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Election

NEWS FLASH

Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Says Marco Rubio Is Not Qualified To Be Vice-President | Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a freshman senator with less experience in government than former half-term governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, is widely viewed as a possible running mate to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In an interview with CNN’s John King, however, one of President Bush’s top lieutenants threw cold water on this idea, saying Rubio is not qualified for the nation’s number two job. According to Gonzales, “Wisdom comes from experience. It comes from living. It comes from success. It comes from failure, and I just think that the country needs to have people in positions of leadership who have that level of experience that’s important to serve effectively as president and as vice-president.” Watch it:

GOP Candidate Who Flirted With Birtherism Claims Comments Had ‘Nothing To Do With Obama’

By Igor Volsky on May 30, 2012 at 4:46 pm

Michigan Senate candidate Peter Hoekstra (R) defended his flirtation with birtherism during an appearance on CNN this afternoon and claimed that his proposal to establish a government panel to ensure that future presidential candidates are born in the United States is unrelated to the false allegations that President Obama was born in Kenya. “This has nothing to do about Barack Obama, this has nothing to do about the past, this is all looking forward,” he said. Moments later, however, he failed to affirm that Obama’s birth certificate is real and merely insisted that nobody has “discredited” its authenticity. Asked why he was proposing to further expand the role of the federal government, Hoekstra explained, “I’m all about solutions.” Watch it:

“I’m not participating in [the birther] debate,” Hoekstra added. “I think that this issue has been settled.” He also said that he saw “no connection at all” between this proposal and his racist ad depicting a Chinese worker mockingly thanking Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).

NEWS FLASH

Pro-GOP Outside Groups Outspending Key Senate Democratic Candidates And Allies By Three-To-One Margin | In yet another sign that the Supreme Court’s controversial 5-4 Citizens United ruling has tilted the playing field toward secretive groups and billionaire businessmen, a new Bloomberg analysis reveals Sen. Sherod Brown (D-OH) and Senate candidate Tim Kaine (D-VA) are being massively outspent by right-wing Super PACs and 501(c)(4)s. Right-wing political groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS have spent at least $8 million against Brown, compared to just $2.5 million on television advertising spent by the Democratic incumbent and allied groups. In Virginia, the Chamber of Commerce and others have so far outspent former Gov. Kaine and his allies by a $1.9 million to $385,000 margin.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Transfers $160,000 In Campaign Contributions To Mysterious Legal Defense Fund

By Annie-Rose Strasser on May 30, 2012 at 2:19 pm

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is diverting campaign donations to bankroll his legal defense fund. For what charges does he need a legal defense? He won’t say.

Walker’s latest campaign finance report reveals that he recently made two transfers totaling $100,000 toward a fund meant to protect him from a “John Doe” corruption investigation.

The three-year long investigation is targeting Walker employees who may have committed a host of corrupt activities — accusations include embezzlement, coercion, and use of taxpayer funds for campaign work. According to the Huffington Post, “Mike Tate, the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, says state law permits Walker to set up such a fund only if he is charged or under investigation for election or campaign violations.”

No one knows exactly if any allegations have been leveled against Walker, or what those might be. However, at the beginning of this year, a Walker appointee and staffer were both arrested and charged with felony embezzlement. Another Walker supporter — one of his funders — was convicted with exceeding campaign spending limits. Whatever Walker’s legal exposure, he is concerned enough to divert substantial campaign funds to his legal defense just days before the election.

Walker previously made another huge transfer of cash into the fund to pay his legal defense. The AP reports:

Walker’s latest campaign finance report filed with the state on Tuesday shows transfers of $70,000 and $30,000 out of his campaign account to the Scott Walker Trust. He previously transferred $60,000 into the account.

His Democratic challenger in Tuesday’s recall election Tom Barrett has repeatedly called on Walker to disclose who is paying for his legal defense fund. Walker has refused to say.

The Governor is required by law to have donors sign off on a transfer of funds, but the Walker campaign will not reveal who those people are. It has been a contentious issue in the lead up to the June 5 recall election, in which Walker has recently found himself in a dead heat, according to some polling. Other pools show Walker with a narrow lead.

NEWS FLASH

17,000 People Sign Petition Asking Birther-Curious Arizona Official To Investigate Whether Romney Is A Unicorn | Last week, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, the state’s top elections official, threatened to kick President Obama off the state’s ballot until Hawai’i once again reiterated that Obama was born in that state. In response to Bennett’s flirtation with birtherism, 17,000 people signed a petition asking him to also investigate whether presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is a unicorn. While it remains to be seen whether such an investigation will reveal that the former Massachusetts governor is indeed a fantastical horned beast similar in appearance to a horse, it’s not clear whether Romney would be permitted to run for president if he is indeed a unicorn. The Romney campaign is likely to rely on the candidate’s past statements about corporations, and claim that “unicorns are people, my friend.”

Rep. Allen West: ‘Let’s Talk About The President Doing Blow And Smoking Dope’

By Scott Keyes on May 30, 2012 at 11:39 am

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) revived President Obama’s drug use from three decades ago during a town hall yesterday, imploring the crowd to discuss “the president doing blow.”

West was asked by a constituent in Boca Raton about charges that he’d assaulted an Iraqi police officer while serving in 2003. He deflected the question and then proceeded to bring up the fact that then-college student Barack Obama had once done drugs.

“So if you guys want to go back and talk about what happened nine years ago for me, let’s talk about the president doing blow, and smoking dope,” West said, to applause.

QUESTIONER: Please release your Article 15 conviction.

WEST: I was not convicted of anything. I think everyone knows what happened. I mean if you guys have a problem with the fact that people were out there planning to kill my soldiers and I found a guy, I put a pistol, shot over his head, and they weren’t killing my soldiers anymore. If you guys have a problem with that, you need to go talk to someone else, because if I’m in that exact same situation, I’m making the same decision for those men and women. [...] So if you guys want to go back and talk about what happened nine years ago for me, let’s talk about the president doing blow, and smoking dope.

Watch it:

To be clear, West is comparing formal charges that he’d violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice by threatening a detainee’s life to a college student doing drugs 30 years ago. West was fined $5,000 for the incident and retired the next summer from “a successful 22-year military career that seemed destined for further advancement.”

Justice

Romney Touts Constitutional Amendment Disqualifying Eisenhower, Roosevelt and McCain From Being President

By Ian Millhiser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on May 30, 2012 at 11:19 am

Too inexperienced to be president

At a campaign rally in Las Vegas yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney touted the idea of making anyone who does not have a business background as ineligible for the White House as if they had been born in Kenya:

“I was speaking with one of these business owners who owns a couple of restaurants in town,” Romney said. “And he said ‘You know I’d like to change the Constitution, I’m not sure I can do it,’ he said. ‘I’d like to have a provision in the Constitution that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president and the birthplace of the president being set by the Constitution, I’d like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he could become president of the United States.‘”

Romney continued: “You see then he or she would understand that the policies they’re putting in place have to encourage small business, make it easier for business to grow.

Watch it:

Romney’s amendment would come as quite a shock to the last person to earn the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958 and served more than two decades in the United States Navy, including more than five years as an prisoner of war. After retiring from the Navy at the rank of captain, McCain turned to politics and was elected to the House in 1983 and to the Senate in 1987. Because McCain devoted his life to serving his country, rather than to working in business, the Romney amendment would disqualify him from the White House.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower would likely suffer a similar fate. Like McCain, Eisenhower was a career officer before entering politics, graduating from West Point in 1915 and eventually commanding the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. It’s not clear whether Romney’s amendment would count the time Eisenhower spent as President of Columbia University as “working in business,” and Eisenhower did work two years supervising the night shift at a creamery before entering college. Unless Romney would allow Eisenhower to count his time in academia as business experience, however, Eisenhower lacked the three years required to become president under the Romney amendment. Saving human civilization from Adolf Hitler is not a sufficient qualification.
Read more

Economy

Romney Economic Adviser Says Romney Plans To Undermine Consumer Protections In Wall Street Reform Law

By Pat Garofalo posted from ThinkProgress Economy on May 30, 2012 at 9:25 am

Mitt Romney, who last night secured the Republican presidential nomination with his win in Texas’ primary, has already made clear his desire to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, enacted in response to the financial crisis of 2008. But according to Glenn Hubbard, one of Romney’s economic advisers, even if Romney can’t get rid of the law wholesale, he’d still like to dismantle important aspects of it:

For example, he said Mr. Romney would propose:

– replacing the new system for dismantling failing financial companies that was created as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law with a new system, which he declined to specify.

– a new system of consumer financial regulation that either moves the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau outside of the Federal Reserve or breaks up the new agency and places the powers within existing financial regulators.

That Romney would break up and disperse the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s duties amongst existing financial regulators shows just how little he cares to address the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.

After all, it was the fact that consumer protection responsibilities were dispersed throughout the regulatory system — and were no regulator’s primary responsibility — that allowed banks to get away with so much pernicious behavior. The creation of the CFPB was meant to address this problem, giving consumers at least one regulator explicitly tasked with looking out for their interests.

Romney, of course, has been raking in money from Wall Street interests who fought the creation of the Bureau tooth and nail. Back in January, Romney called the Bureau the “most powerful and unaccountable bureaucracy in the history of our nation” and falsely claimed that it is “headed by a powerful and unaccountable bureaucrat with unprecedented authority over the economy.”

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