transformation of American society that President Obama promised as a candidate: but instead of the new birth of hope and change, it is the transformation of a constitutional republic operating under laws passed by democratically accountable legislators into a servile nation under the management of an unaccountable administrative state."
• George Ochenski in The Missoulian: "Back when candidate Barack Obama was campaigning for his first presidential bid, he spent a lot of time promising the American people that, were we to elect him, he would bring “hope and change” to the White House. The obvious reference was to then-President George W. Bush, of whom the citizens had grown exceedingly weary, not just because of his stupid and unnecessary wars, but for the `lying and spying' which came to be the trademark of the Bush-Cheney administration."
• Rand Paul on the Senate floor: The President promised us hope and change, but the more he claims that things change, I think the more they stay the same ... But hope and change just turned out to be a slogan. In Detroit and Chicago and in the once great cities of America, no change came. Hope and change was just a slogan. The poverty, the murders, the abysmal schools, they continue. Where are you, Mr. President? Where are you when in our hour of need in our country, why are you sending our money to people who hate us?

RNC, Debates, and TV Miniseries

The Washington Post reports:

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Tuesday that he doesn’t expect CNN and NBC to comply with his calls to cancel their plans to produce films about former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, as he reiterated his threat to cut them out of the Republican primary debate process.

“My guess is this is exactly what’s going to happen: They will produce the films, and we will cut them out,” Priebus told Post TV’s “In Play.”

Priebus penned a letter Monday to the networks asking that they shelve their plans, charging that CNN and NBC are engaging in a “thinly veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election.” CNN plans to produce a documentary about Clinton, a potential 2016 White House contender, while NBC is developing a miniseries.

If the networks don’t back down — they have shown no signs they are willing to do so thus far — Priebus said he intends to pressure GOP candidates not to participate in any debates hosted or sponsored by CNN and NBC by pushing for penalties to be imposed for contenders who don’t fall in line.