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Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/ted-cruz-election-2016-political-goat

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, is coming to South Carolina on May 27, a campaign official said Tuesday. No details are available on a place or time for Clinton’s visit — her first stop in the Palmetto State since announcing her White House bid a month ago. The visit also will be the first time Clinton has come to South Carolina since her 2008 presidential campaign, a campaign official confirmed.

The headlines I’ve seen this morning about this exchange claim that Bush said he wouldn’t rescind Obama’s executive action “right away,” which is sort of true. What Jeb said is that he’d rescind the amnesty as part of a deal with Congress on immigration. That won’t happen on day one of his presidency, so yeah, technically O’s order would remain intact for at least a few months while President Bush works out the details of the new bill with the House and Senate. But focusing on the timing misses the point of what Jeb’s implying: If Republicans in Congress refuse...

MADISON (AP) — The state Democratic Party has paid for a series of billboards demanding Republican Gov. Scott Walker return to Wisconsin...... ....Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate announced Monday that the party has paid for billboards in Milwaukee and Green Bay that call on Walker to return to Wisconsin, accept federal money to expand Medicaid — a move the governor has steadfastly refused and get back to work for the state."

"With Dues Depleted, three AFSCME Councils Merge" Here: Wisconsin’s three AFSCME councils are merging four years after the state rolled back public-sector union rights, prompting two out of three dues-paying members to drop out.

This weekend, a dozen Republican presidential hopefuls showed up at the South Carolina Freedom Summit. They were there to court primary voters who will winnow the presidential field next February. Judging from the speeches, it’s going to be an ugly race. What the candidates are selling, and primary voters are buying, is vituperation against people who don’t look, talk, or pray like the Republican base.............. [SNIP of stuff that sounds good to me - Santorum was on fire] ...............Mexicans, Muslims, gays, rats, roaches. Christian superiority, military contempt for the president, and gauntlets thrown down to queer-loving CEOs. It’s going to...

Former California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring will serve as chairman of 2016 GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s campaign in the Golden State. Nehring, 44, of El Cajon, unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor last year against incumbent Democrat Gavin Newsom. He was the state GOP’s chairman from 2007 to 2011, leading a robust fundraising program to pull the party out of debt; he also chaired the Republican National Committee’s State Chairmen’s committee during those years. Earlier, he chaired the Republican Party of San Diego from 2001 to 2007. Cruz “is an exciting, Reaganite candidate for president who has demonstrated the...

Hillary Rodham Clinton calls them “everyday Americans.” Scott Walker prefers “hardworking taxpayers.” Rand Paul says he speaks for “people who work for the people who own businesses.” Bernie Sanders talks about “ordinary Americans.” The once ubiquitous term “middle class” has gone conspicuously missing from the 2016 campaign trail, as candidates and their strategists grasp for new terms for an unsettled economic era. The phrase, long synonymous with the American dream, now evokes anxiety, an uncertain future and a lifestyle that is increasingly out of reach. The move away from “middle class” is the rhetorical result of a critical shift: After...

Team Hillary is pushing Julian Castro as her VP nominee. “The Republicans are making a big push for the Hispanic vote, so that makes Castro an obvious pick.” Julian Castro, and his twin brother, Congressman Joaquin, were early backers of 2008 Clinton......the odds of Mrs. Clinton picking another woman for the ticket are “zero” .... which eliminates Wendy Davis, the liberal darling of Texas Democrats. --SNIP--That leaves Julian Castro. At just 40 years old, he’s a a two-term mayor of San Antonio, Texas, and is Obama’s HUD Secy. The Castro brothers — twins born to a single mother whose grandmother...

Jeb Bush says that he would have authorized the 2003 war in Iraq — just like his brother did. “I would have, and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody,” the former Florida governor told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly Saturday after delivering the commencement address at Liberty University in Virginia. “And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.”

Many savvy political analysts believe the Democrats have a built in advantage in the Electoral College. Democrats have won four of the last six Presidential elections, and in all six races, they have won a collection of 18 states plus the District of Columbia, now totaling 242 Electoral College votes. These states include all of the New England states except New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia. Democrats have won 5 of the last 6 Presidential contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, and New Mexico, three...

GREENVILLE, S.C. — The Republican dog and pony show hits Upstate South Carolina on Saturday as nearly a dozen presidential hopefuls pitch conservative activists during a forum on economic freedom. The Palmetto State hosts the third nominating contest of the 2016 presidential primary and first in the Republican-dominated South. That makes South Carolina a critical battleground in the race for the GOP nomination, even though the state's streak of picking the party's presidential nominee was broken three years ago. Upstate South Carolina is considered the conservative bastion of this decidedly red state. Scott Ramsey, a 47-year-old Republican voter from Spartanburg...

As many of you know, I'm a big fan of Ted Cruz, but when he does something wrong, it's important to call him on it. In this case he, along with Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, voted for a bill that will effectively allow the President to lift sanctions on Iran. Normally, here's how treaties work: the President negotiates a treaty with another country, like the deal he is negotiating with Iran over its nuclear weapons development. Once the treaty is negotiated, it's submitted to the Senate. Two thirds of the Senate has to vote to approve, or ratify, the...

Jeb Bush is putting in motion an ambitious plan to develop a super PAC that would be unprecedented in its size and scope — a blueprint growing in scale and intensity as he nears the formal launch of his presidential campaign. The group, called Right to Rise, is said to be on track for raising an historic $100 million by the end of May, and its budget is expected to dwarf that of Bush’s official campaign many times over. In interviews, more than half a dozen sources familiar with the Right to Rise plans described a juggernaut that was rapidly...

".....We also tested Walker against all of the other potential Democratic candidates, and he leads them by wide margins. He's up 15 on both Lincoln Chafee (41/26) and Bernie Sanders (43/28), and 18 on both Martin O'Malley (43/25) and Jim Webb (44/26). Those large deficits are largely a function of the candidates' name recognition- because it's so low, only 53-58% of Democrats even commit to voting for those folks against Walker in a general election. But at any rate Clinton is by far and away the strongest candidate for the general in the Democratic field. The Republican primary field in...

But money is unlikely to be Bush’s problem in this campaign, and cash may be a less valuable resource than another sort of currency in which he is lacking: the support of influential Republicans, like current senators and governors, especially those who publicly endorse a candidate. Historically, these endorsements have been the best proxy for support in the “invisible primary” and a leading indicator for which candidates may emerge victorious through the rough-and-tumble nomination race.... We give each candidate “endorsement points” based on endorsements received from governors and members of Congress, which work like this: 10 points for each governor...

<p>For all those convinced that the serial allegations of ethical impropriety swirling around Hillary Rodham Clinton will puncture her prospects of winning the presidency next year, there's a relevant precedent to consider: on the day Bill Clinton was reelected by more than eight million votes in 1996, a solid 54 percent majority of voters said in exit polling that they did not consider him honest and trustworthy.</p>

Peter Schweizer’s “Clinton Cash” links Bill and Hillary Clinton through their work at the Clinton Foundation and State Department to all manner of unsavory characters, including authoritarian leaders, African warlords and businessmen with dubious backgrounds, in addition to more respectable Clinton political operatives and supporters who in Schweizer’s writing paid the Clintons and enriched themselves by way of projects supported by the Clintons. One Clinton-linked transaction however implicates another figure: presumed 2016 GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush. In a chapter titled “Disaster Capitalism,” Schweizer explores the dealings of the Clinton Foundation — in league with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...

Scott Walker said in 2008 that the government "needs to do more to give people freedom back" by fighting the "poverty pimps in our society," referring to government officials and community-based organizations that, he said, use poverty for political power. ...

It’s becoming a trend. A variety of polls now trumpet the claim that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran the gauntlet and emerged unscathed. Despite the best efforts of Republicans and the press, her candidacy cannot be derailed. Her hour come round at last, Hillary Clinton slouches unremittingly toward the White House.“Hillary Clinton appears to have initially weathered a barrage of news about her use of a private email account when she was secretary of state and practices of her family’s foundation,” The New York Times reported this week in a write-up around a poll the organization conducted...