FEC Dismisses Complaint Against Crossroads GPS

Politico reports:

The Federal Election Commission has closed a long-running investigation into the activities of Crossroads GPS — the nonprofit group founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove.

According to a letter sent by the FEC to Crossroads GPS and provided on Tuesday to POLITICO, the election enforcement agency dismissed the complaint — which was filed in 2010 — because there were insufficient votes on the commission supporting allegations that Crossroads GPS violated campaign finance law.

The FEC said it would follow up with a statement to Crossroads GPS explaining its reasons for the closure of the complaint.

The initial complaint was filed against Crossroads GPS in 2010 by the watchdog groups Public Citizen and Protect Our Elections. It alleged that the 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization was actually operating as a political committee — like a PAC or super PAC instead of a tax-exempt nonprofit group. The complaint also claimed that Crossroads GPS should be forced to disclose its donors and list its expenditures — just like PACs, super PACs, campaigns and political parties.

The Twitter Primary

At The Washington Examiner, Hugh Hewitt writes about the Twitter power of potential GOP presidential candidates.

We won't know until three years from now what percentage of Twitter followings as of Dec. 13 turned into actual campaign activists or contributors, but there is no reason not to think that the "Twitter followers" number doesn't mean something given the importance the MSM talking heads pay to their own running totals. These totals are at least a measure of the potential candidates' online efforts.

Here's the Twitterific facts on the Twitter primary as of that day. Where the potential candidate has more than one account, I used the higher number of the two (or three). I have also rounded to the thousand. Their relative rank in "Twitter power" follows their actual number of "followers."

— Bolton: 108,000; 10
— Bush: 101,000; 11
— Christie: 420,000; 3
— Cruz: 234,000; 6
— Huckabee: 318,000; 5
— Jindal: 143,000; 9
— Kasich: 56,000; 13
— King: 17,000; 16
— Paul: 351,000; 4
— Perry: 210,000; 8
— Rubio: 475,000; 2
— Ryan: 561,000; 1
— Santorum: 222,000; 7
— Snyder: 30,000; 14
— Thune: 27,000; 15
— Walker: 73,000; 12

Obamacare Problems Are Not Going Away

An AP-GfK poll finds that people with health insurance blame Obamcare for their increasing premiums and deductibles.

The poll found a striking level of unease about the law among people who have health insurance and aren't looking for government help. Those are the 85 percent of Americans who the White House says don't have to be worried about the president's historic push to expand coverage for the uninsured.

In the survey, nearly half of those with job-based or other private coverage say their policies will be changing next year - mostly for the worse. Nearly 4 in 5 (77 percent) blame the changes on the Affordable Care Act, even though the trend toward leaner coverage predates the law's passage.

Sixty-nine percent say their premiums will be going up, while 59 percent say annual deductibles or copayments are increasing.

Only 21 percent of those with private coverage said their plan is expanding to cover more types of medical care, though coverage of preventive care at no charge to the patient has been required by the law for the past couple of years.

Fourteen percent said coverage for spouses is being restricted or eliminated, and 11 percent said their plan is being discontinued.

At The Wall Street Journal, economist Michael Boskin says that things will get worse:

The "sticker shock" that many buyers of new, ACA-compliant health plans have experienced—with premiums 30% higher, or more, than their previous coverage—has only begun. The costs borne by individuals will be even more obvious next year as more people start having to pay higher deductibles and copays.

If, as many predict, too few healthy young people sign up for insurance that is overpriced in order to subsidize older, sicker people, the insurance market will unravel in a "death spiral" of ever-higher premiums and fewer signups. The government, through taxpayer-funded "risk corridors," is on the hook for billions of dollars of potential insurance-company losses. This will be about as politically popular as bank bailouts.

The "I can't keep my doctor" shock will also hit more and more people in coming months. To keep prices to consumers as low as possible—given cost pressures generated by the government's rules, controls and coverage mandates—insurance companies in many cases are offering plans that have very restrictive networks, with lower-cost providers that exclude some of the best physicians and hospitals.

House Seats: Advantage GOP

At The Cook Political Report, David Wasserman writes that the Democrats have lost the political edge that the shutdown gave them.

At the moment, the political environment appears to have come back down to earth. And, with the 2014 election back to looking more like a referendum on President Obama than House Republicans, we have updated our outlook to a GOP gain of zero to ten House seats.

The candidate most symbolic of the times is Democratic Omaha Councilman Pete Festersen, who entered the race against weak GOP Rep. Lee Terry (NE-02) in the midst of the shutdown but dropped out this week. This shouldn't come as a shock: every cycle has a "gut check" time when candidates reevaluate the climate or their own capabilities, and many candidates who come storming out of the gate in off-years find they can't sustain their momentum.

But for Democrats to have really built on their October progress, they would have needed 1) the promise of more Republican intransigence on continuing resolutions and debt ceilings, 2) more Republican retirements from marginal or semi-marginal districts, and 3) a raft of five to ten more "grade A" candidates in GOP-held districts. In the aftermath of the ACA's launch, none of the three have materialized.

Greenberg's Health Care Predictions

Alex Roarty reports at National Journal:

On Thursday, senior Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg told reporters that the Republican focus on hitting Democrats over Obamacare was a political "trap." Citing a new Democracy Corps poll he helped conduct, Greenberg said if Republican dwell on repealing the law while Democrats focus on fixing the economy, Democrats will come out on top.

In November 1993, Greenberg said:  "Health care will prove to be an enormously healthy project for Clinton, for labor and for the Democratic Party." (Ann Devroy and Dan Balz, "For President, Coalitions Are In Constant Flux," Washington Post, November 18, 1993)

In the 1994 midterm, Democrats lost control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

Will Huck Run?

Mike Huckabee is considering a presidential run in 2016, reports Jonathan Martin at The New York Times:

Since his defeat in 2008, Mr. Huckabee, a pastor-turned governor, has made a living off his own eponymous show on Fox News, a talk radio program he just gave up and a steady schedule of paid speeches all over the country. He said he did not run for president in 2012 because he did not think President Barack Obama could be defeated, but he also acknowledged he has enjoyed earning a measure of financial comfort and celebrity through his show.

It is those two factors, along with the rise of super PACs that let a single wealthy individual sustain a candidate lacking a major financial network, that he says are making him look closely at a second presidential run.

But he also suggested that one of the reasons he granted an interview about his political future after addressing a gathering of pastors is that he is still bothered about how his first presidential run ended - and he wants the respect of somebody who performed better than more vaunted candidates and one who remains popular with many conservatives.

Discussing the potential Republican field in 2016, Mr. Huckabee said it would be “tough” for Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to win such conservative redoubts as Iowa and South Carolina, two early nominating states.

“Let me show you some polling,” Mr. Huckabee said, brandishing a two-page memo about a survey his longtime pollster took earlier this month showing him leading the Republican field in both Iowa and South Carolina. He boasted that such good numbers came at a time when “nobody has even talked about me being named” as a candidate.

Barriers to Third Parties

At RealClearPolitics, Scott Conroy discusses the barriers to third parties, and focuses on the failure of Americans Elect.

When Americans Elect began its efforts, organizers believed that gaining ballot access in all 50 states would be their biggest challenge. As it turned out, the signature-gathering process, the parameters of which are unique to each state, was indeed as onerous and costly as they imagined it would be.

But in the end, the piece of the puzzle that the group initially assumed would fall into place relatively neatly -- attracting a candidate who could actually win the race -- proved the most unworkable element of the entire enterprise.

“We had the money and the people to achieve 50-state ballot access,” said Americans Elect CEO Kahlil Byrd. “But of all the people we briefed on this idea who would’ve been credible candidates, to a person they all decided not to do it. And I guess that attests to their sanity because they knew that they were going to be in a brawl with the two parties, especially if they got serious and got some traction.”

The organization’s fizzle came four years after a similarly minded organization, Unity08, failed to gain much interest and also collapsed.

There is a key reason, it turns out, why the last viable third-party presidential candidate was Ross Perot in 1992: He was a self-starting billionaire. In other words, the candidate came first and the organization followed. And on the presidential level, it appears that’s the way it has to be.