Running Out the Clock

Romney and running out the clock… Dems begin to press the panic button… Greenberg’s and Carville’s advice… Dems win AZ-8 special election… After primaries in ME, NV, ND, and VA, Senate races finally take shape… Eric Holder, political punching bag… Jamie Dimon testifies on Capitol Hill… And Romney addresses Business Roundtable meeting at 11:45 am ET.

By NBC's Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Brooke Brower, and Natalie Cucchiara

*** Running out the clock: With less than five months until Election Day, Mitt Romney and his team are running a campaign that would make Dean Smith (and his Four Corners offense) or Jim Tressel (and his grind-it-out gameplan) proud. If you're ahead -- or within striking distance -- against a talented opponent, you start running out the clock. Take, for instance, Romney's reply yesterday to a reporter’s ropeline question about whether he thought Democrats were taking his recent remark firefighter and police jobs out of context. "I'm not going to talk about that," he said. (Romney also has ducked reporters’ ropeline questions on Syria, JP Morgan, and even Wisconsin.) Or consider all the interviews he does with FOX (especially its cherry-picked programs vs. its newsier anchors) compared with other news outlets. Or think about the fact that the Romney camp isn't planning (for now) on delivering any new policy speeches. The message Team Romney is essentially giving: “We're going to talk about what we want to talk about -- and to whom we want -- and not talk about the rest.”

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*** But does a president get to control what he talks about? It’s impressive message discipline. And as Smith and Tressel proved, you can win tons of games -- and the ultimate prize every once in a while (especially if your opponent makes mistakes) -- by running out the clock. But here’s something about sitting in the White House: A president often doesn’t get to pick and choose the issues he has to deal with. Think of many of the events in the past five years: the financial industry’s collapse, the European debt crisis, the BP oil spill, the Arab Spring, the violence in Libya and Syria, and the list goes on. While a president gets to pick his domestic priorities (tax cuts, education, and Social Security for George W. Bush; health care and financial reform for Barack Obama), so much of the job is reacting to unplanned events. Ironically, the very issue Romney wants to talk about -- the state of the U.S. economy -- is something that presidents have little control over, especially compared with foreign policy (which they have A LOT of control over). And yet how long can Romney go without going into more detail about how he would handle the various unplanned issues that he would have to deal with if he wins. Take Syria. We know he doesn’t like how the president has handled this situation but how would a President Romney deal with Putin and Assad? He’s provided no clues and his campaign appears to be making sure there’s little opportunity (for now) to find out.

NBC's Mark Murray discusses whether President Barack Obama's message on the economy is working.

*** Dems press the panic button: While Team Romney appears to be running out the clock and displaying an impressive ability at message discipline, the Obama White House and campaign are dealing with Democratic Party that’s beginning to panic after a rough last two weeks. “Is it time for Democrats to panic?” the Washington Post’s Tumulty asks. “That’s what a growing number of party loyalists are wondering, amid a rough couple of weeks in which President Obama and his political operation have been buffeted by bad economic news, their own gaffes and signs that the presumed Republican nominee is gaining strength.” One criticism from the Democrats cited in the piece is how insular Team Obama is, a criticism that has dogged the Obama political team beginning Feb. 10, 2007 (the day Obama announced). This story illustrates two of the Democratic Party’s and Obama White House’s worst traits -- pressing the panic button (especially when nothing fundamental about the race has changed in the past two weeks) and ignoring outside voices (which is a criticism we continually hear about the Obama team). Former Bush strategist Mark McKinnon puts it well in the piece: “[The Obama campaign folks] are not any more or less smart than they were four years ago. The dynamics are just different. This time, the wind is in their face instead of at their back.”

We Will Settle for the Next four years

Editor's note: Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" (Times Books) and of the new book "Governing America" (Princeton University Press).

Princeton, New Jersey (CNN) -- This presidential election tells us something unexpected about American politics. For all the talk about polarization and discord in Washington, it appears that both parties will have pragmatic problem-solvers at the top of their tickets.

Democrats have accepted four more years with a pragmatist. President Barack Obama has consistently been willing to anger members of his own party by reaching out to Republicans and often embracing their issues, such as deficit reduction. Rather than a fighting for an ideological agenda, he has instead focused on one problem at a time and accepted the constraints that he faces.

Republicans are settling on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has spent much of his career avoiding ideological purity. By all accounts, one of his virtues as a leader has been his eagerness to delve into difficult problems and his willingness to experiment when trying to find solutions.

Julian Zelizer

As everyone knows, he has shifted his positions on matters such as stem cell research and as governor he was willing to put forward an ambitious health care plan that expanded government by using a conservative idea, the individual mandate.

Some pundits will read the decision to support these candidates as continued evidence of party loyalty. In the case of Obama, there were no Democrats who decided that they would challenge him in the primary because they wanted to avoid the kind of turmoil that occurred when Sen. Ted Kennedy ran against President Jimmy Carter from the left in 1980.

In the case of Romney, the Republican hatred of Obama is so great that the party is willing to compromise on a candidate whose politics are hard to pin down but who stands a better chance of winning in November.

Yet another way to read these decisions is that, at some level, voters are genuinely angry about the polarized status quo in Washington. They are willing to support pragmatic problem-solvers because, at some level, they find it appealing to elect politicians who could overcome the deeply dysfunctional government we have.

There is some evidence to support this claim. In "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America," Morris Fiorina argued that polarization was much stronger among political elites that it was in the broader electorate. His examination of poll data revealed that on many controversial issues such as abortion or gay rights, most Americans tended to be in the middle of the political landscape.

Second, the approval ratings of Congress also suggest that citizens are unhappy with polarization. Approval ratings for Congress are at about 12.5%, a historic low. When such a large number of Americans indicate that they don't approve of the institution, they are registering their complaints about the gridlock in Congress. Even though most Americans continue to vote for incumbents in their districts, they don't like the institution as a whole.

Finally, for all the talk about polarization, when it comes to electing presidents, voters have tended to go for the people who promise to reach out across the aisle. In 2008, Obama ran as the candidate who appealed to both sides of the political spectrum and who contrasted himself with the fierce partisanship of the Republican side.

In 2000, George W. Bush ran as the compassionate conservative who was willing to use government on behalf of some causes, and in 2004 he avoided some of the more divisive issues by emphasizing national security as his unifying issue.

In 1992, voters went for Bill Clinton, a proud pragmatist who wanted to move beyond the orthodoxies of the 1960s. Clinton was part of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group that sought to move his party toward the center. Clinton doubled down on this theme in 1996 as he leaned to the right following the Republican takeover of Congress, and he defeated Sen. Robert Dole by landslide.

The emerging contest between Romney and Obama thus provides more evidence that there is still room to move beyond Washington's bitter partisan stalemates.

When politicians yell and fight, they capture the attention of the television cameras but the public is not always with them. As this upcoming contest reveals, there is still a yearning in the electorate for a different kind of politics in Washington.

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Romney Accuses Obama of hiding Agenda

WASHINGTON—Mitt Romney, fresh off of three momentum-building wins in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of "rhetorical excess" and of muddling his second-term agenda in order to win re-election.

"He wants us to reelect him so we can find out what he will actually do," Mr. Romney told a gathering of newspaper reporters and editors at a Washington hotel. "With all the challenges the nation faces, this is not the time for President Obama's hide-and-seek campaign."

The former Massachusetts governor leveled his latest charges at the president from the stage where Mr. Obama slammed the GOP front-runner a day earlier for supporting a Republican budget blueprint that he called a "radical vision" and "thinly veiled social Darwinism."

Election 2012

• Romney Rolls Up Three Wins
• Santorum Prepares for Last Stand
• Obama Blasts 'Trojan Horse' GOP Plan

The back-and-forth comes as the president and Mr. Romney engage more directly ahead of an expected match-up in the general election, and amid signs that Mr. Romney has opened a nearly insurmountable lead in the GOP contest. Mr. Romney was addressing the Newspaper Association of America the day after his sweep of Maryland, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.

Mr. Romney draw new battle lines with the president by expanding on earlier criticism of Mr. Obama that came after the president was heard on a live microphone asking his Russian counterpart for more time and flexibility to negotiate a nuclear-arms treaty between the two countries.

"He is intent on hiding," Mr. Romney, seeking to extend the significance of the president's remark to areas beyond foreign policy. "You and I will have to do the seeking."

While Mr. Obama remains personally popular, Mr. Romney is seeking to raising doubts about the president's character. Such doubts have been less prominent in the primary campaign, with candidates instead unleashing repeated broadsides against unpopular policy measures, including the economic recovery package and the new health-care law.

Mr. Romney accused the president of shifting positions to curry favor with voters ahead of the election, saying that "Candidate Obama" has "experienced a series of election-year conversions." As evidence, he cited Mr. Obama's recent calls to lower corporate tax rates, reduce regulations and develop more domestic oil, coal and natural gas.

The Obama campaign quickly turned the obfuscation charge back on Mr. Romney.

"From completely rewriting his record of more debt, more spending, fewer jobs and bigger government in Massachusetts to misleading on the President's record of promoting economic security for the middle class, there was very little in Mitt Romney's speech today that bore any resemblance to reality," said Lis Smith, an Obama campaign spokeswoman.

Mr. Romney also blasted the president for, in his words, mischaracterizing the House-passed Republican budget, which seeks deep cuts in agency spending and proposes a revamp of Medicare for future retirees.

"President Obama came here yesterday and railed against arguments no one is making, and criticized policies no one is proposing," he said. "It's one of his favorite strategies—setting up straw men to distract from his record."

The president and Mr. Romney are both painting the race as a contest between two starkly different visions for the country. Mr. Obama criticizes Republicans for offering what are, in his view, draconian cuts to social safety nets while protecting tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans, in turn, criticize the president for failing to bolster employment while piling debt on an already fragile economy.

"The November election will have particular consequence," Mr. Romney said Wednesday. "It will be a defining event."

He used the rest of his speech to deliver familiar criticism of the president's stimulus plan, the new health-care law and his attacks on over-regulation.

Mr. Romney largely steered clear of his remaining rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. His only mention of the primary came in response to a question from the moderator of the event about whether he had asked any of his GOP opponents to exit the race.

"I hope that we're able to resolve our nomination process as soon as possible, of course, because I'd like to focus our time and attention on those key battleground states and raising the funds to be somewhat competitive with the president and his billion-dollar quest," Mr. Romney said. "We have a real challenging road ahead of us, but I believe we will rise to the occasion."

Mr. Romney also offered a pointed critique of the news business for trading speed and frivolity for substance and responsibility.

"In 2008, the coverage was about what I said in my speech," Mr. Romney said, referring to his initial White House bid. "These days, it's about what brand of jeans I am wearing and what I ate for lunch."

He added, "I find myself missing the presence of editors to exercise quality control. I miss the days of two or more sources for a story."

Write to Patrick O'Connor at patrick.oconnor@wsj.com

‘Stop-Newt’ Republicans Confront Base Unwilling to Take Orders

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Two days after Newt Gingrich defeated Mitt Romney in the South Carolina presidential primary one of Romney’s big-name backers offered a grim prediction for his fellow Republicans.

“The possibility of Newt Gingrich being our nominee against Barack Obama I think is essentially handing the election over to Obama,” former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty told reporters on a Jan. 23 conference call. “I think that’s shared by a lot of folks in the Republican Party.”

Pawlenty’s comments echoed those being uttered publicly and behind the scenes by elected Republicans, party activists, fundraisers and pundits, who represent a portion of the party establishment -- a “stop-Newt” caucus -- populated largely by people who have known the former U.S. House speaker for decades.

The question is: Can they?

For two decades, the Republican Party has seen an erosion of its traditional, top-down hierarchy, a decline aided by Gingrich himself in 1990 when he led a House revolt against a budget agreement negotiated by President George H.W. Bush that raised taxes. The rise of the anti-tax Tea Party wing in 2009 splintered the internal levers of power further, making it even harder to impose a choice on the rank-and file.

“There really is no Republican establishment left that can control anything,” said Matthew Dowd, a onetime aide to President George W. Bush and now a Bloomberg Television contributor. “Some try to act like they are in charge, but the fraternity is now running the campus.”

South Carolina Dynamics

Those dynamics were on display in South Carolina. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, lost by 12 percentage points even after campaigning throughout the state with Governor Nikki Haley and just a day after receiving the endorsement of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association. Haley, who rose to power with Tea Party backing, didn’t deliver either her state or its grassroots activists.

Meanwhile, Gingrich’s campaign gained momentum after Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor who also has support from the Tea Party faction, said she’d vote for Gingrich in South Carolina if only to extend the length of the primary.

Similar signs of an insurgence came to light in the 2010 midterm elections, when Nevada voters tapped Sharron Angle -- a Tea Party-endorsed politician opposed by many of the state’s prominent Republicans -- to challenge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. And Delaware Republicans chose Christine O’Donnell over former governor and nine-term U.S. House Representative Mike Castle to seek an open Senate seat. Both Angle and O’Donnell lost.

‘Voters in Charge’

“The voters are now in charge, and Republican leaders need to come to terms with that,” Dowd said. “The media needs to drop the myth that there is a Republican establishment capable of orchestrating anything more than a one-float GOP parade.”

Romney’s campaign, backed by well-known party strategists and fundraisers, has kept up a steady rollout of endorsement announcements from Republican elected leaders that demonstrate his broad support among the insiders. As of Jan. 20, he had the nods of five governors, 14 senators and 59 U.S. House members. That compares with two governors and a dozen congressmen who have endorsed Gingrich, according to Democracy in Action, a political web site that tracks endorsements.

‘Terrified About Newt’

“There are a lot of major players in the Republican Party who are terrified about Newt,” said Gary Gerstle, a specialist on social and political movements a Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “At a more conventional moment in American politics, the establishment would count for a lot more, but this is not a conventional moment. There are now big segments of the Republican Party that will not bow down to the establishment.”

Gingrich -- who served 20 years in Congress, four of them as speaker, and then began a lucrative career in Washington consulting on federal policy -- has been working to turn party leaders’ angst about his candidacy to his advantage, portraying himself as a candidate feared by the ruling class.

In a Jan. 24 message to supporters, he wrote, “The establishment is right to be worried about a Gingrich nomination because a Gingrich nomination means that we’re going to change things.”

The Romney-Gingrich face-off is bringing the simmering power struggle between the Republican grassroots and the party establishment to the fore, said Richard Viguerie, a veteran Republican direct-mail strategist and the chairman of ConservativeHQ.com.

Internal Power Struggle

“There is a war going on here between the grassroots and the establishment,” said Viguerie, who is backing former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. “People in the grassroots see the Republican establishment as part of the problem, not part of the solution, and Gingrich has the ability to go over the heads of the Republican leaders.”

At the root of the concern about Gingrich is whether he will be able to appeal to the broader U.S. electorate. Polls indicate that he has high unfavorability ratings and wouldn’t fare well in a head-to-head matchup against Obama. A January Gallup study found that all national political figures are viewed negatively. Still, “Americans have become more intensely negative in their evaluations of Newt Gingrich -- who now has the lowest score overall,” the study concluded.

Independent Voter Turn-off

Gingrich’s branding of Obama as a “food stamp president,” for example, may not play well with independent voters, whom a Republican nominee would have to win over to have a chance of ousting the president.

Some prominent Republicans say there’s not yet enough of a consensus that Gingrich is unelectable to give rise to a concerted effort among party operatives to thwart his ascent.

“I haven’t seen that there’s an all-hands-on-deck movement to try to block any candidate -- Newt or anyone else,” said Frank Donatelli, the chairman of GOPAC, a training organization for state and local Republican candidates once headed by Gingrich, and a former top party official.

The last time there was such an effort was in 1996, he added, after Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary and prominent Republicans quickly coalesced around Bob Dole, who ultimately claimed the nomination.

“I haven’t heard that kind of alarm emanating about Newt,” Donatelli said.

Former Pennsylvania Congressman Bob Walker, a senior adviser to Gingrich’s campaign, said each time Romney rolls out a new endorsement or dispatches a one-time colleague to criticize Gingrich’s record, it bolsters the former speaker’s argument to voters that he’s their ally against a party machine that doesn’t care about them.

“It took them a little bit of time to realize that Newt Gingrich is capable of beating Obama, but now, I don’t think that they’re going to listen to party bosses anymore,” Walker said. “Newt is basically channeling the people’s anger.”

--Editors: Jeanne Cummings, Mark McQuillan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Julie Hirschfeld Davis in Washington at jdavis159@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jeanne Cummings at jcummings21@bloomberg.net

A reprint from Bloomberg Businessweek

Same Old, Same Old

President Barack Obama has come under fire again as he is asking legislators to approve a $1.3 trillion hike in the debt-ceiling this past week. A request brought on not by failure of the president, but a failure, again, in the legislative standoff between the president and Congress.


Texas Governor, Rick Perry used his pursuit of the Republican Presidential campaign as a platform in the national spotlight to urge congress to reject the President's request telling a small audience in South Carolina that it would mean the government would have to print more money and that would devalue the dollar even further.


"The president again went to Congress to ask them to raise the debt ceiling. Than means they're going to print more money, they're going to spend more money. The dollars in your pocket are going to be devalued even more," Perry said. "I hope the members of Congress send a very clear message to the president. Not now, not again, absolutely not, Mr. President."


The request is part of an agreement reached in August between the White House and Congress to raise the debt limit to $15.2 trillion while creating a "super-committee" that unsuccessfully sought to reach a bipartisan deal last fall.


Perry says the president needs to trim his budget and cut spending, an idea that everyone seems to agree with. However, spending cuts alone is not the answer and no one wants to raise taxes or lose their entitlements. Billionaire Warren Buffett has gone so far as to challenge congressional Republicans a financial deal that could reap millions to the deficit. He, as reported to Time magazine, will match all donations to the deficit by the Republican congressional members and will triple match every dollar Senate Republican  leader Mitch McConnell.


Buffett has emphasized that his offer is a "firm offer".

Is John Boehner In Trouble?

The position of Speaker of the House of Representatives is normally a coveted and honored seat at the proverbial head of the table. But, as things in Washington, D.C. keep unfolding in disarray as it has for the past year, John Boehner may very well have a target on his back.

Several instances of flip-flopping have been apparent in 2011 and one wonders when will Eric Cantor, House Majority leader, make his move to attain the position he most covets. Boehner has not really shown the kind of leadership the junior members, mostly Tea Party members, want. When challenged by the freshmen representatives Boehner seems to re-position himself to satisfy the younger members of Congress.

If the House Republicans are responsible for raising taxes on the middle class and not close the loopholes for the most wealthy Americans, the message would be clear and resounding. Support for the millionaires and billionaires is, in their opinion, the way America should be led. And, if that is in fact the case, the "Super Pac's" will ultimately run this country while middle and lower class citizens could only run and hide and bury their heads in the sand.

America's businessmen and women understand, the best remedy for growth, hiring and most of all greater profits, is a healthy middle class that will purchase and use their products, not a over-taxed middle class that is scrounging to survive.

Boehner understands that raising taxes to the middle class while maintaining the huge loop-holes for the nation's wealthiest, will simply not fly. It becomes political suicide. Hiding behind a conference committee or talking about a one-year extension is simply crap piled upon crap. The Tea Party simply wants to kill it and claim victory as the "new" ideals for the american people.

Boehner is in real trouble and Cantor is all set to push him out of the way so he can ascend to the throne of power and crush all the dissenting members of the House. Boehner's political posturing has backfired and unfortunately he needs his democratic counterparts, he needs to strike a deal with them, and he needs to cut ties with the Tea Party members and take back control of the House. 

House Republicans push for new payroll tax cut talks

A reprint:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-led House of Representatives will set the stage on Tuesday for a showdown with Senate Democrats over a payroll tax cut extension that is becoming a proxy for 2012 election year battles.

The tax legislation has become the latest in a string of battles in Congress this year, all of which have contributed to widespread public discontent with Washington politicians.

When the House votes on Tuesday it will in effect be rejecting a bill that passed the Senate overwhelmingly on Saturday and calling for formal negotiations with the Democratic-led Senate.

The Senate bill would set a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut with the aim of crafting a full-year tax cut extension early next year.

The House move will cast doubt on the future of the popular payroll tax cut, which is caught up in a high-stakes game of brinkmanship between the two political parties that some say could backfire.

Washington gridlock is fueling an anti-incumbent mood among voters heading into next year's elections.

"Our members do not want to just punt and do a two-month short-term fix where we have to come back and do this again," House Speaker John Boehner said late on Monday after a closed meeting with fellow Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shot back that the House should allow an up-or-down vote on the two-month stop-gap plan. "I am happy to continue negotiations on a yearlong deal as soon as the House of Representatives passes the Senate's bipartisan compromise, and prevents a tax hike from hitting middle-class families," Reid said.

Several Republican lawmakers publicly agreed with Reid.

The bipartisan two-month deal crafted by the Senate came after efforts at a full-year tax cut failed.

At stake is much more than politicians' reputations and their 2012 re-election chances. If Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on extending the tax cut that expires on December 31, 160 million Americans will begin 2012 with less money - about $1,000 a year for the average worker - in their paychecks.

That, economists fear, could dampen, or even end what little economic growth there is as the United States struggles to right itself after the deepest recession in decades and severe debt problems in Europe that could infect America.

Not only would workers' taxes go up in a couple weeks if the two sides cannot find a quick compromise. About 2.2 million people who have suffered long-term unemployment will see benefit checks cut off by the middle of February. And doctors treating elderly Medicare patients also will see their reimbursements cut.

Once the House on Tuesday requests a new round of negotiations, as expected, the next steps are unclear.

"We are not coming back, we are not appointing negotiators until they pass the Senate compromise," Reid's spokesman Adam Jentleson insisted.

President Barack Obama already has delayed a Hawaii vacation. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday said, "The president has made clear that he wants Congress to get this done, that he is here now and will be here as Congress tries to sort this out." But Carney did not make clear how Obama might bring the two sides together, or whether he will even try.

(Editing by Christopher Wilson)