Subject: POLITICO Huddle: RAND BEING RAND -- Biden goes hard for Ds -- Grassley on his tough reelect -- CHEETAH ON THE HILL TODAY
From: POLITICO Huddle <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 05:53:57 -0600

04/25/2016 07:51 AM EDT

(@burgessev or [email-masked]) 

RAND IS BACK LIKE HE NEVER LEFT: I sat down with Sen. Rand Paul earlier this month with some expectation that he'd be a bit different than the one who spent years building up a libertarian leaning profile that urged his party faithful to consider a different kind of Republicanism. That was not the case. Paul revels in addressing many of the same topics that brought him to prominence: Foreign aid, the intelligence apparatus and avoiding military entanglements. The only thing he wasn't really trying to discuss was the presidential race that he exited much earlier than he had hoped -- and he sounds quite wary of committing himself again to a national campaign: "It's hard to ask somebody who
 just spent a lot of effort being here and there and being everywhere in between about doing it again. It's not something that I can immediately say, 'Oh my goodness, I'm looking forward to 2020,'" Paul said, even as he conceded that "2020 would be perfect for an ophthalmologist."

Reassessing overseas: It wasn't long after he returned to the Senate full time that the chamber was voting on Paul's proposal to block F-16 sales to Pakistan, part of a liberal-conservative alliance that the Kentucky senator has clinched with Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. "It's classic Rand Paul," as Sen. Dan Coats put it. But Paul's colleagues praise him for being forthright about his intentions and generally not surprising them with his stubborn demands for votes, with Sen. Roger Wicker putting it best: "Rand is genteel." Next he and Murphy are eyeing a proposal that would require Saudi Arabia to hit certain terrorism-fighting requirements to buy arms, because as Paul says, it "should
 be a privilege" for countries to buy U.S. arms and technology. "I'm glad that Rand's back," Murphy said. "I'd much rather have him as a partner here in the Senate than as an adversary in the White House." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f2ffe2e522174706fb806ca76af09816993150ba1a7d52f576d2a5758d745b60

From the cutting room floor: I asked Paul to explain his style a little bit, which he often calls honey over vinegar. "I feel like I get along well with people ... people don't mind differences of agreement so much, they mind if you question their motivation ... that's like calling you a liar or something. Calling you dishonest by questioning your motivation, That becomes really personal." Is that why Ted Cruz's campaign can't get Senate endorsements? "I guess I'd rather just comment on mine, in the sense [of what] I try to do." A couple days later I asked if he had spoken to Cruz recently -- Paul wouldn't say. 

BIDEN GOES HARD FOR SENATE: Joe Biden is in Pennsylvania today, likely to hit the trail a bit for establishment-backed Senate candidate Katie McGinty, evidence that the vice president's engaged heavily in making sure there's a Democratic Senate to preserve his and President Barack Obama's legacy in 2017. Biden pushed for a joint endorsement of McGinty with the president, Edward-Isaac Dovere reports, and Sen. Chuck Schumer looks at Biden as the Democrats' "point guy." "It's part frustration with years of the administration's troubles with Senate Republicans (exacerbated by their refusal to move on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and holding up the 'Biden rule' as defense), part sales
 job reinforcing the Obama-Biden record, and part insistence that he can't leave his party in worse shape than it was when he left the Senate himself," Isaac writes. 

On the record for Joe: DSCC honcho Tom Lopach says that "in poll after poll that the vice president is incredibly popular and very trusted." Read it: http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f2ffe2e522174706067331a7d2ed2135a4d6e003c735696665a2b2a6414ec052

WHAT A CONFUSING CAMPAIGN: Sen. Cruz and John Kasich publicly released their strategy last night to carve up the map to try and stop Donald Trump. Cruz is concentrating on Indiana, Kasich on New Mexico and Oregon. And Sen. Jim Inhofe is supporting John Kasich for president "so that if Donald Trump becomes president, I would want Trump to use him as a vice president." (http://goo.gl/CHOZYR) Oh ho ho, sir, but Kasich's response to this is to begin vetting vice-presidential candidates of his own, per CBS. http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f2ffe2e522174706db50c83667eeb51696709fe465d481931a3f45897d827068

CANDID GRASSLEY - The Des Moines Register's Jason Noble asked the Iowa senator and Judiciary chairman if he's facing the toughest reelect of his political life this year. "It's not because of any one Democratic candidate, it's because of the environment that we're in. And the answer's yes." For Grassley, that environment means "it's the Supreme Court issue." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f2ffe2e52217470698daa3e145b61e2f94de923b30cb4d4c4c382db8c8d854ce

NEW THIS A.M.- House Speaker Paul Ryan is warming us all up for his Georgetown town hall on Wednesday with a fresh video about "problems we can fix" -- to which I assume he's referring to the Washington Metro system. http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f2ffe2e52217470679b22e2375bbe15a4e9e8da20a58d679100ce689febdd9f9

Good morning D.C. And welcome to the Huddle, your play-by-play guide to everything Capitol Hill, where the David Trone ads are only on for one more day. Please send tips to [email-masked] and follow along on Twitter @burgessev. 

TODAY IN CONGRESS - The Senate is in at 3 p.m. and will vote at 5:30 p.m. on a Water and Energy appropriations amendment. The House is out 'til tomorrow. 

AROUND THE HILL - Today at 4 p.m. in Rayburn 2172 Sen. Jeff Flake and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce will host a cheetah and an Australian sheperd to give a briefing on combating threats to the cheetah. Flake and Sen. Chris Coons have a bill similar to a House-passed anti-poaching proposal. 

Wait ... what?  That's right, there will a live cheetah and a dog at their briefing -- but it's on the House side because, we're told, that Senate rules make it tougher to bring a live animal to the Senate. And yet we see dogs in the Senate all the time -- can we get a clarification, @StewSays? 

OFF THE HILL: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast at 9 a.m.

TICK-TOCK -- Hastert's downfall: The Washington Post's Matt Zapotosky takes a deep dive into the stunning fall from grace by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. " When the FBI started asking questions about his unusual cash withdrawals, he tried a dangerous gambit: He told the agents he was an extortion victim, and he agreed to surreptitiously record his calls to help them catch the culprit. Investigators soon concluded that the former U.S. House speaker - an Illinois Republican who had won the trust of countless students he had taught and wrestlers he had coached before he entered politics - was lying. By their assessment, Hastert had, decades earlier, sexually abused the man he claimed
 was extorting him, then paid him $1.7 million to keep quiet." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f2ffe2e52217470656381b72487704efd9069993b2b5a56ec5be45f872179a50

ALL EYES ON MARYLAND AND PA: The Senate race in Maryland has set off contested primaries in two of those ridiculously-shaped districts in the Old Line State. Qs I have: Can former Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown win a House seat after blowing a governor's race in the Fourth District? And will Maryland voters reward the extraordinary spending of Trone in the Eighth District? Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, both Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah and Republican Rep. Bill Shuster face tough challenges for their respective nominations. Cristina Marcos of The Hill has a good primary on those four interesting races which will probably offer more unpredictable results than the presidential contests: 
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f2ffe2e5221747062a5d1312610b5a33d13eade332e93332ea980f046e6e39d4

Mystery solved: Donald Sussman, who bought my hometown paper the Portland Press Herald (since sold) while married to Rep. Chellie Pingree, has poured more than $2 million in for Rep. Donna Edwards's Senate run. Roll Call: http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f2ffe2e52217470684b4b12df6ad2690e78716e6aeb4b2d20246640f5391dded

INSIDE THE CALL LOGS: Rep. David Jolly's not making any friends with his participation in this CBS spot on Congress's dedication to fundraising. Here he is: "It is a cult-like boiler room on Capitol Hill where sitting members of Congress, frankly I believe, are compromising the dignity of the office they hold by sitting in these sweatshop phone booths calling people asking them for money. And their only goal is to get $500 or $1,000 or $2,000 out of the person on the other end of the line. It's shameful. It's beneath the dignity of the office that our voters in our communities entrust us to serve." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f2ffe2e522174706889b6a440b84f7758b5a4934e1d76a21c5170424195fc3bd

@JakeSherman: Former Hill aide turned lobbyist turned member of congress decries fundraising. What a town!!

FORMER SENATOR SURPRISES SELF WITH GAY MARRIAGE - Former Sen. Harris Wofford writes in the New York Times that he surprised himself by falling in love again -- and marrying a man -- after the Pennsylvania Democrat's wife died two decades ago. http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=f2ffe2e522174706756758eb07591b122243e082686776ccc926d9905753cfa1

TRANSITIONS - Lynne Weil is heading back to the Hill to work as comms director and senior policy advisor for Rep. Diane DeGette. 

FRIDAY'S TRIVIA WINNER - Shelby Boxenbaum was the first to answer that the last U.S. senator from Maryland who did not previously serve in the U.S. House or the Maryland House of Delegates was former Sen. John Butler, who was a senator from 1951-1962. 

TODAY'S TRIVIA - I've got today's question: In honor of tomorrow's primaries, which is the largest congressional district in Pennsylvania? The first person to correctly answer gets a mention in the next day's Huddle. Email me at [email-masked]

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