Subject: Correct The Record Friday December 19, 2014 Morning Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 08:23:35 -0500
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*​**Correct The Record Friday December 19, 2014 Morning Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*Reuters: “With Cuba Decision, Obama Hands Hillary Clinton A 2016 Gift”
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/18/obama-hillary-clinton_n_6351860.html>*

“Democrats argue that Clinton's embrace of Obama on Cuba could help her
with Latino voters, especially younger ones in the key state of Florida,
who are less inclined than their elders to be virulently opposed to the
Cuban government.”

*Bloomberg View: Josh Rogin: “Hillary Clinton Secretly Pushed Cuba Deal for
Years”
<http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-18/hillary-clinton-secretly-pushed-cuba-deal-for-years>*

“Although President Barack Obama is taking the credit for Wednesday’s
historic deal to reverse decades of U.S. policy toward Cuba, when Hillary
Clinton was secretary of state, she was the main architect of the new
policy and pushed far harder for a deal than the Obama White House.

*Politico: “The tortoise and the hare”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/jeb-bush-hillary-clinton-2016-113682.html>*

“On one level, the distraction of another big name receiving the 2016 media
klieg light treatment was a welcome development for Clinton. But Bush’s
decision to plow ahead also highlights Clinton’s comparatively slow walk
and relative caution as she approaches the starting line.”

*Bloomberg Businessweek: “Clinton, Democrats Can’t Find Consensus to Beat
Jeb Bush”
<http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-12-18/clinton-democrats-can-t-find-consensus-to-beat-jeb-bush#p1>*

"Yet at the same time, the Democratic super-PAC American Bridge released a
Web video replete with clips of Republican commentators and news reporters
saying Bush will struggle to win over conservatives."

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Clinton spokesman: '16 campaign would be
'different' than '08”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/227575-clinton-spokesman-16-campaign-would-be-different-than-08>*

“A Hillary Clinton spokesman says that if the former secretary of State
launches a presidential bid, her campaign will be different than it was in
2008, when many criticized the way it was run.”

*Wall Street Journal: “Amid Warren’s Rise, a Democratic Split Becomes
Apparent”
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/amid-warrens-rise-a-democratic-split-becomes-apparent-1418936408>*

“One question hanging over the party is what economic policy Mrs. Clinton
would propose should she run for president, and whether she would cast
herself in Mrs. Warren’s populist mode or adopt a more centrist,
business-friendly stance. Much of Mrs. Clinton’s career suggests she would
take the latter course.”

*Bloomberg: “Is the Draft Warren Campaign a Piece of Progressive
Performance Art?”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2014-12-18/is-the-draft-warren-campaign-a-piece-of-progressive-performance-art>*

“Tweets sent, mission accomplished–whatever the mission might be.”

*MSNBC: “Keith Ellison: ‘I would love to see Elizabeth Warren’ run”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/keith-ellison-i-would-love-see-elizabeth-warren-run>*

“Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, the chairman of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus, said Thursday night that he hopes Sen. Elizabeth Warren
runs for president in 2016.”

*National Journal: “Carly Fiorina Hiring for Presidential Campaign”
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/carly-fiorina-hiring-for-presidential-campaign-20141218>*

“The former Hewlett-Packard CEO, who raised her political profile with a
failed run against Sen. Barbara Boxer of California in 2010, has frequently
been mentioned as a long-shot contender to seek the Republican presidential
nomination.”

*Articles:*

*Reuters: “With Cuba Decision, Obama Hands Hillary Clinton A 2016 Gift”
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/18/obama-hillary-clinton_n_6351860.html>*

By Steve Holland

December 18, 2014, 9:06 p.m. EST

WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Potential 2016 Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton knows a political gift when she sees one.

She was quick to embrace the step this week when President Barack Obama, a
fellow Democrat no longer having to face an electorate, relaxed U.S. policy
toward Cuba.

While assailed by Republicans opposed to restoring ties with the
communist-led island, the action has the power to solidify support for
Democrats among increasingly influential Latino voters and appeal to voters
in farm states like Iowa eager to do business in Havana.

Obama's unilateral move has gently shaken up the 2016 race to succeed him,
exposing divisions among Republicans and possibly helping Democrats already
buoyed by his decision to liberalize immigration policy.

Potential contenders Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio adhered to the traditional
Republican hard line on Cuba and sharply criticized Obama. But Kentucky
Senator Rand Paul, who has a libertarian streak, backed the new policy.

A likely White House candidate, Paul told a West Virginia radio station
that the 50-year-old embargo with Cuba "just hasn't worked."

Clinton, Obama's former secretary of state, also had asserted the previous
policy was not working. In her memoir, "Hard Choices," she wrote that she
urged Obama to shift. She welcomed the change in a statement on Wednesday.

Democrats argue that Clinton's embrace of Obama on Cuba could help her with
Latino voters, especially younger ones in the key state of Florida, who are
less inclined than their elders to be virulently opposed to the Cuban
government.

Of America's 1.5-million-strong Cuban-American population, about 80 percent
live in Florida.

"I think it'll help her with the younger folks," Democratic strategist Bud
Jackson said of Clinton.

Latinos already like what they see in Clinton.

A Telemundo/NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found on Thursday that 61
percent of Latinos see themselves supporting Clinton in 2016, 11 points
more than the general population.

MORE OF A PLUS

The Cuba shift could also prove popular among those dependent on America's
agricultural businesses, major hotels and even sports fans who enjoy
watching the best Cuban players make it to Major League Baseball.

"The political calculation has to be that this is more of a plus for a
candidate for president than a minus," said David Yepsen, director of the
Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll of more than 31,000 adults between July and October
showed Americans largely open to forging diplomatic relations with Cuba.
About one-fifth opposed such a move, while 43 percent backed it and around
37 percent were unsure.

But there are potential pitfalls for Clinton. She will need to stake out
some positions of her own or risk criticism that she simply represents the
third term of a president who is saddled with a 40 percent approval rating.

In their 2008 battle for the Democratic presidential nomination that Obama
won, Clinton accused him of being "naive" for offering to meet leaders of
such renegade nations as Cuba without conditions.

Since flirting with a presidential race, Clinton for the most part has
chosen not to separate herself from Obama other than to question his
decision not to arm Syrian rebels, as her memoir reveals.

Lanhee Chen, a Hoover Institution scholar who advised Republican Mitt
Romney's 2012 presidential bid, said if Clinton is "trying to draw some
distance from the president's foreign policy in some ways, it was not
useful to have something where she's perfectly aligned with him."

There are also risks for Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, and Rubio, a
Florida senator. In their criticisms of Obama's policy, the two Republicans
are aligning themselves with their party's conservative base but their
views could appear outdated to moderate voters.

"I think it's kind of a blind cul-de-sac for people like Rubio and Bush to
get pushed into," said Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Democratic
presidential nominee John Kerry's campaign manager in 2004. "It reflects a
Florida that doesn't exist anymore." (Additional reporting by Patricia
Zengerle; Editing by Caren Bohan and Howard Goller)

*Bloomberg View: Josh Rogin: “Hillary Clinton Secretly Pushed Cuba Deal for
Years”
<http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-18/hillary-clinton-secretly-pushed-cuba-deal-for-years>*

By Josh Rogin

December 18, 2014, 12:28 p.m. EST

Although President Barack Obama is taking the credit for Wednesday’s
historic deal to reverse decades of U.S. policy toward Cuba, when Hillary
Clinton was secretary of state, she was the main architect of the new
policy and pushed far harder for a deal than the Obama White House.

From 2009 until her departure in early 2013, Clinton and her top aides took
the lead on the sometimes public, often private interactions with the Cuban
government. According to current and former White House and State
Department officials and several Cuba policy experts who were involved in
the discussions, Clinton was also the top advocate inside the government
for ending travel and trade restrictions on Cuba and reversing 50 years of
U.S. policy to isolate the Communist island nation. Repeatedly, she pressed
the White House to move faster and faced opposition from cautious
high-ranking White House officials.

After Obama announced the deal Wednesday, which included the release of aid
contractor Alan Gross, Clinton issued a supportive statement distributed by
the National Security Council press team. “As Secretary of State, I pushed
for his release, stayed in touch with Alan’s wife Judy and their daughters,
and called for a new direction in Cuba," she said. "Despite good
intentions, our decades-long policy of isolation has only strengthened the
Castro regime's grip on power.”

Yet Clinton played down her own role in the issue, which will surely become
important if she decides to run for president. Top prospective Republican
candidates, including Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have all come out
against the president’s policy shift.

Clinton’s advocacy on behalf of opening a new relationship with Cuba began
almost as soon as she came into office. Obama had campaigned on a promise
to engage enemies, but the White House initially was slow to make good on
that pledge, and on the Cuba front enacted only a modest relaxation of
travel rules. From the start, Clinton pushed to hold Obama to his promise
with regard to Cuba.

“Hillary Clinton played a very large role,” said Steve Clemons, a senior
fellow at the New America Foundation who advocated for changes to U.S.-Cuba
policy. “The president, when he ran for office and when he came in, thought
that doing something on Cuba front would be smart. But as soon as he got
into office, though, every other priority hit him.”

Obama first met Cuban President Raul Castro in April 2009 at the Summit of
the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago and announced he wanted to discuss
changes in U.S. policy toward the Havana government. But the president
faced criticism when he got back to Washington, also because he had shaken
hands with then-Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

“After that experience at the Summit of the Americas, the White House feet
had been burned, they basically didn’t do much. The National Security
Council didn’t do anything, but the State Department continued to try
hard,” Clemons said.

After the initial easing of the travel ban, the administration had prepared
a second batch of measures to expand travel and trade licenses. But shortly
before an expected announcement, the White House got cold feet and shelved
the initiative, according to people briefed by the White House. Members of
the House Foreign Affairs Committee had persuaded White House senior
adviser Valerie Jarrett to intervene at the last moment. Clinton was
displeased but undeterred.

“Cuba was on her mind. I know that she raised it a number of times. The
White House wasn’t ready to move but she kept that in play,” said Clemons.

Arturo Valenzuela was assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere
affairs and Clinton’s point man on Cuba at the time. He worked with Ricardo
Zuniga, who was the head of the department’s Office of Cuba Affairs, behind
the scenes to meet with Cuban officials in 2009, 2010 and 2011 to explore
ways to move forward.

“There was no question that there was strong support in the State
Department for liberalizing some of the restrictions and Secretary Clinton
was quite clear about that,” Valenzuela told me. “I asked Zuniga, with the
secretary of state’s blessing, to draft some further liberalizations of the
travel ban, and that led to a significant shift of the opening up of
general licenses.”

Clinton also directed Valenzuela to talk personally with Cuban Foreign
Minister Bruno Rodriguez in New York in October 2010, the highest-level
diplomatic meeting of U.S. and Cuban officials ever. But one serious
impediment to a grand bargain with the Cuban government remained: the
Cubans refused to consider releasing Gross, whom they accused of spying.

Nevertheless, throughout 2011, Clinton and her team continued to press the
White House to take further steps on Cuba. In early 2011, frustrated by
what she saw as resistance from the Obama political advisers as well as the
NSC staff, Clinton met personally with the president and nudged him to keep
going.

“The pushback was coming from the White House staff. The issue was for
Hillary to say to Obama, ‘Hey listen, your folks are going too slow on this
and we need to move forward on this,’ ” said a former administration
official who was involved in those discussions. “There was a lot of
reluctance in the White House to do that at the time because of various
kinds of domestic problems. If it hadn’t been for the State Department and
her leadership, then these reforms might not have happened.”

Finally, in 2012, Clinton made one more big push for faster movement to
overhaul the relationship. At the Summit of the Americas that April in
Cartagena, Colombia, Clinton was repeatedly harangued by Latin Americans
leaders about Washington’s insistence that Cuba not be allowed to
participate. Clinton was blindsided by the unanimity of this criticism,
including such staunch U.S. allies a Colombian President Juan Manuel
Santos, who had personally pressed Obama on the issue.

“It’s evident to me that Cartagena was a wake-up call for then-Secretary
Clinton,” said Julia Sweig, a Cuba scholar at the Council on Foreign
Relations. “She had a head-snapping experience there and came to see the
unanimity of the Latin American view such that recovery of American
standing in the region really ran through Havana.”

After returning to Washington, Clinton directed her head of policy
planning, Jake Sullivan, to work up several options to lay out a policy
approach and present it to the president. The result was, in essence, what
Obama announced Wednesday, a source close to the process said.

In June, 2013, after his re-election, Obama made the personal decision to
pursue a grand bargain with the Cubans. Talks moved to Canada and were
placed in the hands of  White House staffers, including Zuniga, who had
moved over to the NSC from the State Department. Clinton was gone, but
Obama picked up her ball and ran with it.

In her book “Hard Choices,” Clinton wrote that she asked Obama to “take
another look” at the U.S. embargo on Cuba, which she described as
ineffective and harmful to America’s standing across the region. In that
sense, she owned up to the position she held while she was in office, even
if she didn’t reveal the extent of her involvement.

Nobody knows if Cuba will follow the path of countries like Vietnam, where
economic engagement has been followed by a degree of political opening, or
China, which reaps the benefits of capitalism while maintaining strict
domestic repression. Clinton is betting on the former.

Either way, if  she does run for president in 2016, Republicans can cast
the new policy as her policy, not Obama’s. She was a major author of the
effort and will rightly be the recipient of the credit, or the blame,
depending on what happens in Cuba between now and then.

*Politico: “The tortoise and the hare”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/jeb-bush-hillary-clinton-2016-113682.html>*

By Maggie Haberman

December 18, 2014, 3:51 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Bush’s bold jump catches Clinton backers by surprise.

For months, Hillary Clinton’s allies viewed one Republican as posing a
bigger threat to her in a 2016 presidential general election matchup than
any other: Jeb Bush. But they believed Bush wouldn’t ultimately take the
plunge.

Over the last three weeks, however, it’s become clear to people in
Clinton’s extended orbit that Bush is not only likely to run but that he’s
taking the stage in unabashedly aggressive fashion.

On one level, the distraction of another big name receiving the 2016 media
klieg light treatment was a welcome development for Clinton. But Bush’s
decision to plow ahead also highlights Clinton’s comparatively slow walk
and relative caution as she approaches the starting line.

It also underscores their vastly different circumstances. Bush needed to
send an early signal about his intentions: His party’s primary is shaping
up as a crowded parade of sitting and former governors who are approaching
donors. Questions persisted about whether Bush wanted to run, but
supporters of the former Florida governor say he’s always wanted to; it was
just a matter of him and his family reaching a comfort level.

As the prohibitive frontrunner in the Democratic field, Clinton has the
luxury of taking more time. But some former advisers to President Barack
Obama have been vocal about their concerns that she is risking the same
mistake she made in 2008 in creating an aura of an “inevitable” candidacy.
Bush’s declaration that he’s prepared to stick to his principles at the
risk of offending base voters – to “lose the primary to win the general,”
as he put it recently – has further heightened the contrast with Clinton.

While she continues to weigh whether she wants to launch a second campaign,
the risk is that voters could see him as authentic — particularly if holds
to his “I won’t bend” approach — as private polling shows Clinton still
faces questions about whether she is politically calculating.

“What you’re going to get from Jeb is, ‘This is who I am, take it or leave
it,’” said Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist who knows Bush. “And
that’s what we say we want in our politicians.”

He predicted that would be a contrast with Clinton, who is buffeted by
backers of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the economic populist calling
for reining in big banks. Clinton got tangled up during the midterms in an
apparent effort to emulate Warren’s populism during a Massachusetts
campaign stop.

“We’ve already seen Hillary trying to transform herself into Elizabeth
Warren Lite,” Castellanos said. “She is what Republican candidates tried to
do last time, which is [practice] finger in the wind, follow the primary
voter” politics.

Bush is by no means a lock on his party’s nomination in the way Clinton is
perceived to be on hers. Few Republicans were openly pledging deference to
Bush the way many Democrats have to Clinton. Conservatives have been
unswayed by his record while in office and insist he’s a squish who
represents the elite. Even some of his supporters privately have wondered
whether he will be like his brother or like former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman,
the media darling of 2011 who flamed out soon after declaring.

Beyond policy questions, Bush hasn’t run a campaign since 2002 and faces
challenges surviving in the Twitter era. For instance, Sen. Marco Rubio
(R-Fla.), who says he’s still thinking of running for president, responded
to Obama’s plans to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba well before Bush on
Wednesday. Bush’s recent investment activity also suggests a potential
candidate who believes the usual laws of political gravity won’t apply to
him.

Yet Bush seems confident he has something to offer the general electorate.

“This is the way he was when he was governor of Florida,” said former
Missisippi Gov. Haley Barbour. “He was very policy-oriented, he was a
straight shooter, and he was tolerant of people who disagreed with him, but
he didn’t pander to them.”

Bush has shown little of the slash-and-burn instinct toward Hillary Clinton
that other Republicans have. He was on hand in Philadelphia as she was
presented with an award last year at the National Constitution Center. And
his main criticism of her this year came after her fiery remarks at a
campaign rally in Massachusetts: “Don’t let anyone tell you that
corporations and businesses create jobs.”

In a clear sign of his own growing interest in a campaign, Bush, as he
campaigned for Republicans that week, did not name Clinton but referenced
her “breathtaking” statement. How hard he will hit Clinton remains to be
seen. He frowned on Bill Clinton’s scandal involving Monica Lewinsky,
according to people who’ve spoken with him since the former president left
office, but unlike other Republicans has not attacked Clinton over it. His
father has forged a deep bond with Bill Clinton through their shared worked
on international relief efforts.

Bush also faces a tough balancing act in trying to convince voters whose
views he shuns to support him.

“I think there’s a very fine line between standing up for what you think is
right and poking your finger in every primary voter’s eye, and we’re about
to find out how fine that line is,” said Castellanos.

If he does it successfully, “he’s eating up that moderate space” that
Clinton also will need in the general election, said former President Obama
adviser Stephanie Cutter. However, she noted, no one has been able to avoid
being pulled too far to the right in a GOP primary since George W. Bush ran
in 2000.

When Bush was governor of Florida in 2000 — watching as his brother was
trying to stop Al Gore from keeping the White House under Democratic
control for a third straight term — he told an interviewer that Republicans
of different stripes had coalesced around George W. Bush.

“Eight years in the wilderness brings a higher tolerance for diversity,” he
was quoted saying at the time.

Whether that holds true now remains to be seen.

As for Clinton, several Democratic supporters said Wednesday, one issue is
whether she can avoid falling prey to responding to whatever Bush says
during any given news cycle and getting dragged into the race sooner than
she is ready.

“That’s the worst thing that could happen,” said one Democratic ally.
Bush’s emergence has also increased concern among Democrats about the
party’s prospects of keeping the White House in the unlikely, but not
impossible, scenario that Clinton decides not to run.

There are other questions about how Bush’s move toward a run will effect
Clinton. Some have questioned whether she will now speed up her own time
frame for deciding, after her allies made clear she was not moving to make
her intentions known until next year. Some potential staffers are already
being reviewed, according to people familiar with the discussions. But
Clinton is not generally diving into the political conversation. She is
making statements when she has public appearances and there’s a heavy
attention surrounding a specific issue, or if she has a particular point
she wants to make.

Several Democrats close to Clinton and some former Obama aides predicted
that she will not start speeding up her own efforts. And some argued that
Bush has the some problem she does right now.

“Despite the pundit salivation calling for an immediate ideological
confrontation between Clinton and Bush, they are, in many ways, in a
similar place in their prospective candidacies — months away from that sort
of positioning,” said Ben LaBolt, a former Obama campaign adviser.

“Now is instead the time to measure how they align, both with respect to
their party base but also the general electorate, gaming out the strategies
of the other players likely to enter the field, and reconnecting with their
donor and grassroots networks. The popcorn shall be saved for another day.”

Other Democrats argued Clinton and Bush are similar in that many years have
passed since they’ve interacted with voters, and neither has a clear, broad
rationale for a candidacy.

Several Democrats privately predicated that Bush could blow up on the
launch pad, and his allies have insisted he hasn’t definitively decided on
a campaign. He has the first few months of 2015 to figure out whether he
can be an effective candidate. They expect that Clinton will watch and see
how he performs, and appreciate the fact that someone else is now getting
as much and maybe more media attention, and criticism, than she is.

In the meantime, the Clinton-allied Media Matters and the Democratic
National Committee have been aggressively going after Bush. Those attacks
show just how seriously Democrats are taking him.

“To quote his brother, do not misunderestmate Jeb Bush,” said Paul Begala,
a former Bill Clinton adviser. “He’s a terrific fundraiser, he was twice
elected a governor of the largest swing state — he just brings a lot to the
race… he maybe has more assets and more liabilities than anybody in the
race.

*Bloomberg Businessweek: “Clinton, Democrats Can’t Find Consensus to Beat
Jeb Bush”
<http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-12-18/clinton-democrats-can-t-find-consensus-to-beat-jeb-bush#p1>*

By Jonathan Allen

December 18, 2014

Hillary Clinton’s circle wants to be quoted yawning at Jeb Bush, a sure
sign of concern that he could beat her in 2016.

“He’s got his own party to run in, and I will be very impressed if he makes
it through that primary system,” Paul Begala, a longtime adviser to Clinton
and her husband, said after Bush announced this week that he is “actively
exploring” a presidential run.

Make no mistake. Clinton’s team and other Democrats already are trying to
figure out how to take on Bush, and there’s no early consensus. They could
portray him as a shadow of his brother, President George W. Bush, as a
moderate who can’t make it through his own party’s primary, or as a
candidate who is too conservative to win a general election.

A Bush-centric e-mail that EMILY’s List sent to its donors on Wednesday
took the latter approach.

“Jeb Bush made it official. He’s exploring a run for president,” reads the
graphic embedded in the fundraising pitch from the group that supports
women candidates who back abortion rights. “As governor, he called himself
the ‘most pro-life governor in modern times.’...Imagine what he’d do as
president.”

A button at the bottom of the e-mail says “Help us get ready to hold Jeb
Bush accountable. Donate.”

Stephanie Schriock, the president of EMILY’s list, is often mentioned as a
possible campaign manager for the former First Lady. Jess McIntosh, a
spokeswoman for the group, sought to portray Bush as too conservative for
the American electorate.

‘Their Side’

“Jeb Bush is going to spend a long time reminding everyone how conservative
he is on these issues,” she said. “Voters are going to see that he’s not on
their side.”

Yet at the same time, the Democratic super-PAC American Bridge released a
Web video replete with clips of Republican commentators and news reporters
saying Bush will struggle to win over conservatives. The group counts
high-profile Clinton donors among its benefactors.

Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, said
that if Bush runs and wins the Republican nomination, he’ll struggle to
galvanize the conservative base because he’s endorsed the Common Core
education standards reviled by many in the Republican Party and speaks
warmly of undocumented immigrants.

Harrison said that while it’s important to appeal to independent voters, a
modern presidential campaign has to energize its party’s grassroots to win.

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill declined to comment on Bush, following her
team’s protocol when it comes to discussing potential 2016 rivals.

‘Too Conservative’

Candidates are always trying to define their rivals for the voting public,
and Democrats often pick the tag “too conservative” for Republicans.
President Barack Obama’s aides believed they had a choice in running
against Mitt Romney in 2012, between calling him a flip-flopper or a
far-right conservative. It was former President Bill Clinton who said the
flip-flop tag wouldn’t stick.

Romney’s the other Republican, besides George W. Bush, to whom Democrats
would like to compare Jeb Bush. Democrats were able to use Romney’s wealth,
and the ways in which he attained it, to argue that he was out of touch
with the needs of most voters.

And the one anti-Bush theme that is a common refrain among Clinton-aligned
groups and longtime advisers is that his business ventures will hurt him.
He started two private equity funds this year, including one, BH Global
Aviation, that’s incorporated in the U.K. and Wales, allowing foreign
investors to avoid taxation in the U.S.

‘Benedict Arnolds’

“He would be the first president who organized overseas tax havens for
billionaire Benedict Arnolds,” Begala said.

Bush will give up his role as a senior adviser at Barclays Plc (BARC),
according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be
identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Whatever approach Democrats choose, it’s clear they’re wary of Bush. One
veteran Clinton adviser said that he is probably the strongest Republican
nominee, citing his moderate positions on education and immigration that
don’t sit well with conservatives but hit home with independent voters.

The adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Bush would
benefit in a general election if he can survive the primary without
pandering to the Republican base on those issues -- both because his
positions appeal outside the Republican Party and because it would show him
to be a candidate of conviction.

Bush Fatigue?

“As I look at the Republican side, he’s an adult in the room that commands
respect and the kind of conservative that Wall Street and other Republican
establishment types can get behind,” said Democratic strategist Rodell
Mollineau. “The one downside is his last name’s Bush and there’s still
fatigue in this country.”

Like Mollineau, Begala acknowledged Bush could be a strong candidate, if he
makes it to a general election.

“Since he’s likely to run as a Republican, I think it’s more of a question
for potential Republican candidates than potential Democratic candidates,”
he said. “The guy is formidable. He’s impressive.”

If some Democrats try to sound more blase, it’s rooted in other reasons.
Clinton’s political allies don’t want to feed the Bush-Clinton throwback
hype that has tantalized cable-news producers. The battle of the dynasties
talk isn’t helpful to her if she ends up winning the Democratic nomination
and facing someone not named Bush. And there’s no reason to elevate a
potential heavyweight.

‘Act of Love’

Part of the challenge for Democrats is that Jeb Bush himself has staked out
varying positions on issues, such as illegal immigration. In April, he
described families that decided to come to the U.S. as breaking the law.
“But it’s not a felony,” he said. “It’s an act of love.”

By last month, he moved closer to his fellow Republican hopefuls when he
criticized President Barack Obama for using executive powers to protect as
many as 5 million undocumented immigrants from being deported. And on
Wednesday, he described Obama’s decision to begin normalizing relations
with Cuba after a five-decade embargo a “foreign policy misstep.”

His recent moves toward a run, including a forthcoming e-book on his years
as governor and yesterday’s Facebook announcement about his decision-making
process, have been greeted warmly by veteran Republican Party political
operatives and coolly by a younger generation that identifies more closely
with the Tea Party.

Paul, Cruz

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Texas Senator Ted Cruz are leaders among the
latter set and could be part of a large field of Republican candidates
vying for conservative votes.

For the first time in decades, there could be multiple candidates fighting
for the middle-of-the-road mantle in the Republican primary, including
Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey.

Mike Duncan, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said
the expansion of the Republican field is a sign of strength.

“Historically, we have not had as level a playing field with as many
entrants in a long time,” Duncan said. “This is relatively new territory
for us.”

Duncan pegged 1964 as the last time the Republican Party offered such a
strong set of contenders across the ideological spectrum. That year, the
party nominated Barry Goldwater, who won the support of a young Hillary
Rodham Clinton but lost the election to President Lyndon Johnson. His
opponents included New York governor and future vice president Nelson
Rockefeller, Governor James Rhodes of Ohio, UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge
Jr., and former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota.

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Clinton spokesman: '16 campaign would be
'different' than '08”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/227575-clinton-spokesman-16-campaign-would-be-different-than-08>*

By Peter Sullivan

December 18, 2014, 2:08 p.m. EST

A Hillary Clinton spokesman says that if the former secretary of State
launches a presidential bid, her campaign will be different than it was in
2008, when many criticized the way it was run.

“If she runs, it will be different,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told
The New York Times.

Clinton's 2008 campaign, which saw Barack Obama come from behind to beat
her in a drawn out primary battle, was filled with staffing problems.
Clinton fired her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, and chief strategist
Mark Penn was widely blamed for the campaign's failed course.

The Times reports that Clinton is seeking out a wider range of opinions as
she attends parties and events this year.

The talk about a new campaign strategy comes as the The Washington Post
reported earlier this month that Clinton is involved in talks about how to
handle the transition from the campaign-in-waiting and whether to set up an
exploratory committee before announcing. That report suggested the formal
announcement would come in the spring.

At events this year, Clinton has been speaking out on women's rights issues
such as paid leave and equal pay, and repeatedly mentioning being a new
grandmother.

Still, there are doubts about whether Clinton is plotting the right course
this time around.

"What happened in 2008 was that Hillary’s candidacy got out in front of any
rationale for it, and the danger is that that’s happening again," David
Axelrod, the former Obama adviser who helped defeat Clinton in 2008, said
earlier this week on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

Clinton now has a range of former Obama staffers on her side. Obama's 2012
campaign manager Jim Messina is co-chairman of the pro-Clinton super-PAC
Priorities USA Action, and top Obama campaign aides Jeremy Bird and Mitch
Stewart have joined the group Ready for Hillary.

*Wall Street Journal: “Amid Warren’s Rise, a Democratic Split Becomes
Apparent”
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/amid-warrens-rise-a-democratic-split-becomes-apparent-1418936408>*

By Peter Nicholas

December 18, 2014, 4:00 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Liberals Embrace Senator’s Populist Themes, While Moderates
Prefer a Message With Broader Appeal

Democrats looking for a way forward after their election losses this year
have wound up in a debate over how best to frame the party’s economic
message, with the most liberal members rallying behind Sen. Elizabeth
Warren (D., Mass.) and her calls for a focus on income inequality.

Ms. Warren had gained new prominence on the national stage—and drawn
increasing calls for her to run for the White House—with her attempt last
week to scuttle a compromise budget bill because of concessions to Wall
Street, as well as her opposition to President Barack Obama ’s choice for a
top Treasury post due to his Wall Street ties. Those moves have reinforced
Ms. Warren’s long-standing message that Democrats should fight to reduce
corporate influence and the share of wealth controlled by the nation’s
richest households.

Other Democrats say Ms. Warren’s message will lead only to more electoral
defeats, as many voters will reject the focus on income inequality and
instead want policies aimed at broad economic growth. While all Democrats
say they want to foster a growing economy, the two wings of the party are
at odds over which points should be most central to their message.

“In a world where there are more self-described conservatives than there
are self-described liberals, is having a campaign that only tries to win by
appealing to your base the right strategy?’’ asked Jack Markell, the
Democratic governor of Delaware. “I would argue it’s not.”

Mr. Markell, who hasn’t yet endorsed a candidate for the 2016 election,
said the next Democratic nominee has to reach independents and “some
Republicans, as well. In my mind, an agenda around [economic] growth is the
most likely message to do that.”

At the same time, Ms. Warren’s populist message has made her a focal point
of a vocal wing within the party. The liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org
hosted an event in Iowa on Wednesday night aimed at showcasing support for
Ms. Warren in the state that holds the nation’s first presidential contest.
MoveOn also plans to spend $1 million on its “Draft Warren” effort and is
hiring staff in Iowa, New Hampshire and possibly other states that hold
early primaries.

So far, Ms. Warren has said only that she is backing former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton , telling National Public Radio earlier this week, “I
am not running for president.” Yet in sticking to the present tense, as
NPR’s Steve Inskeep pointed out, she suggested she hasn’t entirely ruled it
out.

One question hanging over the party is what economic policy Mrs. Clinton
would propose should she run for president, and whether she would cast
herself in Mrs. Warren’s populist mode or adopt a more centrist,
business-friendly stance.

Much of Mrs. Clinton’s career suggests she would take the latter course.

For years, the liberal and moderate strands of the party largely minimized
differences and kept a united front amid Republican resistance to President
Barack Obama’s agenda. But the uneasy alliance has become strained after
the midterm elections, in which the party suffered deep losses.

A sign of the split is stepped-up calls for Ms. Warren to jump in the
presidential race.

Some 300 lower-level former Obama campaign aides are lining up behind the
Massachusetts senator, signing a recent letter describing her as someone
who would “take on the Wall Street banks and special interests” and tackle
“rising inequality,” which they called the “challenge of our times.”

A liberal advocacy group called Democracy for America is putting $250,000
into the effort to draft Ms. Warren. Yet the group’s founder, former
Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, has endorsed Mrs. Clinton.

Ms. Warren gained fresh attention in recent weeks. She played a leading
role in opposing Mr. Obama’s choice for a top Treasury post, Antonio Weiss,
due to his Wall Street ties, and also mounted an unsuccessful campaign in
the Senate to scuttle a provision in a $1.1 trillion spending bill that
will loosen parts of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law.

In her attempt to do away with the provision, she employed the sort of
language that leaves liberals enthralled and centrists unnerved. Taking aim
at Citigroup Inc., a recipient of taxpayer-financed bailout money during
the financial crisis, Ms. Warren said in a speech on the Senate floor:
“Washington already works really well for the billionaires and the big
corporations and the lawyers and the lobbyists.…What about the families who
are living paycheck to paycheck and saw their tax dollars go to bail out
Citi just six years ago?”

*Bloomberg: “Is the Draft Warren Campaign a Piece of Progressive
Performance Art?”
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2014-12-18/is-the-draft-warren-campaign-a-piece-of-progressive-performance-art>*

By David Weigel

December 18, 2014, 4:05 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] The grassroots may not want to draft her, and she may not want
to be drafted—but other than that, what a splendid movement.

DES MOINES, Iowa—The two women stood under a Kinko’s worth of merchandise
promoting Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and they compared their
ardors.

“I listened to her and I thought, ‘She’s my hero,’” said Lorna Hall, 51.
“Oh my gosh.”

“I saw her speak for Bruce Braley,” said O’Leary, 53, referring to the
Democrats’ amazing self-destructing 2014 candidate for U.S. Senate. “I said
to myself, ‘She should run for president.’ And then I turned around, and
there was this girl with a sign, saying ‘Draft Warren.’”

It was Wednesday evening in Des Moines, and Hall and O’Leary had beaten the
rush to find prime standing room at the Run Warren Run kickoff at Java
Joe’s, a café that typically hosts NBC News and MSNBC during campaign
seasons. The “girl” who had informed O’Leary of the draft campaign was
there, too–Erica Sagrans, an Obama campaign veteran who had founded Ready
for Warren.

Sagrans’s group was technically independent of the Wednesday meeting,
organized by MoveOn.org, but she was co-sponsoring it. MoveOn was
collecting its own signatures from possible volunteers; she was doing the
same, snapping photos with the people wearing plastic hats branded with a
Warren campaign logo, some of the “hundreds” left over from her group’s
buzzy summer launch.

This party was even buzzier, with reporters from the New York Times and the
Wall Street Journal braving a Des Moines December to meet a hundred or so
Democratic activists. Copies of the full-page ad that MoveOn put in the Des
Moines Register were splayed across tables. A posterboard quickly filled up
with reasons why people backed Warren.

 I don’t want corporations buying our politicians.

* She has common sense!*

* Hillary doesn’t represent me!*

* I’m sick of the male oligarchy.*

Warren’s adherents were so busy talking that they hardly touched the free
cookies and coffee near the entrance of the room. O’Leary had caucused for
Barack Obama six years earlier; Hall had caucused for a pre-scandal,
pre-trial John Edwards. Neither really resented or opposed Hillary Cinton.

“I happen to agree with her politics,” said O’Leary. “I just think we need
fresh blood. We don’t need another Clinton. We don’t need another Bush.”

The progressive organizers, who had flown in from New York and Chicago,
were beaming at what they’d created. “Draft Warren,” in all its forms, is
not a campaign with a candidate so much as an exercise in culture-jamming.
It’s something for progressives to do. O’Leary, for example, said she was
“done with politics” until being enticed to spend an evening with fellow
Warrenophiles. Shortly after 5:30, they all heard the MoveOn campaign’s
national field organizer Victoria Kaplan tell them how to summon Warren
into the race.

“Iowans have the ability to introduce, to the rest of the country,
candidates who inspire us to be more active citizens, to fight for
ourselves, and to fight for the middle class,” she said. “I invite all of
you to take out your phones, to tweet, to take photos, with the hashtag
RunWarrenRun. That’s #RunWarrenRun.”

Tweets sent, mission accomplished–whatever the mission might be. Des
Moines’s Polk County had offered fertile soil for Barack Obama’s 2008
campaign against Hillary Clinton. Obama won 39 percent of the vote from the
sort of voters who crowded Java Joe’s, 12 points ahead of Clinton, who came
in third in the county (and in the state overall). When Kaplan asked what
the Warren campaign achieved, one voice cried out “to do it again,” and no
one mistook what that meant.

But Java Joe’s had seen bigger crowds. Ready for Hillary, the facsimile
campaign created by supporters of the heavy favorite to “freeze” the field,
had held bigger events in Iowa. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who had
just buzzed through Iowa, drew more than twice as many people to a lecture
in Ames as showed up to the Draft Warren party. True, had Warren herself
parachuted in, she could packed every café and bar on Fourth Street. She
was not parachuting in.

“I don’t understand this alleged Draft Warren movement,” said Brad
Anderson, the Democrats’ narrowly unsuccessful candidate for Iowa secretary
of state. In 2004 he’d organized for John Edwards; in 2012 he was President
Obama’s state director.

“I view this 'Draft Warren' movement as something that is much more D.C.
and media driven than Iowa grassroots driven,” said Anderson. “Most people
are enthusiastic about the options that we have–and she’s not running! If
you look at Hillary’s messaging, and her positions on issues, they really
aren’t different from Elizabeth Warren’s.”

The “options” consist of Clinton, Sanders, Maryland Governor Martin
O’Malley, and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb. (Few Iowans expect Vice
President Joe Biden to run if Clinton does.) Democrats here expect some
kind of contested caucus. Few see the makings of a dogfight like 2004 or
2008. Clinton, whose third-place finish in Iowa led to Obama’s eventual
nomination, leads the field handily in most polls.

The difficulty of breaking that was brought out when Pam Jochum, the
president of the Iowa state senate–still Democratic, after 2014–gave a
speech to the crowd. It was the only address from any elected official, and
it fell wide of a Warren endorsement.

“I have no doubt in my mind that someone like Elizabeth Warren is a woman
who is articulate, she is brilliant, and she is courageous,” Jochum said.
“And this is a moment in history when we need elected officials who have
courage. This is our chance to show America what it's like to have a
marketplace of ideas, to have Elizabeth Warren or anyone else who might
jump into this race articulate a vision for America.”

When Jochum left the stage, reporters followed to ask why she’d
quasi-stumped for Warren. Did she think Warren was more in touch with
Democrats than Hillary Clinton?

“I don’t know if I’m in a position to say whether that’s true or false
right now,” she said. “Whoever comes out of that primary season ends up
being a much stronger general election candidate.”

It fell short of her 2007 Obama endorsement, when she compared the future
president to Robert F. Kennedy. This was because it wasn’t an endorsement.
Back in the café, activists watched a short promotional video–ending with
Warren giving a longish, Sopranos-finale kind of pause to a 2016
question–and watched as the screen was replaced by MoveOn activists and
locals. They told their personal stories as MoveOn’s executive director,
Ilya Sheyman, roamed the stage. Only when he opened the even to questions
was there a scintilla of static.

“I’m asking this because we need to get this stuff done early on,” said
Craig Maltby, a 55-year old communications adviser, standing near the exit.
“I hear Senator Warren has a very significant net worth. Can you tell us
how that net worth was created? And do we know that she has not taken PAC
money from Wall Street firms?”

Sheyman took a second to gather his thoughts, which formed into the
standard Warren pitch. “So, Senator Warren, as folks know, never intended
to run for public office, right?” he said. “Before serving in the Senate,
she was a lecturer at Harvard. She’d been a lawyer, previously.” When he
finished with the Warren biography, he reassured Maltby that “her wealth is
a matter of public information. Everyone in the Senate reports that.”

Arms folded, Maltby sounded unimpressed. “That’s a good non-answer,” he
grumbled. “Do we have any information about her PAC contributors?”

“Yeah, it’s all online,” said Sheyman. “Happy to talk it through with you.
But in terms of who she’s fighting for…”

“That all goes up six months down the road if we find out that Goldman
Sachs was contributing to her political fortunes,” snarked Maltby.

“Do your own research!” snapped a woman on the other side of the coffee
carafe.

“The campaign should know,” said Maltby. “It should be an easy question to
answer.”

“Go to the website,” said an older man closer to Maltby.

As Sheyman kept talking–“Elizabeth Warren won a race against Scott Brown, a
Wall Street favorite”–Maltby ducked out. He informed me that he was most
excited about Jim Webb’s campaign, and that Obama’s own support from
Goldman Sachs did not hurt his 2008 campaign because he didn’t make the
campaign about purity.

Yet nobody else left early. For them, Warren could remain an ideal,
unsullied by caucus campaign attacks or smears or questions. The people who
stuck around were divided into four groups, for brainstorming sessions
facilitated by MoveOn organizers or Sagrans. At a “visibility” breakout,
the largely middle-aged activists started by thinking up letters to
editors. A younger activist, joining the circle late, said that the best
visibilities she’d seen were the “die-ins” that shamed police departments
after the killing of Ferguson, Missouri teenager Michael Brown.

No one knew where to take that. The winning idea, after a hurried
discussion, was announced back on the main stage: Warren-drafters were
encouraged to wear red, white, and blue colors to New Year's and Christmas
parties, and start conversations about their would-be, mortal savior.

“I saw the postcards being passed around your group,” said Kaplan, pointing
to MoveOn-provided cards that left room for the name and address of
potential Warren fans. “Maybe, bring a few of those to your New Year's
party.”

The work was going to continue long past New Year's, anyway. MoveOn would
hold another launch event in New Hampshire. The people inspired at Java
Joe’s would have house parties, if they could. This would not end just
because Warren claimed (and claimed, and claimed) not to be running.

“As long as there is enough time for her to get in the race and win–and she
is uniquely positioned to do that later than other folks, by having a
message, by having an infrastructure that raised $42 million in
Massachusetts–as long as we think there’s ample time for her to build a
winning campaign, we think there’s time to keep making the case to her,”
said Sheyman. “Can it go through summer? Absolutely. Can it go later?
Potentially. There’s plenty of time.”

*MSNBC: “Keith Ellison: ‘I would love to see Elizabeth Warren’ run”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/keith-ellison-i-would-love-see-elizabeth-warren-run>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

December 18, 2014, 10:22 p.m. EST

Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, the chairman of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus, said Thursday night that he hopes Sen. Elizabeth Warren
runs for president in 2016.

“I would love to see Elizabeth Warren in this race. I think it would be
fantastic. I think that it would help the quality of the debate and she may
win,” he said on a conference call with members of Democracy for America
(DFA), a progressive group that is trying to draft Warren. “But even if she
doesn’t, I think she’ll make Hillary Clinton a better candidate.”

That’s the closest any major elected official has come to endorsing the
Massachusetts Democrat, who has said repeatedly that she is not going to
run for president.

Ellison added that he feared Clinton, the presumed frontrunner for the
nominee, “could just walk into the general [election] without having
committed to some important real, real economic populism.”

“So, I’m supportive of what [DFA] is doing, I’m supportive of what MoveOn
is doing, and I think Elizabeth Warren is one of the great, bright lights
of our time,” he added.

MoveOn.org and DFA, which grew out of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential
campaign, officially kicked off their campaign to draft Warren Wednesday in
Iowa, and have together committed $1.25 million to the effort.

Earlier in the call, Ellison offered warning to moderate Democrats. “We
also want to let our weak-kneed Democratic friends know that we’re
watching, and if they’re standing with the corporatocracy and the big
banks, we’ll find some other people who will stand with the people,” he
said.

In an interview a few months ago with the liberal AmericaBlog, Ellison
called for pushing Democratic presidential candidates through activism. ”
We will get the candidate we’re looking if we are in the streets and set
forth an agenda they then need to adopt,” he said. “When politicians feel
the heat, they tend to see the light.”

Ellison endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.

DFA is now run by Dean’s brother Jim, and even though they’re supporting
Warren, Howard Dean is backing Clinton. ”That’s just fine, not withstanding
the enormous number of phone calls I’ve been getting from fam therapists
offering their help,” Jim Dean said on the call.

*National Journal: “Carly Fiorina Hiring for Presidential Campaign”
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/carly-fiorina-hiring-for-presidential-campaign-20141218>*

By Tim Alberta

December 18, 2014

[Subtitle:] Despite her improving political skills, the California
businesswoman would be an underdog in a likely all-male GOP field.

Carly Fiorina is laying the groundwork for what one ally says is an
"imminent" presidential campaign—one that could launch as early as next
month.

The former Hewlett-Packard CEO, who raised her political profile with a
failed run against Sen. Barbara Boxer of California in 2010, has frequently
been mentioned as a long-shot contender to seek the Republican presidential
nomination. The speculation is driven by equal parts novelty and activity:
Fiorina, who paid several high-profile visits to early-nominating states in
2014, acknowledged that she would likely be the only woman in the GOP field.

"Look, I think it would be great if we had female candidates—or candidate,"
Fiorina told National Journal earlier this year.

Fiorina is now poised to become that candidate. According to three sources
with direct knowledge of the situation, she has authorized members of her
inner circle to seek out and interview candidates for two key positions on
her presidential campaign: political director and communications director.
Notably, the sources said, her associates are aiming to fill both positions
with women.

The search, sources say, is being spearheaded by Amy Noone Frederick, a
Republican consultant who sits with Fiorina on the American Conservative
Union Foundation's board of directors.

One Republican operative was recently approached about a position with the
Unlocking Potential Project, Fiorina's super PAC. The operative, who asked
not to be named, said that in the course of the interview one of Fiorina's
allies began gauging interest in a separate position "for a certain
presidential candidate who is gearing up for a run."

It's unclear if any hires have been made, and emails to officials with
Fiorina's PAC were not returned.

Still, people familiar with Fiorina's camp say the organizational outreach
proves that she's serious about getting a campaign off the ground—and
quickly. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is already effectively in the race
and consuming other contenders' oxygen. If Fiorina wants to jump in and
make a media splash, she probably can't afford to wait much longer.

"It appears that they want to move fast, which is smart," said Jason Cabel
Roe, a Republican consultant in California. "Carly getting in as the 10th
candidate is not nearly as interesting as Carly getting in as the first or
second candidate."

Meanwhile, as she seeks to make significant personnel moves, Fiorina has
also maneuvered to promote herself in front of influential conservative
audiences in the early part of next year—a key set of auditions that could
very well coincide with the launch of a campaign.

Fiorina, who chairs the ACU Foundation board, is said to have already
secured a prime speaking slot at the ACU's 2015 Conservative Political
Action Conference. That event will be held in the D.C. suburbs on the last
weekend of February. But the bigger prize is one weekend earlier. Fiorina,
sources say, has accepted a coveted invitation to deliver the keynote
address to the Council for National Policy—home to many of the conservative
movement's biggest donors—at its private gathering in southern California.

"February's going to be a big month for her, with two signature events
where she's going to have a big role," said one prominent conservative
activist leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his
involvement with both the ACU and CNP. "One speech in front of movement
leadership, then one speech in front of grassroots activists—those are
going to be big moments for her."

If her message stays consistent with appearances of late, Fiorina will hope
to appeal to these audiences as a political outsider. But she is hardly
without political connections.

While serving as an adviser to Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential
campaign, Fiorina was named chairwoman of a Republican National Committee
fundraising initiative. She parlayed that role into a speaking slot at that
year's GOP convention, and had even generated some buzz as a dark-horse
vice-presidential pick.

Though she could not overcome California's liberal electorate in her 2010
Senate race, Fiorina showed significant improvement on the stump over the
life of the campaign. Her 10-point loss did not tarnish her stature as a
rising star among Republican women; in fact, her opportunities and exposure
have steadily increased. She served as a vice chair of the National
Republican Senatorial Committee in 2012. Her successful takeover of the ACU
Foundation board last year was the clearest indication yet of her political
chops—and ambition.

That said, if and when Fiorina pulls the trigger on a presidential run, she
will enter the contest a decided underdog. She enjoys little national name
recognition, lacks a top-notch political team, and has never won a major
race for public office. Not only did she lose by double digits in 2010, she
left the campaign with a significant amount of debt, some of which remains
unretired more than four years later. (This fact is not lost on Republicans
who have examined her viability as a sleeper candidate.)

But none of that may matter. Several people familiar with Fiorina's
operation suspect that her ultimate goal is not winning the nomination, but
rather breaking through what is expected to be an all-male Republican field
and positioning herself for the second spot on the GOP ticket.

"I don't think Carly's running for president. I think Carly's running for
vice president," said Roe, the California Republican. "If Hillary Clinton's
the nominee, Republicans need a woman front and center—probably on the
ticket. And Carly knows that."

*Calendar:*

*Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official
schedule.*

·  January 21 – Saskatchewan, Canada: Sec. Clinton keynotes the Canadian
Imperial Bank of Commerce’s “Global Perspectives” series (MarketWired
<http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/former-us-secretary-state-hillary-rodham-clinton-deliver-keynote-address-saskatoon-1972651.htm>
)

·  January 21 – Winnipeg, Canada: Sec. Clinton keynotes the Global
Perspectives series (Winnipeg Free Press
<http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Clinton-coming-to-Winnipeg--284282491.html>
)

·  February 24 – Santa Clara, CA: Sec. Clinton to Keynote Address at
Inaugural Watermark Conference for Women (PR Newswire
<http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hillary-rodham-clinton-to-deliver-keynote-address-at-inaugural-watermark-conference-for-women-283200361.html>
)

·  March 19 – Atlantic City, NJ: Sec. Clinton keynotes  American Camp
Association conference (PR Newswire <http://www.sys-con.com/node/3254649>)