Subject: Correct The Record Monday January 26, 2015 Morning Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 08:49:22 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Monday January 26, 2015 Morning Roundup:*

*Articles:*

*Politico: “Behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Treasury takedown”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/antonio-weiss-lizabeth-warren-treasury-114539.html>*

“The larger question is the extent to which Warren continues to use her
platform to push Hillary Clinton to the left and away from her more
centrist, Rubinite roots.”

*BuzzFeed: “DREAMers Are Back And They’re Coming For The GOP And Clinton”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/christianzamora/times-britney-spears-was-so-good-to-her-fans#.siG92Rp4ej>*

“National DREAMer activist Erika Andiola recently told BuzzFeed News that
Clinton and Jeb Bush, two possible 2016 candidates with perhaps views on
immigration policy more in line with the activists’, will be forced to
clarify their stances.”

*Time: “The Invisible Presidential Campaign Kicks Off in Earnest”
<http://time.com/3681834/presidential-campaign-finance-donors/>*

“Bush, Romney and Christie are especially squeezed by the fundraising
pressures, as their candidacies are set to rely heavily on their predicted
ability to match Hillary Clinton’s formidable potential.”

*USA Today: “Cruz, Paul, Rubio spar on Cuba policy at desert forum”
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/01/26/cruz-rubio-paul-koch-bros-white-house/22337325/>*

“Asked by Karl whether Republicans should nominate a candidate with no
foreign policy experience — which none of the three senators on stage in
Rancho Mirage had — Rubio took a shot at Hillary Clinton, Democrats' likely
2016 presidential nominee. ‘I think it would be a mistake to elect as
president the architect of Obama's foreign policy,’ he said. ‘That would be
a terrible mistake.’”

*Forbes: “Hillary's Lead Over GOP Frontrunners Shrinks”
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnzogby/2015/01/25/hillarys-lead-over-gop-frontrunners-shrinks/>*

“The January Zogby Analytics Poll shows former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton keeping her leads over possible GOP contenders in 2016 – but her
leads narrowing significantly.”

*Articles:*

*Politico: “Behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Treasury takedown”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/antonio-weiss-lizabeth-warren-treasury-114539.html>*

By Ben White

January 26, 2015, 5:37 a.m. EST

[Subtitle:] How the Massachusetts senator rallied the left and blindsided
the White House.

NEW YORK — Supporters of Antonio Weiss knew the Wall Street banker’s
nomination for a top job at the Treasury Department was in deep trouble the
morning of Dec. 5.

Kirsten Gillibrand, Democratic senator from New York, went on MSNBC’s
“Morning Joe” and refused to say if she would back the Lazard banker. And
she made clear who was really calling the shots. “I think Senator Warren’s
very clear,” Gillibrand said, sounding a bit like the Massachusetts
senator’s press secretary. “She believes that, as the person responsible
for how consumers are affected, his background and his experience don’t fit
the requirements.”

Weiss supporters in the White House and on Wall Street were stunned. They
expected some opposition from the left but not the explosion that greeted
the nomination. Never mind that, as undersecretary for domestic finance,
Weiss would not be the person chiefly responsible for consumer financial
protection — Warren created a whole separate agency for that — or that
neither Gillibrand nor Warren had ever met or spoken to the man.

The verdict was in. And it was bad.

“That moment stunned me,” said one close friend of Weiss. “For a senator
from New York who is ostensibly part of the sensible center to say this, I
was just flabbergasted.”

Senior White House officials, led by chief of staff Denis McDonough and
counselor to the president John Podesta, would continue to work the phones
and argue in public and private for Weiss’ nomination for the next several
weeks.

But as Democrats kept coming out in opposition — while Republicans sat back
and relished the show — it became clear that Weiss would have a very hard
time getting confirmed.

The game in Washington had changed.

Elizabeth Warren, sometimes disregarded by the White House as a largely
irrelevant nuisance, could no longer be ignored. Bolstered by grass roots
groups eager for any anti-Wall Street crusade and a vibrant progressive
media that hung on her every word, Warren succeeded in knocking out Weiss’
nomination.

It was not a total victory. Weiss will still join Treasury as an
unconfirmed counselor to Secretary Jack Lew. But in terms of symbolism, the
Washington power game and the ideological direction of the Democratic
Party, Warren won big. And the moderate, Wall Street- and business-friendly
wing of the party — in past years happily occupied by Democratic
presidential nominee-in-waiting Hillary Clinton — got punched in the mouth.

“They will have to be more careful now and you won’t see any bankers
nominated for high-level positions,” said a person close to the campaign
against Weiss, who said the episode could also influence the way Clinton
staffs and runs her campaign.

On the other side, the despair among Wall Street’s Democratic elite is
growing acute. As is the belief that Weiss himself never mattered in this
fight.

“In this case, the thing Warren was against — adding another Wall Street
anti-regulatory guy — wasn’t even remotely true,” said one senior Wall
Street Democrat who has worked in government but, like many interviewed for
this article, declined to be identified by name to avoid Warren’s wrath.
“There is no one in government right now who has any market or finance
experience. It’s not like there are ‘too many.’”

How it began

The White House nominated Weiss, a highly respected Wall Street banker at
boutique firm Lazard, on Nov. 12. Treasury wanted him because no one in its
top leadership tier — including Lew and deputy secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin
— had any real financial markets experience.

Lew worked briefly at Citigroup, as did under secretary for international
affairs Nathan Sheets. Raskin worked for a time at Promontory Financial
Group. But none had the kind of deep relationships or international
financial experience that Weiss did. And Weiss, in addition to his work on
Wall Street, was a big financial supporter and bundler for President Barack
Obama.

It did not take long for Warrren to declare war on the nomination.

On Nov. 14, POLITICO first reported, citing a Warren aide, that the senator
would oppose Weiss for the job. “She is a no on Antonio Weiss. She was a
Treasury official herself, she cares a lot about who is in the domestic
finance role,” the aide said at the time. “It oversees Dodd-Frank
implementation and other core economic policymaking.”

Shortly after the POLITICO story, Warren penned an op-ed for The Huffington
Post laying out her case against Weiss, ripping his extensive career on
Wall Street and his work on a controversial deal in which Burger King
bought Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Horton’s and moved its
headquarters to Canada.

The morning the first POLITICO article about Warren’s opposition came out
in the “Morning Money” tip sheet, a small group of progressives at CREDO
Action in San Francisco gathered to plot strategy, poring over the Warren
aides’ every word. This was the perfect fight, they decided.

After the midterm election drubbing, the battle was on for the soul of the
Democratic Party. And another fight was already brewing over the inclusion
of pro-Wall Street language in the year-end spending bill.

“It was the exact right campaign at the exact right time,” said Murshed
Zaheed, deputy political director at CREDO and a former aid to Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid. “We felt this nomination presented the perfect
battle that would drive the narrative of where the party needs to go and
where the progressive movement is right now.”

Warren and other Democrats — along with Republican Chuck Grassley — slammed
the Burger King deal as an un-American “inversion” transaction. The
counterargument from Weiss supporters, that the Burger King deal was not an
inversion because Tim Horton’s was the larger company and putting the
headquarters in lower-tax Canada was the only reasonable thing to do, never
got any traction. It did not help matters that Lew himself had recently
launched an effort to crack down on inversion deals, though not the Burger
King transaction.

For Warren, the Weiss nomination was a last-straw moment, people close to
her say. She didn’t come out hard against Mary Jo White for Securities and
Exchange Commission chair, despite White’s record of defending Wall Street
clients as an attorney in the private sector. She didn’t try to block
Stanley Fischer as Federal Reserve vice chair despite Fischer’s work at
Citigroup. And there were others.

It was time to fire up the troops against Weiss. And they came eagerly
along.

By early December, with no coordination with Warren or anyone else on the
Hill, CREDO said it had close to 200,000 signatures on a petition to oppose
Weiss.

Progressive groups Democracy for America and Moveon.org also joined the
fight. The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor group, raised questions
about millions of dollars in accelerated compensation Weiss was to receive
if he left Lazard for Treasury. The pressure came not just from the left.
The Independent Community Bankers of America sent a letter to top senators
questioning whether Weiss would do enough to champion the interests of
smaller banks.

Through an aide, Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, indicated
he would oppose Weiss. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia also came out in
opposition, an early indication that a full-scale populist assault was
underway. Then Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, viewed as fairly moderate,
said she could not back Weiss because of his work on tax deals.

Outgoing Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden made it clear Weiss
would not get a confirmation hearing in the lame-duck session of Congress
in December. Weiss would have to wait until Republicans took over in 2015,
allowing the opposition movement to gather strength.

“Warren successfully put together this incredible coalition of activist
groups and liberal media organizations that sprang into action without her
really having to do much of anything,” said a Wall Street executive who
tried to help steer Weiss through the process. “These people can now stop
pretty much anyone they want and the White House can’t do much about it.”

Others view Warren’s power as somewhat more limited. She succeeded in
derailing Weiss in part because Obama could not count on Republicans — who
typically like nominees with business experience — to put Weiss over the
top.

“Unrecognizable”

As opposition began to grow, Weiss, who declined to comment for this story,
hunkered down in New York. He could not speak out on his own behalf,
hamstrung by the need to wait for confirmation hearings. He did not get to
sit down in advance with Warren or other senators coming out against him.

People who spoke with Weiss during this time described him as bewildered by
the characterizations of him as a super-wealthy tycoon who favored tax
inversions and would come to Washington to do Wall Street’s bidding at
Treasury. “The picture they painted of him was totally unrecognizable to
him,” one friend said.

Instead, friends and colleagues described Weiss as a fairly progressive
Democrat who liked poetry, bought the Paris Review to keep it afloat and
fell in love with policy while working part time — at Podesta’s invitation
— on tax reform issues at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic
think tank, where he co-authored a paper calling for curtailing tax
loopholes for Wall Street executives, among other things.

These people say the 48-year-old Weiss had long been thinking of a career
shift, especially in the years since his father passed away. He did some
teaching but became most attracted to the idea of doing policy work in
Washington. When Lew reached out to him for the undersecretary job, he
jumped at the chance.

People who know Weiss say he expected to get some opposition. And they say
he knew his high salary — he earned at least $15.4 million from Lazard over
the past two years — would become public knowledge and the source of some
embarrassment.

But friends say Weiss did not expect to be portrayed as a proponent of tax
inversions, since his role at Lazard did not include working on the tax
implications of merger deals. And they say he thought his broad
international experience — he spent eight years in Paris — would be seen as
a plus. Instead, Warren and others used it as a cudgel to argue that he
lacked enough experience in issues of domestic finance. And they said that
it would be better if Weiss had experience in Asia rather than Europe
because of China’s and Japan’s large holdings of U.S. debt.

Meanwhile, White House officials including Podesta, Lew and National
Economic Council Director Jeff Zients continued to speak out on Weiss’
behalf and say they thought the GOP Senate would confirm him in 2015. By
all accounts, the White House never gave up on Weiss. Lew told CNBC as
recently as Friday that he thought Weiss could have been confirmed: “I
still thought that there was a pathway for him to be confirmed. My concern
when he said he didn’t want to be renominated was that we’d get the benefit
of his talent.”

Some moderate voices — Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times and the
Bloomberg News editorial page — came out in favor of Weiss. But
progressives just laughed off those endorsements as indications that the
Lazard banker really should not be trusted.

Opposing Weiss become even more critical for progressives as the White
House pushed hard for support of the year-end spending bill despite a
provision rolling back a section of Dodd-Frank prohibiting banks from
holding certain derivative securities inside their tax-payer backstopped
subsidiaries.

Wall Street fought for the provision for years and Warren and many on the
left railed against the White House for allowing Republicans to sneak it
into the bill. Letting that happen and approving Weiss as well would be
just too much.

As all this was going on, people close to Weiss say he took a long holiday
break and decided it would not be worth it to keep up a confirmation fight
that could take months and leave him little time to actually do the job.
“Antonio learned a lot of lessons the hard way about how Washington really
works now,” one friend said.

And while the White House still hoped that Weiss would eventually receive a
heavy dose of Republican support, there was no guarantee. Republicans could
have simply delayed a hearing for Weiss and let Democrats continue to fight
among themselves.

Friends say Weiss, after a lengthy series of conversations with friends and
colleagues, decided leading up to the weekend of Jan. 10 that he would ask
the White House not to resubmit his nomination in the new Congress.
Officials at Treasury and in the West Wing pushed back at first on the
decision but then relented and asked that he still join the administration
as a counselor to Lew with a senior advisory role on a wide range of issues
from fiscal policy to debt management and financial regulation.

He would not have the clout of a confirmed position or the ability to
testify publicly on the administration’s behalf. But he could still do most
of the stuff he wanted to do. Some on the left squawked that he should not
be allowed to go to Treasury at all. But Warren, herself a former
unconfirmed Treasury official, mostly left the issue alone, content in
scoring a major headline win and sending a message to the administration
that they should not mess with her or the progressive movement on anything
to do with Wall Street.

What it all means

Warren’s message clearly resonated. Obama came out with strong populist
themes in a State of the Union address that adopted much of the
Massachusetts senator’s rhetoric on standing up for the middle class
against the wealthy and powerful. Obama called for a big bank tax, an
increase in the capital gains rate and crackdowns on other loopholes
enjoyed by the wealthy.

And Warren shot to her feet and applauded vigorously when Obama promised to
veto any bill sent to him by the GOP Congress “unraveling the new rules on
Wall Street.”

This was the Obama the activist left loves, rather than the more cautious
centrist with Wall Street sympathies who tried and failed to install former
Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Larry Summers as Federal Reserve
chair. Summers, a protégé of banker Robert Rubin — perhaps the most hated
Democrat among the activist left — eventually had to step aside in favor of
Janet Yellen, a beloved figure to progressives.

Warren clearly demonstrated her ascendance as a political force. The larger
question is the extent to which Warren continues to use her platform to
push Hillary Clinton to the left and away from her more centrist, Rubinite
roots. So far, Clinton has proved less than adept at co-opting Warren’s
message. She’s struggled mightily to talk about her own significant wealth,
complaining about being “dead broke” when leaving the White House in 2000.
And she stumbled on the stump in the midterms when she said that it’s not
corporations that create jobs.

Running on Warren’s issues — reining in Wall Street, protecting consumers —
is not a political liability. The public – and certainly the Democratic
Party – is largely with Warren on all these issues, polling data show. But
Democratic insiders and analysts all question whether Clinton would be
successful at shifting left or come across as hypocritical and insincere.

There is also the question of financial support. Clinton has long enjoyed
heavy backing from Wall Street. But that could dry up if she keeps
criticizing the industry as she did in a tweet on Jan. 16: “Attacking
financial reform is risky and wrong,” she said. “Better for Congress to
focus on jobs and wages for middle class families.” Clinton, in the tweet,
criticized Dodd-Frank changes strongly supported by Wall Street.

The former first lady and secretary of state will hardly be beholden to the
financial-services industry for money, especially in the era of
billionaire-funded “super PACs.” But she would still face charges of
changing her tune if she were to tack too hard toward the Antonio
Weiss-bashing left.

“My guess is she will try to thread her way through this by saying that
Warren has very legitimate concerns but that Wall Street is still an
important part of the economy,” said one of Clinton’s biggest Wall Street
supporters who also backed Weiss for Treasury. “But that’s just a very
tricky needle to thread.”

*BuzzFeed: “DREAMers Are Back And They’re Coming For The GOP And Clinton”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/christianzamora/times-britney-spears-was-so-good-to-her-fans#.siG92Rp4ej>*

By Adrian Carrasquillo

January 25, 2015, 8:16 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] After playing a key role in securing Obama’s executive actions
on immigration, DREAMer activists are back, confronting Republicans, with
an eye towards Hillary Clinton too.

In 2014, DREAMer activists, undocumented youth brought to the country as
children, established themselves as a pivotal force in the immigration
fight. But if you thought the immigration protests that interrupted
speeches from both Democrats and Republicans during 2014 would end with
President Obama’s executive actions, you thought wrong.

If anything, last year showed them that the strategy works, and so DREAMer
activists are back. Their first volley of 2015 came at the Iowa Freedom
Summit, a gathering of conservatives, many with presidential aspirations,
where they had one question: Do you stand with us, or with immigration
hardliner Steve King?

“2016 is around the corner, so we want to see where Republicans stand,
would they overturn [Obama’s actions]? Would they deport DREAMers?” said
activist Cesar Vargas, one of the nearly 10 who crashed the GOP event,
interrupting former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie. “For Hillary Clinton, yes, she tweeted that she supported the
president on executive action, but for us it’s not just about approval —
what else will she do?”

The young activists gave Clinton headaches last year during her book
promotional tour and later on the campaign trail, when they repeatedly
confronted her. National DREAMer activist Erika Andiola recently told
BuzzFeed News that Clinton and Jeb Bush, two possible 2016 candidates with
perhaps views on immigration policy more in line with the activists’, will
be forced to clarify their stances.

If the strategy seems counterintuitive, Vargas says the activists’ strategy
is constantly misunderstood.

“This is not just about political tactics, it’s just about real questions,
there are real people affected by this, whether they’re parents or
workers,” Vargas said. “All 2016 hopefuls say, ‘We want to talk to the real
Americans.’ Well these are the real people affected by these policies.”

Why protest Perry, for instance, someone who has faced criticism from the
right on immigration (Perry famously said “you don’t have a heart” if you
oppose in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants), when Sen. Ted Cruz
and others also there? Activists say they see it differently after Perry
sent the National Guard to the border during the unaccompanied minors
crisis, and Marco Malagon, who interrupted Perry at the event and was
arrested, was there because of that in particular. But Cruz has advocated
for stricter policy on undocumented immigrants and had strong words about
immigrants at the event too.

“Ted Cruz is a lost cause,” Vargas said. “He’s a far right political figure
for the Tea Party. Chris Christie, Scott Walker, on the other hand, they’re
trying to stay away from the issue, we want to know where they stand. Jeb
Bush, he’s seriously considering not only running, but also working with
the Latino community.”

One activist in Iowa for the confrontation, Giancarlo Tello, a New Jersey
DREAMer, said that after the president’s announcement, future immigration
actions won’t only feature young undocumented advocates.

“Its not just going to be DREAMers, but whole immigrant families. Not just
those who qualify for [deferred action], but also for Obama’s actions for
families,” Tello said. “It left 7 million behind. As long as the
undocumented community is still being criminalized, we’re going to go after
them, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans.”

It’s important to note that the activists are not all from one
organization. There are local groups, leaders like Andiola and Vargas of
the Arizona-based Dream Action Coalition, and also one major national
organization: United We Dream (UWD).

For its part, UWD spent Friday to Sunday in Maryland holed up at their
yearly retreat, mapping their strategy for the year. BuzzFeed News has
learned that the group has so-called offensive and defensive priorities, as
well as local and national plans for 2015.

Going on offense looks a lot like what went down in Iowa this weekend, but
just as importantly, the organization wants to defend Obama’s executive
actions, which they feel are under attack by Congressional Republicans, as
well as in the 25-state Texas lawsuit on the constitutionality of the
executive actions. UWD also wants to work on educating the community on
implementation of Obama’s actions, getting all of those who are eligible to
apply to be protected from deportation.

A new strategy for UWD this year centers on some local battles they want to
aid affiliates in, like in Texas, where Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick campaigned on
far stricter border enforcement and dismantling the in-state tuition
program (the issue is contentious within the Republican Party there —
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott largely distanced himself from Patrick during
his campaign, but said if the legislature passed the in-state tuition bill,
he would sign it). The organization also wants to help in states that may
be looking to add in-state tuition like Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The activists in Iowa on Saturday held signs that said “Deportable?” on
them, a reference to a much-maligned tweet by Steve King, who organized the
Iowa Freedom Summit. King was referencing Michelle Obama’s guest at the
State of the Union, a young undocumented immigrant whom he called a
“deportable.”

DREAMers say that King like Cruz, is a lost cause, but the signs were meant
as a question to prospective presidential candidates, as in, “Are we
deportable?”

Vargas said Christie calling King a friend on Saturday told them a lot.

“In Spanish there is a saying, ‘Dime con quién andas, y te diré quién
eres,’” Vargas said.

“Tell me who you’re with, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

*Time: “The Invisible Presidential Campaign Kicks Off in Earnest”
<http://time.com/3681834/presidential-campaign-finance-donors/>*

By Michael Scherer, Alex Altman, and Zeke Miller

January 25, 2015

Presidential candidates-to-be, and a passel of well-known clingers on,
converged in Iowa this weekend with all the flash and fun the nation has
come to expect of the Grand Old Party.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former
Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly
Fiorina managed substantive introductions, alongside businessman Donald
Trump, who declared there is “nobody like Trump,” and Sarah Palin, who
struggled with diction and metaphor, offering phrases like “We don’t sit on
our thumbs this next time when one of our own is being crucified.”

The real action, however, lay elsewhere, off the stage and out of sight, in
an invisible primary taking place behind closed doors in states not known
for their place in the nominating calendar. Candidates have been
crisscrossing the nation and working the phones, dialing for dollars and
loyalty in a contest that may prove far more consequential than speech that
can be given before any crowd at this point.

The goal is not to win votes, but to win the support of Republicans like
Bobbie Kilberg, who hosted an off-the-record event in Virginia for Christie
last week with 96 corporate technology leaders. In recent months, she has
taken not one, but two calls from Mitt Romney informing her of her
thinking, as he edges toward another campaign. And having worked for the
administrations of both Presidents Bush, she feels a special affinity for
former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, whose son, George P. Bush, she recently
supported in his race for Texas land commissioner.

“I have three wonderful friends in this race,” said Kilberg, who runs the
Northern Virginia Technology Council, but supports candidates only in a
personal capacity. “My expectation is that all three of them will run.”

But the physics of political fundraising does not allow for her fealty to
be equally divided for long. Connecters like Kilberg now face enormous
pressure to decide on a single candidate to benefit from their vast
Rolodexes. “I think there is enough donor bandwidth for all three of them
in the center right lane,” Kilberg explains of the three candidates. “The
finite group are the bundlers.”

Securing the 2012 nomination cost Romney $76.6 million, raised in
increments up to the legal limit of $2,500. His super PAC, Restore Our
Future, which could accept unlimited contributions, added nearly $50
million to the tally.

Operatives affiliated with multiple campaigns say candidates will need at
least $50 million to win the nomination this time around, but predict more
of the spending will tilt toward the outside groups.

Bush, Romney and Christie are especially squeezed by the fundraising
pressures, as their candidacies are set to rely heavily on their predicted
ability to match Hillary Clinton’s formidable potential. The early start to
the race — candidates are traveling the country earlier and more frequently
than ever on the Republican side — adds strain across the board.
Complicating matters further are changes to the nominating calendar with
fewer debate opportunities and a compressed timeline that favor well-funded
candidates once voters get to the polls.

Kilberg and her husband Bill, a prominent Washington lawyer, helped bundle
together more than $100,000 in checks of less than $2,000 in 2004 for
George W. Bush. In 2012, she helped lead Mitt Romney’s fundraising in
Virginia, bringing in a reported $322,000 at just one event at her home.
The Tuesday event Kilberg had with Christie and northern Virginia
technology executives was not a fundraiser, she said, but a get-to-know-you
session.

At almost the same time the event was happening, Bush was meeting in the
offices of Dirk Van Dongen, a Republican fundraiser who runs the National
Association of Wholesalers. Dongen, a Washington fundraiser for another
White House aspirant, Marco Rubio, plans to support Jeb Bush this time, if
he runs.

The Bush events were not fundraisers either, though forms were distributed
inviting donors to begin bundling for Bush’s new political action
committee, Right to Rise. The main purpose, as with the Virginia events,
was to win over the networkers who traditionally hold the purse strings of
presidential politics. According to people who attended, Bush spoke broadly
about his views of the country and the best way to approach the
presidential race. He said a winning candidate would have to connect with
middle-class anxiety by walking in the shoes of regular people, said one
attendee.

“The contrast was obvious,” the attendee said, explaining how Bush appeared
to be contrasting himself with Romney’s 2012 campaign. “That’s 100 degrees
from the 47% comment.”

Romney, meanwhile, has been reactivating his own donor base, having chosen
a donor event in New York early in the month to formally announce his
decision to begin pursuing a third presidential campaign. The former
private-equity executive has been working the phones since then, telling
donors he is serious about considering another bid.

Senator Marco Rubio, meanwhile, held his annual retreat for his top donors
in Miami over the weekend, a move designed to keep his loyalists close
while he considers his options. He later joined fellow Senators Ted Cruz
and Rand Paul on stage in Palm Springs at the winter meeting of the Freedom
Partners Chamber of Commerce, a spending vehicle for the billionaire GOP
megadonor Koch brothers and their allies. Also in attendance, after a
well-received appearance in Iowa, was Walker, who was making the first stop
on a multi-day West Coast fundraising swing for his new fundraising
committee, which will be announced as soon as Monday.

While Republican voters have more than a year to decide on the candidate
they want to take on Democrats in 2016, the donors clock is ticking.
Quarterly fundraising totals, which will come out early this summer and
again in the fall, will help shape the race, determining which candidates
have the money to mount serious contests, with the grassroots organizing
ability and television firepower to withstand the early contests.

“It’s really what we would call in the business a pre-sell,” says a senior
Republican strategist about Bush’s visit to Washington this week. “They’ll
come back in the next 60 days and do some big fundraising, and they’ll hope
to get a lot of those same people to be on their committee.”

For those keeping score, the results of such appeals will be the ones that
count, not the applause of activist crowds. In this democratic process, the
voices of the people only matter after the first waves of money have been
counted.

*USA Today: “Cruz, Paul, Rubio spar on Cuba policy at desert forum”
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/01/26/cruz-rubio-paul-koch-bros-white-house/22337325/>*

By Sammy Roth

January 26, 2015, 2:51 a.m. EST

Three likely contenders for the Republican presidential nomination shared a
stage in Rancho Mirage, Calif. on Sunday night, where they outlined similar
visions for helping the middle class but differed sharply on foreign
policy, including Cuba.

The wide-ranging panel discussion — which featured U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz of
Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida — was part of an
annual desert gathering for high-profile Republicans, sponsored by a group
aligned with the billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch. The
summit is traditionally closed to outsiders, but in a limited concession to
their critics, the Koch brothers allowed members of the media — but not the
public — to watch a live stream of Sunday's panel.

The three Republican senators — none of whom has officially declared a
presidential candidacy — largely avoided criticizing each other directly,
in an event that some observers described as the first debate of the 2016
election. But they didn't hesitate to attack President Barack Obama,
starting with the rosy economic outlook he presented in his State of the
Union Address last week.

"It seemed to me like we were watching a description of an alternate
reality," Cruz said. "It reminded me of 'Alice in Wonderland.'"

POPULIST TONE

The Republican senators did, however, echo Obama's focus on the middle
class and income inequality, with Cruz and Rubio especially looking to
strike a populist note. Rubio said income inequality has "increased
dramatically" under Obama's economic policies, while also tweaking Mitt
Romney's 2012 campaign.

"The central narrative of the last campaign, what the voters heard, is, 'We
don't have to worry about the 47 percent,'" Rubio said, recalling Romney's
now-infamous remarks at a private fundraiser. "I think Republicans should
be the party of the 47 percent."

Generally, the candidates had similar prescriptions for helping the middle
class: smaller government, lower taxes across the income spectrum, and
other policies they said would grow the economy as a whole. They criticized
government as much as they criticized Obama, with Paul saying that
government "is not stupid, but it's a debatable question."

"Income inequality is indirectly, if not directly, related to big
government," he said.

But pressed by moderator Jonathan Karl for specifics on hot-button economic
policy issues, the candidates at times equivocated. While all three said
they oppose raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour, Cruz and
Paul wouldn't say whether they support having a minimum wage at all. Rubio
came closest to answering the question, saying that "as a practical
matter," he's not calling to abolish the minimum wage.

CRUZ, RUBIO CONDEMN CUBA POLICY

The biggest disagreements of the night came when the conversation shifted
from economic policy to foreign policy. Cruz and Rubio strongly condemned
Obama's recently announced plan to normalize relations with Cuba, but Paul
said he sees a lot to like about the new policy.

"We have embassies everywhere. Diplomacy is a good thing, not a bad thing,"
Paul said. "Reagan talked to the Russians. Every president we've ever had
talked to the Russians for 70 years, and it's a damn good thing they did."

The candidates were similarly divided on Iran, with Paul arguing that
Congress should let ongoing negotiations over Iran's nuclear program play
out before approving more economic sanctions. Cruz and Rubio painted the
negotiations as a waste of time, calling for a more aggressive stance
against Iran.

Asked by Karl whether Republicans should nominate a candidate with no
foreign policy experience — which none of the three senators on stage in
Rancho Mirage had — Rubio took a shot at Hillary Clinton, Democrats' likely
2016 presidential nominee.

"I think it would be a mistake to elect as president the architect of
Obama's foreign policy," he said. "That would be a terrible mistake."

*Forbes: “Hillary's Lead Over GOP Frontrunners Shrinks”
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnzogby/2015/01/25/hillarys-lead-over-gop-frontrunners-shrinks/>*

By John Zogby

January 25, 2015, 6:30 p.m. EST

The January Zogby Analytics Poll shows former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton keeping her leads over possible GOP contenders in 2016 – but her
leads narrowing significantly. In the January 16-18 online poll of 890
likely voters, Mrs. Clinton leads former Florida Governor Jeb Bush by only
8 points — 45% to 37% (down from 49% to 34% in mid-December’s Zogby
Analytics Poll) – and 9 points over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt
Romney, 46% to 37% (down from 48% to 33%). The poll has a margin of
sampling error of +.-3.4 percentage points.

A lead is still a lead but her margins are narrowing among several key
subgroups. For example, among women she now leads Bush 48%-34%, where it
was 55% to 30% just last month. Her leads have shrunk from 35 points to 16
points among 18-29 year olds, 28 points to 17 points among 30-49 year olds,
16 points to 10 points among independents, and 58 points to 24 points among
Hispanics. She has actually gone from a 20 point lead among Catholics to a
6 point deficit.

The numbers are showing very much the same trend line against Romney. In
two other races, she now leads Kentucky Senator Rand Paul by 14 points (48%
to 34%), while last month it was 18 points (51% to 33%). Against New Jersey
Governor Chris Christie, Clinton now leads by 12 points (45% to 33%),
whereas last month it was by 15 points (48% to 33%).

Now these are not good numbers for Republicans. While these are the only
four candidates we tested, they are all prominent and none of them even
hits 40% — a very bad sign for a national party. But essentially, Clinton
simply running against herself is not doing well, certainly not enough to
close any deal. In fact, during the course of a year of polling, she has
dropped into the mid-40s, down from the mid-50s. And, very significantly,
these numbers include “leaners” – i.e. those who initially said they were
undecided and were asked if they had to choose a candidate today. More
leaners chose the GOP candidates than chose her.

This is only a temporary reading and there is a very long way to go. For
now, there is some movement already and we are watching it closely.

*Calendar:*

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

·  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 4 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton to fundraise for the Clinton
Foundation (WSJ
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/15/carole-king-hillary-clinton-live-top-tickets-100000/>
)

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

·  March 23 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton to keynote award ceremony for
the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting (Syracuse
<http://newhouse.syr.edu/news-events/news/former-secretary-state-hillary-rodham-clinton-deliver-keynote-newhouse-school-s>
)