President Barack Obama walks with Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, left, and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico following their joint press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House, April 2 (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
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Ed Kilgore: Every day there’s at least one headline coming across the transom that doesn’t make you laugh, cry, cheer, or think, but simply scratch your head in puzzlement. Today’s winner is from Politico’s Lois Romano: “Ann Romney is the Romney Democrats Fear Most.”
…. Huh! Everybody thinks Ann Romney is a “rock star?” I did not know that. The “political arena” is all abuzz about her? Missed that, too; the buzzing must be confined to weekends, when I kinda check out from politics as much as possible.
…. If you read this long piece, however, it begins to appear that most of the buzzing Romano is hearing is coming from busy bees inside the Romney campaign itself….
….. Perhaps the most revealing thing about the Romneys as a team that Romano’s account mentions is that their handlers can’t decide whether Ann is more valuable on the road as a speaker, or behind the scenes as a steadying influence on the candidate. It sounds like Mitt needs a road manager and a psychologist as much as he needs a dazzling opening act. Indeed, he seems to be a very needy dude….
Don’t forget, the full version of The Road We’ve Traveled is released tonight (8:0 ET) - sign up here (at OFA) to see it first
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Bloomberg: Claims for jobless benefits dropped last week in the U.S., matching the lowest level in four years, more evidence the labor market is improving.
Applications for unemployment insurance payments fell by 14,000 to 351,000 in the week ended March 10, Labor Department figures showed today. Economists forecast 357,000….
Companies have slowed the pace of firings and are expanding their workforces as sales and confidence improve and the threat of financial contagion from a European default diminishes. A Labor Department report last week showed job growth in February capped the best six months since 2006.
More here
See Steve Benen here on the jobs’ news
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CNN: More veterans are coming back from war and getting back to work in the civilian job force, thanks to efforts by both employers and the government, as well as the improving economy.
The jobless rate for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans has fallen to 7.6%, well below the overall U.S. unemployment rate of 8.3%, and nearly five percentage points below the 12.5% rate for veterans a year ago.
More here
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White House live
11:0 AM: Vice President Biden speaks at a campaign event in Toledo, Ohio (CNN live streaming)
12:30: Jay Carney briefs the press
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Charles Blow (NYT): The Republican Party has a big problem. Huge!
Their likely nominee isn’t much liked by the base of the party. Yet even as he loses primaries in the most conservative parts of the country, he continues to stack up delegates. He is Mitt of the Indomitable Math…. but according to some new polls, the primary season is taking a devastating toll on Romney and the Republican brand as a whole, fueling something of a surge for the president.
The findings of a Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday show that President Obama has steadily increased his lead over Mitt Romney in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, which now stands at a whopping 12 points, 54 percent to 42 percent. These results echoed a Reuters/Ipsos poll released earlier this week that showed Obama leading Romney by 11 points, 52 percent to 41 percent. As Reuters pointed out, that is “nearly double the margin from February.”
More here
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AFP: Vice President Joe Biden will Thursday seek to set the contours of the 2012 general election, lauding President Barack Obama as a man with a “spine of steel” who fights for the middle class.
Biden will deliver the first of a series of speeches in the swing state of Ohio …. “Ours is a philosophy that values the role of workers in the success of a business, and values the middle class in the success of the economy,” Biden will say, according to excerpts of his speech released by the campaign.
“Stated simply, we’re about promoting the private sector. (Republicans) are about protecting the privileged sector. We’re a fair shot, and a fair shake. They’re about no rules, no risk. And no accountability”…
Biden will also praise Obama for rescuing the US auto industry with an unpopular $80 billion bailout opposed by many Republicans, but which has nursed the iconic sector back to health. “He said, ‘we are not going to give up on a million jobs, and the iconic industry America invented. Not without a fight’.”
“The President and I have a fundamental commitment to dealing the middle class back in to the American economy. And ultimately that’s what this election is all about. It’s about a choice. A system that trusts the workers on the line, instead of just listening to the folks in the suites. That’s a stark choice. To my mind it isn’t a choice at all.”
More here
11:0 AM: Vice President Biden speaks at a campaign event in Toledo, Ohio (CNN live streaming)
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TPM
Thanks Desertflower
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Michael Tomasky on Mitt’s Months of Misery in the Primaries to Come. How long can this go on? Pretty darn long. Take a look at the calendar …. He’ll have lots of time to fix things up, if he is the nominee. But think back about how your own view of Mitt Romney has changed in the last six months. Half a year ago, I’d say most people thought: successful, smooth, maybe a little too smooth, but formidable. Now? He’s a punch line. And a punching bag. And the calendar shows that he’s going to continue to be both for a while yet.
Full post here
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Greg Sargent: You constantly hear top Democrats and neutral commentators warning that Mitt Romney’s embrace of extreme positions on immigration have effectively dashed his hopes of making inroads among Latinos in the general election …. this sentiment is now being privately voiced to the Romney campaign by top Republicans, who worry his lurches to the right are undoing years of GOP outreach to a consistuency whose share of the vote will only grow in the years ahead.
The worry has been prompted by a recent poll showing only 14 percent of Latinos support Romney over Barack Obama…
More here
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President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama talk with Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom and Mrs. Samantha Cameron on the Truman Balcony of the White House, March 14, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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See the rest of the sequence at Messynessychic, it’s flippin’ hilarious
Steve Benen: At the most recent debate for the Republican presidential candidates, Mitt Romney wanted to show off his understanding of international affairs, and told the audience that Syria is Iran’s “key ally” and Iranians’ “route to the sea.”
Iran, of course, has 1,520 miles of its own coastline - and doesn’t share a border with Syria….
Today he has an op-ed in the Washington Post, calling for …. shaping a U.S. policy towards Iran that’s “the same as Ronald Reagan’s.”
Um, Mitt? The Reagan administration sold Iran weapons, in violation of an arms embargo, in order to help illegally finance the Contras in Nicaragua…..
More here
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Members of the American Israel Policy Affairs Committee listen to Mitt Romney address the annual policy conference via satellite link at the Washington Convention Center March 6
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Newt Gingrich Falls Asleep on Screen, Asks for Panel’s Questions, But No Panel Exists:
Comedian Bill Maher announced last night that he will donate one million dollars to President Obama’s re-election campaign. At the end of his groundbreaking comedy special, “CrazyStupidPolitics: Live from Silicon Valley,” which streamed live on Yahoo!, Bill brought out a check, making a personal donation of one million dollars to Obama’s Super PAC, Priorities USA Action. He explained that having a country governed by Barack Obama rather than any of the Republican candidates is “worth a million dollars” and that in his own financial interests, “this is the wisest investment I think I could make.” He also encouraged other wealthy liberals to do the same and give until it hurts.
More at Mediaite
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Washington Post (Editorial): Run to the extreme in the primary, move to the center in the fall: That’s expected. But moving from the cartoon world the Republican presidential candidates have constructed back into three dimensions might prove more difficult.
In their debate Wednesday night, the remaining candidates seemed to be continuing their drift from reality - the reality of a center-right electorate they propose to woo and govern, and of the complexities of the problems they promise to solve.
…. From his perch of thorough hypocrisy - Paul is a master earmarker who preserves his purity by voting against appropriations bills he knows will pass - the Texas congressman declared: “I don’t accept that form of government.”
And, of Santorum, “He is a fake.” No, what’s fake is the two-dimensional canvas they’re presenting to voters.
Full editorial here
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TPM: Mitt Romney’s got a problem. Purple Strategies released their “Purple Poll” on Thursday, data from twelve swing states … “His favorable ratings are just atrocious,” Doug Usher, a managing partner at Purple Strategies said. “You can’t be sitting on 27 percent favorability in the general,” the level Romney is at in their new numbers.
“The best thing that Mitt Romney could actually do is actually run a campaign that said something,” Bruce Haynes, one of the founding partners of Purples Strategies and a veteran of GOP campaigns, told TPM. “It’s a Seinfeld campaign. It’s a campaign about nothing….”
More here
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Robert Shrum: Mitt Romney is pandering so desperately to the far-right fringe that he’s become all but unelectable in November …. As he demonstrated in this debate, he’s so desperate to pander his way to the nomination that he’s making it increasingly worthless.
This may do for the primary - it may be essential - but it’s a disaster in the making for the fall campaign. Romney’s cynical hope has to be that his shape-shifting will convince voters he doesn’t really mean this stuff. He can pray that his character weakness is his saving grace - that his reputation for lying about his beliefs will pull him back from the edge of a gender gap that will otherwise pose an unbridgeable barrier to the White House. The longer the primaries drag on, and the more he has to profess his hostility to women’s rights, the less likely it is that he can ever convince the majority who are women to take a chance on him.
…. From Oklahoma to Ohio, which both vote on March 6, and then onto Wisconsin and across the Midwest, Romney is well behind Santorum in the polls. He will have to keep pandering - and above all, right now, he has to win Michigan.
In the Arizona debate, he may have staunched his bleeding in the primaries, but he opened his veins for November.
Full article here
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Martin Bashir: “Newt Gingrich said he’s going to take oil prices down to $2 or $2.50 - the only thing that Newt Gingrich is very skilled at doing is taking his underpants down in the form of the number of adulteries that this man commits.”
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Steve Rattner (NYT): …. As a presidential aspirant, Mr. Romney evidently hasn’t felt a need to be consistent or specific as to what should have been done to address the collapse of the auto industry starting in late 2008. But the gist is that the government should have stayed on the sidelines and allowed the companies to go through what he calls “managed bankruptcies,” financed by private capital.
That sounds like a wonderfully sensible approach - except that it’s utter fantasy. In late 2008 and early 2009, when G.M. and Chrysler had exhausted their liquidity, every scrap of private capital had fled to the sidelines.
I know this because the administration’s auto task force, for which I was the lead adviser, spoke diligently to all conceivable providers of funds, and not one had the slightest interest in financing those companies on any terms. If Mr. Romney disagrees, he should come forward with specific names of willing investors in place of empty rhetoric. I predict that he won’t be able to, because there aren’t any.
Full article here
Thanks Africa
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A source tells National Confidential that 26 American cars will be arranged by the United Auto Workers to echo Mitt Romney’s infamous “let Detroit go bankrupt” op-ed when he visits Ford Field on Friday. The cars will be on top of a parking garage right across from Ford Field where Romney will be giving a speech to the Detroit Economic Club.
White House.gov